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 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.

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

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to support farmers to implement crate-free farrowing for pigs.

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

We are firmly committed to maintaining and improving animal welfare and want to work closely with the farming sector to deliver high standards. The Animal Health and Welfare Pathway supports farmers to improve their animals’ health and welfare through funded vet visits as well as targeted grants. We continue to work with the industry on how the Pathway can encourage improvements in indoor pigs’ welfare.

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

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the levels of phosphates and nitrates in England's waterways; and whether they intend to extend safety protections to people involved in water sports on those waterways.

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

The level of water pollution is unacceptable. That is why cleaning up our rivers, lakes and seas is a priority for the government. Working with farmers and the wider industry is key to delivering against this priority.

Under the Environment Act 2021, a legally binding target was set to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment from agriculture entering the water environment by 40% by 2038.  A suite of proportionate and effective regulations, advice and incentives are in place to support delivery of this target and reduce pollution. We are focused on working with farmers to improve compliance to meet their obligations and make improvements to their businesses.

UK Health Security Agency and the Environment Agency offer advice in their ‘Swim Healthy’ guidance on swimming in open waters: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/swim-healthy-leaflet/swim-healthy.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, following the decision to close the NHS volunteer and care service, whether they will extend the funding of NHS Practitioner Health beyond March 2026.

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

The National NHS and Care Volunteer Responders programme was first established as part of the COVID-19 response and then adapted to respond to other organisational pressures. However, a model that worked well in a national crisis is no longer the most cost-effective way of facilitating the important contribution of our much-valued volunteers.

National Health Service staff are incredibly dedicated. However, if healthcare staff are to provide excellent care to patients, they need to receive excellent support themselves. Work is underway to modernise NHS working culture and to make the NHS the best place to work, and this includes a much stronger focus on staff health and wellbeing.

The Practitioner Health mental health treatment service is currently funded up until 31 March 2026. NHS England is reviewing the future provision of services to support staff health in the workplace.

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

To ask His Majesty's Government what measures they are considering to protect hares and their young during the breeding season; and what assessment they have made of the introduction of a close season for the killing of hares.

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

Defra Ministers support the ambition to introduce a close season for hares in England. The hare is a much-loved species, and we fail to give it the protection we should. England and Wales stand out as being among the few European countries not to have a close season for their hares. A close season should reduce the number of adult hares being shot in the breeding season, which runs from February to October, meaning that fewer leverets (infant hares) are left motherless and vulnerable to starvation and predation. A close season is also consistent with Natural England's advice on wildlife management that controlling species in their peak breeding season should be avoided unless genuinely essential and unavoidable.

Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many homes were built in (1) England, and (2) the UK, in each of the past 15 years.

Answered by Baroness Taylor of Stevenage - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)

The Department publishes an annual release entitled ‘Housing supply: net additional dwellings, England’, which is the primary and most comprehensive measure of housing supply. This includes estimates of housing supply in each financial year to 2023-24; is shown in the table below; and can be found in Live Table 120 on gov.uk here.

Net additional dwellings in the devolved regions of the United Kingdom and aggregate figures for the UK are not held centrally by MHCLG.

Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask His Majesty's Government what statistical source and metric they used for the basis that the £2 billion investment to support social and affordable housebuilding is the biggest in a generation; and what length of time that generation time period covers.

Answered by Baroness Taylor of Stevenage - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)

I refer the noble Lady to the answer given to Question UIN 41449 on 3 April 2025.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what measures they are considering to support the prevention of criminal damage to agricultural equipment, such as introducing requirements for immobilisers or forensic marking.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Government is committed to safeguarding rural communities, with tougher measures to clamp down on equipment theft, anti-social behaviour, strengthened neighbourhood policing, and stronger laws to prevent farm theft and fly-tippers.

Our Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will deliver 13,000 more neighbourhood police by the end of the Parliament, whilst also ensuring each community, including rural communities, has a named, contactable officer to turn to. We recognise the impact stolen farm machinery can have on businesses. We will implement the Equipment Theft (Prevention) Act 2023, which aims to prevent the theft and re-sale of high-value equipment, particularly for use in an agricultural setting.

The Act enables the Home Secretary to make secondary legislation requiring immobilisers and forensic marking to be fitted to new All-Terrain Vehicles (ATVs) and quad bikes to act as a deterrent to theft. The Act does not specifically aim to prevent criminal damage to agricultural equipment.

We intend to publish the Government response to a Call for Evidence on the detail of the secondary legislation shortly. This will set out what equipment the Government proposes to include in the legislation, which we hope to introduce later this year.

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

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to continue to make subsidies for sustainable farming practices available to farms of all sizes; and at what rate.

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

We have moved away from the EU’s approach to subsidies to a ‘public money for public goods’ system.

We currently have a record 50,000 farm businesses and half of all farmed land now managed under our schemes – with more money being spent through these schemes than at any point.

Going forward we’ve committed an average of £2.3 billion a year to directly benefit tens of thousands of farmers, including small farmers, supporting farm profitability through investment in research and technology and sustainable food production, at the same time as improving the quality of the water in our rivers, the air we breathe and our spaces for wildlife.

Energy Studies APPG
Wednesday 11th June 2025

Found: Earl of Stair Lord Palmer The Rt Hon. the Lord Paul Lord Ravensdale Lord Redesdale Baroness Redfern

Energy Studies APPG
Wednesday 11th June 2025

Found: Earl of Stair Lord Palmer The Rt Hon. the Lord Paul Lord Ravensdale Lord Redesdale Baroness Redfern

Apprenticeships APPG
Wednesday 11th June 2025

Found: Green - Lord Hunt of Kings Heath - Lord Baker of Dorking - Lord Watson of Invergowrie - Baroness Redfern

Waterways APPG
Wednesday 11th June 2025

Found: Apologies had been received from Baroness Redfern.