Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that spousal visa applications are processed in line with equality standards, especially where one party has (a) a learning disability and (b) Down's Syndrome.

Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

The partner route under Appendix FM includes different requirements for those who have a disability in recognition of the Home Office’s equality obligations. For example, where the sponsor is claiming certain health disability allowances the family must meet the adequate maintenance test rather than the minimum income requirement and applicants are exempt from meeting English language requirements if they have a disability which prevents them learning English.

All applications are considered on a case-by-case basis and where there are vulnerabilities, the caseworker will take this into consideration. Equality Impact Assessments are kept under review and updated as necessary.

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether the Treasury has estimated the economic cost of outages on hyperscale cloud providers, and whether such risks are factored into national digital resilience planning.

Answered by James Murray - Chief Secretary to the Treasury

The Government monitors systemic risks to UK critical national infrastructure, including resilience measures and contingency planning, including cloud providers.

The Government recognises the importance of robust protections for the services essential to our society and economy. That is why we introduced the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill on 12 November. The Bill will make sure more types of essential and digital services adhere to robust cyber security practices.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what actions she will take to address restrictive software licensing practices by dominant cloud providers, as identified by the CMA, to ensure fair competition in the cloud services market.

Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

The Government is committed to supporting a competitive and innovative digital economy. This is why we prioritised the commencement of the Competition and Markets Authority’s (the CMA) new powers in digital markets. The CMA is independent of Government, and any decisions on which markets it investigates is for their Board.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps the Government is taking to ensure greater competition, interoperability, and diversity in the UK cloud market, in light of successive large-scale outages from Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

In July, the Competition and Markets Authority (the CMA) recommended their board prioritise a future Strategic Market Status investigation into competition in the cloud market. The CMA is independent of Government and any decisions on which markets it investigates is for their Board.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that the Competition and Markets Authority accelerates the Digital Markets Unit strategic market status designation process for cloud services.

Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

The Competition and Markets Authority (the CMA) has completed 3 Strategic Market Status investigations this year. The CMA is independent of the Government and decisions on which markets to investigate is for their Board. The CMA has published guidance on its website on how it will prioritise Strategic Market Status designations.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment her Department has made of the systemic risks posed to the UK economy and critical services by reliance on two dominant hyperscale cloud providers, following recent outages on Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) continues to monitor systemic risks to UK critical national infrastructure from reliance on cloud providers, including resilience measures and contingency planning following recent service outages. DSIT works closely with each cloud provider during and after any incident to ensure improved resilience and lessons learnt are shared across Government. For example, following earlier global digital resilience incidents, we are working to strengthen our capability to coordinate this kind of incident across Government.

Government recommends that public sector organisations adopt a multi-region approach, in which they make controlled, considered use of regions in a way which is compatible with UK law. This helps improve resilience by removing the reliance on any one region.

DSIT will publish the Government Cyber Action Plan this Winter, which sets out a clear approach for Government and the public sector to manage cyber security and resilience incidents impacting Government services.

Government also recognises the importance of robust protections for the services essential to our society and economy – that is why we introduced the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill on 12 November.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of parks and green spaces on communities.

Answered by Miatta Fahnbulleh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

Parks and urban green spaces are important for community cohesion, biodiversity, climate change mitigation, and civic pride.

Responsibility for funding, managing and maintaining them lies mainly with local authorities. The government is committed to supporting Local Authorities in developing best practice to look after parks and green spaces.

The cornerstone of our support for communities is the government’s Pride in Place Programme, providing up to £5 billion funding and support over 10 years to 244 places. This flagship offer will help build strong, resilient and integrated communities in areas that experience the most entrenched social and economic challenges. This includes opportunities for communities to invest in their local parks and green spaces.

We are also committed to maintaining the quality of parks and green spaces through the MHCLG-owned Green Flag Award, which sets the national quality standard. The scheme has helped to transform thousands of parks and green spaces across the country.

The government's statutory guidance on local government reorganisation requires that unitary structures must prioritise the delivery of high quality and sustainable public services to citizens and that unitary structures should enable stronger community engagement and deliver genuine opportunity for neighbourhood empowerment, including parks and green spaces.

The government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is also clear that planning policies should set out an overall strategy for the pattern, scale and design quality of places and make sufficient provision for the conservation and enhancement of the natural, built and historic environment, including green infrastructure.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to protect green spaces and parks as part of the local government review.

Answered by Miatta Fahnbulleh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

Parks and urban green spaces are important for community cohesion, biodiversity, climate change mitigation, and civic pride.

Responsibility for funding, managing and maintaining them lies mainly with local authorities. The government is committed to supporting Local Authorities in developing best practice to look after parks and green spaces.

The cornerstone of our support for communities is the government’s Pride in Place Programme, providing up to £5 billion funding and support over 10 years to 244 places. This flagship offer will help build strong, resilient and integrated communities in areas that experience the most entrenched social and economic challenges. This includes opportunities for communities to invest in their local parks and green spaces.

We are also committed to maintaining the quality of parks and green spaces through the MHCLG-owned Green Flag Award, which sets the national quality standard. The scheme has helped to transform thousands of parks and green spaces across the country.

The government's statutory guidance on local government reorganisation requires that unitary structures must prioritise the delivery of high quality and sustainable public services to citizens and that unitary structures should enable stronger community engagement and deliver genuine opportunity for neighbourhood empowerment, including parks and green spaces.

The government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is also clear that planning policies should set out an overall strategy for the pattern, scale and design quality of places and make sufficient provision for the conservation and enhancement of the natural, built and historic environment, including green infrastructure.

Thanking postal workers

Hair and beauty products (chemicals applied to the hair or body for cosmetic purposes) and treatments (cosmetic procedures typically performed by specialists) can cause harm to consumers if they contain unregulated ingredients or if they are improperly administered.  The inquiry will respond to recent research which has led to concerns about the current scientific evidence base and regulation for these products, as well as the required training and qualifications of specialists performing treatments.  The inquiry will also investigate the growing concern that certain products that are commonly used by marginalised groups, such as creams to ‘relax’ afro-type hair and synthetic hair, can contain harmful chemicals.

On 15 July 2025 the Defence Secretary told the House of Commons about a large-scale data breach that had taken place in 2022, when a Ministry of Defence official emailed a spreadsheet to an external contact, unaware that it contained details relating to 18,700 Afghan nationals applying for relocation.