Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to regulate professional dog walkers.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
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.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have any plans to extend the powers of RSPCA inspectors under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 to ensure better enforcement in the protection of animal welfare.
Answered by Baroness Hayman of Ullock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
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.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 8 October (HL957), when they expect considerations on extending the Electronic Prescription Service to conclude, and a decision to be taken.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As part of ongoing considerations, NHS England intends to launch a pilot in the coming months extending the Electronic Prescription Service to specific Detained Estate health services in England. Amendments to the National Health Service (Charges for Drugs and Appliances) Regulations 2015 will be made in the autumn, subject to parliamentary time.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to increase funding to hospices in England.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is determined to shift more healthcare out of hospitals and into the community, to ensure that patients and their families receive personalised care in the most appropriate setting and palliative and end of life care, including hospices, will have a big role to play in that shift.
Palliative care services are included in the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) must commission. This promotes a more consistent national approach and supports commissioners in prioritising palliative and end of life care. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications.
Whilst the majority of palliative and end of life care is provided by National Health Service staff and services, we recognise the vital part that voluntary sector organisations, including hospices, also play in providing support to people at end of life and their loved ones.
Most hospices are charitable, independent organisations which receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. The amount of funding charitable hospices receive varies by ICB area, and will, in part, be dependent on the breadth of a range of palliative and end of life care provision within their ICB footprint.
The Department will continue to proactively engage with our stakeholders, including the voluntary sector and independent hospices, on an ongoing basis, in order to understand the issues they face.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to amend the National Health Service (Charges for Drugs and Appliances) Regulations 2015 to enable the electronic transfer of prescriptions between prisons and community pharmacies.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England is considering extending the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) to Detained Estate health services in England, and the Department is engaging with them on this work.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what proportion of women remanded in custody in each of the last three years were subsequently (1) sentenced, and (2) not sentenced.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on the remand status of defendants and subsequent outcomes in the Remands data tool.
The attached tables provide the proportion of outcomes for female defendants after being remanded in custody, split by magistrates’ court and Crown Court.
Defendants proceeded against at magistrates’ courts and subsequently committed to the Crown Court will have separate remand decisions made in both courts and will be included in both totals.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the accessibility of mental health services to (1) children and young people, and (2) older adults, who have speech, language and communication needs.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the NHS Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance for 2024/25, NHS England is continuing to expand access to mental health services. This includes increasing the number of children and young people accessing comprehensive mental health support, as well as the number of adults and older adults completing a course of treatment for anxiety and depression via NHS Talking Therapies, some of whom having speech, language, and communication needs. Support may include provision of speech and language therapy as part of a local offer, however decisions about service provision are down to local determination by integrated care boards, to meet locally identified need.
As set out in the Equality Act 2010, all organisations, including those in health and social care, must take steps to remove the barriers individuals face because of disability. The National Health Service must make it as easy for disabled people to use health services as it is for people who are not disabled. NHS organisations and publicly funded social care providers must also comply with the Accessible Information Standard, to meet the communication needs of patients and carers with a disability, impairment, or sensory loss.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to review (1) the level of the Carer's Allowance, and (2) the eligibility threshold for the Carer's Allowance.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
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.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to ensure that the Child Poverty Strategy will address the barriers which prevent children in poverty from accessing speech and language support.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Education)
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.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to change the way that deaths of patients detained in secure settings under the Mental Health Act 1983 are investigated.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are currently no such plans at this time to change the way that deaths of patients detained in secure settings under the Mental Health Act 1983 are investigated.
The Mental Health Bill will deliver our manifesto commitment to modernise the Mental Health Act 1983. It will give patients greater choice, autonomy, enhanced rights and support, and ensure everyone is treated with dignity and respect throughout treatment. The Bill will make the Act fit for the 21st century, redressing the balance of power from the system to the patient and ensuring people with the most severe mental health conditions get better, more personalised, care.
The Patient Safety Incident Response Framework sets out the NHS’s approach to developing and maintaining effective systems and processes for responding to patient safety incidents for the purpose of learning and improving patient safety. The Framework became a requirement in the NHS standard contract from April 2024. Under this framework a locally-led patient safety incident investigation is required for deaths of patients detained under the Mental Health Act (1983) or where the Mental Capacity Act (2005) applies, where there is reason to think that the death may be linked to problems in care (i.e., the incident meets the “learning from deaths” criteria, the investigation explores decisions or actions as they relate to the safety event).
In addition, all deaths among people detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 are reported to the Care Quality Commission and referred to the Coroners Office.