Lord Scriven

Measures to modernise the constitution were announced in the King’s Speech, including legislation to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. This will be the first step in wider reform to the second chamber, as set out in the manifesto.

The UK is a leading advocate for human rights around the world. This work takes place separately to negotiations on free trade agreements.

While aspects of trade policy can provide the opportunity to address other issues in a bilateral relationship, free trade agreements are not generally the most effective or targeted tool to advance human rights issues.

Trade deals like the UK-GCC FTA will be aligned with the trade and industrial strategies, to bring prosperity to communities across the country and fulfil our mission of securing the highest sustained growth in the G7.

The UK is a leading advocate for human rights around the world. The Department for Business and Trade are currently assessing progress across the programme of Free Trade Agreements currently under negotiation. Economic growth is our first mission in government and Free Trade Agreements have an important part to play in that. The Department's trade deals will be aligned with its industrial strategy, to bring prosperity to communities across the country and fulfil our mission of securing the highest sustained growth in the G7.

Deploying revenue protection staff to deter ticketless travel, and doing so in a reasonable and efficient manner, is a matter for train operating companies.

Revenue protection offers passengers an additional level of safety and security whilst travelling on the rail network.

While there has been no specific assessment into the functionality of air conditioning during the recent hot weather, a sample of EMR's trains are independently inspected each month to assess overall ambience, and this includes the temperature of the carriage.

EMR advises that, on the occasion in question, the air conditioning failed in one carriage. All other carriages on the train had functioning air conditioning and staff offered passengers the opportunity to move to a different carriage, as well as providing water. New trains are due to replace the current train fleet from 2025.

The department each year routinely takes steps to ensure letters issued to those eligible to Winter Fuel payments are accurate based on their circumstances at the time of writing. Naturally, there is a short timeframe where in very rare occasions these circumstances may change whilst the letters are already in production or in the delivery network. We continually review our processes to ensure these instances are kept to an absolute minimum to avoid unnecessary impacts on our customers or their relatives.

This information is not held in the format requested, as data on active out of area placements is not categorised by age.

There have been no cuts to operational services to make the £2.3 billion of funding available. The majority came from central NHS England funding, held as part of the start year financial plans for this purpose. The remainder came from savings identified during the subsequent planning round, including taking a higher risk appetite on the extent to which underspends or savings would be identified during the course of the year. No funding came from savings on allocated capital budgets.

The following table shows the detentions under the Mental Health Act 1983, by legal status and across all providers, each year from 2021/22 to 2023/24:

Source: the Emergency Care Data Set and the Mental Health Data Set.

We have taken necessary decisions to fix the foundations in the public finances at Autumn Budget. This enabled the Spending Review settlement of a £22.6 billion increase in resource spending for the Department from 2023/24 outturn to 2025/26. The employer national insurance rise will be implemented in April 2025, with the Department setting out further details on allocation of funding for next year in due course.

The government is uplifting resident doctor pay scales for 2023-24 by an average of 4.05% on top of their existing pay award. This has an estimated cost impact of approximately £350 million per year.

On the second question, we have taken tough decisions to fix the foundations in the public finances at Autumn Budget, this enabled the SR settlement of £22.6 billion increase in resource spending for the Department of Health and Social Care from 2023-24 outturn to 2025-26. The Employer National Insurance rise will be implemented April 2025, the Department of Health and Social Care will set out further details on allocation of funding for next year in due course, including through NHS Planning Guidance and the usual consultations.

We continue to discuss the use of the death penalty with the Bahrain authorities and have not made representations recently on the cases mentioned. We are aware that investigations are ongoing into allegations of mistreatment.

Pakistan is a FCDO human rights priority country. We work to protect and promote human rights in Pakistan through our diplomatic engagement and programme funding. This includes regularly raising our opposition to the death penalty and concerns about the misuse of blasphemy laws, both in principle and in relation to specific cases. Minister Falconer, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan, underlined the importance of promoting religious tolerance and harmony with Pakistan's Human Rights Minister Azam Tarar on 4 September.

The FCDO is committed to Transparency. We are currently reviewing the transparency of the Gulf Strategy Fund, to build on the Thematic Summaries already published annually on GOV.UK. Publication of the summary for 2023/24 will follow this review.

The Gulf Strategy Fund has an allocation of £6m for the Financial Year 2024/25. Funding for future years will be decided once we know the outcome of the Spending Review.

The FCDO publishes quarterly data on gifts and hospitality received by ministers and senior officials on GOV.UK. Providing the complete information requested would exceed the word limit for responses to written parliamentary questions but the FCDO publishes quarterly data information which can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fcdo-ministerial-gifts-hospitality-travel-and-meetings

and

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fcdo-senior-officials-business-expenses-hospitality-and-meetings

Information relating to gifts and hospitality received by embassy staff is held locally, but is not centrally collated, as this would incur a disproportionate cost to the department.

The FCDO expects all members of staff to always maintain the highest standards of propriety, in line with the Civil Service Code and the Diplomatic Service Code.

The abuse that took place at Brook House Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) in 2017 was unacceptable.

The previous government published its response to the public inquiry into Brook House IRC on 19 March 2024, summarising the progress made since 2017 and addressing each of the ten key areas of concern raised in the report.

Positive progress continues to be made in addressing the Inquiry findings. A cross departmental working group has been meeting since September 2023. The working group continues to meet monthly to consider and monitor delivery of the Inquiry’s recommendations, providing oversight and overarching governance to monitor Inquiry recommendations.

The Home Office routinely publishes information on a quarterly basis, including the number of cases outstanding. Data on the total number of outstanding cases in the asylum system (‘asylum work in progress’), asylum decision makers, processing times and productivity is published in the ‘Immigration and Protection’ data of the Migration transparency data - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

We are unable to forecast the number of people with outstanding case decisions as each case is decided on its own individual merits and there are many factors that can delay and contribute to the length of time to process asylum claims.

We received a response from the Mayor on the recommendations made by the independent Tees Valley Review. We are currently reviewing that response against the recommendations made and we will publish our response as soon as our review is completed.

We received a response from the Mayor on the recommendations made by the independent Tees Valley Review. We are currently reviewing that response against the recommendations made and we will publish our response as soon as our review is completed.

The previous government’s independent review into the Tees Valley Combined Authority’s oversight of the South Tees Development Corporation and Teesworks Ltd was published 29 January 2024. The then Secretary of State wrote to the mayor in March 2024 requesting a further report in six months’ time. We expect to receive this report in September 2024, and to publish this in due course.