Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help support elderly domestic abuse victims.
Answered by Shabana Mahmood - Home Secretary
From April 2025, the Home Office has allocated nearly £800,000 to Hourglass to provide specialist helpline and advocacy support for older victims of VAWG.
We will also publish a new national commissioning statement on VAWG to improve the provision of support for all victims, including older victims.
Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps her Department is taking to ensure SMEs have equitable access to finance from banks.
Answered by Rachel Blake
The Government has an ambitious agenda to support UK SMEs and drive growth across bank and non-bank lending. We have increased the British Business Bank’s funding, bringing their capacity to £25.6bn, to support initiatives such as the Growth Guarantee Scheme to stimulate the provision of finance to SMEs. Meanwhile, reforms to credit data sharing and work to develop Open Finance aim to boost competition and address information gaps. Changes to bank capital and ringfencing also support a proportionate, effective framework for SME finance
Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing mandatory, specialist domestic abuse training for all housing officers in England.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has not undertaken an assessment of mandating specialist domestic abuse training for all housing officers in England.
Local authorities, under their statutory duties in Part 4 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, are required to assess the need for and provide support for all victims of domestic abuse and their children while in safe accommodation. To support delivery of this duty, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government provided local authorities in England £160 million in 2025/26, a £30 million uplift from the previous year, and £499 million funding will be allocated to local authorities over the next three years.
Statutory guidance to local authorities is available (Delivery of support to victims of domestic abuse in domestic abuse safe accommodation services - GOV.UK) providing further details on how the duty should be delivered, including the expectation for local authorities to strengthen their understanding of domestic abuse locally, which may include through training.
Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing a co‑investment fund with diverse angel investors.
Answered by Blair McDougall - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade) (Jointly with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The British Business Bank's Angel Co-Fund programme already invests alongside syndicates of Business Angels. Every £1 invested by the Angel Co-Fund has leveraged around £5 from Angel syndicates.
The Bank is also expanding its Angel Syndicate Programme to support diverse Angel networks. The programme's pilot engaged 185 new Angel investors, of whom 176 were female and 9 were male. Since launch of this pilot programme in 2023, the Bank has completed 29 investment deals worth £18.4 million.
Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps he is taking to ensure that support programmes provide meaningful access to all types of finance, as well as investment education and readiness support, such as training, mentoring, and guidance, for female founders in all regions.
Answered by Blair McDougall - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade) (Jointly with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Backing women-led businesses across the regions is a priority for this government. To tackle access to finance, the government-backed Invest in Women Taskforce has secured commitments of £635 million to be invested in women-led businesses across the UK. The British Business Bank has delivered over 118,000 loans totalling more than £1.1 billion through its Start Up Loans programme, with 40% going to female founders.
UK Export Finance launched its new Female Founder Accelerator in January 2026 in partnership with Lifted Ventures. This will include workshops, mentoring and coaching to equip female founders with the support to scale internationally with confidence.
Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether he is taking steps to (a) monitor and (b) report on the gender investment gap, such as tracking year‑on‑year venture capital and angel investment into female‑founded companies; and whether targets or timelines have been set by his Department for improvement in this area.
Answered by Blair McDougall - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade) (Jointly with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Department for Business and Trade tracks year-on-year venture capital and angel investment in women-led businesses through its Investing in Women Code, a partnership between government, trade associations in the finance sector, and their members. Starting with 12 signatories in 2019, the Investing in Women Code now has over 300 finance providers signed up, including most major UK banks and Venture Capital funds.
Signatories to the Code report gender-disaggregated data on an annual basis for publication. Investing in Women Code reports demonstrate that Code signatories perform significantly better than the market average as regards investment in female founders.
Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how he is using allied health professionals to support soldier rehabilitation.
Answered by Louise Sandher-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for the Armed Forces)
All Armed Forces personnel are supported by dedicated and comprehensive rehabilitation services. Allied health professionals play a crucial role in supporting the treatment and rehabilitation of Armed Forces personnel in the UK and on operations to ensure our Armed Forces are fit to fight and can fight back to fitness.
Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to help ensure that defibrillators which have reached the end of their operational life will in state-funded schools in England will be replaced and funded by her Department.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
In 2023, the department provided over 20,000 defibrillators to state-funded schools in England. The programme aimed to ‘plug the gaps’ in existing provision to ensure that all schools have access to a device.
Defibrillators provided by the department are fully supported for the eight-year lifecycle of the device. New pads will be delivered automatically every two years, and replacement batteries provided four years after the initial delivery.
For schools who have existing defibrillators and for schools who wish to purchase additional defibrillators, the department has worked with the NHS to set up Defibs4Schools, which provides devices and consumables of a suitable specification. More information can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/automated-external-defibrillators-aeds-in-schools.
Following completion of the programme, the department will evaluate the impact of the rollout to inform future decisions.
Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what mental health support is available to school staff who experience psychological harm as a result of witnessing or administering the use of a workplace automated external defibrillator on a pupil or colleague.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Schools are best placed to understand what support may be most appropriate for their staff and should have standard operating procedures in place, including aftercare, should an incident occur where a member of staff witnesses or administers use of an automated external defibrillator on a pupil or a colleague. Should a rescuer need support after an incident, they may be able to request a debriefing from the local ambulance service. Alternatively, they can seek help directly from their GP.
The ‘Promoting and supporting mental health in schools and colleges’ page on GOV.UK, offers resources to build a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing and can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mental-health-and-wellbeing-support-in-schools-and-colleges. This includes information about the range of mental health support offers and training available to schools and colleges.
The charity, Education Support, also offers a free confidential 24 hour helpline dedicated to supporting staff working in education.
Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what diplomatic steps she is taking to help protect children in Iran from actions taken by the Iranian authorities.
Answered by Hamish Falconer - Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Jointly with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The killing and brutal repression of peaceful protesters in Iran is horrific. Iranians must be able to exercise their right to peaceful protest without fear of reprisal.
The Iranian government must immediately end the violence, uphold fundamental rights and freedoms, and ensure British nationals are safe. The Foreign Secretary made this very clear when she spoke with the Iranian Foreign Minister on 12 January, and I did likewise when we summoned the Iranian Ambassador the following day.
We are working closely with our partners to ensure the Iranian regime is held accountable for its violent repression and systematic human rights abuses against its own people.