Asked by: Anna Gelderd (Labour - South East Cornwall)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how local authorities and police forces share information on children aged between 16 and 18 while respecting confidentiality.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Section 115 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 confers a power for the disclosure of information between the police and relevant local authority for the purpose of preventing offending and community safety.
Every area should have a local Data Sharing Agreement in place, and the Youth Justice police officer should act as the two-way conduit of intelligence sharing between the Youth Offending Team and the local police. Information sharing is done in the same way for all children (aged between 10-17 years old) regardless of age.
Asked by: Anna Gelderd (Labour - South East Cornwall)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing performance standards for material recovery facilities to ensure purity of all material bales.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Simpler Recycling requires the following recyclable waste streams from all households and workplaces in England: glass, metal, plastic, paper and card, food waste (and garden waste from households only). These measures will increase the quantity of dry recyclable material collected for sorting at MRFs and will apply from 31st March 2025 from workplaces, 31 March 2026 from households and 31st March 2027 from micro-firms (with less than 10 FTEs).
There are existing requirements on material recovery facilities (MRFs) to report the reject rates at each facility in Waste Data Flow question 100 and to undertake composition sampling on material received and report this to the Environment Agency via the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2023.
Defra is working with WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme) and waste industry representatives to support Material Recovery Facility (MRF) readiness for the Simpler Recycling requirements.
We have engaged with MRF operators and local authorities through WRAP’s MRF Forum to identify challenges with MRF capacity, investment, upgrade timelines, and to work with the sector to identify interventions to support MRFs as they prepare for Simpler Recycling. WRAP is developing interventions to support Local Authorities with setting up new MRF contracts, determine the potential future composition of dry mixed recyclable waste streams and the associated financial implications.
I have instructed my officials to develop further policy options to drive long-term improvement to Local Authority performance, including on potential approaches to improving quality which will support the UK reprocessing sector.
Asked by: Anna Gelderd (Labour - South East Cornwall)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to allocate (a) new and (b) ring-fenced funding to support the implementation of the Final Delivery Plan for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, published in July 2025.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise the negative impact that myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) has on patients and their loved ones, and also the cost to health and care services and the wider economy through, for example, loss of work and an increased benefits bill. We, therefore, recently published the ME/CFS final delivery plan, which focuses on boosting research, improving attitudes and education, and bettering the lives of people with this debilitating disease.
There are currently no plans to allocate new or ring-fenced funding specifically to support the implementation of the ME/CFS final delivery plan. However, we continue to commission research on ME/CFS services across the United Kingdom, focussing on the most severely affected. The plan includes increased funding for research, awarded through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, into how existing medicines can be used for post-viral conditions, including ME/CFS. Additionally, there are always opportunities for researchers to bid for and secure research funding for ME/CFS through our open research funding calls.