Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how (a) temporary accommodation use and (b) all forms of homelessness were factored into assessments of levels of need in the Fair Funding review of local authority needs.

Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

The government has set out our proposal for consolidating funding across all forms of homelessness, through the first multi-year settlement in a decade, in the Fair Funding Review 2.0 consultation on gov.uk here.

The Fair Funding Review 2.0 includes proposals to roll funding for Temporary Accommodation, currently part of Homelessness Prevention Grant, into the Local Government Finance Settlement Revenue Support Grant and the creation of a consolidated Homelessness & Rough Sleeping Grant thematic pot.

Taking this approach of separating out temporary accommodation funding will end the current tension that forces local authorities to choose between investment in prevention and meeting current temporary accommodation costs, creating dedicated ringfenced funds for the prevention of homelessness and rough sleeping.

This follows the government’s consultation on the Homelessness Prevention Grant. You can read the response to this consultation on gov.uk here.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when her Department plans to launch its consultation on changes to indefinite leave to remain for Hong Kong British National (Overseas) visa holders; and how long her Department expects to run that consultation for.

Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

The Government is committed to supporting members of the Hong Kong community who have relocated to the UK and those who may come here in future.

I welcomed the opportunity to listen to the views of Members around these subjects in the recent 8th September Westminster Hall Debate on settlement.

We will be consulting on the earned settlement scheme later this year, and the length of the consultation will be announced at that point. All will be welcome to participate. We will provide details of how the scheme will work after that consultation.

We regularly engage with representatives of the Hong Kong diaspora in the UK on issues related to the BN(O) visa and will continue to do so.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of exempting people with experience of transnational suppression from proposals to increase the qualifying time for Indefinite Leave to Remain to ten years.

Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

We will be consulting on the earned settlement scheme later this year. All will be welcome to participate. We will provide details of how the scheme will work after that consultation.

Any attempt by any foreign power to intimidate, harass or harm individuals or communities in the UK will not be tolerated.

Wherever we identify such threats, we will use all measures, including through our world-class intelligence services, to mitigate risk to individuals, and we will continue to ensure that robust systems are in place to detect, deter and counter such activity.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will consider the potential merits of reintroducing health in pregnancy grants to support early years development.

Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Children’s early years are crucial to their development, health, and life chances. This is why the Government offers financial support to families with young children on low incomes through the Healthy Start scheme and the Sure Start Maternity Grant (SSMG). The SSMG is a one-off £500 grant payment intended to help with the costs of having a newborn or adopted baby. Eligibility for SSMG is set out on the GOV.UK website, at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/sure-start-maternity-grant/eligibility

Healthy Start is a demand-led, statutory scheme that aims to support young families in the greatest need to buy healthy food. We recently announced in the 10-Year Health Plan that we will uplift the value of weekly payments by 10%.

The move to a Neighbourhood Health Service, as described in the 10-Year Health Plan, and the Best Start in Life Strategy, will further improve support for families, so that every child has the healthiest possible start in life. Building on the £126 million funding boost for the Family Hubs and Start for Life Programme in 2025/26, Best Start Family Hubs will be rolled out to every local authority from April 2026.

Alongside improving services for all families, tackling child poverty is an urgent priority for the Government. A Ministerial Taskforce is exploring all available levers to drive forward short and long-term action across the Government to reduce child poverty and is working to publish the Child Poverty Strategy.

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what plans he has to ensure (a) Rt hon. and hon. Members and (b) other elected representatives are held to account for (i) misleading the public and (ii) repeating inaccurate information.

Answered by Nick Thomas-Symonds - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office

Honesty is one of the Seven Principles of Public Life, which form the ethical basis of officeholders' standards in public life. All officeholders, including MPs and other elected representatives, have a responsibility to provide accurate information to the public.

For MPs, the Seven Principles are enshrined in the Commons Code of Conduct. The House has mechanisms available to ensure MPs uphold these standards, and individual MPs are directly accountable to their constituents.

Regarding locally elected representatives, the Government launched a consultation seeking views on proposed measures to strengthen the standards framework for local authorities in England in December 2024. The Government's response will be issued in due course.

In addition, the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, introduced on 16th September, contains an offence of misleading the public. This applies where a public authority or public official acts with the intention of misleading the public (or is reckless as to that possibility) and they know, or ought to know, that their act is seriously improper. The definition of ‘public official’ for this purpose includes ministers.

Found: Neil Coyle (Lab) and Gregory Stafford (Con) called for the amendment to be retained.51 However, Sojan