Jo White

The Online Safety Act requires services to protect all users from illegal misogynistic content, and children from harmful misogynistic content including content which is violent, hateful or abusive.

The largest services (category 1) will also need to remove misogynistic content prohibited in their terms of service and have effective, accessible mechanisms to report abuse.

On 16^th January 2025, the Government announced £410 million investment to accelerate development of fusion energy and kickstart economic growth as part of its Plan for Change. The funding will support the rapid development of the UK fusion energy sector over 2025 to 2026 with investment in the skills needed for scientists, engineers, welders and programme managers to enter the cutting-edge industry. Fusion already supports thousands of jobs in the UK, with thousands more to follow as the technology advances.

Every constituency in the country has at least one person in receipt of the Mineworkers Pension Scheme. The number of scheme members in each constituency is listed in the table below. This information is from the scheme trustees and correct as at 30 October 2024. Some of these scheme members will not yet be in receipt of their pension, but we do not have a breakdown of that information at constituency level.

The department is working with the Department of Health and Social Care to help promote and deliver supervised toothbrushing programmes for 3 to 5-year-olds in the most deprived communities.

The department recognises that prevention is better than cure. For this reason, we will be targeting the areas of highest need to have the greatest impact on young children’s oral health.

Further information on the implementation timetable will be confirmed in due course.

Currently all state-funded schools in England are required to teach about good oral hygiene as part of the statutory health education set out within relationships, sex and health education statutory guidance. Independent schools are required to cover health education as part of their responsibility to provide personal, social, health and economic education.

The below table shows the number of apprenticeship service employers accounts with apprenticeship starts in the 2023/24 academic year.

The figures are for the number of employer accounts instead of employers. An employer may have more than one apprenticeship service employer account.

I refer my hon. Friend, the Member for Basstettlaw to the answer of 14 October 2024 to question 7255.

The budget and the actual spending of the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) element of the Adult Education Budget from 2018/19 to 2023/24 financial year is set out in the table below. Funding to providers is allocated on an academic year and underspends are based on a financial year basis; therefore, underspends in a financial year predominantly reflect provider delivery in the preceding academic year (i.e. 2018/19 academic year is reflected in 2019/20 financial year).

The ESFA allocates grant funding to providers. Providers who underdeliver on their allocations by more than 3% will have their funding recovered through a reconciliation process (allowing providers who can over deliver to grow their allocation by up to 10%).

The department is committed to giving every child the best start in life, regardless of where and how they are educated. We cannot ignore the rising numbers of home-educated children and official data which shows that growing numbers of children have been moved into home education due to mental health concerns or lack of provision for special educational needs in their local schools.

Local authorities have legal duties to be satisfied that all children are receiving a suitable education. However, this duty is undermined by the fact that parents have no obligation to inform their local authority of their decision to home educate. This means that local authorities are unable to fulfil their duties. There is a risk that children are going under the radar and missing out on the education they deserve that will enable them to access the best opportunities in life.

For this reason, the government will use the Children’s Wellbeing Bill to require English local authorities to maintain registers of children not in school. Parents and certain out-of-school education providers will be required to provide information for those registers. This will help local authorities piece together a fuller and more accurate picture of those children who are receiving education otherwise than at school and target resources to locating and supporting those who are missing out on education. Local authorities will also have a duty to provide support to those home-educators who request it, which will act as an incentive for families to register.

The registers will contain information on those children who are registered on a school roll and are receiving education otherwise than at school. It will not include children who are on a school roll but failing to attend. The department is taking separate action on that important issue of persistent absence.

In terms of this new system of registration, parents can be assured that the registers will not be used to criminalise any parent who does not send their child to school. Parents who do not provide information for the registers will result in their local authority being unable to be satisfied that a child is not receiving a suitable education and so the local authority will need to proceed to a formal request for evidence about that education. If that evidence is not forthcoming, or is insufficient, this will usually lead to the local authority needing to issue a School Attendance Order. This is the same mechanism that exists in the current law; no change will be made.

The government takes the matter of data protection very seriously, including any threats to privacy and personal data. Local authorities will be legally restricted as to whom they may share register information with and for what purposes. The usual provisions of the UK-GDPR will apply to all data processing activities.

The department continues to work with local authorities on existing non-statutory registers and to collect data from those registers.