Asked by: Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to encourage young people to take up the apprenticeships and workplace opportunities available as part of their new skills reforms; and what assessment they have made of the impact of those reforms on the number of 16–24 year olds claiming Universal Credit while signed off work due to health conditions.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This government is transforming the apprenticeships offer into a new growth and skills offer that will give greater flexibility to employers and support young people at the beginning of their careers.
In August 2025, we introduced new foundation apprenticeships to give young people a route into careers in critical sectors, enabling them to earn a wage while developing vital skills. They are underpinned by additional funding for employers of up to £2,000 to contribute to the extra costs of supporting someone at the beginning of their career.
We are investing an additional £725 million to deliver the next phase of the offer and meet our ambition to support 50,000 more young people into apprenticeships. We will expand foundation apprenticeships into sectors that traditionally recruit young people, launch a pilot with Mayoral Strategic Authorities to better connect young people to local apprenticeship opportunities, and fully fund SME apprenticeships for eligible 16–24-year-olds from the next academic year.
The government also facilitates the Apprenticeship Ambassador Network (AAN), comprising around 2,500 employer and apprentice volunteers who go into schools and colleges to share their compelling stories and experiences of what apprenticeships can do for young people.
Regarding other workplace opportunities, nearly 900,000 young people (aged 16–24) on Universal Credit will receive a dedicated session and four weeks of intensive support with a Work Coach to help them find local work, training, or learning opportunities. Over 360 Youth Hubs are also being established across Great Britain, providing access to employment and support services for all young people, including those not on benefits. These hubs will offer joined-up, community-based support by partnering with health, skills, and voluntary sector organizations.
Additionally, up to 150,000 additional work experience placements and 145,000 bespoke training opportunities will be created, including Sector-based Work Academy Programmes (SWAPs), which guarantee a job interview for participants at the end.
The Jobs Guarantee Scheme will also mean that every eligible 18–21-year-old who has been on Universal Credit and looking for work for 18 months will be guaranteed six months of paid employment (25 hours/week at minimum wage), with the government covering all employment costs. These initiatives are designed to support young people into employment and training with a strong focus on local opportunities and guaranteed paid work for those most in need.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to mitigate the impact of resident doctors’ industrial action on NHS capacity and patient safety during the winter period.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government made a comprehensive offer to resident doctors in writing on 8 December 2025. The offer included a range of measures, such as introducing emergency legislation to prioritise United Kingdom medical graduates, increasing the number of training posts over the next three years, and measures which would put money back in doctors’ pockets. The offer was rejected by the British Medical Association (BMA) resident doctor membership on 15 December 2025.
As a result, planned strikes from 17 to 22 December went ahead, posing risks to the National Health Service during a critical period. My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has taken all possible steps to prevent these strikes, including offering to extend the BMA’s mandate to allow further consultation.
The Department and the NHS are now focused on managing the combined challenges of flu and industrial action, having already vaccinated 17 million people, 170,000 more than last year, and 60,000 more NHS staff, and are working closely with frontline leaders to prepare for disruption.
An operational response, led by NHS England, is stood up to prepare and mitigate the impacts of strikes and to ensure patient safety is maintained. As has always been the case, employers will seek to mitigate the impact of any industrial action, including seeking to agree voluntary patient safety mitigations with trade unions at a local or national level with support from NHS England, and rearranging elective care, as appropriate, to maintain urgent services.
Asked by: Lord Reid of Cardowan (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve apprenticeship retention and completion rates, particularly in sectors with high drop-out levels.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
To ensure quality apprenticeships provision, the department holds all providers to account through its apprenticeship accountability framework which encompasses a wide range of quality indicators including achievement and retention.
The support and guidance available to employers and apprentices has also been enhanced and the department has worked with the Learning and Work Institute to produce a number of guides to support apprentices’ on-programme experience, including a line manager’s guide to apprenticeships.
The department is continuing to support employers and providers to focus on quality by making systems and processes simpler whilst introducing flexibilities that will improve outcomes and maintain rigour. Improvements include the introduction of a one-click employer on-boarding process, changes to the English and maths requirements for adult apprentices, and new more efficient end-point assessment plans.
The department has also introduced tools to provide timely feedback on quality and reasons for withdrawal so that we can continue to drive forward progress in the coming years.
Asked by: Lord Reid of Cardowan (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that apprenticeship opportunities are fully accessible to individuals with disabilities, learning difficulties, or additional support needs.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The government is working to ensure that a learning difficulty or disability is not a barrier to people who want to realise the benefits of an apprenticeship.
The Find an Apprenticeship service allows people to identify Disability Confident Employers offering opportunities and Additional Learning Support funding is available to training providers to make reasonable adjustments which support apprentices who have learning difficulties and disabilities.
The government also provides £1,000 to both employers and training providers when they take on apprentices aged under 19, or 19-to-24-year-old apprentices who have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHC) or have been in care.
Asked by: Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of those who use telemedicine abortion services have an abortion after the 10 week threshold.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In 2022, the latest available data, there were 152,405 abortions where both abortion medications, mifepristone and misoprostol, were taken at home by residents of England and Wales. Of this, 16 abortions, or 0.01%, were recorded as having occurred at 10 weeks gestation or over. Cases containing inconsistent information, such as at-home abortions over 10 weeks gestation, are returned to clinics for confirmation. At the time of publication of the 2022 statistics, five, or 0.003%, of these abortions were confirmed as having occurred at 10 weeks gestation or over, with the remaining 11 cases being unconfirmed.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the net zero targets are for (a) their Department and (b) its arm’s-length bodies; and whether guidance has been issued on adopting net zero targets earlier than 2050.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department for Transport (DfT), the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA), the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), Office of Rail and Road (ORR), Trinity House, Transport Focus, the Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain, the Civil Aviation Authority, and Active Travel England (ATE) are committed to achieving the UK Government’s Net Zero Carbon target by 2050. The Department for Transport also holds policy responsibility for ensuring greenhouse gas emissions from in-use transport and transport infrastructure construction reduce in line with the legislated economy-wide target of net zero by 2050.
The position in terms of other Department for Transport bodies is set out below.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) supports the Maritime Decarbonisation Strategy. This includes reducing fuel lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, 80 per cent by 2040, and achieving zero emissions by 2050.
All other arm’s-length bodies will be expected to adopt the existing 2050 target or develop their own based on their operational impacts.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the Environment Agency's implementation timeline for the waste registration and accreditation system.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The packaging regulations provide the Environment Agency (EA) with a statutory 12-week period to determine applications for reprocessor & exporter registration and accreditation applications.
In a small number of cases the determination period is going beyond this 12-week period for applications under the new 2026 packaging regulations. This is due to increased application queries and embedding the new requirements to ensure all applications are consistently assessed. The EA will back date registrations and accreditations to 1 January 2026. The EA does not anticipate that these delays will continue and has a plan to determine all applications as promptly as possible.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what support his Department is considering to address capital works required at the Old Royal Naval College.
Answered by Louise Sandher-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
The Ministry of Defence works closely with parties who have an interest in the Old Royal Naval College. In exercising his power to grant leases on the Old Royal Naval College, the Secretary of State gives regard to the suitability of occupants to maintain the site, and to public access. Under the terms of their lease, responsibility for heritage conservation, maintenance, and repair rests with the Greenwich Foundation for the Old Royal Naval College. Public access is a matter for all tenants, and employment is a matter for individual employers on site.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment he has made of the potential risks to employment, public access and heritage conservation at the Old Royal Naval College.
Answered by Louise Sandher-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
The Ministry of Defence works closely with parties who have an interest in the Old Royal Naval College. In exercising his power to grant leases on the Old Royal Naval College, the Secretary of State gives regard to the suitability of occupants to maintain the site, and to public access. Under the terms of their lease, responsibility for heritage conservation, maintenance, and repair rests with the Greenwich Foundation for the Old Royal Naval College. Public access is a matter for all tenants, and employment is a matter for individual employers on site.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the principal barriers have been to the deportation of foreign nationals convicted of sexual offences since 2024; and what steps her Department is taking to help tackle those barriers.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office deals with significant and complex challenges when seeking to return those who have no right to be in the UK to their country of origin. Sometimes the UK’s current obligations under international law prohibit us from returning certain individuals despite their criminality. Legal or re-documentation barriers can frustrate immediate deportation. Despite these barriers, we are fully committed to making our communities safer by deporting those who break our laws.
To address these challenges, this government is committed to reforming the appeals process by creating a new appeals body with professionally trained adjudicators. We will also strengthen the certification regime to deny appeal rights for clearly unmeritorious claims. Furthermore, the number of countries that foreign national offenders can be deported to before they can lodge an appeal from abroad has also been increased.
We are also working to reform Human Rights and Modern Slavery claims. In these areas we will rebalance the public interest test for Article 8 claims and work with our international partners to reform the application of the ECHR’s prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment. With the Modern Slavery reforms legislation will be brought forward to clarify our responsibilities under international law, the removal of reconsideration for negative decisions, enhanced screening for individuals detained for removal, and a stronger link between timely disclosure and credibility of a claim.
Finally, under new measures introduced by the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act 2025, sexual offences which give rise to the notification requirement in Schedule 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 will be assumed to be ‘particularly serious’ for the purpose of applying Article 33(2) of the Refugee Convention, thereby allowing the UK to exclude those individuals from being granted asylum protections in the UK.
Where removal is still not possible due to our ECHR obligations, the provision will ensure that such individuals are not afforded the generous benefits of protection status in the UK.