Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many officials (1) in total, and (2) in number of full-time equivalent staff, have been involved in supporting the promoters of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in the Department of Health and Social Care since November 2020.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The number of full-time equivalent staff working on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has fluctuated since January 2025; there was not a team working on this bill prior to this, and any work on assisted dying was delivered through existing policy teams. The primary function of the team now in place is to fulfil the Government’s duty to the statute book, with regards to the legal and technical coherence of the bill. This includes providing technical drafting support and advising on workability of the legislation, as well as supporting Ministers to fulfil their duties to Parliament, such as responding to questions and correspondence and Parliamentary debates and committee hearing. Matters of policy have remained solely for the Sponsoring Members, Kim Leadbeater MP in the House of Commons and Lord Falconer in the House of Lords, to determine.

As of 1 September 2025, there were 11.8 full-time equivalent (FTE) officials in the Department of Health and Social Care Bill Team, at its largest the Bill Team was 16.8 FTEs. Where required, contributions on specific issues may have been sought from other teams, however the FTE cannot be accurately quantified for these issues.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government which four councils will be required to have government-backed local inquiries into grooming gangs, in addition to Oldham.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

In June this year, Baroness Casey published her independent audit into group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse, and the Government accepted every recommendation it made, including establishing a new national inquiry. The national inquiry, equipped with statutory powers under the Inquiries Act 2005, will direct targeted local reviews in specific areas.

The former Home Secretary previously committed in January to provide guidance and establish a £5 million fund which would have supported non-statutory local inquiries. Our new approach of establishing a national statutory inquiry, will be strengthened through its statutory powers – therefore, we have discontinued work related to the previously announced guidance and £5 million fund.

We are in the process of identifying an appropriate Inquiry Chair with the credibility and experience to command the confidence of victims, survivors and the public. They will be announced in due course.

Once the Chair is appointed, they will play a central role in shaping the inquiry’s terms of reference, alongside identifying the first local areas for review.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government, in fulfilling its strategy for 16 and 17 year-olds to take up education and training as set out in 1.4.2 of its Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper (CP 1412), what funding they will provide for transport in rural areas.

Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

The responsibility for post-16 transport lies with local authorities, who have a duty to publish a transport policy statement each year that sets out the travel arrangements they will make to support young people to access further education. ​

​Arrangements do not have to be free, but the department expects local authorities, including those in rural areas, to make reasonable decisions based on the needs of their population, the local transport infrastructure, and the resources they have available. ​

​The 16 to 19 Bursary Fund is also used to help students with travel costs, including those on low incomes. It enables schools, colleges and training providers to support students with transport costs where these have been identified as a barrier to participation.​

​In addition to their statutory responsibilities, many local authorities do offer some form of subsidised transport which, combined with the 16 to 19 bursary, has been intended to provide financial support to students from low-income households. These decisions are best made locally, in consideration of local needs, the resources available and other local circumstances.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether legitimate undercover journalism is considered a "reasonable excuse" for the purposes of the offence of taking or recording intimate photograph or film under Schedule 9(2) of the Crime and Policing Bill.

Answered by Baroness Levitt - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The proposed new section 66AA(5) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 states that: “It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under subsection (1) to prove that the person had a reasonable excuse for taking the photograph or recording the film”.

This would be a fact-sensitive decision to be made by the court on a case-by-case basis.

That said, the position of a journalist working undercover is one of the situations in which the Government has envisaged that the defence might apply.

The public-facing CPS Legal Guidance Assessing the Public Interest in Cases Affecting the Media [Media: Assessing the Public Interest in Cases Affecting the Media | The Crown Prosecution Service] provides further guidance to prosecutors in dealing with scenarios such as this, including the application of the Public Interest Test.

Therefore, any journalist being investigated for an offence would also be entitled to make representations to the Director of Public Prosecutions, relying on the Legal Guidance, that a prosecution should not take place because it did not meet the Full Code Test for prosecution.