Lord Bradley

The Equality Act 2006 details the establishment, duties, powers and constitution for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

Further information regarding the governance of the EHRC can be found on their website: www.equalityhumanrights.com.

The Office for the Children’s Commission does not have a terms of reference. Instead there is a framework agreement with the Department for Education, which can be found here: DfE framework agreement | Children's Commissioner for England.

The Children Act 2004 created the role for a Children’s Commissioner in England with the primary function of promoting and protecting the rights of children in England, ensuring that the views of the most vulnerable children are heard. The role was established following a recommendation in the Inquiry into Victoria Climbié’s death in 2000.

The intention of the Children and Families Act 2014 was to strengthen the remit, independence, and powers of the Commissioner. The Commissioner was given additional powers to effectively carry out the role.

These pieces of legislation set out the powers and responsibilities of the Children’s Commissioner for England.

The Victims’ Commissioner is appointed by the Secretary of State for Justice in accordance with the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. The functions of the role are set out in legislation and are to promote the interests of victims and witnesses, encourage good practice in the treatment of victims and witnesses, and to keep under review the operation of the Code of Practice for Victims (“the Victims’ Code). The Victims’ Commissioner is also required to make an annual report on the performance of their functions to the Justice Secretary, Attorney General and the Home Secretary and give advice to a Minister of the Crown or to the Treasury when required to do so, amongst other functions and duties.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. It operates within the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated regulations, including the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, which sets out the fundamental standards that providers of health and social care are expected to meet.

The CQC among its other functions, inspects, assess and monitors providers, giving them a rating of either outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate, to encourage continuous improvement. It has enforcement powers, to ensure the quality of care does not fall below the expected levels of standards.

Ofsted’s overall functions and remit are set out in a range of legislation, including the Education and Inspections Act 2006, which is available here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/40/part/8. The Act establishes Ofsted as a non-ministerial government department.

Ofsted publishes a number of documents relevant to its work and responsibilities, including its corporate governance arrangements, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ofsteds-corporate-governance-framework/ofsteds-corporate-governance-framework. An annual report on its work is attached and also available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/655f2551c39e5a001392e4ca/31587_Ofsted_Annual_Report_2022-23_WEB.pdf.

The number of children in poverty has gone up by 700,000 since 2010, with over four million children now growing up in a low-income family. This not only harms children’s lives now, but it also damages their future prospects, and holds back our economic potential as a country.

My right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister therefore announced, on 17 July 2024, the appointment of my right hon. Friends, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and the Secretary of State for Education, as the joint leads of a new ministerial taskforce to begin work on a Child Poverty Strategy. The government is committed to delivering an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty, to tackle the root causes, and give every child the best start at life.

Tackling child poverty is at the heart of breaking down barriers to opportunity and improving the life chances for every child. For too many children, living in poverty robs them of the opportunity to learn and to prosper. Too many children, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds, leave primary school with unresolved speech, language and communication needs that have a lasting impact on their life chances.

To help tackle this now, the department will provide targeted support for teachers in early years settings and primary schools to support children with the development of speech, language and communication skills. More broadly, the department will work with teachers and curriculum experts to identify how oracy can be woven into lessons across the curriculum to support all children to succeed. Through this, the department aims to support teachers across the country to realise the benefits of using oracy to teach, by adding it to their repertoire and enabling more children and young people to flourish in life and work.

Early language skills are vital to enable children to thrive in the early years and later in life, including for all aspects of later attainment in school. To support early language skills, the department is investing over £20 million in the Nuffield Early Language Intervention programme (NELI). NELI is an evidence-based programme targeting reception aged children needing extra support with their speech and language development and is proven to help them make four months of additional progress, which rises to seven months for those eligible for free school meals. In July 2024, the department announced that funded support for the 11,100 schools registered for the NELI programme, which is equivalent to two thirds of all English state primaries, would continue for the 2024/25 academic year.

Professional dog walkers must comply with the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and other relevant legislation, such as welfare in transport regulations and the Health and Safety at Work Act, and any public liability or other insurance policy requirements.

The Government has no current plans to regulate professional dog walkers. The Canine and Feline Sector Group has published best practice guidance to assist dog walkers which can be found here.

There are no current plans to expand statutory powers in either the Animal Welfare Act 2006 or the Animals (Penalty Notices) Act 2022 to include RSPCA inspectors. The RSPCA has strong working relationships with the Police and Local Authorities who support them in protecting animals where needed.

This Government recognises the challenges unpaid carers are facing and is determined to provide them with the help and support they need and deserve. It is looking closely at how the benefit system currently does this, notably through Universal Credit and Carer’s Allowance.

With respect to benefit levels, the Secretary of State has a statutory obligation to review the rates of State pensions and benefits each year. In the case of Carer’s Allowance, the relevant statute provides that it must rise at least in line with the increase in prices over the preceding year. The review to set rates for 2025/26 will take place in the autumn.

Other support is available through the benefit system. Full-time unpaid carers on low incomes may also be eligible for means tested support, such as Universal Credit and Pension Credit. These benefits can be paid to carers at a higher rate than those without caring responsibilities through the carer element and the additional amount for carers respectively. Currently, the Universal Credit carer element is £198.31 per monthly assessment period. The additional amount for carers in Pension Credit is £45.60 a week.

Due to the size of the data, a table showing the names of the current healthcare providers for each prison in England is attached. This does not include providers sub-contracted to provide services for substance use, neurodiversity, mental health, or dental, amongst other services.

This information is held on a local level by the healthcare providers for each respective prison.

The information requested is not held centrally.

In July, my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care asked Dr Penny Dash to carry out a review, looking at patient safety across the health and care landscape in England, within the context of the wider regulation and improvement of the quality of care. The guidance, Review of patient safety across the health and care landscape: terms of reference, published on 15 October 2024, is available on the GOV.UK website, in an online-only format.

Healthwatch England is the independent statutory national champion for people who use health and social care services. Its functions include gathering and communicating the views of the public on their needs and experiences of health and social care services. Healthwatch England also provides support and assistance to the 152 Local Healthwatch organisations in England.

The key contractual dates for the current privately-operated prisons are set out in the table below.

*Inherited from the Home Office

The key contractual dates for prisons that were previously privately-operated are set out in the table below.

The key contractual dates for the current privately-operated prisons are set out in the table below.

*Inherited from the Home Office

The key contractual dates for prisons that were previously privately-operated are set out in the table below.

The information requested in can be found in the attached table.

Data sources and quality

Note that the tariff length is the time between date of sentencing and tariff expiry date, and does not take into account any time spent on remand. The figures do not include whole-life orders. The numbers are subject to revision as more data become available; any changes in the numbers since the last publication of this information is as a result of more sentencing data becoming available.

The data have come from administrative IT systems which, as with some large-scale recording systems, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing and may be amended as part of data cleansing or updates.

The requested information, by prisoner ethnicity and religious affiliation, is provided in the tables below:

PAVA incident reports by ethnic group (2022, 2023)

PAVA incident reports by religion group (2022, 2023)

The Use of Force Policy Framework sets out the context in which force is used lawfully by trained prison staff as well as setting out a professional standard for using force.

All prison officers trained in how to use PAVA undergo regular refreshers which cover the lawful use of force in the custodial setting.

HMPPS is closely monitoring the use of PAVA in all sites at senior levels.

These figures have been drawn from HMPPS Management information. Care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, but the detail is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. We do not provide exact data when the figure is five or fewer, as this risks identification of individuals. In these cases, the figure has been replaced by the symbol *. This approach is in accordance with our standards on data disclosure.

Information relating to the use of PAVA spray on prisoners with disabilities is recorded in a number of formats. To be able to identify all such cases, it would be necessary to review all potentially relevant records, and this could not be done without incurring disproportionate cost.

Information is held on staffing numbers in the public-sector youth secure estate, and is published quarterly at table 5b of the HMPPS Workforce Statistics Bulletin:

Staffing information in relation to settings that are managed independently is not held by HM Prison & Probation Service.