Lord Bishop of Oxford

The new criteria for the adoption and special guardianship support fund will enable as many children and families as possible to access the available funding. The department always assesses the impact of changes on vulnerable children. This, of course, includes assessing the cost implications of decisions.

The new criteria for the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund will enable as many children and families as possible to access the available funding. The department always assesses the impact of changes on vulnerable children. This includes reviewing the equalities impact assessment, which will be made available in the House Libraries in due course.

The department routinely monitors data on adoptive and kinship placement disruption, as well as on adopter recruitment. The department is working closely with Adoption England to improve its monitoring of placement disruption and is funding them to deliver specific projects designed to improve adopter recruitment and family support.

The new criteria for the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund will enable as many children and families as possible to access the available funding. The department always assesses the impact of changes on vulnerable children. This includes reviewing the equalities impact assessment, which will be made available in the House Libraries in due course.

The department routinely monitors data on adoptive and kinship placement disruption, as well as on adopter recruitment. The department is working closely with Adoption England to improve its monitoring of placement disruption and is funding them to deliver specific projects designed to improve adopter recruitment and family support.

The number of therapeutic sessions available to a child after a specialist assessment funded by the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) is dependent on a variety of factors. This includes the cost of the specialist assessment, the cost of the therapy and in which financial year the specialist assessment was completed. It is also important to note that additional funding may be made available by the local authority or Regional Adoption Agency beyond that provided by the ASGSF, therefore increasing the amount of therapy available, should the specialist assessment recommend this.

The department estimates that £3,000 of funding will fund an average of 19 to 20 hours of therapy. This is a significant package of support, which may be tailored to meet a child’s individual needs.

Outcomes measurement tool data enables the efficacy of ASGSF-funded support to be monitored at local and national level. The department started to collect data from outcomes measurement tools for ASGSF-funded therapies in December 2023. As therapy treatment comes to an end, this data will give an overall picture of the impact and adequacy of individual ASGSF-funded therapies. We are currently developing tools and methods for assessing this emerging information.

The number of therapeutic sessions available to a child after a specialist assessment funded by the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF) is dependent on a variety of factors. This includes the cost of the specialist assessment, the cost of the therapy and in which financial year the specialist assessment was completed. It is also important to note that additional funding may be made available by the local authority or Regional Adoption Agency beyond that provided by the ASGSF, therefore increasing the amount of therapy available, should the specialist assessment recommend this.

The department estimates that £3,000 of funding will fund an average of 19 to 20 hours of therapy. This is a significant package of support, which may be tailored to meet a child’s individual needs.

Outcomes measurement tool data enables the efficacy of ASGSF-funded support to be monitored at local and national level. The department started to collect data from outcomes measurement tools for ASGSF-funded therapies in December 2023. As therapy treatment comes to an end, this data will give an overall picture of the impact and adequacy of individual ASGSF-funded therapies. We are currently developing tools and methods for assessing this emerging information.

The Department for Work and Pensions does not refer claimants to food banks, but provides operational instructions to Jobcentre colleagues detailing when it is appropriate to signpost claimants to food banks.

The UK actively participated in developing the draft United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology. The Government sought to ensure that the draft Recommendation is consistent with international human rights law, including the right to privacy. We welcome that the Recommendation aims to prevent harm in line with international law and covers specific vulnerable groups, including children and persons with disabilities. The Recommendation will be considered for adoption by the UNESCO General Conference in November this year and we hope that this debate will enable important progress towards mitigating risks arising from the use of neurotechnology.

We're very aware of the ethical concerns raised by numerous stakeholders including the ICRC around the potential misuse of AI in Defence, including its impact on humans and the potential use of autonomous systems in ways which might violate international law. We published the Ambitious, Safe, Responsible specifically in order to ensure clarity and support ongoing conversations around the UK approach.

With respect to autonomous weapons systems: the UK's focus is on setting clear international norms for the safe and responsible development and use of AI, to ensure compliance with International Humanitarian Law through meaningful and context-appropriate levels of human control. We propose development of a compendium of good practice mapped against a weapon systems' lifecycle which would provide a clear framework for the operationalisation of the eleven guiding principles agreed by the UN Group of Government Experts on Certain Conventional Weapons 2017-19.

We are keen to continue extensive discussions on this issue with the international community and NGOs on this issue, including through discussions at the UN.

The 'Ambitious, Safe, Responsible' policy sets out that the Ministry of Defence opposes the creation and use of AI enabled weapon systems which operate without meaningful and context-appropriate human involvement throughout their lifecycle. This involvement could take the form of real-time human supervision, or control exercised through the setting of a system's operational parameters.

We believe that Human-Machine teaming delivers the best outcomes in terms of overall effectiveness. However, in certain cases it may be appropriate to exert rigorous human control over AI-enabled systems through a range of safeguards, process and technical controls without always requiring some form of real-time human supervision. For example, in the context of defending a maritime platform against hypersonic weapons, defensive systems may need to be able to detect incoming threats and open fire faster than a human could react.

In all cases, human responsibility for the use of AI must be clearly established, and that responsibility underpinned by a clear and consistent articulation of the means by which human control is exercised across the system lifecycle, including the nature and limitations of that control.

The UK does not support calls for further legally binding rules that prohibit autonomous weapons that identify, select and attack targets without context-appropriate human involvement and regulate other autonomous systems. International Humanitarian Law already provides a robust, principle-based framework for the regulation of development and use of all weapons systems including weapons that contain autonomous functions.

Without international consensus on the definitions or characteristics of weapons with levels of autonomy, a legal instrument would have to ban undefined systems, which would present difficulties in the application of any such ban and which could severely impact legitimate research and development of AI or autonomous technologies.