Baroness Taylor of Bolton

Ofsted inspects around 50% of the 2,496 (July 2025) registered private schools in England. There is currently disparity between the fees charged for inspections and full cost recovery.

The table below sets out the budgeted cost of inspections compared to the fee income, over the last three years. Ofsted do not hold comparable data for the 2020/21 and 2021/22 financial years as Ofsted inspections were heavily affected by COVID-19 and were therefore not typical years of inspection activity.

Government policy is that costs associated with inspections by government bodies should be recoverable. This will reduce the need for government subsidy. The government is considering options to close the gap.

Since its launch in 2011, the Tell Us Once service has assisted over 5.2 million families. We monitor the number of notifications generated and the time it takes for recipient organisations to open them, ensuring that notifications are received and acted upon promptly.

We work closely with service delivery partners to ensure the service meets citizens' expectations. The most recent monthly internal evaluations of customer feedback show a satisfaction score of 4.6 out of 5 for the online service.

Employees and the self-employed make contributions that determine their level of State Pension until State Pension age. Payment of National Insurance contributions (NICs) builds an individual’s entitlement to claim contributory benefits which then replace earnings in certain circumstances, for example if someone is unable to work or is retired. After reaching State Pension age, the liability for employee and self-employed NICs no longer exists.

Employers are able to claim employer NICs reliefs including those for under-21s and under-25 apprentices. This means employers pay no employer NICs for apprentices under 25 or employees under 21 whose annual salaries are below £50,270.

The Government keeps all taxes under review as part of the policy making process.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) publishes the estimated annual cost of exempting individuals over State Pension age from paying National Insurance contributions (NICs) in the National Insurance contributions tab of the Structural Tax Reliefs publication. The estimated annual costs for employer NICs relief for apprentices under 25 and employees under 21 are published by HMRC in the NICs tab of the Non-Structural Tax Reliefs publication. These publications are both available online.

The figures for these three exemptions/reliefs are shown below:

Note 1: Figures shown are in £ million.

Note 2: Figures marked with an asterisk (*) are provisional

The General Register Office (GRO) Death Certificate Application Form (for events registered overseas) asks for ‘Marital Status’ only if deceased is female, as the Registration of Births and Deaths Regulations 1987 specifically defines ‘maiden surname’ in England and Wales as the name a woman has prior to her first marriage or civil partnership.

The numbers of all types of deprivation orders issued in cases of conviction for offences of “Disclosing private, sexual images” under section 33, Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 and “Sharing intimate images without consent” under section 66B, Sexual Offences Act 2003 is as follows.

These figures relate to all instances that a deprivation order was issued to a defendant for these offences.

The Government is committed to halving violence against women and girls and has introduced legislation to criminalise several types of intimate image abuse, and to extend the powers of the court to issue deprivation orders in these cases. We are exploring what can be done to encourage the use of deprivation orders in cases such as these.