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.

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 ensure that NHS England facilitates the dissemination of the findings of the maternal, newborn and infant clinical outcome review programme delivered by MBRRACE-UK.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The maternal, newborn, and infant clinical outcome review programme, delivered by Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK (MBRRACE-UK), forms part of the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme, which is commissioned and managed on behalf of NHS England by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership.

MBRRACE-UK publishes annual data and surveillance reports on their website, and holds a national learning event to disseminate information and audit findings. NHS England supports this approach and reviews all audit recommendations after publication with a range of stakeholders. NHS England’s Three-Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal services also highlights how NHS England will use MBRRACE-UK’s reports to monitor trends and themes at both a national and local level.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on developing updated guidance for schools on tackling sexual harassment.

Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)

The department has previously committed to non-statutory guidance on sexual harassment, sexual violence and violence against women and girls. This is pending whilst the department carries out the review of the Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) statutory guidance, and the department will be considering how best to support teachers in this area.

A draft of the amended RSHE statutory guidance will be published for consultation as soon as possible. The department will take responses carefully into account, including any relating to content on sexual harassment and violence, in finalising new guidance prior to publication.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether she plans to bring forward a code of practice regarding violence against women and girls online.

Answered by Saqib Bhatti - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

The Online Safety Act (OSA) gives online user-to-user services and search service providers new safety duties. They will need to take steps to tackle illegal content and protect children. The major social media platforms – known as ‘Category 1 services’ in the Act – will also be required to take steps to enforce their terms of service and offer user empowerment tools. As the regulator for the OSA, Ofcom will set out steps providers can take for their different duties in codes of practice and guidance. This will include steps for content which disproportionately affects women and girls.

Ofcom will also produce guidance summarising all the measures it has recommended in its different codes of practice and guidance that will protect women and girls. This guidance will ensure it is easy for platforms to implement holistic and effective protections for women and girls, across their various OSA duties.

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 1^st 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.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 19 April 2024 to Question 22008 on Refugees: Afghanistan, what his planned timetable is for establishing a route for separated families to be reunited.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

In October we committed to establishing a route for those evacuated from Afghanistan under Pathway 1 of the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme without their immediate family members to reunite them in the UK. We remain on track to meet that commitment in the first half of this year. Further details and guidance will be provided in due course.

Found: I am copying this letter to your shadow minister Anneliese Dodds MP and to John Kirkpatrick, interim