Asked by: Chris Elmore (Labour - Ogmore)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he plans to take to support the wine industry after February 2025.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government has supported the wine industry with duty freezes at 6 of the last 12 fiscal events, including the decision at Spring Budget 2024 to freeze alcohol duty until 1 February 2025.
As part of the new alcohol duty reforms, the Government has removed the sparkling wine premium, meaning sparkling wines now pay the same amount of duty as still wines of the same strength. As a result, an 11% sparkling wine now pays 61p less duty than under the previous duty system. While higher strength wines will be subject to more duty under the reforms than under the previous system, lower strength wines will be subject to less duty.
The Government has been clear that the wine easement is a temporary and transitional measure to support the wine industry to adapt to the new duty system by 1 February 2025. The Government is confident that the necessary changes are manageable within the time provided and that the wine industry has the information required to update their systems and calculate the correct duty.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether a recent assessment has been made of the potential merits of creating an NHS Never Event for discharging newborns home to temporary accommodation without a cot.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
No assessment has been made of the potential merits of creating an NHS Never Event for discharging newborns home to temporary accommodation without a cot. A consultation on the future of the Never Events Framework was conducted by NHS England, and ran between 5 February and 5 May 2024. The consultation sought views on whether the existing Never Events Framework remains an effective mechanism to drive patient safety improvement. NHS England will respond to the consultation in due course.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners in HMP Lewes were (a) released as street homeless and (b) released and recalled (i) once and (ii) multiple times in each of the last six months.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
We are unable to provide data on street homelessness beyond 31 March 2023 as that data is a subset of data due for future publication and releasing it at this time would breach official statistics publication rules, as outlined in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Data for the latest six-month period, October 2022-March 2023, is available is provided in table 1 below.
Table 1: Number not housed on the first night of release from HMP Lewes, with an accommodation status at release recorded as Homeless - Rough Sleeping by month of release, October 2022 to March 2023.
Month of Release | Number |
October | 9 |
November | 10 |
December | 11 |
January | 4 |
February | 10 |
March | 9 |
Total | 53 |
Notes:
1. These figures are drawn from administrative data systems. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent.
2. Data is consistent with metric CU150 Housed on the first night of custodial release, contained within the latest Performance Ratings publication, 2022-2023: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-performance-ratings-2022-to-2023
3. In order to be counted in measure CU150, the release event must be found in both Prison-NOMIS and nDelius. Unmatched release events are excluded. (I.e., the figures provided might not include all cases).
4. Release events with a missing or obsolete status are treated as "negative" in this measure, as are release events with multiple statuses.
Data source: National Delius and Prison NOMIS
We are unable to provide data on releases and recall of offenders beyond 31 December 2023 as that data is a subset of data due for future publication and releasing it at this time would breach official statistics publication rules, as outlined in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Data for the latest six-month period, July 2023 - December 2023, is available is provided in table 2 below.
Table 2: The number of first-time releases from HMP Lewes from July- December 2023, and subsequent recalls by 31 December 2023
Month of release | Number of releases | Number of offenders recalled once | Number of offenders recalled more than once |
July | 47 | 17 | * |
August | 45 | 16 | 6 |
September | 42 | 11 | * |
October | 52 | 18 | 3 |
November | 49 | 10 | * |
December | 43 | 10 | 0 |
Notes:
1. Offenders are counted once in each month of release. There could be a handful of offenders counted twice across different months where they were released for the first time on different sentences.
2. Recalls are counted from date of release up to 31 December 2023. Where further recalls have occurred beyond 31 December 2023, these recalls are not included.
3. Given releases in later months have a shorter time for recalls to occur, direct comparisons across months are biased. The months have different lengths of time for recalls to occur.
4. Disclosure control: An asterisk (*) has been used to suppress values of one or two. This is to prevent the disclosure of individual information. Further suppression may be applied where needed.
5. Data quality: The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
Data source: P-NOMIS and Public Protection Unit Database (PPUD)
We know that having a safe place to stay helps cut crime which is why we are investing in our transitional accommodation service so prison leavers can have a guaranteed 12 weeks of basic, temporary accommodation to provide a stable base on release.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to help ensure the adequacy of wellbeing support for (a) officers and (b) other staff in police forces.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government takes very seriously the mental health of the police workforce and we are committed to making improvements in wellbeing support for officers and staff. Through the Police Covenant we have made significant progress on our initial priorities, including delivering pre-employment mental health support for the police workforce, launching a family support pack, improving occupational health standards in all forces and appointing a Chief Medical Officer for policing.
We also continue to fund the National Police Wellbeing Service (NPWS). The service is helping forces and individuals to identify where there is most risk of impacts on mental health, and developing work around building resilience, as well as putting in place support for those who need it in response to traumatic events.
The Home Office also provided funding to establish and run the first year of a 24/7 Mental Health Crisis Support line for current and former members of the police workforce. The NPWS will introduce the new independent and confidential support line imminently. This will be a dedicated phone line for policing staffed by qualified counsellors who have specialised training in crisis intervention and suicide prevention. The line will initially be available to all police officers and staff within the North East Region, with the view to expanding to all regions in England and Wales in 2025.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what mental health support is available to police officers in England; and what steps her Department takes to make police officers aware of that support.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government takes very seriously the mental health of the police workforce and we are committed to making improvements in wellbeing support for officers and staff. Through the Police Covenant we have made significant progress on our initial priorities, including delivering pre-employment mental health support for the police workforce, launching a family support pack, improving occupational health standards in all forces and appointing a Chief Medical Officer for policing.
We also continue to fund the National Police Wellbeing Service (NPWS). The service is helping forces and individuals to identify where there is most risk of impacts on mental health, and developing work around building resilience, as well as putting in place support for those who need it in response to traumatic events.
The Home Office also provided funding to establish and run the first year of a 24/7 Mental Health Crisis Support line for current and former members of the police workforce. The NPWS will introduce the new independent and confidential support line imminently. This will be a dedicated phone line for policing staffed by qualified counsellors who have specialised training in crisis intervention and suicide prevention. The line will initially be available to all police officers and staff within the North East Region, with the view to expanding to all regions in England and Wales in 2025.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to help ensure the adequacy of mental health support for staff in police forces.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government takes very seriously the mental health of the police workforce and we are committed to making improvements in wellbeing support for officers and staff. Through the Police Covenant we have made significant progress on our initial priorities, including delivering pre-employment mental health support for the police workforce, launching a family support pack, improving occupational health standards in all forces and appointing a Chief Medical Officer for policing.
We also continue to fund the National Police Wellbeing Service (NPWS). The service is helping forces and individuals to identify where there is most risk of impacts on mental health, and developing work around building resilience, as well as putting in place support for those who need it in response to traumatic events.
The Home Office also provided funding to establish and run the first year of a 24/7 Mental Health Crisis Support line for current and former members of the police workforce. The NPWS will introduce the new independent and confidential support line imminently. This will be a dedicated phone line for policing staffed by qualified counsellors who have specialised training in crisis intervention and suicide prevention. The line will initially be available to all police officers and staff within the North East Region, with the view to expanding to all regions in England and Wales in 2025.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what his planned timetable is for the commencement of a 24/7 mental health crisis support line for police forces staff.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government takes very seriously the mental health of the police workforce and we are committed to making improvements in wellbeing support for officers and staff. Through the Police Covenant we have made significant progress on our initial priorities, including delivering pre-employment mental health support for the police workforce, launching a family support pack, improving occupational health standards in all forces and appointing a Chief Medical Officer for policing.
We also continue to fund the National Police Wellbeing Service (NPWS). The service is helping forces and individuals to identify where there is most risk of impacts on mental health, and developing work around building resilience, as well as putting in place support for those who need it in response to traumatic events.
The Home Office also provided funding to establish and run the first year of a 24/7 Mental Health Crisis Support line for current and former members of the police workforce. The NPWS will introduce the new independent and confidential support line imminently. This will be a dedicated phone line for policing staffed by qualified counsellors who have specialised training in crisis intervention and suicide prevention. The line will initially be available to all police officers and staff within the North East Region, with the view to expanding to all regions in England and Wales in 2025.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what mental health support is available to police officers; and how that support is promoted to officers.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government takes very seriously the mental health of the police workforce and we are committed to making improvements in wellbeing support for officers and staff. Through the Police Covenant we have made significant progress on our initial priorities, including delivering pre-employment mental health support for the police workforce, launching a family support pack, improving occupational health standards in all forces and appointing a Chief Medical Officer for policing.
We also continue to fund the National Police Wellbeing Service (NPWS). The service is helping forces and individuals to identify where there is most risk of impacts on mental health, and developing work around building resilience, as well as putting in place support for those who need it in response to traumatic events.
The Home Office also provided funding to establish and run the first year of a 24/7 Mental Health Crisis Support line for current and former members of the police workforce. The NPWS will introduce the new independent and confidential support line imminently. This will be a dedicated phone line for policing staffed by qualified counsellors who have specialised training in crisis intervention and suicide prevention. The line will initially be available to all police officers and staff within the North East Region, with the view to expanding to all regions in England and Wales in 2025.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Benyon on 18 December 2023 (HL838), whether they have had any discussions with the government of Kenya regarding the eviction and destruction of property of the Ogiek people in the Mau forest of that country.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The British High Commission in Nairobi is closely monitoring events in the Mau Forest. I have not raised this issue with the Kenyan authorities.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what measures they are considering implementing to (1) monitor, and (2) evaluate the progress of the post-Brexit border strategy, and what steps they are taking to share new information with affected companies and organisations across the UK.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Progress against delivery of the 2025 UK Border Strategy can be seen through publication and subsequent implementation of the Border Target Operating Model (BTOM). This has enabled us to bring together policy and process improvements through better use of technology and data, most notably with the development of a Single Trade Window.
We have continued to explore innovation at the border through our Ecosystem of Trust Pilots. The BTOM also outlines our plans for improving border processes for exporters. The Government will continue to monitor progress on specific BTOM policies in line with Magenta Book guidance on evaluation.
The Government worked extensively with traders to ensure current and future changes at the border are clear and that they have ample time to prepare. Engagement with businesses has been extensive, including: 10,000 participants registering for Government-led events before final BTOM publication; regular contact with around 30,000 importers to provide up-to-date information; the delivery of over 50 webinars to thousands of businesses; engagement with major supermarkets and their suppliers to provide training, and communication to 150k businesses in the UK.