Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what his policy is on the treatment of injury related Armed Forces payments, including the AFPS 05 injury enhancement, in divorce and financial remedy proceedings in England and Wales.

Answered by Louise Sandher-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)

The Armed Forces do not have separate divorce procedures applying solely to Service personnel. Any injury-related payments are valued and shared between the parties in accordance with the relevant scheme rules and general divorce law.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if she will make it her policy to prevent (a) AFPS 05 injury enhancements and (b) other injury related Armed Forces payments from being treated as divisible marital assets in (i) divorce and (ii) financial remedy proceedings.

Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

Injury-related payments are not currently excluded from the division of assets by the court. Instead, the court’s approach to whether such payments are treated as ‘matrimonial’ or ‘non-matrimonial’ will depend on the circumstances of the case.

As part of its 2024 scoping report on financial remedies, the Law Commission considered the court’s wide discretion in dividing assets in financial remedy proceedings, including the treatment of matrimonial and non-matrimonial property.

By Spring, the Government will be consulting on the challenges raised by the Law Commission in its report on financial remedies. The Government will carefully consider these issues as it prepares for consultation.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to review the police funding formula before the next comprehensive spending review.

Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Secretary considers the distribution of funding each year to ensure decisions promote police efficiency, effectiveness and support the Government’s wider programme of reform.

Further details regarding police funding for 2026-27 will be set out in the upcoming Final Police Funding Settlement.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of consolidating the specific grant for the Police Uplift Programme into the core policing grant.

Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)

The 2026-27 provisional police funding settlement (18 December) published that total funding to Territorial Police Forces will be up to £18.3 billion, an increase of up to £746 million compared to the 2025-26 police funding settlement. This equates to a 4.2% cash increase and a 2.0% real terms increase for the policing system. On 16^th January, forces received a letter inviting views on the delivery of Neighbourhood Policing model.

The Government has listened to policing’s concerns about the Officer Maintenance Grant and its requirement to achieve a specified officer headcount target. This funding mechanism has in some instances led to forces placing more officers in back-office roles which is not helpful in supporting visible policing and prevents forces from building a workforce with the mix of skills necessary to tackle crime.

The Government’s position is that people want to see neighbourhood police on the streets. We recognise the need to improve trust and confidence in policing – strengthening neighbourhood policing is a way of achieving that goal.

Final force level funding allocations for 2026-27 will be published at a Final Police Funding Settlement by the end of January.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if his Department will consider recognising Long Covid as an occupational disease.

Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Department is advised by the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council (IIAC), an independent scientific body, on the changes to the list of occupational diseases for which Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit can be paid.

IIAC has published Command Papers on COVID-19 and its occupational impacts. The Department is considering the recommendations in these documents which can be accessed here: COVID-19 and Occupational Impacts - GOV.UK and Occupational Impact of COVID-19 in the Transport and Education Sectors - GOV.UK

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of making injury-related pension enhancement and compensation elements protected within divorce settlements.

Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)

People may be able to access a workplace or private pension earlier than the scheme’s normal minimum pension age due to ill health, subject to the rules of the individual scheme. These rules vary, and it is for schemes to determine the conditions under which benefits can be paid before the normal pension age and/or on enhanced terms.

Where an ill health pension is paid from an arrangement that meets the legal definition of an occupational pension scheme, it is generally a shareable asset in the event of a divorce. This applies even where the pension has been brought into payment early for ill health reasons.

There is a specific exception in legislation for benefits that arise solely due to disablement, or death resulting from an accident suffered by a person that occurs during their pensionable service. These rights are not shareable on divorce.

The division of assets in divorce proceedings is a matter for family courts, which make decisions based on the law of the country in which the divorce takes place. In England and Wales, this falls under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, for which responsibility rests with the Ministry of Justice.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will consider Tourette's in its Independent Review into Mental Health Conditions, ADHD and Autism.

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

This review focuses on mental health conditions, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and autism. Tourette’s is a neurological disorder and therefore it will be at the Chair's discretion as to how far the review considers Tourette's with this in mind.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if the Department can outline the length and mechanism for delivery of the new mandatory safeguarding learning programme for the NHS workforce.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

Mandatory safeguarding training in NHS England is a strict, contractual obligation for all staff. The current Statutory and Mandatory Training e-learning programme has been developed to align with the UK Core Skills Training Framework which sets out 11 statutory and mandatory training topics for all staff working in health and social care settings.

NHS England is collaborating with national and local subject matter experts to create a new approach and some revised content to the mandatory and statutory learning for all National Health Service staff, which includes all statutory safeguarding duties and programs for NHS Providers. We expect this to be rolled out to the NHS later this year.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in response to Question tabled on 15 December 2025, UIN 99871, if the Government can outline what steps are being taken to ensure the needs of people with severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis are adequacy met.

Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The final delivery plan on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), published in July 2025, includes an action for the Department and NHS England to explore whether a specialised service should be prescribed by my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for severe ME/CFS. Officials from the Department have commenced discussions with NHS England on how best to take forward this action.

The third and final session in NHS England’s newly-developed ME/CFS e-learning series, Managing Severe ME/CFS, is now live on the NHS Learning Hub. This session provides practical, evidence-based guidance for healthcare professionals to support people living with severe and very severe ME/CFS.

Additionally, as set out in the Plan for Change, we are committed to returning to the NHS constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment by March 2029. We exceeded our pledge to deliver an extra two million appointments, tests, and operations in our first year of government, having delivered 5.2 million additional appointments between July 2024 and June 2025. This will help people with severe ME/CFS to get support sooner.

The 10-Year Health Plan sets out a transformed vision for elective care by 2035, where most interactions no longer take place in a hospital building, instead happening virtually or via neighbourhood services. We will empower patients by giving them greater choice and control and establishing expected standards for making their experience of planned NHS care as smooth, supportive and convenient as possible, including for people with severe ME/CFS.

Found: Q121 Jo Platt: You have spoken a little about legacy building for communities.

Found: Q121 Jo Platt: You have spoken a little about legacy building for communities.