Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Government provides support for young people who have been arrested for rough sleeping under the Vagrancy Act.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government has made the unprecedented commitment to end rough sleeping within this Parliament and to fully enforce the Homelessness Reduction Act. We have already embarked on a strategy to shift the focus to prevention and move vulnerable individuals into multi-agency support, backed by £2.4 billion over three years.
The government’s ‘Ending Rough Sleeping for Good’ strategy published in 2022 recognises that young people face particular challenges in accessing and maintaining accommodation. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is funding £2.5 million is being provided through the Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 to fund youth services in local areas. The youth interventions provide funding to 8 local authorities across England to develop specialist youth support such as outreach workers, prevention officers and specialist housing for those under 25. The Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) is also delivering over 2,000 homes by March 2025, including 650 homes for young people sleeping rough or at risk of rough sleeping and funding for wrap-around support tailored to individual needs.
Where anyone is arrested, Liaison and Diversion (L&D) services have been introduced into police custody, to seek to ensure that vulnerable people are identified and offered access to the help they may need. A key component of these schemes is to provide referrals to community treatment and support services and to provide advice to police custody staff on how best to support people with these vulnerabilities.
In certain circumstances, local authorities have a duty to provide accommodation to young people in their area aged under 18 deemed ‘in need’ under the Children’s Act 1989.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many 16 to 25 year olds have been arrested for rough sleeping under the Vagrancy Act.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The government does not collect figures on police usage of the Vagrancy Act where this does not result in prosecution. Policing is operationally independent of the Home Office, and we cannot comment on operational decisions.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of regulations on the use of snares.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
An industry-owned code of practice for the use of snares to control foxes in England sets out clear principles for the legal use of snares, using evidence from snare-use research to improve snare deployment and design.
Anyone using snares has a responsibility under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 to ensure their activities do not harm protected species or cause any unnecessary suffering. Anyone committing an offence can face prosecution, an unlimited fine or even a custodial sentence.
We are looking at how snares are regulated as part of our continued drive to maintain the highest animal welfare standards in the world, and working to ensure the regulated use of the most appropriate trap and cull method which causes the least suffering whilst providing the greatest protection to crops, game birds or endangered species.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what funding his Department has allocated to tackle youth homelessness in each of the last five years.
Answered by Felicity Buchan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The Government is committed to tackling all forms of homelessness and rough sleeping, including youth homelessness.
Between 2018 and 2025, Government has provided £938 million through the Rough Sleeping Initiative, to support local authorities to tackle rough sleeping. We expect councils to commission services based on an assessment of the needs of their local community to make sure that all groups’ needs are considered, which will include young people. During this period, we have also committed £17.4 million to support local authorities to prevent homelessness and rough sleeping for care leavers.
Since 2021, we have invested £1.6 billion through the Homelessness Prevention Grant, giving councils the funding they need to prevent homelessness and help more people sooner, including young homeless people.
In 2022, we announced the £200 million Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) which is delivering over 2,000 homes and support services for people sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough, including young people. Of these, over 650 are specifically for young people sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the further authorisation of the emergency use of neonicotinoids on global pesticide reduction targets.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The decision to authorise the short-term emergency use of a pesticide is never taken lightly and is based on robust assessment of the risks and benefits. The emergency authorisation we have issued this year for the use of a neonicotinoid on sugar beet is subject to strict conditions to mitigate risks to the wider environment.
We remain absolutely committed to the targets agreed in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. UK diplomatic leadership was critical to agreeing the framework and we will continue to champion the framework’s implementation.
We welcome the text in target 7, as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) lies at the heart of the UK's approach to minimise the environmental impact of pesticides.
In addition, the Government recently held a roundtable with members of the British sugar industry and environmental organisations to discuss the industry’s progress on implementing alternative pest control measures to neonicotinoids. I urge British Sugar and others in the sector to drive forward these plans, so that their outputs can be implemented in the field at pace.