Asked by: Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what her policy is on retaining parliamentary constituency boundaries when grouping the areas currently covered by county councils to form the wider areas to be covered by new unitary authorities.
Answered by Jim McMahon - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Local government boundaries are not directly related to Parliamentary constituency boundaries. Local government boundary changes may be considered when undertaking a future Parliamentary constituency boundary review.
Asked by: Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his policy is on patient confidentiality in relation to sharing information on (a) inquiry reports and (b) other relevant information on killings by mentally ill people with the (i) families of their victims and (ii) general public; and what his policy is on (A) publishing independent homicide reports and (B) intervening to consider publication in such cases, in the context of patient confidentiality.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department of Health and Social Care has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.
Asked by: Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what information his Department holds on how much and what proportion of the annual budgets of the BBC (a) World Service and (b) Monitoring Service are funded by FCDO; and what discussions he has had with the BBC on preventing cuts in those services.
Answered by Hamish Falconer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Government provides approximately one-third of the funding for the BBC World Service, with the remainder funded from the BBC Licence Fee. The BBC are operationally and editorially independent and set the budget for the World Service. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) provided £104.4 million of grant funding to the World Service in 2023/24, the most recent year for which there are published audited accounts.
FCDO Ministers engage routinely with the BBC on the World Service. The BBC discussed their plans for the World Service in 2025/26 with the FCDO, as part of the Spending Review process.
HMG does not provide any funding for BBC Monitoring.