Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to integrate steatotic liver disease indicators into non-communicable disease policy and frameworks to meet the World Health Assembly resolution on steatotic liver disease adopted in May 2026.

Answered by Sharon Hodgson

The Government recognises the importance of the World Health Assembly’s resolution on steatotic liver disease (SLD), which marks the first time liver disease has been formally recognised as part of the global agenda on noncommunicable diseases.

We are taking action to ensure SLD is integrated within whole-system approaches and tackled effectively. This includes through NHS England’s Liver Transformation Programme, which aims to improve liver disease diagnosis and treatment through focus on the entire care pathway, ensuring a more integrated and effective approach to liver care. The programme has three workstreams, awareness and prevention, detection and diagnosis, and treatment, which will ensure outcomes are aligned with the goals of the World Health Assembly’s resolution on SLD.

Furthermore, the newly published Cardiovascular Disease Modern Service Framework is specifically designed as an integrated cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic strategy and makes specific mention of the importance of addressing metabolic associated SLD.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to tackle the under-achievement of persistently disadvantaged pupils.

Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)

The department is determined to do more to improve the life chances of our most disadvantaged children and to break the link between background and future success.

The ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ Schools White Paper establishes the departments plan to improve the outcomes of all children. When children born under this government finish secondary school, it is our ambition that all children achieve higher standards and the KS4 disadvantage gap will be halved. This equates to 30,000 more disadvantaged young people passing their English and maths GCSEs than today.

The department’s approach to tackle this disadvantage gap is comprehensive: rebuilding early family support, reforming how disadvantage funding is allocated and boosting its impact to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, improving teacher recruitment and retention so every child benefits from high-quality teaching, broadening the curriculum alongside access to high-quality enrichment, and launching two place-based missions, Mission North East and Mission Coastal, to drive improvement in areas where outcomes remain stubbornly low.

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will commit to introducing an interim redress scheme for victims of the Sodium Valproate scandal, as recommended in the Hughes Report.

Answered by Emma Reynolds - Chief Secretary to the Treasury

The Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care are in regular contact on a range of issues, including health and social care policy.

As previously set out, the Government extends its sincere and heartfelt sympathies to all those affected by sodium valproate. We recognise the suffering that many individuals and families have experienced and the lasting impact these harms have had on their health, wellbeing and quality of life.

Policy on the issue of redress for families affected by sodium valproate during pregnancy is the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Care. The Department has been in contact with the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC), Professor Henrietta Hughes, with regard to the ongoing health initiatives it is taking forward in conjunction with NHS England, relating to sodium valproate. Details of the Government’s work to date are set out in recent letters to Professor Hughes, which are published on the PSC website.

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