Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is the total number of reports categorised by police forces in England of (1) antisemitic, and (2) Islamophobic, hate crimes in each of the last 3 years.

Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office publishes official statistics on hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales. This includes information on religious hate crimes, by targeted religion. In the year ending March 2025, the police recorded 2,783 religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people and 4,478 targeted at Muslims.

Due to a change in IT system, data for the Metropolitan Police Service are not comparable over the last three years. Excluding data from this force, the table below shows the number of offences over the last three years:

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government how much they have paid for private companies to look after children in unregistered care homes in each of the last three years for which such information is available.

Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

All homes which wholly or mainly look after children must be registered with Ofsted, to ensure effective oversight and inspection of homes where children in care live. Those which provide healthcare may also need to be registered with CQC.

The use of unregistered provision reflects shortages of suitable registered provision in some areas, particularly for children with complex needs. The government has made available £53 million in match-grant funding for local authorities to create up to 200 new placements for children with complex needs by 2029, helping to address sufficiency gaps.

Ofsted have published criteria to prioritise applications to register homes that: address local need; receive departmental capital funding; or provide highly specialist care for children with complex needs and disabilities.

To improve transparency, the 2026 annual data return submitted by local authorities (SSDA903) will include a category for unregistered placements to help build a national dataset of this provision.

Regional Care Cooperatives will help reduce reliance on unregistered provision by improving regional sufficiency planning, commissioning and market oversight, enabling more children to access the right registered homes in the right place.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to allowing Ofsted to recognise Care Quality Commission-registered children’s care placements.

Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

All homes which wholly or mainly look after children must be registered with Ofsted, to ensure effective oversight and inspection of homes where children in care live. Those which provide healthcare may also need to be registered with CQC.

The use of unregistered provision reflects shortages of suitable registered provision in some areas, particularly for children with complex needs. The government has made available £53 million in match-grant funding for local authorities to create up to 200 new placements for children with complex needs by 2029, helping to address sufficiency gaps.

Ofsted have published criteria to prioritise applications to register homes that: address local need; receive departmental capital funding; or provide highly specialist care for children with complex needs and disabilities.

To improve transparency, the 2026 annual data return submitted by local authorities (SSDA903) will include a category for unregistered placements to help build a national dataset of this provision.

Regional Care Cooperatives will help reduce reliance on unregistered provision by improving regional sufficiency planning, commissioning and market oversight, enabling more children to access the right registered homes in the right place.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what role they envisage for regional care co-operatives in reducing the use of unregistered homes in children’s care provision.

Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

All homes which wholly or mainly look after children must be registered with Ofsted, to ensure effective oversight and inspection of homes where children in care live. Those which provide healthcare may also need to be registered with CQC.

The use of unregistered provision reflects shortages of suitable registered provision in some areas, particularly for children with complex needs. The government has made available £53 million in match-grant funding for local authorities to create up to 200 new placements for children with complex needs by 2029, helping to address sufficiency gaps.

Ofsted have published criteria to prioritise applications to register homes that: address local need; receive departmental capital funding; or provide highly specialist care for children with complex needs and disabilities.

To improve transparency, the 2026 annual data return submitted by local authorities (SSDA903) will include a category for unregistered placements to help build a national dataset of this provision.

Regional Care Cooperatives will help reduce reliance on unregistered provision by improving regional sufficiency planning, commissioning and market oversight, enabling more children to access the right registered homes in the right place.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what support they plan to provide to local authorities to increase the number of specialist placements in children's care homes which they operate.

Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

All homes which wholly or mainly look after children must be registered with Ofsted, to ensure effective oversight and inspection of homes where children in care live. Those which provide healthcare may also need to be registered with CQC.

The use of unregistered provision reflects shortages of suitable registered provision in some areas, particularly for children with complex needs. The government has made available £53 million in match-grant funding for local authorities to create up to 200 new placements for children with complex needs by 2029, helping to address sufficiency gaps.

Ofsted have published criteria to prioritise applications to register homes that: address local need; receive departmental capital funding; or provide highly specialist care for children with complex needs and disabilities.

To improve transparency, the 2026 annual data return submitted by local authorities (SSDA903) will include a category for unregistered placements to help build a national dataset of this provision.

Regional Care Cooperatives will help reduce reliance on unregistered provision by improving regional sufficiency planning, commissioning and market oversight, enabling more children to access the right registered homes in the right place.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to increase (1) transparency, and (2) knowledge of the use of, unregistered children’s homes in England.

Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

All homes which wholly or mainly look after children must be registered with Ofsted, to ensure effective oversight and inspection of homes where children in care live. Those which provide healthcare may also need to be registered with CQC.

The use of unregistered provision reflects shortages of suitable registered provision in some areas, particularly for children with complex needs. The government has made available £53 million in match-grant funding for local authorities to create up to 200 new placements for children with complex needs by 2029, helping to address sufficiency gaps.

Ofsted have published criteria to prioritise applications to register homes that: address local need; receive departmental capital funding; or provide highly specialist care for children with complex needs and disabilities.

To improve transparency, the 2026 annual data return submitted by local authorities (SSDA903) will include a category for unregistered placements to help build a national dataset of this provision.

Regional Care Cooperatives will help reduce reliance on unregistered provision by improving regional sufficiency planning, commissioning and market oversight, enabling more children to access the right registered homes in the right place.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how much humanitarian aid they have provided to support the needs of the residents of Gaza in each of the last 3 years.

Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington

The UK provided £97.6 million in funding in financial year 2023/24, £127.4 million in FY 2024/25, and £81 million of humanitarian and early recovery funding for Gaza in 2025/26 as part of our overall £116 million programme for Palestine. This funding has supported a range of services, including the provision of more than one million patient consultations across Gaza, sustained food assistance for over 1.4 million people, and improved water, sanitation and hygiene services for more than 620,000 people.