Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help increase the supply of Creon; and what support his Department is providing to patients who are not able to use alternative medicines.

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

The Department continues to engage with suppliers of Creon and other pancreatic enzyme replacement therapies (PERT) to boost production to mitigate the supply issue. The supplier of Creon expects to receive increased quantities for 2025. Suppliers of alternative PERT and specialist importers of unlicensed medicines continue to supply increased volumes to assist in covering the gap in the market. The Department has issued management advice to healthcare professionals which directs clinicians to unlicensed imports when licensed stock is unavailable, and which includes actions for integrated care boards to ensure local mitigation plans are implemented. The Department, in collaboration with NHS England, has created a webpage to include the latest update on PERT availability and easily accessible prescribing advice for clinicians.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle (a) grooming gangs and (b) child sexual exploitation.

Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

On 6 and 16 January, the Home Secretary announced to Parliament a raft of measures to go further in tackling child sexual abuse and exploitation, including 'grooming gangs' offending.

The Home Secretary has written to the National Police Chiefs' Council requesting officers look again at these unsolved and closed grooming gangs cases, backed by £2.5m in funding for stronger investigations The remit of the Independent Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel has also been extended so that it covers not just historic cases before 2013 but all cases since to ensure victims of abuse have the right to an independent review

This includes appointing Baroness Louise Casey to oversee an audit to improve our understanding of the scale, nature and drivers of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse at a national and local level, and to make recommendations on what additional action is needed to improve our response.

We will provide stronger support for local areas which are interested in undertaking work to better understand and tackle local grooming gang issues and improve their own local responses going forward.

We will also be working across Government to set out a clear timeline for taking forward the 20 recommendations from the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse by Easter.

Found: McIntosh of Pickering, Chair, Bricks and Water Blake Stephenson MP, vice-Chair, Bricks and Water Lee Pitcher

When a division is called in the House of Commons, Members present on the Estate who wish to cast a vote must then proceed to the division lobbies located adjacent to the Chamber to do so.  During the Covid-19 pandemic, due to social distancing requirements, Members were able to vote electronically in some divisions in the House (then known as ‘remote voting’),  but these arrangements lapsed in mid-2021 alongside other pandemic-era procedures. Several other legislatures around the world – including the House of Lords – currently operate some form of electronic voting arrangements, therefore providing different models that could be compared to those in the House of Commons which require a physical presence in a certain location for a valid vote to be cast.