Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
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 merits of setting a timetable for the full implementation of the Women’s Health Strategy across all integrated care boards.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Women’s Health Strategy sets out our ambitions for improving the health and wellbeing of women and girls in England. It is a 10-year strategy, as many of the improvements we want to see require structural change. We have committed to updating Parliament annually on the progress of the Women’s Health Strategy. In January 2024, my Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care updated Parliament on our priorities for 2024.
To support local implementation of the strategy, we have established a Network of Women’s Health Champions, made up of senior leaders from every integrated care system. The network is working together to implement priority commitments in the strategy, including women’s health hubs.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many times Ministers in his Department have met with representatives of the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign since 2015.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Departmental Ministers met with representatives from the WASPI campaign group on 29 June 2016. The department did not meet with representatives from the campaign group for the duration of the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman's investigation which began in 2018.
In laying the report before Parliament at the end of March, the Ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of this House, and I will provide a further update to the House once I have considered the report's findings.
Asked by: Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask His Majesty's Government, following recent polling by the Belonging Forum which found that renters are more likely than the general population to (1) feel lonely, (2) not know their neighbours, and (3) feel unsafe walking home in the dark, whether they are developing any policies to promote greater integration of renters in their local communities.
Answered by Baroness Swinburne - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The Government’s Levelling Up White Paper sets out the Government’s missions to end economic equality and level up the UK. As part of our mission to restore a sense of local community, pride and belonging, our ambition is for the number of non-decent rented homes to have fallen by 50% by 2030, with the biggest improvements in the lowest performing areas. We will require privately rented homes to meet the Decent Homes Standard for the first time. This will give renters safer, better value homes and remove the blight of poor-quality homes in local communities.
Through the Renters (Reform) Bill, which is currently progressing through parliament, we will deliver the manifesto commitment to abolish section 21 evictions. This will give tenants the confidence that they can remain in their home and are able to put down roots in their communities.
In addition, we have invested over £150 million since 2020 for over 400 projects through the Safer Streets fund. This has gone towards local crime prevention measures such as better CCTV and streetlighting, or local community projects, with a particular focus on driving down anti-social behaviour, preventing neighbourhood crimes such as domestic burglary and making streets safer for women and girls.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of lowering the State Pension age to 60.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
As stated in our previous response to the same question published on 24 April 2024, the Government has no plans to make such an assessment.
Changes to State Pension age were made over a series of Acts by successive governments from 1995 onwards, following public consultations and extensive debates in both Houses of Parliament.
Further changes were introduced through the Pensions Acts 2011 and 2014 in order to protect public finances and maintain the sustainability of the State Pension over the long term.
Under the 2011 Pensions Act the State Pension age for women and men rose to 66.
The rise in State Pension age to 67 has been planned since 2014. Since then, the Government has undertaken two statutory State Pension age reviews, one in 2017 and one in 2023. These reviews both considered whether the existing rules about the timetable for State Pension age rising to 67 remained appropriate.
Both reviews, including the Independent Reports that supported them, concluded that the rules concerning the increase in State Pension age from 66 to 67 should continue as planned.
Asked by: George Galloway (Workers Party of Britain - Rochdale)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will meet representatives of Women Against State Pension Inequality to discuss the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman's findings and recommendations in its report entitled Women’s State Pension Age: our findings on injustice and associated issues, published on 21 March 2024.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
In laying the report before Parliament at the end of March, the Ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of this House, and a further update to the House will be provided once the report's findings have been fully considered.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 16 April 2024 to Question 20473 on State Retirement Pensions: Women, what his expected timetable is to respond to the PHSO report.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
In laying the report before Parliament at the end of March, the Ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of this House, and a further update to the House will be provided once the report's findings have been fully considered.
Asked by: Rachel Hopkins (Labour - Luton South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many convictions there were for rape in each year since 2005; and what the conviction rate was in the same period.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
This Government is committed to improving the criminal justice system’s response to rape. In 2019, we commissioned our end-to-end Rape Review, publishing this in 2021 alongside a clear Action Plan that committed to delivering sustained improvements for victims. In this Action Plan, we set ourselves stretching ambitions to return the volumes of adult rape cases being referred by the police, charged by the CPS, and going to court back to 2016 levels by the end of this Parliament.
We have exceeded each of these ambitions ahead of schedule. In practice, this means we have more than doubled the volumes of police referrals, charges, and cases reaching court compared to when the Review was commissioned in 2019.
Increases to conviction volumes or conviction rates were not included as ambitions for the Rape Review. The right to a fair trial means that juries should rightly make decisions independently and based on the facts of the case.
Whilst not being a Rape Review ambition, the Ministry of Justice does hold data on convictions for rape offences.
Published data for calendar years (from 2010 to 2022) can be found in the following tool: Outcomes by Offence tool: December 2022.
The most recent published data available, providing data for the years ending in June from 2011 until 2023, can be found in the following tool: Outcomes by Offence tool: June 2023.
The full calendar year for 2023 will be available in the next update of the Outcomes by Offence tool, expected in May 2024.
This can be accessed by navigating to the ‘Prosecutions and convictions’ tab and using the Offence filter to select the following offences in the Outcomes by Offence data tool:
To cover the full period requested, previously unpublished convictions for rape offences from 2005 to 2009 have now been provided in Table 1.
It is not advised to use this data to calculate conviction rate (the number of convictions as a proportion of the number of prosecutions). This is due to the Court Proceedings Database counting two separate records at two separate stages (one for prosecution, one for conviction). We cannot track the defendant throughout their court journey and an individual may appear at each court in separate years, or for a different principal offence at different stages. As a result, this rate is not an accurate measure of the proportion of prosecutions that result in a conviction.
However, the most accessible published data for conviction rates is in the quarterly data summaries for the period 2019/20 onwards published by the CPS in the CPS quarterly data summaries | The Crown Prosecution Service. Furthermore, convictions rates 2007/8 to 2013/14 are available in the CPS Violence against Women and Girls crime report 2013-2014.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of lowering the State Pension age to 60.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government has no plans to make such an assessment.
Changes to State Pension age were made over a series of Acts by successive governments from 1995 onwards, following public consultations and extensive debates in both Houses of Parliament.
Further changes were introduced through the Pensions Acts 2011 and 2014 in order to protect public finances and maintain the sustainability of the State Pension over the long term. Under the 2011 Pensions Act the State Pension age for women and men rose to 66.
The rise in State Pension age to 67 has been planned since 2014. Since then, the Government has undertaken two statutory State Pension age reviews, one in 2017 and one in 2023. These reviews both considered whether the existing rules about the timetable for State Pension age rising to 67 remained appropriate.
Both reviews, including the Independent Reports that supported them, concluded that the rules concerning the increase in State Pension age from 66 to 67 should continue as planned.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he plans to undertake a review into the potential merits of issuing compensation to all women impacted by changes to the State Pension age.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
In laying the report before Parliament at the end of March, the Ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of this House, and a further update to the House will be provided once the report's findings have been fully considered.
Asked by: Stephen Farry (Alliance - North Down)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department plans to meet with representatives of the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign following the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman's report into the communication of state pension age increases, published on 21 March 2024.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
In laying the report before Parliament at the end of March, the Ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of this House, and a further update to the House will be provided once the report's findings have been fully considered.