Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that non-custodial sentences command public and judicial confidence by ensuring that, when offenders undertake such interventions, they are demanding, well organised, purposeful, and with the clear intention of reducing recidivism.
Answered by Lord Bellamy
The Government is committed to the effective delivery of non-custodial sentences, and it is important that both judges and the public have confidence in the delivery of these sentences.
Courts have the power to impose a range of requirements to sentences served in the community. All community orders must have a compulsory punitive element to ensure that offenders are punished for their crime, and to deter further reoffending. For example, Unpaid Work (UPW) ensures offenders are making visible reparations for their crimes, such as cleaning graffiti. We have invested up to £93m in Community Payback over a three-year period to boost delivery of UPW hours. We have also relaunched the UPW nominations website on GOV.UK to make it easier and more accessible for the public to have a say in how and where UPW hours should be used.
Electronic monitoring is a well-established tool available to courts and probation staff to strengthen offender management in the community. We are increasing the number of defendants and offenders that can be tagged at any one time to 25,000 by March 2025.
Community Sentence Treatment Requirements (CSTRs) can also be imposed as part of a community sentence for offenders with mental health, drug or alcohol issues, offering a robust alternative to custody which addresses the root causes of offending. We have recruited Health and Justice Partnership Coordinators across all probation regions to ensure strong links between probation and healthcare to support these requirements.
Public confidence is maintained by ensuring our staff are equipped with the right tools so that they can make the most of their expertise and judgement. We have increased funding for the Probation Service by an additional £155m a year to recruit record levels of staff, so that we can bring down caseloads, and deliver better and more consistent supervision of offenders in the community.
We recognise the importance of ensuring the public is properly informed about sentencing as a whole and that the public has access to a range of information to enable this. We are also building and maintaining the confidence of the judiciary by improving arrangements to increase understanding and transparency in probation delivery at national, regional and local levels.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to provide support to local authorities in financial difficulty.
Answered by Baroness Penn
We monitor the financial health of local authorities closely, including through extensive direct engagement with councils. We stand ready to speak to any council that has concerns about its ability to manage its finances, or that faces pressures it has not planned for.
The provisional local government finance settlement for 2024-25 makes available up to an additional £3.9 billion to local authorities in England, an increase of 6.5% in cash terms on 2023-24. We have launched a consultation on the provisional settlement, which closes on 15 January 2024.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the Carers UK report State of Caring 2023 — The impact of caring on: health, published in November; and what steps they intend to take in response.
Answered by Lord Markham
We are grateful to Carers UK for having undertaken the research for this report, and we recognise that caring is not always easy or straightforward. There is a wide variety of caring circumstances, experiences and needs among unpaid carers, and the enormous contribution of unpaid carers is reflected throughout Next Steps to Put People at the Heart of Care, published on GOV.UK in April 2023 in an online-only format.
On 24 October 2023, we announced our £42.6 million Accelerating Reform Fund to support innovation and scaling up in adult social care, and to kick-start a change in services provided to support unpaid carers.
We are also investing at least £2.3 billion extra funding a year in expanding and transforming mental health services in England by March 2024. This extra funding will enable an extra two million people, including unpaid carers, to be treated by mental health services within the National Health Service by March 2024.
We know that breaks and respite are important for unpaid carers. This year, £327 million from the Better Care Fund has been earmarked to provide short breaks and respite services and additional advice and support to carers, together with a small number of additional local authority duties.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the Children's Commissioner report Missing Children, Missing Grades, published on 2 November; and what steps they are taking in response.
Answered by Baroness Barran
Improving attendance is one of the department’s priorities. The report provides vital insight into the relationship between attendance and attainment. The recommendations echo the department’s ‘support first' approach to attendance and its goal to make attendance everyone's business. In response, the department continues to implement its comprehensive plan to address the issue.
The department has published guidance encouraging all schools and local authorities to adopt the practices of the most effective schools. All schools are now expected to publish an attendance policy and appoint an attendance champion. Local authorities are expected to meet termly with schools to agree individual plans for at risk children. 86% of schools subscribe to the department’s attendance data tool to spot at risk pupils. The department’s attendance hubs now support 800 schools benefiting over 400,000 pupils.
These measures are in addition to the implementation of the special educational needs and disability (SEND) reforms which will ensure that children with SEND receive high quality, early support in attending school wherever they live in England.
The department’s approach is starting to turn the tide, with recent data showing there were 380,000 fewer pupils who were persistently absent from or not attending school in the 2022/23 academic year compared to 2021/22, but absence levels remain too high.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what action they intend to take in response to the findings of the His Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation's Annual Report 2022/2023.
Answered by Lord Bellamy
The Ministry of Justice fully recognises the challenges raised by the Chief Inspector in his annual report and my Right Honourable Friend, the Prisons and Probation Minister will respond to him in full. We are committed to addressing the issues he outlines, most vitally around staffing levels and the need to improve the management of risk. We have injected extra funding of more than £155 million a year to deliver more robust supervision, reduce caseloads and recruit thousands more staff to keep the public safe. The unified Probation Service is delivering greater consistency in supervision and we are already giving local leaders greater decision-making powers so they can better address the issues that are unique to their local area.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve the number of care leavers who have access to university education.
Answered by Baroness Barran
This government is committed to ensuring that all care leavers are supported to succeed in education and achieve positive outcomes. The ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ strategy sets out the department’s plans to reform the children’s social care system, including improving the education, employment and training outcomes of children in care and care leavers. This includes, from 2027, a year-on-year narrowing of the gap in care leaver higher education participation rates compared to the general population.
We will introduce a gold standard accreditation scheme for further and higher education institutions supporting care leavers, working with an expert advisory group to develop the accreditation in partnership with the sector, and will consult on plans to expand the Virtual School Head role to include children in care and care leavers up to age 25. Local authorities must also provide a £2,000 bursary for care leavers who go to university.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the 130,000 children of homeless families are receiving an education in school.
Answered by Baroness Barran
All children of compulsory school age, regardless of their circumstances, are entitled to a full-time education which is suitable to their age, ability, aptitude and any special educational needs that they may have. The department consulted and implemented changes to the statutory School Admissions Code in 2021 to improve the in-year school admissions process and fair access protocols. Fair access protocols are the safety net to secure school places in-year for vulnerable and unplaced children, where the in-year admissions process fails. In those changes, the department identified a list of categories of children who are eligible for placement in fair access, which included children who are homeless. The school admissions code can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-admissions-code--2.
The ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance expects schools, local authorities and partners to work with pupils and parents to remove any barriers to school attendance by building strong and trusting relationships, and working together to put the right support in place. This guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance. In all cases, schools should be sensitive and should avoid stigmatising pupils and parents. They should talk to pupils and parents to understand what they think would help improve their attendance. This allows individual approaches that meet an individual pupil’s specific needs.
All schools should be calm, orderly, safe, and supportive environments where pupils can thrive and reach their potential in safety and dignity. Teachers know their pupils best and are in the best position to identify their needs and to plan which approaches will meet them most effectively.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with (1) the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer, (2) the Care Quality Commission, (3) the General Pharmaceutical Council, and (4) the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, relating to the performance of homecare medicines services.
Answered by Lord Markham
The Department has not made an assessment of the performance of the National Homecare Medicines Committee (NHMC). Providers of Homecare Medicine services to National Health Service patients do so under framework agreements and contracts which may be held at national level through NHS England, regional level through NHS procurement hubs, or local level through hospital trusts. This therefore requires a high degree of centralised co-ordination for which the NHMC liaises with homecare providers through their trade association the National Clinical Homecare Association (NCHA) to support and co-ordinate development of the homecare market and discuss any system wide issues. The NHMC includes representatives from the NHS, including NHS England and Pharmaceutical officers, homecare providers, pharmaceutical manufacturer associations and the Care Quality Commission.
NHS England, the NHMC and the NCHA have discussed concerns about the performance of homecare medicines services with officials from the Department.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the performance of the National Homecare Medicines Committee.
Answered by Lord Markham
The Department has not made an assessment of the performance of the National Homecare Medicines Committee (NHMC). Providers of Homecare Medicine services to National Health Service patients do so under framework agreements and contracts which may be held at national level through NHS England, regional level through NHS procurement hubs, or local level through hospital trusts. This therefore requires a high degree of centralised co-ordination for which the NHMC liaises with homecare providers through their trade association the National Clinical Homecare Association (NCHA) to support and co-ordinate development of the homecare market and discuss any system wide issues. The NHMC includes representatives from the NHS, including NHS England and Pharmaceutical officers, homecare providers, pharmaceutical manufacturer associations and the Care Quality Commission.
NHS England, the NHMC and the NCHA have discussed concerns about the performance of homecare medicines services with officials from the Department.
Asked by: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to reduce the number of children placed in local authority care.
Answered by Baroness Barran
The department published its plans to reform children’s social care on 2 February 2023 in ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, which can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1147317/Children_s_social_care_stable_homes_consultation_February_2023.pdf.
‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ sets out how the department will help families to overcome challenges at an early stage, keep children safe and make sure those in care have stability, long-term loving relationships and opportunities for a good life. Over the next two years, the department will address urgent issues facing children and families now and lay the foundations for a whole system reform.
A central aim of the reform programme is to keep more children safely with their families, where this is possible. The department will invest more than £45 million over the next two years through its ‘Families First for Children Pathfinder’, which will test the implementation of reforms across Family Help, Child Protection, and Family Network Support Packages. This will inform wider roll out.
Whilst the government recognises the importance of reducing the number of placements for children in the care system, placements can be the right option for some children. The strategy also sets out how the department is prioritising work with local authorities to ensure children have access to the right placements at the right time.