Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many animals were housed in UK (a) laboratories, (b) breeding centres and (c) universities but not used in scientific procedures in 2023; and how many animals were not used in scientific procedures and euthanised in 2023.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The available data in this area was most recently set out in Annual Statistics of Scientific Procedures on Living Animals, Great Britain 2023, published on 11 September 2024. The statistics provide full details on the number of licensed procedures carried out, the species of animals and the purposes for which the procedures have been undertaken. The 2023 Annual Statistics show that 2.68 million scientific procedures involving living animals were carried out in Great Britain in 2023; this is a decrease of 3% on last year and the lowest number since 2001.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take legislative steps to authorise the police to inform youth clubs when people (a) attending and (b) running them have received a police caution for sexual offences.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Ensuring the system for managing sex offenders and those who pose a risk is as robust as possible is a crucial part of preventing sexual violence and delivering our mission to halve violence against women and girls.
The disclosure and barring regime protects children and vulnerable adults through the disclosure of relevant criminal records to help employers make informed recruitment decisions. Where an individual is seeking to work in a role that involve special risks and sensitivities, such as working closely with children, an employer may request they obtain an enhanced criminal record certificate from the Disclosure and Barring Service. These certificates include details of spent and unspent cautions and convictions recorded on the Police National Computer, subject to filtering rules. Except in some sectors like health and education, the use of DBS checks is at the employer’s discretion.
In addition, police can share information about individuals who may pose a risk where disclosure is required to protect the public, including children or vulnerable adults. This can be done either proactively or on request.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason international students from countries with Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results above the UK’s own in English are required to take additional English tests when they apply to UK universities.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Government has no plans to weaken the UK’s immigration controls on English language requirements in the way suggested by the Honourable Member for Basildon and Billericay.
To ensure that all those coming to the UK to study under the Student route are genuine students who can follow a course of study, the Home Office sets minimum requirements for English language competency as specified in the Immigration Rules.
Sponsors who are Higher Education Providers (HEP) with a track record of compliance offering courses at degree level or above can also choose to set higher requirements and use their own methods to assess the students’ English language ability.
It is important that the English language requirements set out in our Immigration Rules continue to be applied to each individual based on their personal aptitude, rather than handing blanket approval to all students based on the PISA results of their country of origin.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking through (a) Young Futures Hubs and (b) Young Futures Prevention Partnerships to help tackle violence against women and girls.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Government has set an ambitious target to halve VAWG in a decade. To achieve this, we must reduce the current levels of offending and reoffending but also prevent abuse from happening altogether.
This focus on prevention also sits at the heart of the Young Futures Programme, which will establish a network of Young Futures Hubs and Young Futures Prevention Partnerships.
Young Futures Prevention Partnerships will bring local partners together to ensure children at risk of being drawn into knife crime, anti-social behaviour and violence against women and girls are identified earlier and offered support in a more systematic way.
Young Futures Hubs will bring together services to improve access to opportunities and support for young people at community level, promoting positive outcomes and enabling them to thrive.
Officials across Government are working together, using evidence of what works, to start to shape how the Young Futures Hubs will work in practice.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential contribution of youth services to the prevention of violence against women and girls.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Government has set an ambitious target to halve VAWG in a decade. To achieve this, we must reduce the current levels of offending and reoffending but also prevent abuse from happening all together.
The Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy will set out our strategic direction and concrete actions to deliver this ambition. We are considering a range of policy options across Government to prevent these crimes including education for young people around healthy relationships and consent, community interventions and tackling online VAWG.
That includes looking at how we can work most effectively with youth services and through the Young Futures programme to deliver this ambition.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has had recent discussions with the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology on the potential merits of expanding the provisions of the Online Safety Act 2023 to help tackle violence against women and girls.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Tackling VAWG in all of its forms, including when it takes place online, is a top priority for this Government, and that's why we have set out an unprecedented mission to halve VAWG within a decade.
The misuse of technology to abuse or harm others (including online) has a disproportionate impact on women and children and we know this is a significant and growing issue in the UK and worldwide.
We will go further than before to deliver a cross-government transformative approach to halve all forms of violence against women and girls, underpinned by a new VAWG strategy to be published next year. In January 2025, the Government introduced new legislation which will make creating sexually explicit 'deepfake' images a criminal offence.
The Online Safety Act designates material relating to child sexual exploitation and abuse as a priority offence. Platforms must put in place systems and processes to minimise and remove this content. The Illegal Harms Codes, laid before Parliament in December and coming into force from 17 March this year, sets out the steps companies must take to meet their duties under the Act to tackle this content."
I regularly meet with Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to discuss these matters.
My officials also engage regularly with DSIT and the Ministry of Justice to identify the most appropriate legislative vehicles to tackle technology-facilitated VAWG.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 8 January 2025 to Question 16332 on Undocumented Migrants, whether she plans to make an estimate of the number of people in the UK illegally.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
By its very nature, it is not possible to know the exact size of the illegal migrant population, and so the Home Office under successive governments has not published any official estimates of the illegal migrant population. In June 2019, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published a note on ‘Measuring illegal migration: our current view’.
Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the code of practice for statistics, taking into account a number of factors including user needs, the resources required to compile the statistics, as well as quality and availability of data.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) national and (b) local inquiries have been carried out into rape grooming gangs.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
It is essential that we continue to learn from past failings on group-based Child Sexual Exploitation to improve and strengthen our ongoing response to grooming gangs offending.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), led by Professor Alexis Jay, was conducted over seven years and engaged with more than 7,000 victims and survivors. None of the 20 recommendations from the final report were implemented by the previous Government. IICSA also conducted a dedicated two-year investigation into abuse by organised networks and published a report in February 2022. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue (HMICFRS) published an inspection into the effectiveness of the police response to group-based Child Sexual Exploitation in December 2023. Local inquiries have also taken place in many local authority areas including Rotherham, Oldham, Rochdale, Bradford and Telford.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 1 November 2024, to Question 10992, on Ministers: private property, whether the Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention submitted a claim to the Department for the costs relating to the theft of her personal effects whilst on official duties at the Police Superintendents' Association conference in Kenilworth in September 2024.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention has not submitted a claim to the Department for the costs relating to the theft of her personal effects whilst on official duties at the Police Superintendents' Association conference in Kenilworth in September 2024.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make it her policy to remove the gender-neutral toilets in her Department in Marsham Street.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The current number and location of gender neutral toilets in the Home Office’s Marsham office was established under the previous government in October 2017, at a cost of £36,963.20, and has remained unchanged since that time.
There are no plans to spend further public money on the reconfiguration of the Home Office’s toilets.