Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to increase the UK’s soft power capabilities.

Answered by Hamish Falconer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)

Soft power is fundamental to the UK's impact and reputation around the world. It fosters friendships, builds relationships, promotes our values, and drives our own growth and prosperity. But we have not taken a sufficiently strategic approach to our huge soft power assets as a country. This is why we have set up a Soft Power Council to channel British expertise in these areas. Members of the Soft Power Council are establishing working groups to devise ways of deploying our soft power and broadening the reach of key moments in the global calendar. They will also help shape and drive a new Soft Power Strategy for the UK that will deliver on our foreign policy priorities.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what contingency plans are in place to ensure the continuity of food supply chains in the event of a natural disaster or armed conflict.

Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Defra assesses the potential impacts of natural disasters and conflicts along with other risks to the food supply chain, as outlined in the National Risk Register (NRR). Defra works with Cabinet Office, as leads for the NRR, and the wider resilience and Critical National Infrastructure community across the Government to ensure impacts to food supply are considered in risk assessments and contingency planning.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to improve collaboration between businesses and law enforcement agencies.

Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office works closely with businesses across a wide range of shared interests and priorities, from prevention of fraud and cybercrime to tackling the sale of dangerous knives. A particular focus of this cooperation over the past year has been shop theft.

Town centres play a key role in the success of local economies. However, some town centres have become a shadow of their former selves with anti-social behaviour (ASB) and crime being both a cause and effect of their decline. As set out in our Plan for Change, this Government is focusing on town centres, including how the police and businesses can work together to make them safer for our communities.

Our Retail Crime Forum ensures we bring together and regularly engage with retailers and policing, promoting collaboration between the retail sector, security providers and law enforcement.

Pegasus is a unique private-public partnership and an excellent example of business and policing working together. Through Pegasus, retailers have agreed to fund a specialist analysis team within Opal, the national police intelligence unit for serious organised acquisitive crime. We will provide £5 million over the next three years to continue to fund the team.

The National Business Crime Centre recently hosted a Safer Action Business Days (SaBA) national week of action. SaBA Days is a joint approach by police, business, private security, Business Crime Reduction Partnerships and Business Improvement Districts working in partnership to focus resources into designated location to create a significant impact to reduce crime.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the level of knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust among school-age students in England.

Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)

The Holocaust is the only historic event which is compulsory within the current national curriculum for history at key stage 3. The government has made a commitment that the Holocaust will remain a compulsory topic in the reformed national curriculum, which will also be required teaching in academy schools when it is implemented.

The government supports the teaching of Holocaust education in schools and colleges by funding teachers’ professional development in this subject through University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education and the Holocaust Educational Trust’s ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ project, which gives students aged 16 to 18 the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In addition, a further £2 million funding for Holocaust remembrance and education was committed at the Autumn Budget 2024. This will be used to support the ambition set by my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister for all students to have the opportunity to hear a recorded survivor testimony. The department is currently exploring how it can support schools to fulfil this ambition.

The Work and Pensions Committee is undertaking a short inquiry into the impact of the Government’s proposals to reform the disability and health related benefits system, as set out in the Pathways to Work Green Paper.