Asked by: James McMurdock (Reform UK - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment she has made of the long-term impact of (a) early release schemes and (b) other emergency prison measures.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
In July 2024, the Lord Chancellor took decisive action to avoid imminent gridlock across the Criminal Justice System (CJS) by changing the automatic release point for those serving eligible Standard Determinate Sentences (SDS) from 50% to 40%. The measure will be reviewed 18 months after its implementation in September 2024. This allowed us to end the previous Government’s End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme.
When implementing the SDS measure, we took every possible step to mitigate risk including an 8-week implementation period, clear offence exclusions, and collaboration with partners across the CJS. We are committed to publishing transparency data on the number of SDS40-affected releases. We have already published data for day one of Tranches 1 and 2 on 7 November 2024 and are considering how routinely publishing SDS40 data best fits with our regular Accredited Official Statistics.
Whilst the SDS change provided the intended medium-term relief to the system, this was never expected to be a silver bullet. To put prison capacity on a sustainable footing in the long-term, the Lord Chancellor announced the Independent Review into Sentencing, alongside a series of prison capacity measures to ensure we have sufficient capacity in the lead-up to the Review’s recommendations. This included reforming our recall practices to target the unsustainable growth in the recall population since the pandemic and an extension of the maximum period offenders can spend on Home Detention Curfew from 6 – 12 months. MoJ remains dedicated to working with its agencies and stakeholders to continuously evaluate and where necessary improve the HDC scheme.
We will continue to monitor the longer-term impacts as they develop.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Reform UK - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what services are available for asylum seekers on entry into the UK.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Home Office)
uidance on the asylum support system is publicly available at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/asylum-support-asylum-instructions
Asked by: James McMurdock (Reform UK - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, when she plans to publish the long-term housing strategy; and what key objectives will be included to provide long-term certainty to the housing market.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The government intend to publish a long-term housing strategy later this year.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Reform UK - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to provide (a) schools and (b) parents with guidance to protect young people from harmful content on social media platforms.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department’s ‘Keeping children safe in education’ publication is the statutory safeguarding guidance that all school and colleges must have regard to.
This guidance provides schools and colleges with robust information on how to protect pupils and students online. The guidance has been significantly strengthened with regards to online safety in recent years. Online safety is now embedded throughout the guidance, making clear the importance of ensuring a whole school approach to keeping children safe both online and offline.
The guidance makes clear that schools and colleges should ensure appropriate filtering and monitoring systems are in place and that their effectiveness is regularly reviewed. This limits children’s exposure to harmful content while on school-managed computers
As part of the statutory relationships and health education (RHE) in primary schools and relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) in secondary schools, pupils are taught about online safety and harms.
This includes being taught about the effects of their online actions on others, how to recognise and display respectful behaviour online and where to get help and support for issues that occur online. In addition, pupils should have a strong understanding of how data is generated, collected, shared and used online, for example, how personal data is captured on social media or understanding the way that businesses may exploit the data available to them.
Statutory guidance for RHE can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/relationships-education-primary. Statutory guidance for RSHE can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education/relationships-and-sex-education-rse-secondary.
Through the statutory national computing curriculum, from key stages 1 to 4 inclusive, there is progression in content to reflect the different and escalating risks that young people may encounter. The computing curriculum also provides pupils with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions whilst online or using other digital applications and technologies.
All schools are also required by law to have a behaviour policy which outlines effective strategies that will encourage good behaviour. Schools should be clear that even though the online space differs in many ways, the same standards of behaviour are expected online as apply offline and everyone should be treated with kindness, respect and dignity.
Finally, the Online Safety Act requires all services in scope to take steps to protect users, including children, from illegal content and criminal behaviour. Companies in scope of the Act will need to risk assess whether their service is likely to be accessed by children and if so, provide safety measures to protect children from harmful and age-inappropriate content.
Ofcom has a duty to promote media literacy to help the public understand the nature and impact of where harmful content and online behaviour affects certain groups.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Reform UK - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking with telecommunications providers to help prevent fraud through (a) scam calls and (b) text messages.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government is working extremely closely with industry, regulators, law enforcement and consumer groups to close the vulnerabilities that criminals exploit in telecoms networks to stop scams reaching people. The Government and Industry are currently developing a second Telecommunications Fraud Charter to build on previous voluntary action taken by the country’s biggest Telecoms companies. This new Charter will go further in encouraging companies to identify, prevent, and disrupt high volume telecoms fraud.
In addition to this, we are also pursuing legislation that aims to ban ‘SIM farms’, which are technical devices which allow criminals to send scam texts to thousands of people at the same time. Additionally, this Government is working with Ofcom to stop more cases of number ‘spoofing’, where scammers impersonate UK numbers to persuade people that they are speaking to banks, telephone companies or other legitimate businesses.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Reform UK - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to achieve the construction of 14,000 additional prison places by 2031.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
This Government will build the prison places that the previous Government promised but failed to deliver because of their inability to stand up to their own backbenches.
We are investing over £2.3 billion in prison building this year and next. The Lord Chancellor set out plans for delivering 14,000 new prison places by 2031 in the 10-Year Prison Capacity Strategy, which includes the construction of four new prisons, as well as the expansion and refurbishment of the existing estate and temporary accommodation.
HMP Millsike in Yorkshire is due to open in spring 2025 and will deliver c.1,500 places. Construction of a new c.1,700 place prison near the existing HMP Gartree in Leicestershire is on track to start in the summer, and outline planning permission is in place for a c.1,500 place prison in Buckinghamshire and a c.1,700 place prison in Lancashire. Additionally, new houseblocks at HMP Rye Hill and HMP Fosse Way are due to complete during the course of 2025, providing c.700 places between them. We also continue to roll out hundreds more Rapid Deployment Cells across the estate. We are working with suppliers to deliver these places as quickly as possible.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Reform UK - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether he plans to introduce regulations to prevent the sharing of scam content on social media platforms.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Government takes the issue of fraudulent content on social media platforms seriously – which is why fraud is listed as a priority offence in the Online Safety Act.
In-scope services, including social media platforms, will have to take steps to prevent fraudulent content appearing on their platforms and to swiftly remove such content if it does. The largest services (categorised services) must also take action to tackle paid-for fraudulent adverts.
Ofcom has robust powers to take enforcement action where companies fail to meet their duties, including issuing fines of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Reform UK - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what discussions he has had with social media companies on the role of their platforms in perpetrators committing online fraud.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The government is committed to tackling online fraud, as demonstrated through the strong duties in the Online Safety Act to protect users from this content.
In addition, the Joint Fraud Taskforce is a partnership between government, the private sector and law enforcement to tackle fraud collectively. Minutes of the taskforce’s meetings are published on gov.uk
Asked by: James McMurdock (Reform UK - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will take steps to ensure that biological males who identify as female are not housed in women’s prisons.
Answered by Nicholas Dakin - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
We take the allocation of transgender prisoners very seriously. It is right that there are safeguards in place to protect the safety of vulnerable women, and well over 90% of transgender women in custody are held in men’s prisons.
Transgender women who have committed sexual or violent offences, or who retain birth genitalia, will not be held in general women’s estate, other than on an exceptional basis where experts have a high level of confidence that they pose a low risk to other prisoners.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Reform UK - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, which initiatives have been supported by the £216 million funding to Ethiopia through the Official Development Assistance Programme in 2024-25.
Answered by Anneliese Dodds - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Ethiopia for 2024/25 was £216 million. Most of this allocation has been used to provide lifesaving humanitarian aid, focused on emergency health, nutrition, and social protection. This includes our Productive Safety Net Programme, supporting those in food-insecure households. We are also investing in education and health services, including a programme to prevent maternal, new-born and child deaths, as well as a programme that provides water and sanitation in drought affected areas. We have allocated UK ODA to promote peacebuilding including a sustainable peace process in Tigray, through disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of combatants. We are also investing UK ODA towards economic reform, job creation and revenue raising through more effective taxation.