Jack Rankin

DCMS is currently overseeing a number of projects reviewing the UK Youth Parliament and its funding. Further details on their conclusions will be published in due course.

The Government highly values the charity sector, and its positive contribution across society.

Due to the difficult economic inheritance from the previous government, we have had to take a number of difficult decisions on tax, welfare and spending to fix the public finances, fund public services, and restore economic stability.

The Government has considered the implication of this policy change on the charity sector, and the impacts have been published in the usual way by HMRC as part of the Autumn Budget process.

A Tax Information and Impact Note (TIIN), which gives a clear explanation of the policy objective and an assessment of the impacts, was published alongside the National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill on 13 November 2024. This Note includes the impacts of the policy on the Exchequer; the economic impacts of the policy; and the impacts on individuals, businesses, civil society organisations and equality impacts.

The Secretary of State has a quasi-judicial role when considering foreign state ownership, influence and control in newspapers and news magazines, and as such we cannot comment further.

The Consultation on The Enterprise Act 2002 (Mergers Involving Newspaper Enterprises and Foreign Powers) Regulations 2024 closed on 9 July 2024. Ministers recognise the high importance of this issue and are considering the responses carefully. Ministers take into account a wide range of issues and evidence when making a decision, and will publish the response in due course.

The Consultation on The Enterprise Act 2002 (Mergers Involving Newspaper Enterprises and Foreign Powers) Regulations 2024 closed on 9 July 2024. Ministers recognise the high importance of this issue and are considering the responses carefully. Ministers take into account a wide range of issues and evidence when making a decision, and will publish the response in due course.

The department is not able to identify which non-UK domiciled students who hold British nationality are paying international fees.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) is responsible for collecting and publishing data on the UK higher education sector. These data are shared with the department and includes a wide range of information on students coming from overseas to study in UK higher education providers (HEPs), including their legal nationality. Information on the type of fees a student pays, however, is not collected across all UK HEPs.

The department is not able to identify students who are paying international fees who are (a) British nationals and (b) non-domiciled in the UK.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) is responsible for collecting and publishing data on the UK higher education sector. These data are shared with the department and include a wide range of information on students coming from overseas to study in UK higher education providers (HEPs). Information on the type of fees a student pays, however, is not collected across all UK HEPs.

The legal nationality of the student is collected across all HEPs that submit data to HESA. The department estimates that of the 288,465 full-time, undergraduate, international students (those with permanent address outside the UK) enrolled in UK HEPs in the 2022/23 academic year, 12,805 declared that they held British nationality. Of the remaining full-time, undergraduate, international students, 271,505 declared that they held an overseas nationality and 4,155 have an unknown nationality.

All school staff should feel safe and supported at work, and confident in being able to report concerns. We expect school leaders, as employers, to take appropriate action to tackle any issues that are raised.

All school employers, including trusts, have a duty to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees. The primary duty to take reasonable care for the health and safety of all employees, including school leaders, rests with the employer. The employer is therefore responsible for doing what is reasonably practicable to ensure that employees are adequately supported in relation to wellbeing and should take appropriate action where they are aware of any matters that impact their employee’s welfare. It is the responsibility of individual trusts to have robust staffing policies in place to ensure this is the case.

This includes having complaints guidance and whistleblowing policies and procedures in place. Guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/setting-up-an-academies-complaints-procedure/best-practice-guidance-for-academies-complaints-procedures and here: https://www.gov.uk/whistleblowing.

My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, is the prescribed person for matters relating to education for whistleblowers who do not want to raise matters directly with their employer. Concerns can be raised with the department using the Customer Help Portal available here: https://customerhelpportal.education.gov.uk.

More widely, as Principal Regulator for academies, the Secretary of State is clear that accountability is non-negotiable. The department holds academies to high standards, setting and enforcing all non-financial standards, and facilitating, supporting and overseeing intervention in multi-academy trusts when it is needed.

Academy trusts are also bound by their funding agreements to conduct their academies within the terms and requirements of their Articles of Association, the Academies Trust Handbook and any legislation or legal requirement that applies to academies. Where concerns about an academy are identified or raised, the department works closely with trusts to ensure statutory requirements are being met.

The department does not collect data from schools which specifically distinguishes spending on non-special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) related facilities or non-SEND pupils.

Local authorities retain the legal duty to ensure appropriate support is provided for children with SEND. Local authorities can allocate high needs top-up funding to schools in respect of a particular pupil with more complex SEND, normally to secure the provision set out in an education, health and care plan, and they determine how much extra funding to allocate.

The table below outlines the Child Maintenance Service budget for each year since 2021, sourced from the CMS Management Accounts.

The budget for 2025/2026 has not yet been finalised and therefore is not included.

Note: the budget information does not represent actual spend.

The cost of running the Child Maintenance Service is not separated between supervision and processing of (a) Direct Pay arrangements and (b) Collect and Pay arrangements, therefore, the information requested is not held.

Where parents fail to take responsibility for paying for their children, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) will not hesitate to use the range of enforcement powers available, and a liability order facilitates this.

A liability order allows the CMS to formally have the debt a paying parent owes legally recognised in a court of law. It can choose which enforcement method to proceed with depending on the circumstances of the case, and the welfare of any qualifying children involved.

Following the Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023 receiving royal assent in July 2023, secondary legislation is required to bring into force existing powers that allow the CMS to make an administrative liability order (ALO) against a person who has failed to pay child maintenance and is in arrears.

The ALO will replace the current requirement for the CMS to apply to the court for a liability order enabling CMS to take faster action against those paying parents who actively avoid their responsibilities and will get money to children more quickly.

Liability orders have not yet been replaced by ALOs, so we are only able to provide data for liability orders. Published data can be found on the national tables page 6.1. Please find a summary of the data below.

Data on the reasons a court rejected a liability order is not held centrally and to compile it would not be an effective use of operational resources.

The CMS applied for approximately;

• 17,800 liability orders between October 2023 and September 2024,
• 15,100 liability orders between October 2022 and September 2023, and
• 11,300 liability orders between October 2021 and September 2022.

Approximate number of liability orders withdrawn or dismissed (rejected);

• 1,200 liability orders between October 2023 and September 2024,
• 900 liability orders between October 2022 and September 2023, and
• 900 liability orders between October 2021 and September 2022.

(Please note that the figures exclude Scotland).

It is worth noting that an important reason for liability orders being withdrawn is that they are settled prior to going to court.

The number of staff who work for the Child Maintenance Service by each civil service pay bracket has been provided in the tables 1 and 2 below.

Table 1: The Child Maintenance Service, Great Britain (CMS GB) have a total of 3,831 staff in post.

Data to December 2024

Table 2: The Department for Communities, Northern Ireland (DFC NI) administers casework for Paying Parents living in Northern Ireland under Northern Ireland legislation for the 2012 scheme and have their own funding process, pay structure and grading system. DFC NI also provide services to CMS GB under a Memorandum of Understanding. There are a total of 987 staff in post providing these services who are either civil servants employed by the DFC NI or agency staff employed by The Recruitment Co.

Data to December 2024

A consultation on proposed reforms to the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) was published by the previous Government on 8 May 2024. This included removing Direct Pay and managing all CMS cases in one service to allow the CMS to tackle non-compliance faster, and exploring how victims and survivors of domestic abuse can be better supported. This follows the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act receiving royal assent in July 2023.

The consultation was extended by this Government at the end of July and ran until 30 September 2024. We are currently analysing the responses we have received, and the Government will publish a response in due course.

At the end of September 2024, the CMS was managing 749,000 arrangements of which approximately 60% of arrangements used Direct Pay and 40% Collect and Pay.

The Government has published a thorough impact assessment of the measures included in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, including the prohibition on the advertising of vaping products and nicotine products.

Public health messaging and campaigns will continue to support the promotion of vapes as a quit aid for smokers, as outlined on the Better Health and National Health Service websites. Additionally, through our national Swap to Stop scheme, we’re helping adult smokers to quit by providing up to one million vapes to local authorities.

The Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 prohibits the advertisement and sponsorship of tobacco products, and that prohibition applies to tobacco products intended to be smoked, sniffed, sucked, or chewed. The Department’s view is that heated tobacco is captured by this definition.

Due to the nicotine content and unknown long-term harms, vapes and nicotine products carry risks of harm and addiction, and this is particularly acute for adolescents whose brains are still developing.

The 10-year Adolescent Health Study (AHS) will follow a cohort of 100,000 eight to 18 year olds from across the United Kingdom and will provide further insights about the health consequences of vaping for young people. This will provide healthcare professionals and policymakers with the robust evidence they need to shape future policy. We will continue to engage with the AHS team during the study’s development.

Alongside this, we will continue to clamp down on illicit vapes and those which are not compliant with UK regulations. We have also committed to invest £10 million of new funding in 2025/26, to support Trading Standards to tackle underage and illicit tobacco and vape sales.

Through the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, we are also introducing powers to introduce a retail licensing scheme and create a more robust product registration scheme. A new registration scheme, along with stricter rules on testing and product requirements, will support a safe and legal market for tobacco and vape products, and will allow us to quickly identify illicit products which should not be on shelves.

No assessment has been made of the potential impact of changes in the levels of grants of Indefinite Leave to Remain on National Health Service capacity or waiting times, and there are no current plans to undertake such an assessment.

Internationally educated staff remain an important part of the workforce, and our Code of Practice for International Recruitment ensures stringent ethical standards when recruiting health and social care staff from overseas. The Government remains committed to growing homegrown talent and giving opportunities to more people across the country to join the NHS.

In summer 2025, we will publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, and treat patients on time again.

No assessment has been made of the potential impact of changes in the levels of grants of Indefinite Leave to Remain on National Health Service capacity or waiting times, and there are no current plans to undertake such an assessment.

Internationally educated staff remain an important part of the workforce, and our Code of Practice for International Recruitment ensures stringent ethical standards when recruiting health and social care staff from overseas. The Government remains committed to growing homegrown talent and giving opportunities to more people across the country to join the NHS.

In summer 2025, we will publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, and treat patients on time again.

Internationally educated staff remain an important part of the workforce, and our Code of Practice for International Recruitment ensures stringent ethical standards when recruiting health and social care staff from overseas. Health and Care Worker visa holders may be eligible to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain after five years on the visa. No estimate has been made of the potential impact on public services of grants of Indefinite Leave to Remain to people with Health and Care Worker visas.

The Government remains committed to growing homegrown talent and giving opportunities to more people across the country to join the National Health Service. In summer 2025, we will publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade and treat patients on time again.