Written Statements

Thursday 4th June 2026 Written Statements

Thursday 4 June 2026

Children’s Social Care: Enduring Relationships Strategy

Thursday 4th June 2026 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Josh MacAlister)]

Transforming children’s social care is central to our mission to break down the barriers to opportunity. It is fundamental to ensuring that every child grows up safe, supported and able to thrive. Today we are publishing the enduring relationships strategy, which sets a clear direction for children’s social care in England by placing relationships at the heart of the system’s purpose.

This publication builds upon our recent work to legislate for social care reform, reset how the system operates and give our partners clarity on delivery. The enduring relationships strategy establishes a guiding principle, bringing coherence to reforms by placing relationships at the heart of the system. The independent review of children’s social care called for a relentless focus on family networks, reunification and other forms of permanence that promote lifelong relationships to support the best outcomes for care-experienced children that endure into adulthood.

The evidence is clear: a single stable, trusted and loving relationship can transform a child's life, improving resilience, health, education and their long-term outcomes. There are professionals across the sector working tirelessly to support children to build and sustain trusted relationships.

However, this is too often dependent on individual commitment rather than reliable structures. Children can experience multiple moves, separation from family and community, and too often leave care without the networks of support that most young people rely on. The enduring relationships strategy addresses this directly. At its heart is a simple but fundamental idea: the purpose of the children’s social care system must be to build, protect and sustain children’s enduring relationships, so that they can feel safe, supported and able to thrive.

To enable this, our reforms are aligned to four key outcomes, and supporting enduring relationships is the golden thread that runs between them.

First: focusing practice on enduring relationships

Relationships should be treated not as an add-on, but as the core purpose of practice and the lens through which all professional judgment is exercised. This is reflected in the families first partnership programme, where mandatory family group decision making will ensure that children’s families and wider networks are involved in decisions about their care at an earlier stage. In addition, the Government have strengthened local authorities’ duties to promote sibling contact for children in care.

At every stage of decision making, the system should consider not only whether a child is safe, but who matters to that child and how those relationships can be enabled and sustained.

Second: creating homes for enduring relationships

All children should have a home that meets their need for love and support. Homes for children in care are not simply placements; they are where relationships are formed, sustained and strengthened. The system must create the conditions for those relationships to flourish, rather than contributing to their breakdown.



The majority of children should be supported in family-based homes. The Government are investing £88 million to reform fostering and recruit 10,000 new foster carers, working with fostering hubs and the sector, as set out earlier this year in the fostering action plan. Kinship care is also being strengthened, with every local authority required to publish a local kinship offer, supported by £126 million to pilot seven kinship zones, including family network support packages to help families step in and care for children within their networks.

Residential care should be used for far fewer children and only where it best meets their needs, with a focus on maintaining and restoring family connections. To address gaps in provision, the Government are rolling out regional care co-operatives to improve planning and commissioning. In addition, I have commissioned Emmanuel Akpan-Inwang to review professional development for staff in children’s homes, ensuring that the workforce can better support children to build and sustain meaningful relationships.

Third: supporting the transition to adulthood through relationships

Young people leaving care should be supported to move into adulthood with strong, lasting relationships in place. Too many leave care without the network of connections that most young people rely on as they begin adult life, and this must change. The Government are strengthening support for care-experienced young people so that they can move towards interdependent living, underpinned by trusted and enduring relationships.

Programmes such as Staying Put and Staying Close are ensuring continuity of care and connection beyond the point of leaving care, while strengthened corporate parenting expectations mean that public services play a more active and consistent role in supporting care leavers.

Recognising that many children in care have already lost important relationships, a national roll-out of Family Finding will be taken forward across all local authorities, with the aim of helping children identify and reconnect with the people who matter most in their lives.

Fourth: embedding relationships through accountability and inspection

The importance of children’s long-term relationships must be embedded through accountability and inspection. Care should be judged not by placement numbers or types, but by children’s experiences and the strength of the relationships they are able to build. To support this, the Government will introduce an enduring relationships measure to gauge improvement and provide accountability, alongside working with Ofsted to ensure that inspection frameworks reflect this priority.

We will take forward this work in close partnership with local authorities and the wider sector. Local authorities will be engaged as learning partners, reflecting their central role in leading practice and driving improvement. We will work closely with Coventry, Dorset, North Yorkshire and York local authorities, with the aim of publishing a best practice guide next spring.

This is a call to action for practitioners and leaders working with children in and leaving care to ensure that every child leaves with a network of enduring relationships. We ask the sector to strengthen how services support these relationships, engage in sharing what works, and act now by building on existing knowledge and good practice.

The publication of the enduring relationships strategy marks an important step in establishing a clear and consistent purpose for children’s social care. Every young person should be able to rely on children’s social care to meet more than their material needs. They should have a community of people who know them well and the confidence that someone will always be there for them. We cannot accept a system that does not provide this for our most vulnerable children. That is why these reforms are designed to support children’s futures beyond their time in care, ensuring that they have the love, stability and opportunity they need to thrive.

A copy of the enduring relationships strategy will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses.

[HCWS89]

Antisemitism and Racism in the NHS: Mann Review

Thursday 4th June 2026 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (James Murray)]

Today I am publishing the outcome of Lord Mann’s review into antisemitism and other forms of racism in the NHS, alongside the Government response.

The review was commissioned in October 2025 to examine how the NHS, employers and UK health regulators identify, report and respond to antisemitism and other forms of racism, and to ensure that both patients and staff are better protected from discrimination and abuse. The Government welcome the publication of the review and are grateful to Lord Mann for his detailed and thorough work. We have considered the recommendations in full and our response sets out in clear terms that we are fully supportive of all the recommendations in the Mann report.

In the wake of a series of horrific attacks on the Jewish community across the country, the Government are clear that tackling antisemitism is the responsibility of the whole of society—including the health service.

The review finds that racism, including antisemitism, remains a persistent issue within the NHS and wider society, with discrimination affecting both staff and patients, undermining confidence in services and the experience of care. It finds that unacceptable levels of antisemitism have led to extreme consequences, with some Jewish patients reporting not wishing to present for treatment, and Jewish staff considering leaving the NHS. The review is equally clear that other forms of racism and discrimination against NHS patients and staff are at unacceptable levels, and that NHS employers are the first line of defence and must be taking urgent action.

Lord Mann’s report sets out a comprehensive set of recommendations to strengthen accountability, improve reporting and investigation processes, and embed an anti-racist culture across the health system. These include:

Strengthening leadership accountability for tackling racism, including through the NHS oversight framework and the forthcoming staff standards;

Improving the quality and transparency of data, including through the workforce race equality standard;

Enhancing processes for reporting and investigating incidents, including clearer national guidance and improved capability;

Ensuring greater consistency across professional regulators in addressing racism; and

Strengthening training and development, including mandatory education on racism and cultural competence for NHS leaders and staff.

The review also emphasises the importance of clear definitions of racism to support consistent understanding and action across the system.

As part of the Government response to this review, today I am also asking NHS England to adopt the UK Government definition of anti-Muslim hostility and set clear expectations that every trust, integrated care board and arm’s length body does the same, as part of our wider efforts to tackle all forms of racism and religious hatred in the NHS. Use of this definition will support more consistent identification, reporting and response to anti-Muslim hostility across health and care sectors.

We will deliver meaningful changes based on the recommendations of the review that are for the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England. This work must be supported and reinforced at all levels of the healthcare system. This includes working closely with NHS England, regulators and other system partners, as well as with affected stakeholders, to assess how all of the recommendations can be implemented optimally—to ensure NHS staff and patients are kept safe from hate.

A copy of the report and the accompanying Government response are available on gov.uk.

[HCWS91]

Palliative and End-of-Life Care Modern Service Framework: Interim Update

Thursday 4th June 2026 Written Statements

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

In November 2025, I announced that the Government would develop a modern service framework for palliative care and end-of-life care in England. This MSF is one of the only six MSFs announced, which clearly demonstrates that palliative care and end-of-life care is a top priority for this Government. The MSF will help address rising demand; late identification of need; inequitable variation in access, experience and outcomes; and the wider pressures facing the health and care system. Today I am providing an update on progress ahead of publication in autumn 2026.

The MSF is a clinically led, evidence-based framework to support sustained improvement in outcomes for patients and carers, including by systematically identifying, measuring and reducing health inequalities, and reducing unwarranted variation in access, experience and outcomes. This Government’s goal, being developed with partners, is that every person who needs palliative care or care at the end of life will have equitable access to high-quality support, shaped by what matters to them, their families and carers. There will be a notable shift towards outcome measurement to understand improvement, including a specific focus on identifying and reducing inequalities in outcomes across different population groups. Systems are already beginning to implement these reforms, so that by March 2029 we will have delivered impact against the aim, set out in the neighbourhood health framework, of increasing by 10% the number of people identified as approaching end of life, and reducing non-elective admissions and hospital bed days for this cohort by 10%. Furthermore, as part of the 10-year health plan commitment to at least double the number of people offered a personal health budget by 2028-29, so that they can have more control over their care, we will start trialling PHBs for those with palliative care and end-of-life care needs by the end of 2026-27.

We are undertaking extensive engagement with more than 70 organisations across the health and care sector, including clinical experts, the voluntary sector, people with lived experience, and those representing babies, children and young people, adults and older people, and their carers.

A review of the evidence, and our engagement to gather real-world examples, has identified five working sub-goals for the system to drive change. With our stakeholders, we will build on these insights to develop areas for action for those commissioning and delivering services:

Support our staff and our population to better understand palliative care, death and dying.

Provide a person-centred approach and ensure equitable access to earlier and more effective identification of needs, in all settings of care.

Prevent distress through proactive and equitable assessment and management of need closer to home.

Ensure equitable access to personalised palliative care.

Deliver a palliative care response that is timely, effective and equitable, including access to out-of-hours telephone support, within this Parliament.



Performance and outcome metrics will support system accountability and will measure what matters most to people receiving care, and to their families and carers. There will be separate measures for adults, and for babies, children and young people, with a focus on unwarranted variation and health inequalities, and a commitment to developing person-centred outcome and experience measures.

The strategic commissioning framework sets out how integrated care boards, in partnership with local authorities, will focus on long-term population health strategy and planning, and care redesign. The MSF will support this by setting standards and the clinical evidence base, and by highlighting areas for innovation to inform integrated models of palliative care, guide population health improvement plans and align with neighbourhood health. This will support the shift to strategic commissioning, including the requirement—in line with ICBs’ statutory duties—for clear and transparent contractual arrangements for commissioned palliative care activity across all providers, including hospices, to meet population health needs, with explicit regard to reducing inequalities and improving outcomes for underserved and disadvantaged groups.

The national director for primary care and community services will be informing the systems, setting out two actions to ensure progress is made towards strategic commissioning of palliative care and end-of-life care services:

Action 1: Produce an integrated needs assessment and understand service provision and utilisation.

Action 2: Move to sustainable contracting of hospice services.

The Government are also committed to publishing a 10-year workforce plan to ensure the NHS has the right people, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver for patients, including those approaching the end of life.

We will continue to co-design the MSF with people with lived experience, their families and carers, and sector partners, to refine the themes and areas for action, and finalise the metrics and accountability framework. We remain on track to publish the final MSF in autumn 2026, supported by system delivery and commissioning approaches.

Attachments can be viewed online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-statement/Commons/2026-06-04/HCWS88/

[HCWS88]

China: National Security Response

Thursday 4th June 2026 Written Statements

[The Minister for Security (Dan Jarvis)]

Yesterday, MI5, alongside our Five Eyes allies, issued an intelligence bulletin to warn that China’s military intelligence is targeting Five Eyes Government and military personnel to gain access to sensitive or privileged information.

The bulletin reveals that Chinese military intelligence is using online job platforms to cultivate long-term relationships with a range of Five Eyes nationals. This includes posing as employees of private consultancies, think tanks or HR firms, and placing online job advertisements for foreign policy and defence analysts.

This bulletin once again highlights the exceptional work of our intelligence and security services and the strength of our enduring Five Eyes partnership. It is through their joint efforts that we are able to keep our people safe.

I encourage everyone to read and digest the separate “Applicant Beware” guidance from the National Protective Security Authority on spotting the signs of online targeting. Doing so will ensure that people do not inadvertently become targets of China’s efforts. The disclosure of certain types of data can place the lives of frontline military personnel at risk, can weaken our economic prosperity, and enable interference in our democratic processes.

We have always been clear that we will engage with China on areas of mutual benefit, including developing a positive economic relationship. However, we have also been clear that China poses security threats to the UK. The Government will continue to tackle activity that infringes on our national security and sovereign affairs and raise our defences.

The Government are undertaking a range of work to further secure the UK from state threats activity. This includes:

The continued delivery of our counter-political interference and espionage action plan;

£170 million invested in renewing the sovereign and encrypted technology that civil servants use to protect sensitive work;

The removal of surveillance equipment manufactured by companies subject to the national intelligence law of the People’s Republic of China from all sensitives sites that the Government operate around the world;

Ongoing support to the higher education and research sector to address national security risks to international collaboration through the research collaboration and advice team;

Bolstering efforts to support universities to identify and combat foreign interference, supported by additional investment of £3 million over the next three years; and

Delivery of a £210 million backed Government cyber action plan, which aims to increase the cyber resilience of UK Government systems and to ensure that the UK is a hard operating environment for any threat actor.

We have recently seen the first National Security Act prosecutions in relation to China on May 7. This continues to demonstrate that those who break our laws will face prosecution.

The Government will continue to update Parliament as we take the necessary action to protect our national security.

[HCWS90]