Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing mission critical neighbourhoods, as defined by the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods, on the effectiveness of the Government's policies on tackling (a) deprivation and (b) other issues.

Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

This Government has recently announced the Plan for Neighbourhoods, a £1.5 billion programme to invest in 75 areas over the next decade, offering a long-term strategy to fix the foundations of places that have been left behind. This plan will help to tackle deprivation at the root cause, creating neighbourhoods where people can thrive, communities are stronger, and people have control over the things that matter to them. In each of these areas, we will help set up a Neighbourhood Board, bringing together residents, local businesses, and grassroots campaigners to draw up a new vision for their neighbourhood. I welcome the launch of the Independent Commission on Neighbourhood’s interim report and look forward to seeing, their insights on how we can build on this agenda to support the most in need neighbourhoods.

Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, when she expects to receive the final report of the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods.

Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

This Government has recently announced the Plan for Neighbourhoods, a £1.5 billion programme to invest in 75 areas over the next decade, offering a long-term strategy to fix the foundations of places that have been left behind. This plan will help to tackle deprivation at the root cause, creating neighbourhoods where people can thrive, communities are stronger, and people have control over the things that matter to them. In each of these areas, we will help set up a Neighbourhood Board, bringing together residents, local businesses, and grassroots campaigners to draw up a new vision for their neighbourhood. I welcome the launch of the Independent Commission on Neighbourhood’s interim report and look forward to seeing, their insights on how we can build on this agenda to support the most in need neighbourhoods.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of the population of England and Wales has a criminal record.

Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury

To answer the question exactly would be disproportionate costs. The Ministry of Justice holds an extract of data from the Police National Computer (PNC). To obtain data on all those with a criminal record would require collaborating with the Home Office as they hold the complete source data.

In October 2024, the Ministry of Justice published an ad-hoc statistical publication which estimated that 9.4 million working age people in the UK have a nominal record with a criminal element against their name held on the MoJ extract of the PNC. This is a high-level estimate based on the UK population and is equivalent to 22% of the working aged population (those aged 16-64). This is an estimate with limitations. A comprehensive programme of work would need to be undertaken to determine a precise figure and this would incur disproportionate cost.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what demographic information is held about the subjects of DBS checks in England and Wales.

Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) is operationally independent from the Home Office and as such the Home Office does not hold any demographic information about the subjects of DBS checks in England and Wales. The DBS itself only holds demographic information that is mandatory for the processing of disclosure checks and barring referrals.

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