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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to protect the domestic beet sugar industry from (a) tariff and (b) non-tariff barriers.

Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The Government has made clear commitments to uphold our standards in trade deals and protect our sensitive sectors. The recently agreed trade agreement with India will fully exclude sugar from the UK's tariff reductions. We will continue to do what is right for the UK sugar sector in our trade policy.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what estimate his Department has made of the number of (a) manufactured components and (b) raw materials imported from China for the domestic production of electric vehicles in the last five years.

Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)

Over the last five years the UK has, on average, annually imported China-origin goods worth a) £1.9bn of components (automotive parts, batteries, and motors) and b) £9.7m of minerals that are typically used for batteries and traction motors. These imports may have been used for non automotive uses. The Department does not have the precise value that went into UK automotive production. This information is commercial and therefore can only be provided by individual companies.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Child Maintenance Service in reaching targets set under its service level standards in each year since 2020.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) has four official Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), each with a standard measure for 1) assessment accuracy, 2) application clearances, 3) change of circumstances clearances and 4) Collect and Pay compliance.

Information on the accuracy of CMS assessments, which has a standard level of >99%, is published in the annual CMS Client Funds Account, and since 2020 has shown a consistent level of 99.4%, increasing for the latest year available (2023/24) to 99.5% .

The published quarterly CMS statistics provide information on application clearances, change of circumstances clearances and Collect and Pay compliance, with the latest data available for quarter ending December 2024, and these are shown in the table below.

Quarterly Child Maintenance Service Key Performance Indicators for Applications, Change of Circumstances and Collect & Pay Compliance, April 2020 to December 2024

Source: CMS statistics, Stat-Xplore

Notes:

1. [x] denotes that figures for the most recent quarter will not be available until the next publication.
2. Application clearance figures are available in Table 1 of the latest CMS National tables.
3. Change of circumstances clearance figures are available in Table 8 of the latest CMS National tables.
4. Collect and Pay compliance figures are calculated using the CMS Paying Parents dataset on Stat-Xplore and are reported in the ‘Paying Parents and the Collect and Pay service’ section of each quarterly bulletin.
5. During the quarter ending June 2020, the Child Maintenance Service was affected by the COVID-19 outbreak and the resultant changes to the Department’s operational priorities. During this period, new applications to Child Maintenance Service will have experienced a reduced level of service and will have been provided with an indicative calculation of maintenance only, which is not considered a clearance for this table. In addition, the COVID-19 outbreak may have reduced the demand for new Child Service Maintenance arrangements. This also means that only priority changes of circumstance would have been progressed during this period.

Since 2020, as part of the DWP Service Modernisation Programme, the CMS has been undergoing extensive improvements to increase the quality and range of online services available to separated parents. This program has transformed how customers can interact with CMS, providing them with the choice to make contact through digital routes while ensuring that assistance is available for those who need additional support and non-digital customers via the telephone service. These improvements have allowed case workers to focus more on actioning their work. The wide-reaching programme aims to continue to reform and modernise CMS services with increased effectiveness and efficiency.

Additionally, the CMS has amended its service to allow Direct Pay arrangements to quickly move to Collect and Pay when the Paying Parent is not paying or when Direct Pay is no longer appropriate. 14,000 arrangements moved from Direct Pay to Collect and Pay in the quarter ending December 2024 meaning CMS are collecting money for children quicker.

In the quarter ending December 2024, over 1 million children were covered by CMS arrangements, an increase of 61,000 from the quarter ending December 2023.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps his Department is taking to enable parents the right to access their deceased child’s social media data.

Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

The government is committed to ensuring families feel that the system is on their side when tragedies happen. In these cases, the Online Safety Act provides for Ofcom to require information from services on a child’s online activity at a coroner’s request. To strengthen this, the Data (Use and Access) Bill seeks to establish a data preservation process requiring companies to preserve such relevant information at a coroner’s request.

The Online Safety Act will also require categorised services to be transparent with parents regarding a company’s data disclosure processes, following the death of a child.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, which companies supply police ICT systems; and how many (a) contracts have been awarded to and (b) systems are managed by each company.

Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office does not centrally collect all of the information requested. Obtaining and verifying this information for the purposes of answering these questions could only be done at disproportionate cost.

However, the Hon Member may be interested to read the Home Secretary's speech to the National Police Chiefs' Council and Association of Police and Crime Commissioners' annual conference on 19 November 2024, where she set out her vision on police reform and efficiency, including the potential savings to be achieved through greater collaboration on IT contracts. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/home-secretarys-vision-for-police-reform

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, which companies supplied police ICT systems in each year since 2010; and what the value of contracts awarded to those companies was.

Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office does not centrally collect all of the information requested. Obtaining and verifying this information for the purposes of answering these questions could only be done at disproportionate cost.

However, the Hon Member may be interested to read the Home Secretary's speech to the National Police Chiefs' Council and Association of Police and Crime Commissioners' annual conference on 19 November 2024, where she set out her vision on police reform and efficiency, including the potential savings to be achieved through greater collaboration on IT contracts. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/home-secretarys-vision-for-police-reform

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many different suppliers there are for ICT systems used across police forces in England and Wales.

Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office does not centrally collect all of the information requested. Obtaining and verifying this information for the purposes of answering these questions could only be done at disproportionate cost.

However, the Hon Member may be interested to read the Home Secretary's speech to the National Police Chiefs' Council and Association of Police and Crime Commissioners' annual conference on 19 November 2024, where she set out her vision on police reform and efficiency, including the potential savings to be achieved through greater collaboration on IT contracts. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/home-secretarys-vision-for-police-reform

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many ICT systems are used across police forces in England and Wales.

Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office does not centrally collect all of the information requested. Obtaining and verifying this information for the purposes of answering these questions could only be done at disproportionate cost.

However, the Hon Member may be interested to read the Home Secretary's speech to the National Police Chiefs' Council and Association of Police and Crime Commissioners' annual conference on 19 November 2024, where she set out her vision on police reform and efficiency, including the potential savings to be achieved through greater collaboration on IT contracts. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/home-secretarys-vision-for-police-reform

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what representations she has received from schools on the adequacy of funding for the breakfast clubs early adopters scheme.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The department had over 3,000 schools apply to be part of the early adopter scheme, so as expected there has been some movement in the schools taking part as we finalised the 750 running from April, but that has been minimal.

The list of schools taking part in the breakfast clubs early adopter scheme can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/breakfast-clubs-early-adopters-schools-in-the-scheme.

The department has used existing programmes and costs to determine the funding rates, and this has been tested and refined with a range of schools. We are confident that the total funding will enable schools to meet the minimum expectations, which is a 30-minute club with breakfast meeting the school food standards, based on existing provision operating in schools.

One function of the early adopters is to test how schools utilise the funding, and the department has a robust strategy to capture and analyse this data. Decisions about the overall budget envelope for breakfast clubs national rollout is subject to the next spending review.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, which early adopter schools have opted out of the free breakfast club pilot programme.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The department had over 3,000 schools apply to be part of the early adopter scheme, so as expected there has been some movement in the schools taking part as we finalised the 750 running from April, but that has been minimal.

The list of schools taking part in the breakfast clubs early adopter scheme can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/breakfast-clubs-early-adopters-schools-in-the-scheme.

The department has used existing programmes and costs to determine the funding rates, and this has been tested and refined with a range of schools. We are confident that the total funding will enable schools to meet the minimum expectations, which is a 30-minute club with breakfast meeting the school food standards, based on existing provision operating in schools.

One function of the early adopters is to test how schools utilise the funding, and the department has a robust strategy to capture and analyse this data. Decisions about the overall budget envelope for breakfast clubs national rollout is subject to the next spending review.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to tackle antisemitism in universities.

Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

This government is deeply concerned about the continued, unacceptably high, prevalence of antisemitism in universities. We have confirmed £7 million in funding to address antisemitism in education, and the Office for Students will be introducing a new registration condition from August that will require universities to act against all forms of harassment, including antisemitism.

Furthermore, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education will soon host a round table with leading vice-chancellors from across the country to discuss what more can be done collectively, and at all levels, to make our universities a safe and inclusive environment for all.

Found: _NC39 David Simmonds Joy Morrissey Nick Timothy .

Found: _NC39 David Simmonds Joy Morrissey Nick Timothy .

Found: _NC39 David Simmonds Joy Morrissey Nick Timothy ★.