Jack Rankin

To support the running of the Youth Select Committee (YSC), £10k is provided to an external delivery partner. Staff from the House of Commons support the YSC in addition to their existing responsibilities so it is not possible to disaggregate staff time in this way. Facilities used for the YSC were on the parliamentary estate so no additional costs were incurred.

The Gambling Commission is required by its statutory functions to strike a balance between supporting the growth of regulated businesses and providing protection for consumers and society. The Commission’s statement of principles for licensing and regulation includes ensuring that unnecessary regulatory burdens are not placed on businesses, prioritising the least intrusive regulatory tools to achieve compliance and ensuring that any regulatory action is proportionate. It also states that the Commission will have regard to promoting economic growth, insofar as it thinks it is consistent with pursuit of the licensing objectives.

The government’s priority is to ensure funding is being directed where it is needed most to deliver on our objective to reduce gambling-related harms. The Gambling Act 2005 is clear that DCMS and HM Treasury have powers to approve levy spending. To guarantee sufficient accountability and transparency within the new system, we will ensure robust governance arrangements are in place for the levy, including a Levy Board for central government oversight. Governance arrangements will be designed to manage conflicts of interest, while recognising that a wide spectrum of views and insights will be needed to shape our objectives and monitor the outcomes of the levy system.

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 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.

There have been no changes to the rules for importing thoroughbred horses into Great Britain since 6 February 2025. Imports of thoroughbred horses from the European Union do not currently need to enter Great Britain via a Border Control Post and are not subject to physical checks at the border. Guidance on importing horses into Great Britain is available on gov.uk

Defra is aware that Stansted has signalled an intention to relocate its Border Inspection Post to another site and that the timing of this remains uncertain. This is a commercial decision for the airport’s owners. No application to de-designate the existing site or designate a new site has been received. The Department stands ready to help progress such applications when received.

This is a devolved matter, and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

The Government recognises the importance of the equine sector to the UK economy and to improving equine identification and traceability. We have no current plans to implement mandatory digital identification, but we remain in close touch with the industry to look at potential improvements.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is the national authority responsible for food safety and food hygiene across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The FSA ensures that official controls and legislation for meat safety and traceability are met by deploying staff in every slaughterhouse. The FSA also conducts risk-based, intelligence driven surveillance to monitor food safety and authenticity. It also has a National Food Crime Unit to prevent, detect and investigate food crime.

The Government recognises the importance of improving equine traceability. Defra is engaging with industry to consider improvements to this.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) main priority is upholding road safety standards while it works hard to reduce car practical driving test waiting times.

On the 18 December 2024, DVSA set out further plans to reduce driving test waiting times across the country. These steps include recruiting 450 driving examiners (DEs). Full details of these steps can be found on GOV.UK.

DVSA continues recruitment for DEs at driving test centres (DTCs) that serve customers in the Windsor constituency and is currently working through the recruitment process from recent campaigns.

As part of this, DVSA has had four candidates successfully pass training, with a further four potential new DEs booked-on training programmes. There are also another four potential new DEs currently undergoing checks as part of the recruitment process.

DVSA has also been running a recruitment campaign in March and has fourteen vacancies for the area as part of this.

The Department does not hold data on individual noise readings from Heathrow Airport.

We expect airports to help local communities understand their noise impacts through monitoring, provision of information and communication. Heathrow publishes a wide range of noise data on its website including real time data from its noise monitors and annual reports which detail its noise impacts.

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

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.

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 Office for Health Improvement and Disparities is not involved in the allocation of funds from the Horserace Betting Levy (HBL). The HBL is administered by the Horserace Betting Levy Board, an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

The 10-Year Health Plan will deliver the three big shifts our National Health Service needs to be fit for the future: from hospital to community; from analogue to digital; and from sickness to prevention. We expect the 10-Year Health Plan to be published in Spring 2025.

The NHS Health Check programme aims to prevent heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease among adults aged 40 to 74 years old, and engages over 1.4 million people a year. The programme assesses for high blood pressure, which is a strong risk factor for the development of chronic kidney disease. Where an individual’s NHS Health Check indicates high blood pressure, it is for a general practitioner to consider the results, and then, if required, undertake further clinical investigation and treatment where appropriate.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body responsible for developing authoritative, evidence-based best practice guidance for the National Health Service.

The NICE has been able to recommend two SGLT2 inhibitors, empagliflozin and dapagliflozin, for treating chronic kidney disease and for treating chronic heart failure with reduced, preserved, or mildly reduced ejection fraction, subject to specified clinical criteria. The NICE has also recommended several SGLT2 inhibitors as monotherapy, or in combination with other drugs, for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. The NHS in England is legally required to fund medicines recommended in a NICE appraisal, usually within three months of final guidance, so these treatments should now be available for healthcare professionals to prescribe to NHS patients in line with NICE’s recommendations.

In September 2024, the NICE added links to the relevant technology appraisal guidance on SGLT-2s, namely empagliflozin and dapagliflozin, to the guideline Chronic kidney disease: assessment and management. This is to provide easy access to the relevant appraisal guidance at the right point in the guideline, and to help users find the information more easily.

The NICE is updating its guideline Chronic heart failure in adults: diagnosis and management, to reflect changes in clinical practice and the introduction of new drug classes, such as SGLT2 inhibitors, since the guideline was first published, ensuring that the NICE’s guideline recommendations and treatment algorithms are up to date, so that all patients can receive equitable care. The updated guidance is expected to be published in August 2025. The NICE publishes a range of resources to support services in putting its recommendations into practice.

The NICE has also published a general practice indicator on chronic kidney disease and SGLT2 inhibitors. NICE indicators measure outcomes that reflect the quality of care or processes and can be used in a number of different settings to support high quality care, including in the uptake of NICE-recommended treatments, such as SGLT2 inhibitors.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) develops its guidelines independently based on a thorough assessment of the available evidence and through extensive engagement with stakeholders.

The NICE’s independent committee is currently updating its clinical guideline recommendations on the use of medicines for the management of type 2 diabetes in adults. The draft recommendations will be issued for public consultation at the earliest opportunity. It is not possible to say what those recommendations will be at this time.

Early diagnosis is crucial for people with long-term conditions like chronic kidney disease in accessing timely treatment, preventing deterioration, and improving survival rates. The NHS Health Check programme aims to detect and prevent conditions like heart disease, stroke, and kidney disease among adults aged between 40 and 74 years old, and engages over 1.4 million people a year.

The Department is already developing a digital version of the check to provide a more accessible and convenient service for people. The NHS Health Check Online service will be piloted in three local authorities from spring 2025 for six months, with the aim of being rolled out nationally from spring 2026, delivering approximately one million checks in the first four years.

The Elective Recovery Plan, published in January 2025, also set out measures to improve diagnostic capacity and access.

More tests and scans delivered in the community, better joint working between services, and greater use of apps and wearable technology will all support the early detection and faster treatment of chronic kidney disease.

The delivery of a potential international airport in Mirpur is an internal matter for Pakistani government authorities. Whilst the UK supports the aim of economic development in the region, it is not for the UK to influence decisions around specific infrastructure projects. This issue has not been raised by the Foreign Secretary with Pakistani counterparts.

Iran has long proliferated weapons across the Middle East, and continues to provide military, financial and political support to its proxies and partners - destabilising the region and jeopardising international security. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have made clear to their Iranian counterparts that Iran must restrain its proxies and partners and take action to avoid regional escalation.

We will continue to work with our international partners to tackle Iran's malign behaviour. This includes holding them to account in multilateral fora, using sanctions regimes to target Iranian support to its proxies, and by maintaining our permanent defence presence in the region.

The Prime Minister spoke with Iranian President Pezeshkian on 12 August, warning against the risk of regional escalation. The Foreign Secretary has also spoken with both former Acting Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri-Kani, on 7 August, and Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi, on 23 August.

The UK unequivocally condemns the strike in Golan Heights that has tragically claimed at least 12 lives. Hizballah must cease their indiscriminate attacks and their destabilising activity. The Foreign Secretary spoke with Israel's Foreign Minister Katz on 4 August following the attack, offering his condolences for the death of innocent children in Madj al Shams. He expressed the Government's concern about the escalation in tensions and the growing potential for miscalculation across the de-facto border between Lebanon and Israel. We continue to urge both Israel and Lebanon to engage with the US led discussions to reach a political settlement and resolve their tensions diplomatically.   A widening of the conflict is in nobody's interest. The Government is working in lockstep with our allies to deescalate tensions and urge all parties to end the destructive cycle of retaliatory violence.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) produces forecasts of the UK’s economic and fiscal position.

The government sets its fiscal policy on the basis of the official OBR forecast.

Box 4.5 of the OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook published in March 2024 sets out estimated impacts of migration on the fiscal forecast. As the minimum residency required to move to indefinite leave to remain is currently at least 5 years, this falls outside the forecast period. As the OBR says in the March 2024 EFO. ”However, our forecasts will capture the cost of any immigrants from previous cohorts who now claim welfare through Indefinite leave to remain grants because their claims will be included in the outturn data that provides the starting point for our forecast”.

I refer the Honourable Member to the Answer he received on the 31 March 2025 to UIN 41380.

I refer the Honourable Member to the Answer he received on the 31 March 2025 to UIN 41380.

It remains our absolute commitment to end the use of hotels over time, as part of our reduction in overall asylum accommodation costs.  We do not provide a running commentary on hotel numbers, but by the end of March there will be fewer hotels open than when this Government took office.

An instalments approach would place a considerable administrative burden on HM Passport Office to seek payment when they are due and take action where payment is not made.

Where a fee is required, the full payment must accompany the application.

If UKVI suspect a relationship may not be genuine, further checks can be conducted, which may include a relationship interview with the applicant and sponsor. If the relationship is found to be non-genuine the application may be refused.