Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment she has made of the impact of grant-funded voluntary organisations on reducing unresolved tax disputes.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The VCS Grant Funding programme complements the Extra Support services HMRC provides and extends the Department’s reach. Grant Funding enables organisations to deliver trusted support to vulnerable and extra support customers with complex or unresolved tax issues. This helps those customers engage with HMRC and understand their obligations. The VCS support contributes to positive outcomes, building confidence, helping resolution and bringing tax affairs up to date. In 2025/26 the Scheme supported 43,000 individual customers.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, when his Department plans to respond to the consultation on climate-related transition plan requirements, which closed in September 2025.
Answered by Katie White - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
This Government has consulted on our manifesto commitment to introduce transition plan requirements for UK regulated financial institutions and large companies, and the department will publish our response to this consultation shortly.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps her Department is taking to ensure the UK is in a place to advance the green finance agenda ahead of its forthcoming G20 presidency.
Answered by Rachel Blake - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
The UK is already one of the world’s leading sustainable finance centres, and our focus is how to evolve and expand. The Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy set out how the government will strengthen the UK to support the domestic and global transition and drive growth across the financial services sector.
We are delivering a number of targeted initiatives, prioritising changes that will make the greatest impact – for example, making the UK Sustainability Reporting Standards available and bringing ESG ratings into the regulatory perimeter. This will boost investor protection and UK competitiveness and allow the UK’s world-leading sustainable finance sector to adapt and continue to develop the innovative products which have propelled the UK’s sustainable finance leadership.
In addition, we are focused on making the UK a global hub for transition finance. This is not only essential for meeting global net-zero goals, but also represents a major opportunity for UK economic growth and investment.
We are still in the early stages of planning for our G20 Presidency. No decisions have been made on structure or topics but we expect a strong focus on growth and resilience, including the G20’s role in addressing vulnerabilities and managing global shocks.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to support community-led approaches to crime prevention in the Buckingham and Bletchley constituency.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
We have put prevention front and centre of our plans to improve the lives of people across the UK. Nowhere is this more important than in delivery of our mission to make our streets safer, including by halving knife crime and violence against women and children in a decade and tackling anti-social behaviour. Community-led approaches are vital to this work, and we’re committed to developing a whole-system approach which delivers with and for communities.
The Home Office has allocated just under £2 million for Thames Valley Violence Prevention Partnership (VPP) in 2026/27. The VPP brings together local partners, including police, schools, health partners, councils and community groups to understand the drivers of violence locally and take action to prevent it. They are investing in a range of programmes, including Op Deter, a partnership with Youth Justice teams in Buckinghamshire to engage with young people at a teachable moment and provide them with targeted support in custody to divert them from further criminality.
We are taking a whole of society approach to halving knife crime. The ‘Coalition to Tackle Knife Crime,’ set up by the Prime Minister, brings together families with personal experience, community leaders, front-line practitioners, ‘what works’ centres and academics. Regular collaboration with this group is ensuring national policy is grounded in real-world insights and made stronger and more practical as a result. The Coalition’s insights have already shaped the Home Office’s response to child criminal exploitation and contributed significantly to the delivery and success of knife surrender schemes.
Through the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee, we are restoring neighbourhood policing. We are putting 13,000 additional policing personnel in neighbourhood roles, who will be embedded in local communities. Every neighbourhood in England and Wales already has named, contactable officers dedicated to tackling and preventing crime and ASB locally. As at 28 February 2026 Thames Valley Police have grown by 85 FTE neighbourhood officers since 31 March 2025.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has been made of co-designing social care to meet community needs in Buckingham and Bletchley constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Local authorities should pursue the principle that market shaping and commissioning should be shared endeavours, with commissioners working alongside people with care and support needs, carers, family members, care providers, representatives of care workers, relevant voluntary, user, and other support organisations, and the public to find shared and agreed solutions.
To support this aim, the Department funds Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) as part of its national improvement and support offer to the sector. TLAP’s Making it Real framework and principles ought to be used to facilitate people who draw on care and support in shaping services. TLAP also helps with practical models of self-directed support and advice on the personalisation of services to the areas that request it.
As local authorities are responsible for commissioning social care, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes City Councils will be able to provide a response relating to the specifics of how co-designing social care to meet community needs has been carried out.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what initiatives she is taking to help get survivors of modern slavery into employment.
Answered by Natalie Fleet - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
In England and Wales, the Modern Slavery Victim Care Contract (MSVCC) provides adult victims of modern slavery who are identified through the National Referral Mechanism with a tailored package of support based on their individual needs. This includes a dedicated support worker to help victims access services that support their recovery.
If a victim has the right to work in the UK their MSVCC support worker can support them to engage with their nearest Jobcentre Plus, which can help them prepare for, find and stay in work. This may include access to a Work Coach who can offer tailored access to employment support.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to reduce the levels of abuse towards retail workers in Buckingham and Bletchley constituency.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Driving down retail crime is top priority for this Government.
We are supporting police forces, including in Buckingham and Bletchley, by strengthening neighbourhood policing so officers can focus on local priorities such as shoplifting. The Government recognises the importance of visible neighbourhood policing in deterring crime.
We will deliver 13,000 additional neighbourhood policing personnel across England and Wales by the end of this Parliament. By February 2026 we had delivered more than 3,100 additional police officers and PCSOs into neighbourhood roles. The first-year growth target was first exceeded in January 2026, two months ahead of schedule.
We are also giving the police the powers they need and have strengthened the law through the Crime and Policing Act, introducing a new offence of assaulting a retail worker and removing the £200 threshold for shop theft.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to support energy security through international co-operation following the 2026 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund.
Answered by Chris Elmore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The International Financial Institutions (IFIs) are the primary financing mechanism to respond to the impacts of the Middle East crisis on developing countries, including for energy security. They have an unparalleled ability to deliver emergency finance at scale to help deal with the immediate impacts in a crisis, as well as longer term policy reforms and investments that build resilience for the future.
Thanks in part to UK pressure, the IFI crisis toolkit is stronger than ever. The World Bank has made $20-25 billion of additional financing available and the International Monetary Fund has roughly $300 billion in total financing capacity to response to balance of payments crises. At the Spring meetings in Washington, the Minister of State for International Development pushed for a forward leaning, coordinated IFI response. The UK continued this work at the Global Partnerships Conference in London on 19-20 May.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what steps his Department is taking to ensure the clean energy sector procures UK manufactured steel.
Answered by Chris McDonald - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Our Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan gives investors the certainty and stability they need to invest in and expand UK supply chains.
We are committed to supporting and growing clean energy supply chains, creating good jobs across the UK. This includes ensuring there are opportunities for domestic products, including UK steel, to be used in our UK deployment projects; as well as leveraging our strong deployment trajectories to unlock even more investment into UK supply chains.
We have recently set out our approach to supporting the UK steel industry in the Steel Strategy and have announced revisions to tariffs and quotas to protect UK producers. Additionally, the National Wealth Fund has at least £5.8 billion for investing in some clean energy sectors, and green steel.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to help prison staff combat substance misuse by inmates in the prison estate.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
We recognise that levels of illicit drug use in prisons remain too high, and we are committed to creating safe, stable environments where staff are equipped with the tools and support they need to promote recovery and drug-free living. We have invested over £40 million in physical security across 34 prisons, including £10 million on drone countermeasures, to help prevent drugs entering prisons in the first place.
We work closely with our health partners to ensure that prisoners with a drug and alcohol dependency are identified at the earliest opportunity. This helps create the conditions in which their addictions can be effectively addressed, and aims to ensure access to consistent, high-quality treatment and care across the estate. Our Incentivised Substance Free Living units, now funded in 88 prisons, provide structured pathways to recovery using incentives and regular drug testing. We are also increasing access to mutual aid groups across the estate, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics anonymous, and have taken steps to review our drug testing regime as a whole to ensure it supports the best outcomes.
We are committed to ensuring that our staff in specialist roles have the skills they need, including our 54 Drug Strategy Leads in key prisons, who work to implement local drug strategies effectively. At prison group level, we have recruited 17 Drug and Alcohol Leads to support joint working with health commissioners across wider geographies. Alongside this, naloxone, a drug used for suspected opioid overdose, is now available in every prison, with over 10,000 prison staff trained in the emergency use of nasal naloxone. Naloxone training is also embedded into foundation training for all new prison officers, strengthening frontline capability to prevent harm.