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 continuity of care for people with drug treatment needs on release from prison, including ensuring effective links between prison and community drug treatment services.

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

Everyone who has drug and/or alcohol treatment needs is assessed in prison and offered a referral to a treatment or recovery service on release. The Department works closely with national partners and with local authorities to improve continuity of care between prison and community drug and alcohol treatment systems. To support this, the Department has published a continuity of care self-assessment toolkit, and shares actionable data and good practice with drug and alcohol partnerships on a regular basis. The continuity of care self-assessment toolkit is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/continuity-of-care-from-prison-to-community-self-assessment-tool

This work has enabled more people than ever to receive the treatment they need following their release from prison. The proportion of adults released from prison and successfully starting community treatment within three weeks of release was 53% in 2023 to 2024. This is a 10% increase from the proportion reported in 2022 to 2023, at 43%, and is 23% higher than when this data was first reported in 2015 to 2016, at 30%.

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 provide sustainable funding for grassroots men’s mental health initiatives.

Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department currently has no plans to provide funding for grassroots men’s mental health initiatives.

More widely, the 10-Year Health Plan sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country, including for men. This includes transforming mental health services into 24/7 neighbourhood mental health centres, improving assertive outreach, expanding talking therapies, and giving patients better access to 24/7 support directly through the NHS App.

The Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, published in 2023, identifies middle aged men as a priority group for targeted and tailored support at a national level.

On 19 November, to coincide with International Men’s Health Day, we published the Men’s Health Strategy. The strategy includes tangible actions to improve access to healthcare, provide the right support to enable men to make healthier choices, develop healthy living and working conditions, foster strong social, community and family networks, and address societal norms. It also considers how to prevent and tackle the biggest health problems affecting men of all ages, which include mental health and suicide prevention, respiratory illness, prostate cancer, and heart disease.

Through the Men’s Health Strategy, we are launching a groundbreaking partnership with the Premier League to tackle male suicide and improve mental health literacy, by embedding health messaging into the matchday experience.

We also announced the Suicide Prevention Support Pathfinders programme for middle-aged men. This program will invest up to £3.6 million over three years in areas of England where middle-aged men are at most risk taking their own lives and will tackle the barriers that they face in seeking support.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve access to mental health services, particularly for young people and those in rural areas.

Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

We know that too many children and young people are not receiving the mental health care they need, including young people living in rural communities. For 2025/26, mental health spending is forecast to amount to £15.6 billion. This represents a significant uplift of £688 million in real terms spending on mental health compared to the previous financial year.

As part of our mission to build a National Health Service that is fit for the future and that is there when people need it, the Government is recruiting an additional 8,500 mental health workers by the end of this Parliament.

Additionally, approximately six in ten pupils will have access to a mental health support team by March 2026, which equates to approximately six million pupils and further education learners. Rollout will be prioritised based on NHS identification of local need and reaching the most vulnerable children first. We are accelerating the rollout of mental health support teams to achieve full national coverage by 2029.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of volunteer-led men’s mental health groups on mental wellbeing and NHS services.

Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department has not made an assessment of the potential impact of volunteer-led men’s mental health groups on mental wellbeing and National Health Services.

More widely, the 10-Year Health Plan sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country, including for men. This includes transforming mental health services into 24/7 neighbourhood mental health centres, improving assertive outreach, expanding talking therapies, and giving patients better access to 24/7 support directly through the NHS App.

The Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, published in 2023, identifies middle aged men as a priority group for targeted and tailored support at a national level.

On 19 November, to coincide with International Men’s Health Day, we published the Men’s Health Strategy. The strategy includes tangible actions to improve access to healthcare, provide the right support to enable men to make healthier choices, develop healthy living and working conditions, foster strong social, community and family networks, and address societal norms. It also considers how to prevent and tackle the biggest health problems affecting men of all ages, which include mental health and suicide prevention, respiratory illness, prostate cancer, and heart disease.

Through the Men’s Health Strategy, we are launching a groundbreaking partnership with the Premier League to tackle male suicide and improve mental health literacy, by embedding health messaging into the matchday experience.

We also announced the Suicide Prevention Support Pathfinders programme for middle-aged men. This program will invest up to £3.6 million over three years in areas of England where middle-aged men are at most risk taking their own lives and will tackle the barriers that they face in seeking support.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help protect children from AI-generated abuse online.

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

The Government recognises the serious and evolving threat posed by artificial intelligence being misused to create child sexual abuse material. We have taken world-leading action to address this risk.

AI-generated child sexual abuse material is not a victimless crime. The material often includes depictions of real children, escalating the risk of contact abuse. The volume and realism of this material can make it increasingly challenging for safeguarding partners to identify and protect children. Offenders can also use these images to groom and blackmail children.

Working in partnership with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Alan Turing Institute, and the Accelerated Capability Environment, the Home Office has led the Deepfake Detection Challenge. This initiative brought together experts and stakeholders to develop and evaluate detection tools, which are essential in addressing serious harms including online child sexual abuse. As offenders increasingly exploit AI, we must harness its potential for good.

A key outcome has been the creation of a UK Government Benchmarking capability which enables scientific evaluation of detection technologies, offering data to support informed procurement decisions for the most effective solutions. The next phase will continue to identify and benchmark AI-driven solutions.

Through the Crime and Policing Bill, we are introducing specific offences to make it illegal to possess, create, or distribute AI tools designed to generate child sexual abuse material, as well as so-called “paedophile manuals” that instruct offenders on how to exploit AI for abuse. These offences carry penalties of up to five years’ imprisonment for AI tools and up to three years for manuals.

We have recently announced a further amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to empower authorised bodies- including AI developers and child protection organisations- to scrutinise AI systems to prevent them generating harmful content. This will help to improve safeguards within AI models to prevent them being misused to create child abuse material.

Where AI models fall under the Online Safety Act as a user-to-user service or an online search provider, companies are required to provide highly effective age assurance to protect children from exposure to harmful or inappropriate content.

We recognise there are concerns about AI chatbots, or AI companions, and the risks of harm to children these may pose. At the recent Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, we confirmed that we are considering if all AI chatbots are covered by the Online Safety Act and what more may need to be done. If it requires legislation, then this is what we will do.

We have been clear as a government that our steps so far with the Online Safety Act are the foundation for a safer online experience for children. But it is not the end of the conversation.

The UKG will also be supporting to host an event in the new year with the NSPCC focusing on children and AI.

Our approach combines robust legislation, proactive technology safeguards, and international cooperation to keep children safe online and we will not hesitate to go further.

Found: the Codex Coner, a volume of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian drawings, by Professor Paul Davies

Found: Paul Davies MS Welsh ConservativesSenedd Cymru (Member Accountability and Elections) Bill: Stage 1 report

<p>Question 8, finally, Paul Davies.</p>

<p>I thank Paul Davies for that. I agree with him that all parts of Wales will want to benefit from that returned investment—an investment that is now, as it should have been all along, in the hands of this Senedd to determine. I know that my colleague Rebecca Evans is working very hard with local government interests and others to ensure a transition between current arrangements and the arrangements we will want to put in place in Wales in the future. That is quite a challenging pathway, because many local authorities have existing commitments that they will want to complete. In the longer term, the programme and prospectus that the Welsh Government sees for the local growth fund is that it will have a regional as well as a local impact, and that it will involve <span style="text-decoration: underline;">a wider set of partners</span></p>

<p>I thank Paul Davies, Llywydd, for that. The impact of the UK autumn budget will be felt throughout Pembrokeshire in its reductions in child poverty, increases in state pensions, improvements to the minimum wage and the national living wage. A continued commitment in that budget to renewable energy investment is also of key importance to Pembrokeshire people.</p>

<p>Diolch yn fawr, Paul Davies.&nbsp;You are right: support for business is crucial, and it’s a key priority of this Welsh Government. You have just heard from the First Minister about the level of non-domestic rates. It is important there is a transitional relief scheme. I’m sure many of us were out—I think this was raised only last week—on Small Business Saturday, of course, recognising that it is also about our habits, our custom: shop local, which I certainly do in my town of Barry. But it is very clear that we are already boosting our businesses, and indeed it’s not just the Welsh Government playing a part in that, but also local government as well.</p>