Written Statements

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

Monday 11 March 2024

UK-Israel Free Trade Agreement: Fourth Round Negotiations

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister for Trade Policy (Greg Hands)]

The fourth round of United Kingdom-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations took place virtually between 19 and 29 February 2024.

During this round, officials held technical text-based discussions across 12 policy areas in 26 sessions. The negotiations focused particularly on services, which are not covered by our existing agreement, and important given the UK is the world’s second largest exporter of services.

These negotiations reflect our shared commitment to working towards a comprehensive deal and strengthen our existing trade relationship, worth £6.4 billion in Q3 of 2023. A cutting-edge agreement with provisions covering services, innovation and digital trade would complement both our economies.

A fifth round of negotiations will take place in due course.

The UK will maintain its long-standing foreign policy positions in this FTA, including with respect to the internationally recognised borders of Israel; and will continue to exclude illegal settlements to ensure nothing in this FTA undermines the viability of a two-state solution.

The Government remain clear that any deal we sign, including with Israel, will be in the best interests of the British people and the United Kingdom economy. We will not compromise on our high environmental and labour protections, public health, animal welfare and food standards, and we will maintain our right to regulate in the public interest. We are also clear that during these negotiations, the NHS, and the services it provides, is not on the table.

The Government will continue to work closely with Israel and will keep Parliament updated as these negotiations progress.

[HCWS325]

The Elizabeth Emblem

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office (Oliver Dowden)]

I have today laid in Parliament a paper setting out the details of the Elizabeth Emblem, a new award to honour those who have died in the course of public service.

The recognition will be in the form of an emblem for the next of kin to wear at their discretion, with a memorial scroll and miniature included. The Elizabeth Emblem is silver in colour and in the form of an oval. The obverse of the emblem shall bear the inscription “For A Life Given In Service” surrounded by a rosemary wreath, as a symbol of remembrance, and a Tudor crown. The reverse of the emblem shall be inscribed upon with the name of the person for whom it is in memoriam.

We owe a great debt to those who give their life in public service. Their next of kin will now be eligible to receive this recognition as a mark of the nation’s gratitude in the form of the Elizabeth Emblem.

[HCWS323]

Timor-Leste: British Embassy

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)]

I am announcing the UK’s intention to reopen the British embassy in Timor-Leste. This will mark the next stage in our deepening friendship—building on an intensification of the bilateral relationship over the last two years, including the visit by President Ramos-Horta to the UK in February 2024 and my recent visits to Timor-Leste in September 2023 and again on 1 to 2 March.

This decision sends a strong signal of the UK’s support to Timor-Leste, a country that is making important strides on its own development journey and is also ready to stand up for a rules-based international order based on the purposes and principles of the UN charter. Our countries have been friends since Timor-Leste achieved its independence in 2002. We were pleased to see Timor-Leste secure its accession to the World Trade Organisation in February 2024 and will continue to support its progress in completing the road map for accession to ASEAN—the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The UK has diplomatic missions in all of ASEAN’s 10 existing member states and as an ASEAN dialogue partner we want to ensure we remain well represented throughout this dynamic and strategically important region. This will take the number of officially designated overseas posts to 282.

The UK is committed to building stronger long-term partnerships in the Indo-Pacific to support maritime and economic security, using our expanded global diplomatic network to support these relationships. By sharing expertise, increasing maritime resilience, and looking to expand our diplomatic presence to Timor-Leste, the UK is working to safeguard long-term global security and prosperity.

[HCWS327]

Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe: UK Delegation

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Leo Docherty)]

The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy MP) has been appointed as a full Member of the United Kingdom Delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in place of the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker MP).

[HCWS326]

Equity in Medical Devices

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Andrew Stephenson)]

The NHS is committed to upholding high standards in medical device safety. In response to emerging evidence of potential ethnic and other unfair biases in the design and use of some medical devices commonly used in the NHS, an independent review was commissioned by former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid).

Today, I am pleased to publish the final report of the independent review into equity in medical devices, alongside the Government’s response.

I would like to place on record my gratitude to the review chair, Dame Margaret Whitehead, and the panel who conducted this review. They embraced a comprehensive approach, involving stakeholders, fostering collaboration with clinical experts, NHS planners and policy advisors, engaging with health professionals on the frontline, educators and crucially, patients and the public. This deliberate approach underscores the importance and impact of the panel’s findings, and their recommendations are integral to our commitment to fostering a fair and healthy future for all.

The panel made 18 recommendations, taking these recommendations in turn:

Recommendations 1 to 3 focus specifically on pulse oximeters and cover immediate mitigation measures to ensure existing devices can perform to a high standard and improvements in international standards for approval of new device models.

Recommendations 4 to 7 focus on prevention of potential for harm through improved detection of bias in optical devices, including better research and testing, more robust monitoring and auditing and refreshed education for health professionals.

Recommendations 8 to 14 focus on enabling the development of safe and equitable artificial intelligence (AI) medical devices.

Recommendation 15 underscores the urgency of preparing for the transformative impact of large language and foundation models on healthcare and regulatory systems.

Recommendations 16 to 18 address equity concerns and societal challenges related to polygenic risk scores (PRS) in genomics. They emphasise the need for regulation in response to the influx of commercial PRS tests in the UK.

The Government’s response has been published alongside the final report. The Government welcome and acknowledge the importance of the outlined recommendations, endorsing its main argument that, unless appropriate actions are taken, biases can occur throughout the entire medical device life cycle.

We are dedicated to ensuring equitable medical device practices, spanning from design through to use. The Government have already initiated substantial efforts addressing many of the essential elements of the report’s recommendations, as detailed in the Government response. As we continue to drive progress, we welcome ongoing collaboration with industry partners, which is paramount to embedding best practices and supporting the NHS in delivering optimal and equitable care for all.

Both the final report from the independent review into equity in medical devices and the Government’s response will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses, and published on www.gov.uk.

[HCWS329]

Hereditary Tyrosinemia Type 1

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister for Health and Secondary Care (Andrew Stephenson)]

I would like to inform the House that I have accepted the UK National Screening Committee’s recommendation to introduce a new condition, tyrosinemia type 1, to the newborn blood spot screening programme in England.

Hereditary tyrosinemia type 1 is a rare genetic condition that affects approximately seven babies in the UK per year. Left untreated, this condition can lead to severe complications such as liver, kidneys and nervous system damage, and in some cases requires liver transplant. Without treatment, children with tyrosinemia type 1 often do not survive past the age of 10. There is no cure for this condition but treatment can help prolong life.

There is currently an inequitable situation whereby families with a known history of this condition can seek early screening and access treatment before their child shows symptoms, when treatment is most effective, while parents without a known history will only discover their child’s condition when symptoms become evident and when treatment is less effective. Introducing tyrosinemia type 1 to the newborn blood spot screening programme will create a fairer, faster, and simpler route to diagnosis and treatment. NHS England have started the work needed to ensure this programme can be implemented next year.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the UK National Screening Committee for continuing to provide invaluable expert advice on screening programmes. I would also like to pay tribute to all those who work in delivering high-quality screening across the country. The addition of this new condition will maintain the Government’s commitment to improving equity of access to effective treatments for rare diseases.

[HCWS328]

Foreign National Offenders, Prisons and Probation

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Alex Chalk)]

Our plan to cut crime and keep the public safe is working. Violent and neighbourhood crime have reduced by over 50% since 2010, and the reoffending rate is down from 31% to 25%. We are locking up more criminals for longer: over the past decade, the average time offenders spend behind bars increased by more than 40% and rapists now go to prison for nearly three years longer, on average, than in 2010. We have already ended Labour’s automatic halfway release for serious sexual and violent offenders so they will serve two-thirds of their sentence behind bars. We are currently legislating so that rapists serve the full custodial part of their sentence behind bars and to ensure that life means life for the most horrific murderers.

We will always ensure we have sufficient prison capacity to lock up the most serious and dangerous offenders. We are on track to deliver 10,000 new prison places by the end of 2025 and have a long-term commitment to build 20,000 new prison places overall—the largest prison building programme since the Victorian era. In addition, we are doubling up cells where it is safe to do so.

We need to go further to ensure we can continue locking up serious and violent offenders for longer. The number of foreign national offenders (FNOs) has increased over recent years and now makes up over 10,000 prisoners in England and Wales—about 12%—at an average cost to the taxpayer of £50,000 per year, reducing the capacity of the prison system. These are people who should be removed back to their own countries of origin wherever possible. We have made progress: last year the Government returned nearly 4,000 FNOs from prison and the community, a 27% increase compared to the year before.

In January, the Government extended the early removal scheme from a maximum period of 12 months to 18 months, so eligible FNOs can be deported up to six months earlier. Almost 400 FNOs have already been removed from the UK via this scheme since January—a 61% increase compared to the equivalent period a year earlier. We have also signed a robust new agreement with Albania which has restarted transfers of Albanian FNOs, and we are legislating in the Criminal Justice Bill to enable prisoners to be transferred and held in rented prisons overseas, as several EU countries have done.

We must now build on this progress by ensuring that even more FNOs are removed from the country as quickly as possible and spurious barriers to removal are quickly dismissed, so we will:

Radically change the way we process FNO cases—we have created a new taskforce across the HO and MoJ—including the prison service, immigration enforcement and asylum and modern slavery teams, surging 400 additional caseworkers to prioritise these cases who will all be in place by the end of March and streamlining the end-to-end removal process.

Expedite prisoner transfers with our priority countries such as Albania and conclude new transfer agreements with partner countries such as Italy.

Be fully prepared to make use of the powers provided under the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 to restrict visas for any country where no progress on foreign national offender removals can be made.

Amend our existing deportation policy to enable foreign national offenders given suspended sentences of six months or more to be considered for deportation under the Immigration Act 1971 on the ground it is conducive to the public good, enabling us to remove more foreign national offenders from the country.

Bring forward an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill to extend foreign national conditional cautions to foreign national offenders with limited leave. Currently, this type of caution can only be given to foreign national offenders who do not have leave to enter or leave to remain in the UK, enabling us to remove more foreign national offenders from the country.

This will allow us to return almost double the number of FNOs directly from prison in 2024, compared to 1,800 last year, and make more returns of FNOs from prison than in any year since 2010, saving the taxpayer millions of pounds and keeping our streets safe.

We must also address the unsustainable growth in the remand population since the pandemic and Criminal Bar Association action. Since 2019, the remand population has increased by over 6,000 to more than 16,000 today, in part because we made the right decision for public protection and did not release tens of thousands of prisoners at the start of the pandemic, as many other countries did. We also made the right decision for access to justice and refused calls to scrap trial by jury. This has placed additional pressure on the prison estate and on the criminal justice system as a whole. The Lady Chief Justice has confirmed that if bail applications are made to the magistrates’ court or renewed before the Crown court, the courts remain ready to hear them within the short time limits provided for in the criminal procedure rules. We are also exploring at pace with the senior judiciary the roll-out of a remote nationwide pilot Crown court capable of hearing new bail applications. The pilot would monitor whether these additional measures result in an increase in the use of tagging and appropriate support packages in bail applications.

In order to support this, the Government will invest £53 million additional funding to expand the Bail Information Service, part of the productivity package the Chancellor announced at the Budget. This will enable our court system to be more efficient by increasing the court-based staff and digital systems that can provide critical information to the judiciary, making the bail process more efficient. To support this work, a further £22 million of additional funding will be available in 2024-25 to fund community accommodation.

We will also increase awareness about the availability of tags, especially high tech GPS and alcohol monitoring tags, to ensure that offenders can be monitored in the community.

We will also extend the existing end-of-custody supervised licence measure to around 35 to 60 days. We will enable this to happen for a time-limited period, and work with the police, prisons and probation leaders to make further adjustments as required. This will only be for certain low-level offenders. Where necessary, electronic monitoring will be applied, enhancing public protection. Ministers will continue to keep the use of this measure under review.

These measures all rely on a probation service that can focus its attention on the most critical points of the justice system, especially when an offender is first released from prison. In 2021 the Government created the unified probation service, which brought together all of probation into a single national organisation. We have invested £155 million of extra funding each year in the service and onboarded over 4,000 trainee probation officers since then. That is why we will be taking steps to refocus probation practice on the points that matter most to public protection and reducing offending.

From April, we will reset probation so that practitioners prioritise early engagement at the point where offenders are most likely to breach their licence conditions, allowing frontline staff to maximise supervision of the most serious offenders. Similarly, for those managed on community orders and suspended sentence orders, probation practitioners will ensure intervention and engagement is prioritised towards the first two-thirds of the sentence, as experience shows that this most effectively rehabilitates offenders.

We express our deep gratitude for the efforts of all those working in the criminal justice system: prisons, probation and courts staff, the police, prosecutors and lawyers, and the judiciary. They deserve credit for their enormous commitment and professionalism in their vital work to keep the country safe.

[HCWS332]

Hong Kong British National (Overseas) Welcome Programme

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Felicity Buchan)]

Today, I am pleased to announce the launch of the fourth year of funding for the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) welcome programme. We will continue to offer support to BN(O)s as they integrate into their communities through the programme, including by:

Continuing funding for 12 welcome hubs across the UK, at the same level of £3.6 million as in previous years;

Continuing demand-led funding for local authorities to provide English language and destitution support—England only;

Funding a grant scheme worth circa £1 million for voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations to deliver projects focusing on the two priority areas of (a) employability and (b) mental health and wellbeing;

Maintaining funding for the hate crime reporting service for BN(O)s and ESEA communities until the 31 March 2024, and a further announcement on the future provider will be made in due course;

Continuing to signpost BN(O)s through the online welcome pack with information about the support and services they can access in the UK;

In addition, the £2.5 million children and young people’s resettlement fund facilitates projects in England until March 2025 that support young people on the Hong Kong BN(O), Ukrainian and Afghan pathways. Families will benefit from the projects funded, which include projects tailored to the specific needs of Hong Kong BN(O) children and young people in areas such as mental health and trauma support.

There will no longer be funding for regional VCSE projects as we are targeting the funding of the programme to support BN(O)s in line with current needs identified through ongoing delivery and funded research.

This funding for the fourth year will run from 1 April 2024 until 31 March 2025. Funding on certain programme components—English language and destitution support—will be allocated to the devolved Administrations according to the Barnett formula.

Through the continuation of the welcome programme funding as it moves into its fourth year, the Government are demonstrating our continued commitment to supporting Hong Kong BN(O)s who have chosen to make the UK their home.

[HCWS331]

Operation Kenova Interim Report: Response

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Chris Heaton-Harris)]

My noble Friend the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Lord Caine) has made the following statement:

This statement is in response to the publication of the Operation Kenova interim report into the activities of an alleged agent known as Stakeknife, which has just been published by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

There can be no doubt that the way Operation Kenova has conducted its work since being commissioned in 2016 has gained the trust of many families who have long been seeking answers as to what exactly happened when their loved ones were so brutally murdered by, and on the orders of, the Provisional IRA.

Over 3,500 people from all parts of the community were killed during the troubles and tens of thousands more injured. Over 1,000 of those killed were members of the security forces. Their bravery, courage, dedication and sacrifice in seeking to uphold democracy and the rule of law must never be forgotten.

We must remember too that the vast majority of deaths during the troubles, around 90%, were perpetrated by terrorist organisations—in the substance of this report, by the Provisional IRA.

As this is an “interim” report, I will not comment at this time on behalf of the Government on the detail of the report. It contains several specific, very serious allegations that remain subject to consideration by the courts.

It would not be right for the Government to make any comment on the substance of the interim report until the conclusion of litigation related to it. I note the recent decisions made by the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland in relation to files passed to them by Operation Kenova, which once again go to show how difficult it is to achieve criminal justice outcomes in legacy cases. Due to numerous related civil cases, however, that remain ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time. There is also the prospect of appeals against any of the recent decisions made by the Director for Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland.

I would like to put on record again my deepest sympathy with all the families who lost loved ones during the troubles—including as a result of the actions of the Provisional IRA.

[HCWS324]

Universal Credit: Claimant Support

Monday 11th March 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister for Employment (Jo Churchill)]

The Department for Work and Pensions would like to announce the outcome of the grant competition to identify an organisation to continue providing support for customers making a new claim to universal credit.

Citizens Advice and Citizens Advice Scotland will continue to deliver the support independently across England, Scotland and Wales, with up to a further £38 million investment planned for two years from April 2024. This means that free confidential and impartial support will continue to be available to help people make a new universal credit claim, including those invited to move from legacy benefits to universal credit, and manage their claim, up to receiving their first correct payment.

As there is no change in the substance of support provided, the “Future Support Offer 2024” name, used during the competition to indicate that DWP was looking for future provision, will revert to “Help to Claim”. The decision to retain the name reflects the fact that Help to Claim is a recognisable brand, both to people who will be using the support and to the people who will be providing that support.



Since April 2019, Help to Claim has supported nearly 900,000 people, with nine in 10 people rating their overall experience as good or very good and saying they would recommend it to friends and family, providing a strong rationale for the decision to keep the name.



The support will continue to be provided through telephony and digital channels. Those individuals who are unable to access support via these channels will be able to go to their local jobcentre, where jobcentre staff will identify the right support to meet their needs. This support is already in place and available to those individuals who choose to seek advice from the Department directly in making a claim to universal credit.



The Department is committed to providing the best possible support for all our customers, including the most vulnerable in society, in both making and maintaining their claim.

[HCWS330]