Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when she plans to publish a fuller equalities impact assessment of the Child Poverty Strategy, including its impact on groups at highest risk of poverty.

Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)

A full summary equalities analysis was published alongside the Child Poverty Strategy and is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-poverty-strategy-summary-equalities-analysis.

The impacts of policies contributing to the Child Poverty Strategy will be kept under review and monitored on an ongoing basis by departments using their own established approaches to considerations made under the Public Sector Equality Duty.

The ongoing monitoring and evaluation of the Child Poverty Strategy will also continue to assess the poverty risk and prevalence for groups with protected characteristics, as far as the data and evidence gathering allow.

The monitoring and evaluation framework, published alongside the Strategy, set out that a baseline report will be published in summer 2026, with annual reporting on progress thereafter.

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 ensure adequate funding for Time for Young People in Torbay; and if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of early support provision.

Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

We recognise the importance of high-quality, community-based early support for children and young people’s mental health, including innovative local services such as Time for Young People in Torbay. These services play a key role in offering early, accessible support to young people at a point when they may not meet clinical thresholds for statutory National Health Service mental health services. It is open to integrated care boards and local authorities to commission voluntary sector providers to ensure the mental health and wellbeing needs of their local population are met.

Whilst Government does not directly fund Time for Young People in Torbay, as part of the Department’s wider commitment to early intervention and prevention, we are working with NHS England to expand funding for a range of early support initiatives and to strengthen the evidence base for such provision. For example, in 2024/25, the Department provided £8 million of funding to boost and evaluate the impact of 24 existing early support hubs, with a further £7 million in 2025/26. Findings from the evaluation will help inform the design and implementation of Young Futures Hubs, a national model for open-access support in communities.

This is in addition to other ongoing initiatives that deliver early intervention, for example through further investment and expansion of mental health support teams in schools so that up to 900,000 additional children and young people in England will have access to an NHS-funded mental health support team in their school or college by Spring 2026, compared to Spring 2025. We intend to reach full coverage by 2029.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, from January 2023 to December 2025, what information his Department holds on the number of instances where waiting times for Access to Work have resulted in claimants losing their job or having their working hours reduced.

Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

Access to Work is only available to people who are in work or about to start work, and the number of hours worked does not affect eligibility, so this type of data is not recorded.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether his Department takes account of exceptional circumstances in previous years when calculating Council Tax base growth, including reviews of single person discounts and the introduction of a Council Tax premium on second homes.

Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

At the provisional Local Government Finance Settlement 2026-27 to 2028-29 on 17 December 2025, we set out the funding available to councils through the longstanding Core Spending Power measure, which was calculated in line with the approach used at previous Settlements. This means we assumed each authority’s council tax base increases in line with the five-year average annual growth in their council tax base. The inclusion of second homes premium income in Core Spending Power does not affect grant allocations, as it is excluded in the updated assessment of relative need and resources.

We are aware over two thirds of billing authorities introduced second homes premiums in 2025-26, and under our proposals this additional income would be accounted for in Core Spending Power, given it is an important part of the resources available to local authorities to deliver services. No council will lose grant and/or business rates through our assessment of authorities’ relative need and resources as a result of this approach and as part of the government’s policy to reward places for housebuilding.

The consultation on the provisional Settlement closed on 14 January. The government is now considering responses and will set out its position at the final Settlement in February.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will take steps to (a) remove the cap on the number of days courts can sit, (b) help ensure prisoners are transported to court on time, (c) hold discussions with the Crown Prosecution Service on the removal of cases from the backlog, (d) help support the recruitment of more public sector barristers and (e) help ensure that court buildings are fit for purpose.

Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The Government inherited a justice system in crisis, with a record and rising open caseload of nearly 80,000 criminal cases waiting to be heard and too many victims waiting years for justice.

1. In the Crown Court for this financial year (2025/26), we are funding 111,250 sitting days – the highest number of sitting days on record and over 5,000 more than the previous Government funded for the last financial year. The Deputy Prime Minister and Lady Chief Justice continue discussions on allocation for 2026-27, aiming to give an unprecedented three-year certainty to the system. The Deputy Prime Minister has been clear that sitting days in the Crown and magistrates’ courts must continue to rise and his ambition is to continue breaking records by the end of this Parliament. We will provide Parliament with an update on the sitting day allocations in the usual way at the conclusion of the Concordat process.

2. Prisoners should be produced on time and we are committed to making improvements where we can. Prisoner transport delivery is regularly reviewed and a significant number of contract changes have been made already to adapt to the changing operational requirement. But even if every prison van ran like clockwork tomorrow, we would still be left with a backlog edging towards 100,000 cases. Prisoner transport delays are a symptom of a stretched system, not a cure for it.

3. There is no quick fix to the criminal courts crisis, and no single lever that can be pulled. It is vital that all system partners work together to deliver swifter justice for victims. We continue to talk to system partners, including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), to consider options, including those in Sir Brian Leveson’s Part I report on criminal court reform. In June 2025, the Chancellor announced a landmark increase of £96 million (RDELex) in additional funding for the CPS over the spending review period 2026-2029. This will help CPS protect victims by tackling the backlog, speeding up justice, and delivering a justice system that services victims.

4. We are investing up to an additional £34 million per year for criminal legal aid advocates. We are also taking forward Sir Brian’s recommendation to match-fund a number of criminal barrister pupillages, with a particular focus on opening a career at the criminal Bar to even more young people from across society.

5. This Government has also secured record investment of up to £450 million per year for the courts system over the Spending Review period, alongside investing £148.5 million in court and tribunal maintenance and project funding this financial year, £28.5 million more than the previous Government funded last financial year.

But investment alone is not enough – that is why this Government asked Sir Brian Leveson to undertake his Independent Review of the Criminal Courts. On 2 December, the Deputy Prime Minister responded to the first part of that review and set out why structural court reform is necessary, alongside investment and modernisation.

Loan Charge and settlement terms offered to large companies and individuals

Right to object to data being used in online direct marketing

Public toilet provision

Flooding as a result of Storm Chandra

Improving equestrian road safety awareness

90th anniversary of the Spitfire

Signing of the Hamburg Declaration

President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement

World Cancer Day

Buying community energy locally

Social media for under 16s

UK digital sovereignty strategy

Halie Selassie and Bath

Commemorating National Care Leaver’s Month November 2025

The Hive, Chard

Import of illegal meat

Brain cancer

Public health campaign on tackling stigma towards suicide

Dolly Parton's birthday

Peter Hill, visiting every pub in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide 2020

Deregistration of international non-governmental organisations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Iran protests

Less Survivable Cancers Week

Use of UK bases by the United States and international law in relation to Greenland

The Gatehouse in Oxford

Vera Petty

Homelessness support in Eastbourne

RESP and St Andrews Aquarium nominated for award

Yeovil College's University Centre

Swan Theatre, Yeovil

Motor neurone disease

Rail fare increase

Found: Q7 Steve Darling: DWP is a massive organisation.

Found: Baxter (Labour; Paisley and Renfrewshire South) Mr Peter Bedford (Conservative; Mid Leicestershire) Steve Darling

Submit Evidence (by 12 Feb 2026)

Nearly one million young people aged 16–24 are not in employment, education or training (NEET). This is a worrying statistic given the harm that being NEET can do to young people’s prospects and wellbeing. To tackle this problem, the Government has recently transferred the skills remit to DWP and announced measures such as the Youth Guarantee and apprenticeship reforms. The Work and Pensions Committee’s inquiry, which seeks to complement the independent Milburn Review into Young People and Work, will explore the causes of economic inactivity and how to help young people into work, education or training, and scrutinise the Government’s plans.

Members of the Education and Work and Pensions Select Committees have decided to undertake an inquiry that will consider how the Government can ensure it will deliver a successful Child Poverty Strategy.