Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 30 April 2025 to Question 47160 on Food: Import Controls, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the ban on personal imports of meats and diary products from EU countries.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra publishes assessments of the risk of animal diseases entering Great Britain through trade in animal products at www.gov.uk/government/collections/animal-diseases-international-monitoring. Our August 2025 attitude tracker demonstrated a high level of public awareness of the animal health-related ban on personal imports of certain meat and dairy products from EU countries amongst recent travellers.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of trends in the level of regional differences in economic inactivity rates by (a) gender, (b) age, (c) ethnicity and (d) religion.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
(a)(b)(c): The information requested is published and available at:
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/default.asp
Guidance for users can be found at:
https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/home/newuser.asp
(d): The most recent data is published and available at: Economic activity status by religion - Office for National Statistics
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of trends in the level of economic inactivity rates amongst (a) foreign and (b) UK nationals.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The latest inactivity rates for UK and non-UK nationals are published and available at:
Asked by: Patricia Ferguson (Labour - Glasgow West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether Palestinian academics with offers of (a) positions and (b) study placements at universities in the UK can be issued with visas to allow them to travel to the UK.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
I refer my Hon Friend to the statement to the House made by the Home Secretary on 1 September.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of community sentencing in reducing reoffending.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
There is evidence that community orders and suspended sentence orders are more effective at reducing reoffending than sentences of immediate custody in certain circumstances.
Robust analysis (using a matched comparison group to account for cohort differences such as drug use and unemployment), found that custodial sentences of less than 12 months were associated with higher reoffending rates (4 percentage points difference) compared to court orders (community or suspended sentence): https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5d1c732ee5274a08cdbe45c4/impact-short-custodial-sentences.pdf.
The Department’s latest published reoffending data (July to September 2023) shows that the one year proven reoffending rate for those on a court order was 34% and 62% for those released from a determinant sentence of less than 12 months: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/proven-reoffending-statistics-july-and-september-2023.
Ministry of Justice research findings indicate that individuals sentenced with a Community Sentence Treatment Requirement reoffend less often compared with those given a short custodial sentence. For example, Mental Health Treatment Requirements recipients had a lower reoffending rate than those on a short custodial sentence recipients by 9 percentage points.
We welcome the Independent Sentencing Review’s emphasis on increasing the use of community sentences for lower-level offenders, ensuring that prisons are focused on locking up the most dangerous offenders.
In the Sentencing Bill, we have introduced new powers to allow the courts to have greater flexibility than ever before to tailor punishments to offenders and ensure sentences served in the community are not a “soft option” but represent a genuine punishment by restricting offenders’ freedoms.
These new powers will include banning offenders from driving, from attending pubs and bars, as well as public events such as sports and concerts. We are also introducing tough new restriction zones that will limit offenders to a specific geographical area.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what support is available to help ex-offenders reintegrate into communities in high deprivation areas.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Effective resettlement of prison leavers is crucial to reduce reoffending. This includes making sure someone has a home, family links where appropriate, access to healthcare, a job or education, and timely access to benefits where needed.
Community probation practitioners coordinate each individual’s rehabilitation, taking an individualised approach to ensure all prison leavers are connected with the right local support. They work closely with pre-release teams and local services, including through prison-based and commissioned rehabilitative services, to enable effective reintegration back into the community.
To support this, the Government is committed to ensuring robust pre-release plans are in place, identifying and putting support in place to address individuals’ needs before release.
This support includes HMPPS’s Community Accommodation Service Tier 3, which provides up to 12 weeks of temporary housing for those at risk of homelessness on release, offering a stable base to support reintegration. Additionally, we’ve launched regional Employment Councils that bring together businesses, probation, and the Department for Work and Pensions to help prison leavers into work - a key factor in reducing reoffending by up to nine percentage points.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment he has made of levels of (a) puppy and (b) kitten smuggling into the UK under existing pet travel rules.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra's approach to fisheries management and stakeholder engagement is one where there is a greater focus on early and ongoing involvement of the fishing sector, supplementing formal consultation processes for fisheries management plans (FMPs) with tailored, participatory approaches. Inshore representatives have opportunities to contribute through working groups, tide and time-sensitive regional engagement events and evidence gathering exercises.
Inshore voices are also continually considered across all fisheries management through support from regional fisheries groups (RFGs), the Marine Management Organisation’s (MMO) network of regional fisheries managers, meetings of Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCAs) and other routine engagement.
Marine plans should be used to guide decision makers on how to balance different interests in the sea, including fisheries. National policy statements also set out how marine activities should be considered.
Asked by: Neil Duncan-Jordan (Independent - Poole)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much money was saved following the means-testing of the winter fuel allowance in 2024-2025, net of the increase in successful Pension Credit claims during the same period.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
Linking Winter Fuel Payment eligibility to Pension Credit or certain other income-related benefits in England & Wales for winter 2024/25 was estimated to save around £1.3 billion, inclusive of an estimated increase in Pension Credit take-up of five percentage points as a result of the policy change. This figure has been published in the Office of Budget Responsibility’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook (October 2024), available here: https://obr.uk/docs/dlm_uploads/OBR_Economic_and_fiscal_outlook_Oct_2024.pdf. Final 2024/2025 expenditure figures for Winter Fuel Payment and Pension Credit will be available in the next edition of the Benefit Caseload and Expenditure tables.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to improve take-up of Pension Credit in areas where rates of claim are low.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is committed to ensuring that all pensioners receive the support to which they are entitled. That is why since autumn 2024 we have been running the biggest ever Pension Credit take-up campaign. The latest Pension Credit applications and awards statistics show that DWP received over 320,000 Pension Credit claims between July 2024 and July 2025 – with nearly 60,000 extra awards compared to the same period the previous year. The statistics also show more households getting Pension Credit than at any time since November 2021.
Maximising the take-up of Pension Credit is a priority with new promotional activity due to start this month and DWP linking up with partners and stakeholders to promote Pension Credit as widely as possible.
Asked by: Gregor Poynton (Labour - Livingston)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of reinstating funding for UK exhibitors at key international trade fairs in (a) the natural stone sector and (b) other sectors where export potential is strong.
Answered by Gareth Thomas - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
Through our Trade Strategy, Industrial Strategy, and Small Business Plan, we are putting in place the policies, support, and services needed to drive export-led growth. For the first time, DBT is integrating its support for SMEs across all sectors in a single, accessible platform - the Business Growth Service - designed to help businesses across the UK start, scale, and succeed globally.
From tailored market advice and free Export Academy training to UK Export Finance and our on-the-ground network around the world that facilitate trade missions, we are making it easier for businesses to navigate global markets. We continue to review how we can improve our support, including how we connect firms to new opportunities, and build the capability to seize them.