Asked by: Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government to what extent funds from the Conflict, Security and Stability Fund and the Integrated Security Fund are being invested into defence work related to human security.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Integrated Security Fund (ISF) aims to integrate gender and human security concerns throughout all our programming. This includes cooperation with defence actors and support for women, girls, and other marginalised groups to engage with defence and security providers. The Fund supports activities which can be read about in more detail in the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) Annual Reports, including our contribution to advancing the UK’s commitments to Women, Peace and Security under the UK National Action Plan (NAP).
Asked by: Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether there is a defence budget dedicated to women, peace and security, and human security, work.
Answered by Earl of Minto - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
In Defence, work on Human Security and Women, Peace and Security (WPS) is primarily delivered as a mainstreamed and integrated component of existing work, consequently it does not have a dedicated budget line. This approach helps to ensure that Human Security and WPS are not treated as standalone concerns and siloed from core Defence activity and priorities.
When appropriate, budget is made available for specific Human Security and WPS requirements. This can be seen in the delivery of the Human Security in Military Operational Planning course that is delivered at the Defence Academy or the delivery of the Gender Barriers Study to support UK’s ability to meet UN gender parity targets during peacekeeping deployments.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people are in debt to the Department through overpayments of Carers Allowance; and how much do they owe in total.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
As of 14th May 2024, the volume of people who have an outstanding Carers Allowance debt is 134,800 with a total value of £251m. This figure represents the total stock and as such the total monetary amount may have been accrued over multiple years. Those who have an outstanding Carers Allowance debt may no longer be in receipt of the benefit.
Women make up the majority of Carer’s Allowance claims, and this is reflected in the proportion of those with an outstanding Carer’s Allowance debt. As of 14th May 2024, there were 42,800 (32%) males, 91,900 (68%) females and 100 (less than 1%) not identified, with an outstanding Carers Allowance debt.
As of November 2023, there were over 991,000 people in receipt of Carers Allowance. That figure is made up of over 271,000 (27%) males and 720,000 (73%) females.
The data contained in our response has been sourced from internal DWP management information, which is intended only to help the Department to manage its business. It is not intended for publication and has not been subject to the same quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics. It should therefore be treated with caution.
All figures provided have been rounded.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many (a) men and (b) women are in debt to his Department through overpayments of Carers Allowance.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
As of 14th May 2024, the volume of people who have an outstanding Carers Allowance debt is 134,800 with a total value of £251m. This figure represents the total stock and as such the total monetary amount may have been accrued over multiple years. Those who have an outstanding Carers Allowance debt may no longer be in receipt of the benefit.
Women make up the majority of Carer’s Allowance claims, and this is reflected in the proportion of those with an outstanding Carer’s Allowance debt. As of 14th May 2024, there were 42,800 (32%) males, 91,900 (68%) females and 100 (less than 1%) not identified, with an outstanding Carers Allowance debt.
As of November 2023, there were over 991,000 people in receipt of Carers Allowance. That figure is made up of over 271,000 (27%) males and 720,000 (73%) females.
The data contained in our response has been sourced from internal DWP management information, which is intended only to help the Department to manage its business. It is not intended for publication and has not been subject to the same quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics. It should therefore be treated with caution.
All figures provided have been rounded.
Asked by: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, if she will have discussions with the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs on tackling gender-based violence in other countries.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
The department works closely with the Foreign Secretary on many issues, including tackling violence against women and girls in other countries.
The UK is a global leader on action to address conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and has committed £60m since the launch of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative(PSVI) in 2012.
We have also put forward the first ever UK nomination to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Professor Shazia Choudhry, whose academic work
focuses on violence against women and girls.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to (a) evaluate and (b) review the violence against women and girls strategy.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The ambitious cross-Government Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy set out a series of measures to help ensure that women and girls are safe everywhere - at home, online, at work and in public. This was followed by a complementary Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, published in March 2022. So far, we have completed 69% of the commitments across both strategy documents.
Delivery is overseen by a cross-Government VAWG Ministerial Steering Group (VAWG MSG). The last VAWG MSG took place on 1st May and was chaired by the Home Secretary. Part of the meeting focused on accelerating delivery of the remaining strategy commitments.
Many of our interventions are funded through grants awarded to third parties. These grants are actively monitored with recipients providing regular monitoring and end of financial year reports.
We are assessing the overall impact of measures set out in the strategies against the ambition to increase support to victims and survivors and bring more perpetrators to justice.
Our long-term ambition is to reduce the prevalence of violence against women. This is monitored via the published crime statistics, which include police recorded crime and Crime Survey for England and Wales data, as well as via other published criminal justice agency data. The latest data can be found here: Crime in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk).
Estimates from the 2022/23 CSEW showed that 5.1% of adults aged 16 to 59 years experienced domestic abuse in the previous year (Domestic abuse prevalence and victim characteristics - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)). This was a statistically significant decrease compared with the year ending March 2020 (6.1%), a year largely unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the same period, the prevalence of sexual assault and stalking has remained stable with no statistically significant changes.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Streatham)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, whether she has had discussions with employers on the (a) public reporting of ethnicity pay gaps and (b) inclusive early talent pipelines.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
As part of the government’s ambitious Inclusive Britain action plan, we published comprehensive guidance in April 2023 for employers on how they can measure, report on and address any unfair ethnicity pay gaps within their workforce. We have engaged with employers and representative bodies in both developing and promoting the new guidance.
We have also worked with employers to deliver other relevant actions in Inclusive Britain including:
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of a four-day working week on gender equality.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The government routinely considers the implications of evidence from a range of sources when assessing policies on working practices. The government has no plans to implement a four-day week but has recently introduced the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Act 2023.
The Act makes changes to the right to request flexible working to better support employers and employees to agree flexible working arrangements that work for everyone.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps to implement the recommendations of MBRRACE-UK's report entitled Saving Lives, Improving Mothers’ Care: Lessons learned to inform maternity care from the UK and Ireland Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths and Morbidity 2019-21, published in October 2023.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The recommendations made in the Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK’s (MBRRACE-UK) report have informed a series of work programmes to improve maternity safety. This includes ongoing work delivered through NHS England's Three-Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services, which sets out how care will be made safer, more personalised, and more equitable for women, babies, and families. This is supported by an additional investment of £186 million a year to improve maternity and neonatal care, compared to 2021, on top of an additional £35 million over three years, from 2024/25 to 2026/27.
Asked by: Damien Egan (Labour - Kingswood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential implications for her Department’s polices of recent trends in levels of (a) children, (b) women and (c) people unable to access NHS dental services in Kingswood constituency.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our Dentistry Recovery Plan, backed by £200 million, will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for National Health Service dental patients. It will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. A New Patient Premium is supporting dentists to take on new patients and since the end of January, nearly 500 more practices have said they are open to new patients.
The Dentistry Recovery plan also sets out a new emphasis on prevention and good oral health in children. This includes supporting nurseries and early years settings to incorporate good oral hygiene into daily routines, and providing advice to expectant parents on how to protect their baby’s teeth. The plan will deploy mobile dental teams into schools to provide advice and deliver preventative treatments to more than 165,000 children.
A new patient premium is supporting dentists to take on new patients, and a new marketing campaign will help everyone who needs an NHS dentist in finding one. We have further supported dentists by raising the minimum Units of Dental Activity rate to £28 this year, making NHS work more attractive and sustainable. We are committed to evaluating the impacts of the measures included in our plan, and we will publish monthly data on progress, once available. Annual dental statistics, including the number of adults and children who have seen an NHS dentist since 2015, are available at the following link: