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 Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of Endometriosis UK's report The state of endometriosis care in the UK, published in March, and of the average diagnosis time for endometriosis.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government acknowledges the challenges faced by women with endometriosis and the impact it has on their lives, their relationships, and their participation in education and the workforce. We are committed to improving the diagnosis, treatment, and care for those with endometriosis.

We welcome the report published by Endometriosis UK The State of Endometriosis Care in the UK earlier this year which published concerning findings about endometriosis diagnosis times. It is unacceptable that women can wait so long for an endometriosis diagnosis, and we are taking action to address this.

Endometriosis is identified as a priority condition in the Renewed Women’s Health Strategy, where women experience unacceptably long delays to diagnosis, pain being dismissed, and fragmented care. The strategy announces a new programme to improve education for girls about their menstrual health, investing an additional £1 million to support targeted work in schools and community settings to support girls’ knowledge about menstrual health and when to seek healthcare. This is an important factor in delays in diagnosis and treatment for endometriosis.

Clinical pathways for heavy periods and pelvic pain, which can be a sign of endometriosis, will be redesigned to reduce repeat appointments, unnecessary referrals, and long waits.

This will create roadmaps for health systems to use and adapt for local needs that will enable women to move more quickly through the system and reach the level of care they need with fewer appointments. These redesigned pathways will also help systems to transform services, plan their workforce, and consider where capacity is most usefully deployed so that hospitals can provide the specialist care they are designed to, and move more care where appropriate into the community.

Women with endometriosis will benefit from single points of access for gynaecology referrals and a shift away from hospital only care towards neighbourhood and community settings.

We are also establishing an “online hospital”, NHS Online, which will give people across the country, on certain pathways, the choice of getting the specialist care they need from their home. It will connect patients with clinicians across the country through secure, online appointments accessed through the NHS App.

Menstrual problems which may be a sign of endometriosis will be among the first nine conditions available for referral to NHS Online from 2027. This will allow women with menstrual problems which may be a sign of endometriosis across the country to reach a diagnosis and explore treatment options sooner.