Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the increase to Employer's National Insurance Contributions on rape crisis centres.

Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

This Government inherited a criminal justice system under immense pressure, and a black hole in the nation’s finances.  We have made difficult decisions to ensure we can deliver the justice victims deserve.

This Government has protected the smallest businesses and charities by increasing the Employment Allowance to £10,500, meaning that 43% of employers will pay no National Insurance Contributions at all.

I have protected dedicated VAWG victims spending in the department this year to ensure help is available to survivors of these awful crimes. This includes our ringfenced domestic abuse and sexual violence funding to all 42 Police and Crime Commissioners and our Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Fund, which reaches over 60 specialist rape victim support organisations. Grant recipients are best placed to understand their local communities and shape support to meet the need of victims in their area.

To stay abreast of demand volumes and service user needs, we regularly monitor these grants, using management information to inform policy development and commissioning.

Now that the department has its Spending Review settlement, we are in the process of allocating this budget to individual priorities, including victims funding. This will require difficult and carefully considered decisions to balance priorities within the Ministry of Justice.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to help ensure that rape support charities receive adequate funding.

Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

This Government inherited a criminal justice system under immense pressure, and a black hole in the nation’s finances.  We have made difficult decisions to ensure we can deliver the justice victims deserve.

This Government has protected the smallest businesses and charities by increasing the Employment Allowance to £10,500, meaning that 43% of employers will pay no National Insurance Contributions at all.

I have protected dedicated VAWG victims spending in the department this year to ensure help is available to survivors of these awful crimes. This includes our ringfenced domestic abuse and sexual violence funding to all 42 Police and Crime Commissioners and our Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Fund, which reaches over 60 specialist rape victim support organisations. Grant recipients are best placed to understand their local communities and shape support to meet the need of victims in their area.

To stay abreast of demand volumes and service user needs, we regularly monitor these grants, using management information to inform policy development and commissioning.

Now that the department has its Spending Review settlement, we are in the process of allocating this budget to individual priorities, including victims funding. This will require difficult and carefully considered decisions to balance priorities within the Ministry of Justice.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding for rape crisis centres.

Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

This Government inherited a criminal justice system under immense pressure, and a black hole in the nation’s finances.  We have made difficult decisions to ensure we can deliver the justice victims deserve.

This Government has protected the smallest businesses and charities by increasing the Employment Allowance to £10,500, meaning that 43% of employers will pay no National Insurance Contributions at all.

I have protected dedicated VAWG victims spending in the department this year to ensure help is available to survivors of these awful crimes. This includes our ringfenced domestic abuse and sexual violence funding to all 42 Police and Crime Commissioners and our Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Fund, which reaches over 60 specialist rape victim support organisations. Grant recipients are best placed to understand their local communities and shape support to meet the need of victims in their area.

To stay abreast of demand volumes and service user needs, we regularly monitor these grants, using management information to inform policy development and commissioning.

Now that the department has its Spending Review settlement, we are in the process of allocating this budget to individual priorities, including victims funding. This will require difficult and carefully considered decisions to balance priorities within the Ministry of Justice.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what plans he has to review the funding model for rape crisis centres.

Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

This Government inherited a criminal justice system under immense pressure, and a black hole in the nation’s finances.  We have made difficult decisions to ensure we can deliver the justice victims deserve.

This Government has protected the smallest businesses and charities by increasing the Employment Allowance to £10,500, meaning that 43% of employers will pay no National Insurance Contributions at all.

I have protected dedicated VAWG victims spending in the department this year to ensure help is available to survivors of these awful crimes. This includes our ringfenced domestic abuse and sexual violence funding to all 42 Police and Crime Commissioners and our Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Fund, which reaches over 60 specialist rape victim support organisations. Grant recipients are best placed to understand their local communities and shape support to meet the need of victims in their area.

To stay abreast of demand volumes and service user needs, we regularly monitor these grants, using management information to inform policy development and commissioning.

Now that the department has its Spending Review settlement, we are in the process of allocating this budget to individual priorities, including victims funding. This will require difficult and carefully considered decisions to balance priorities within the Ministry of Justice.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure provisions in the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill maintain data protection requirements.

Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)

The department recognises its responsibility to ensure the highest standards of data privacy and transparency in respect of personal data, and we are ensuring that this is prioritised as the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill progresses.

We are ensuring that measures outlined in the Bill align with data protection principles, as set out in the Data Protection Act 2018, UK General Data Protection Regulations (UK GDPR) and the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.

The department has met its obligation under Article 36(4) of UK GDPR to consult with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on all measures involving the use of personal data. We continue to engage with the ICO for measures relating to the single unique identifier and the children not in school.

The department is engaging with the ICO to ensure that data protection risks identified are properly mitigated and will publish summaries of the assessments once they are complete.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what consultation her Department undertook with parents of home educated children on the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill includes a proposal for compulsory Children Not in School registers and an accompanying duty on parents to give information for these registers. The department consulted on this proposal as part of its ‘Children Not in School’ consultation, which ran between April and June 2019. The consultation received almost 5,000 responses, 74% of which were from parents and young people.

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if she will take steps to ensure that HMRC does not impose (a) penalties and (b) interest on (i) people and (ii) businesses who make inadvertent errors on their tax returns.

Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)

If a penalty for an inaccuracy is charged by HMRC, a person can also appeal against our decision to impose a penalty.

Interest is only applied to any outstanding liability. If a corrected error shows no outstanding amount, no interest will be charged.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 7 July 2025 to Question 64393 on Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme: Coronavirus, what steps he is taking to improve the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme.

Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

I would like to reiterate my profound and sincere sympathies to all those individuals who have experienced harm following vaccination, and to their families.

The Department has been working with the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), the administrators of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS), to take steps to improve the scheme and process claims at a faster rate. Building on work to scale up and modernise operations through the digitisation of the claims process and increasing administrative staff working on the VDPS, the NHSBSA is engaging with healthcare providers to improve the return rate of medical records, essential to assessing claims, including through submitting subject access requests.

In parallel, Ministers continue to actively consider a range of options for further reforming the VDPS.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has issued guidance to police forces on the use of stop and search for weapons at hotels housing asylum seekers.

Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)

Code A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) governs the use of stop and search powers. Guidance on the use of stop and search is also issued to forces by the College of Policing in its Authorised Professional Practice.

The Home Office has issued no guidance to police forces specifically relating to the use of stop and search at hotels asylum seekers. Decisions on the deployment of stop and search powers are for chief constables and their officers, who have the appropriate operational expertise.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department made of the adequacy of the use of single unique identifiers for schools, in the context of the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)

Provision in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to introduce a single unique identifier (SUI) for children is based on extensive user research, including engagement with schools and education settings. Our 2023 report, ‘Improving multi-agency information sharing’, highlighted that while schools use identifiers such as the unique pupil number (UPN), these are not recognised across other agencies that process and share information relating to safeguarding and welfare, creating fragmentation and risk.

To address this, the department began pilot activity in April 2025 to test the feasibility of using the NHS number as a consistent identifier within health and children’s social care. Future piloting will test this across wider safeguarding partners, including education. The intention is not to replace identifiers that are currently used in education, but to design how the SUI can work alongside existing identifiers to improve information sharing and strengthen safeguarding.

Found: Letter from Torsten Bell MP to Christopher Chope MP, Emma Lewell MP, Esther McVey MP, Karl Turner MP,