Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure vulnerable children in care are given the best start in life.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
Reforming children’s social care is essential to ensuring vulnerable children have the best start in life. We are shifting the system toward early, preventative support so more families can stay safely together.
Our plans will help children remain with their families wherever possible, increase support for kinship carers and foster families and improve outcomes for children in care and care leavers, including through the rollout of the Staying Close programme. We will also fix the care market to reduce profiteering and put children’s needs first, alongside strengthening multi‑agency approaches to keep children safe.
Backed by £2.4 billion over the next three years, national reforms to Family Help, Multi‑Agency Child Protection and Family Group Decision Making will be delivered through the Families First Partnership programme, with local authorities deciding how best to use these resources to support vulnerable children in care. A further £1.5 billion will improve access to affordable early education, raise early years quality and strengthen family services.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to increase access to healthcare services in rural areas.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government’s 10-Year Health Plan has set out a long-term vision to reform the National Health Service and make it fit for the future. Addressing healthcare inequity is a core focus of the 10-Year Health Plan, to ensure the NHS is there for anyone who needs it whenever they need it.
This includes ending the postcode lottery for cancer patients through introducing new training places targeted at trusts with the biggest workforce gaps, prioritising rural and coastal areas.
There are also a range of adjustments made to integrated care board funding allocations that account for the fact that the costs of providing health care may vary between rural and urban areas. These adjustments specifically support remote or sparsely populated areas.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many online child sexual abuse offences have been recorded in England and Wales in the last 3 years.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Online child sexual abuse offences are captured in police recorded crime via an online crime flag being applied to a series of offences deemed most likely to be child sexual abuse. This includes contact sexual offences and obscene publications offences which act as a proxy for indecent images of children (IIOC) offences.
In April 2015, it became mandatory for all forces to return quarterly information on the number of crimes flagged as being committed online as part of the Annual Data Requirement (ADR). Since April 2024 this has been supported by the National Data Quality Improvement Service (NDQIS) which aims to improve the quality and consistency of flagging. Data released prior to 2024 are not directly comparable due to the move to NDQIS.
The online crime flag refers to any crime committed either in full, or in part, through use of online methods or platforms. The online crime flag helps provide a national and local picture of how internet and digital communications technology are being used to commit crimes, and an understanding of the prominence of certain crimes that are happening online, compared to offline.
An offence should be flagged where online methods or internet-based activities were used to facilitate the offence (e.g. through email, social media, websites, messaging platforms, gaming platforms, or smart devices). In April 2024, recording guidelines were amended to clarify that offences committed via SMS text messages or online-platform-enabled phone calls should also be flagged.
These data are published quarterly via the Office for National Statistics (ONS), originally in ‘Other related tables’ and now in ‘Appendix tables’ as per links below.
Child sexual offences | Proportion | Obscene publications offences | Proportion | |
Year to September 2025 – Appendix Table C5 | 14,515 | 23% | 32,191 | 75% |
Year to September 2024 – Appendix table C5 | 13,987 | 23% | 28,269 | 71% |
Year to September 2023 – Other related tables, F11 | 12,568 | 20% | 26,024 | 64% |
Note: Data across the year are not comparable due to continued improvements to the processing of online flags.
The Government is committed to tackling all forms of child sexual abuse and exploitation and is committed to taking robust action to better safeguard children, ensuring victims and survivors receive appropriate care and support and pursuing offenders and bringing them to justice.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many households are in receipt of benefits in excess of £28,000.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Family Resources Survey (FRS) is an annual report that provides facts and figures about the incomes and living circumstances of households and families in the UK. The FRS uses a nationally representative sample of UK households and includes data on benefit receipt, at both individual and family levels.
The latest FRS is available for 2023/24 and, in the ‘Income and state support data tables’, Table 2.14a shows the number of benefit units in the UK by the total amount of annual state support received for that financial year, plus the two preceding years. This data is also available in the ‘FRS Family 2’ table in the Family (Benefit Unit) Dataset on Stat-Xplore. Please read the notes which accompany these tables.
The number of families who received in excess of £28,000, can be extracted from the Family (Benefit Unit) Dataset on Stat-Xplore by using the custom range functionality (which is available to registered users) on the Family (Benefit Unit), total, annual amount of Income received from State Support, in bands, in latest prices (CPI-adjusted real terms) data by using the ‘Range’ option in the ‘Measures’ section.
You can register or access Stat-Xplore as a guest user and, if needed, you can access guidance on how to extract the information required. In addition there is also the FRS Stat-Xplore User Guide.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many life sentences have been handed out to people under the age of 16 in the last five years.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
Between year ending September 2021 and year ending September 2025, 10 defendants aged under 16 have been given a life sentence. This is a further breakdown of published sentencing outcomes data released routinely as part of the Accredited Official Statistics series Criminal Justice Statistics Quarterly which is available here: Criminal Justice Statistics.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department plans to bring forward legislative proposals to set a target for the reduction of the use of single-use plastic.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra does not currently have plans to bring forward legislative proposals to set a target for the reduction of the use of single-use plastic.
This Government is committed to moving to a circular economy and will publish a Circular Economy Growth Plan that sets out how government will deliver a more circular and more prosperous economy.
Defra will continue to review the latest evidence on problematic products and/or materials to take a systematic approach, in line with circular economy principles, to reduce the use of unnecessary single-use plastic products and encourage reuse solutions.