Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government, following the announcement on 25 February that they will invest £208 million in a new national biosecurity centre, whether those funds were previously committed to go directly to farmers as payments for 'public goods'.

Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The National Biosecurity Centre is the new name for the facility delivered at APHA Weybridge, previously known as the Science Capability in Animal Health programme. This funding has not been previously committed to other purposes.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to extend funding for NHS Practitioner Health beyond March 2026.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

NHS England has recently extended the NHS Practitioner Health service to the end of March 2026. Discussions around the mental health and wellbeing provision for future staff, including this service, are ongoing.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the speech by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to the National Farmers Union on 25 February, when the requirements to favour high-welfare products in government catering contracts will come into effect, and what sectors other than hospitals and schools are being targeted.

Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

As announced at the National Farmers Union Conference, the National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS), which sets out the Government’s strategic priorities for public procurement, came into effect alongside the Procurement Act on 24 February. The NPPS underscores the Government's commitment to increasing the procurement of food that meets higher environmental standards, supporting local suppliers and upholding ethical sourcing practises across public sector contracts, including catering contracts. Defra officials are currently exploring the options for any future changes to public sector food and catering policy.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to support the steel industry by reducing their electricity costs.

Answered by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)

Government is committed to tackling high industrial electricity prices in the UK. This is why Government has taken action to mitigate high electricity costs for energy intensive industries by continuing the Energy Intensive Industries compensation scheme and implementing the British Industry Supercharger.

The Plan for Steel, which will be published in Spring, will address electricity prices for steelmakers. We are committed to providing up to £2.5bn to rebuild steel industry which will be available through the National Wealth Fund and other routes.

Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to preserve productive farmland by encouraging the installation of solar panels on buildings and car parks rather than such farmland.

Answered by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

The deployment of rooftop solar is a top priority. Permitted development rights mean most rooftop projects do not require an application for planning permission, including non-domestic arrays of any size, and solar canopies on car parks. New buildings standards will ensure that all newly built houses and commercial buildings are fit for a net zero future. We expect these standards to encourage the installation of solar panels.

Ground mount solar is also needed to meet our 2030 clean power ambitions. Planning guidance makes clear that, wherever possible, projects should utilise previously developed land. Where the development of farmland is judged necessary, lower-quality land should be preferred.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the link between online misinformation about health, and poor media literacy; and how they are taking this into account in public health policy.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department has not made a specific assessment of the impact of health misinformation on public health decision making, but recognises the importance of accurate health information being available to the public and of preventing misinformation.

The Department regularly rebuts factual inaccuracies when they appear in traditional media and undertakes extensive planning, engagement, and strategic work to ensure accurate public health information is available on social media channels, to mitigate misinformation. In addition, the Department strives to ensure that all of the information it publishes is accurate, clear, and accessible to a variety of audiences, including using easy read versions.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will publish the key performance indicators of the Sustainable Farming Incentive, and how these have been met.

Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Defra is monitoring the Sustainable Farming Incentive and tracking contributions to outcomes. We recently published statistics on the area within agri-environment schemes, which showed that 64% of England’s farmed area is in a scheme. 3.3 million hectares are in SFI 2023 and over 380,000 hectares are in the SFI expanded offer.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of mandatory animal welfare labelling on consumer purchasing decisions.

Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

A public consultation on fairer food labelling was undertaken last year by the previous Government. The consultation sought views on proposals to improve and extend current mandatory method of production labelling and was accompanied by an impact assessment which assessed the potential costs and benefits. Research was also commissioned to explore animal welfare considerations in consumer purchasing decisions, which will be published in due course.

We are now carefully considering all responses before deciding on next steps and will respond to this consultation in due course.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what support they provide to young people serving sentences of less than 12 months who are released on licence to secure affordable youth-friendly accommodation and an opportunity to find a job.

Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

Children returning to the community after being sentenced to time in custody are provided with the personal and structural support they need to rebuild their lives, by the youth custody establishment and their Youth Offending Teams (YOT), including support to secure suitable accommodation and education, training or employment.

Where appropriate, the establishment will use the temporary release scheme to prepare a child for return to the community. The Youth Custody Service is piloting a new policy framework in five sites, for release on temporary licence (ROTL). In the new policy, children who are eligible may now be considered and risk assessed for ROTL after five months or halfway through their sentence, whichever is earlier. This will mean for many children in YOIs they should be able to access ROTL earlier than under the previous provisions. Activities on ROTL could include visiting potential accommodation or education placement as well as providing access to potential employment opportunities.

Where children are unable to return to the family home, the YOT work with children’s social care to find a suitable placement for the child. Local authorities are responsible for ensuring that there is sufficient accommodation available to meet the needs of all children they look after. This government is supporting local authorities to meet their statutory duty through a multi-year package of capital investment which includes £90 million for 2025-26 announced in the Autumn Budget. This funding will help local authorities to maintain capacity and expand provision across open and secure children's homes sectors to provide safe and suitable homes.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they will give to flooding, drought, healthy soil, and clean water in their 25-year farming roadmap.

Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The food and farming sector is operating in an increasingly complex environment. Climate change is causing weather variability leading to more floods, droughts and other extreme events. These challenges are contributing to declining biodiversity, soil degradation, water quality pressures and increasing risks to land productivity.

The Farming Roadmap will be a long-term strategy setting out this Government’s vision for a thriving sector that delivers for the economy, nature, food security and the environment. It will provide a vision for our farming sector and set the direction for how we get there, with a focus on delivering our food security and environmental objectives, whilst supporting farms to be resilient and profitable. The roadmap will be published later this year.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the level of male chick culling in the UK egg industry; and what steps they are taking to support producers to reduce that practice.

Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The legislation sets out strict requirements to protect the welfare of animals at the time of killing, including male chicks from the egg production sector.

Permitted killing methods for chicks, such as gas stunning and maceration, are based on scientific research and assessment to ensure birds are spared any avoidable pain, distress, or suffering. All laying hen hatcheries in the UK use argon gas mixtures as their stunning method.

We are firmly committed to maintaining and improving animal welfare and want to work closely with the farming sector to deliver high standards. In recent years there has been rapid global progress in the development of technologies that allow chicks to be sexed in-ovo (within the egg). We welcome the UK egg industry’s interest in the development of day zero sexing technology.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve the IT systems used by the Probation Service and its partners to save time and enable practitioners to make better decisions.

Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice is improving its IT systems to address capacity challenges within HM Prison and Probation Service. These will save practitioners and Probation Service partners time, by reducing administrative burdens and by supporting delivery of the Independent Sentencing Review recommendations. We are focusing on:

A) Putting foundations in place, including replacing the existing legacy systems with a single, integrated digital service for probation officers that will put all the tools they need in one place and reduce the need to shift between systems and repeat tasks;

B) Addressing data quality and integration issues, by putting in place a single data source for the probation service, to reduce time taken to search for and access data, including data from other agencies; and

C) Piloting new uses of technology, such as AI to eliminate manual processes (voice transcription to automate writing up notes), and deploying two-way smartphone communications with offenders (e.g., automated reminders and offender check-ins).

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to sustain recruitment and training until Probation Service vacancies are filled across all geographic areas.

Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

Recruitment and training of staff remain high priorities for the Probation Service, to ensure we have a sufficient workforce to safely supervise and manage people in the community. The Probation Service exceeded the 2024/25 trainee Probation Officer recruitment target of 1,000, successfully onboarding 1,057 trainees. The Lord Chancellor has committed to onboarding a further 1,300 trainees in 2025/26.

We have extended centralised recruitment campaigns for key grades to all regions to reduce the time to fill operational roles. Last year we launched a non-graduate route for staff to train as Probation Officers. This will increase applications and provide routes for a more diverse range of staff.

The pace of recruitment is balanced against the organisation’s ability to train and support new recruits whilst retaining sufficient services in the meantime. There is a core learning and development curriculum that must be completed by all new entrant Probation Services Officers and by Trainee Probation Officers alongside the academic requirement of their qualification. The Probation Service has continued to deliver the required learning to the high volumes of new recruits over recent years to ensure that learners can meet the qualification standards.