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 improve the completeness and consistency of data recorded on people diagnosed with secondary breast cancer across NHS Trusts in England, in the context of the latest findings of the National Audit of Metastatic Breast Cancer (NAoMe) published on 10th September.

Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Via the National Disease Registration Service (NDRS), NHS England collects, curates, quality assures, and analyses data about people with cancer across the whole of England.

The NDRS data improvement team is working with National Health Service trusts to provide support and guidance to improve their reporting of non-primary cancers, focused on the specific recurrence and progression data fields included in the Cancer Outcomes and Services Dataset. This includes updates on trust submitted recurrence data in our routine ‘diagnoses by provider’ dashboard, available on our NHS facing, secure data quality and insights hub.

The National Cancer Plan for England, published in February this year, committed to define and count recurrent cancers, starting with breast cancer. The NDRS is working towards publishing a baseline figure of metastatic breast cancer patients in the last quarter of 2026 as per the commitment in the plan.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when her department plans to respond to the correspondence from the hon. member for Newton Abbot under case ref MW16977.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

A reply was sent to the hon. Member on 23 September 2026.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to respond to the correspondence of 31 July 2026 from the hon. Member for Newton Abbot, ref MW17163.

Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

I apologise to the Hon. Member for the delayed responses to his correspondence, which have now been sent to him.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to respond to the correspondence of 31 July 2026 from the hon. Member for Newton Abbot, ref MW17164.

Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

I apologise to the Hon. Member for the delayed responses to his correspondence, which have now been sent to him.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to respond to the correspondence of 31 July 2026 from the hon. member for Newton Abbot, ref MW17188.

Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

I apologise to the Hon. Member for the delayed responses to his correspondence, which have now been sent to him.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate her Department has made of the (a) prevalence of respiratory disease and (b) number of emergency hospital admissions for respiratory conditions in Newton Abbot.

Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The specific data requested by the Hon Member is not centrally held, but he may find useful information on the prevalence and treatment of respiratory conditions in his local area at the Department’s Fingertips website at the following link:

https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profiles

In addition, the National flu and COVID-19 surveillance report, published by the UK Health Security Agency, provides weekly surveillance of respiratory virus activity in England, including hospital admission rates specifically for influenza, COVID-19, and respiratory syncytial virus rather than the full range of respiratory conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The report is available on the GOV.UK website at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports-2026-to-2027-season

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of making bus travel free for under 16s in Devon during term time.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The Government recognises the importance of affordable and reliable bus services in helping children and young people access education and other opportunities.

Decisions on introducing local concessionary travel schemes are generally matters for local transport authorities, who are best placed to consider local transport needs and priorities.

The Government supports affordable bus travel through the Local Authority Bus Grant, which gives local transport authorities flexibility to introduce local fare initiatives and targeted support for children and young people.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether probabilistic record linkage tools, used by the Department or its agencies automatically link records relating to individuals where a predefined confidence threshold is met; and what human review is undertaken before such linked records are used for operational purposes.

Answered by Jake Richards - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice uses Splink, a probabilistic record linkage tool created in the Department, across a variety of services and analytical applications.

Where the match score exceeds a certain threshold, records are typically linked automatically, without human review. The score threshold varies according to use case and is set following assessment of accuracy required for the intended purpose, including where linked records may support operational processes.

Before a linking model is deployed, human review is undertaken on a sample of recorded pairs to assess linkage accuracy inform selection of an appropriate confidence threshold. Linkage performance is subsequently monitored, and threshold and matching algorithms are adjusted where necessary in response to identified issues or changes in data quality.

In addition, record linkage projects are subjected to appropriate governance and ethical overview, including through the Ministry of Justice AI and Data Science Ethics Framework.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether probabilistic record-linkage tools used by the Department are used to link records relating to individuals across departmental boundaries; and what assessment he has made of the potential implications for individuals of being automatically included within, or excluded from, such cross-departmental linked identities.

Answered by Jake Richards - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The Ministry of Justice mostly uses probabilistic record-linkage tools to link internal administrative datasets (such as court, prison and probation data), while most linking across departmental boundaries uses deterministic linking. However, there are a small number of projects that use probabilistic matching across departmental boundaries for analytical and research purposes, such as:

• Crown Prosecution Service data has recently been linked probabilistically to prisons and probation data, as part of work to join up data across the criminal justice system to improve understanding of the whole end-to-end system.

• Prisoner and family relationship data was linked with HMRC Child Benefit records to estimate the number of children affected by parental imprisonment.

The results of this linking are used for analytical and research purposes, informing policymakers with better quality evidence rather than informing decisions at an individual level.

All data-linking activity is subject to the Ministry of Justice's established governance arrangements, including completion of a Data Protection Impact Assessment where required and engagement with the Ministry of Justice AI & Data Science Ethics Framework. These processes consider a wider range of ethical, legal and data protection issues including the potential implications for individuals of being included within, or excluded from, linked datasets.

Defibrillators in police vehicles

19th International Day of Democracy

Found: Samantha Niblett (Labour; South Derbyshire) Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat; Henley and Thame) Martin Wrigley