Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether the Artificial Intelligence Security Institute completed a risk assessment of xAI’s Grok code before it was released to the public.

Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

The AI Security Institute regularly test models across leading labs. While we do not provide a running commentary on which models we test due to commercial and security reasons, it actively works with labs to improve safeguards when vulnerabilities have been identified.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether the Artificial Intelligence Security Institute assessed xAI’s Grok for harms prior to launch.

Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

The AI Security Institute regularly test models across leading labs. While we do not provide a running commentary on which models we test due to commercial and security reasons, it actively works with labs to improve safeguards when vulnerabilities have been identified.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to make water social tariff (a) eligibility, (b) discount levels and (c) application processes (i) transparent and (ii) subject to government oversight.

Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Defra expects water companies to ensure that their customers know what support schemes are available and how to access them if they need help. Companies offer a range of support schemes for customers struggling to afford their bills, including social tariffs, WaterSure, debt support schemes, financial hardship funds, flexible payment plans and payment breaks. Defra is working with water companies to ensure social tariffs are more consistent and taken up by those most in need.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment her Department has made of trends in the level of support for water social tariff across different regions; and what steps she is taking to ensure households in similar financial circumstances are treated equally.

Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Evidence shows that levels of social tariff provision vary between regions because each water company sets its own eligibility criteria and level of support. The Government keeps support schemes under review and expects industry to do the same to ensure vulnerable customers across the country are supported, and customers know what support schemes are available and how to access them if they need help.

Water companies have more than doubled the number of customers that will receive help with their bills through social tariffs – from 4% to 9%.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to ensure parliamentary oversight of the proposed changes to NICE regulations.

Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The proposed amendments to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence regulations were subject to a public consultation, which ran from 9 December 2025 to 13 January 2026. The Department is currently analysing consultation responses and will shortly finalise a statutory instrument (SI) to bring forward secondary legislation to amend the regulations.

The SI will be laid before Parliament and will be subject to the negative parliamentary procedure. The policy merits of the SI will be scrutinised by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, in line with its terms of reference at the following link:

https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/255/secondary-legislation-scrutiny-committee/content/120278/slsc-terms-of-reference/

As is conventional, the SI will be laid before Parliament at least 21 days before coming into force to ensure Parliament has adequate time to consider it.

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