Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many incidents relating to deer management required an armed response from police officers in the year 2023-24.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not hold any data on the number of incidents related to deer management reported by police forces, or how many required an armed police response.
While the Home Office does collect and publish annual statistics on the number of police firearms operations, the data excludes operations involving discharges for animal destruction and does not include any details of the nature of the incidents.
The latest available data for the year ending 31 March 2025 can be accessed at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-use-of-firearms-statistics-april-2024-to-march-2025
Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many incidents relating to deer management were reported by police forces in 2023-24.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not hold any data on the number of incidents related to deer management reported by police forces, or how many required an armed police response.
While the Home Office does collect and publish annual statistics on the number of police firearms operations, the data excludes operations involving discharges for animal destruction and does not include any details of the nature of the incidents.
The latest available data for the year ending 31 March 2025 can be accessed at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-use-of-firearms-statistics-april-2024-to-march-2025
Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department plans to streamline the deer management night licensing regime.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra provides a wide range of support to help landowners and managers tackle deer impacts on woodlands. This includes grants for managing their impacts and for capital items, as well as funding of relevant projects, including those that facilitate landscape scale action.
A dedicated Forestry Commission team of Deer Officers is in place, providing nationwide advice, facilitating grant support and encouraging landscape scale collaborative management.
Natural England are leading the Sussex Woods Protected Sites Strategy pilot, focused on reducing deer impacts on protected woodlands, which includes supporting landowners and managers to work together at scale to manage deer impacts.
We are considering plans for further action on deer impacts management and will outline these, including any implications for the existing regime for the licensing of managing deer at night, in due course.
Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to incentivise deer management by local landowners at a landscape scale.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra provides a wide range of support to help landowners and managers tackle deer impacts on woodlands. This includes grants for managing their impacts and for capital items, as well as funding of relevant projects, including those that facilitate landscape scale action.
A dedicated Forestry Commission team of Deer Officers is in place, providing nationwide advice, facilitating grant support and encouraging landscape scale collaborative management.
Natural England are leading the Sussex Woods Protected Sites Strategy pilot, focused on reducing deer impacts on protected woodlands, which includes supporting landowners and managers to work together at scale to manage deer impacts.
We are considering plans for further action on deer impacts management and will outline these, including any implications for the existing regime for the licensing of managing deer at night, in due course.
Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of a deer management strategy.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra provides a wide range of support to help landowners and managers tackle deer impacts on woodlands. This includes grants for managing their impacts and for capital items, as well as funding of relevant projects, including those that facilitate landscape scale action.
A dedicated Forestry Commission team of Deer Officers is in place, providing nationwide advice, facilitating grant support and encouraging landscape scale collaborative management.
Natural England are leading the Sussex Woods Protected Sites Strategy pilot, focused on reducing deer impacts on protected woodlands, which includes supporting landowners and managers to work together at scale to manage deer impacts.
We are considering plans for further action on deer impacts management and will outline these, including any implications for the existing regime for the licensing of managing deer at night, in due course.
Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of developing a proxy measure for early diagnosis in blood cancer, in the absence of staging information.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department continues to support the National Health Service to diagnose and treat cancer as early and fast as possible. There have been improvements in the prognosis of blood cancer patients, with patients now living twice as long. However, we recognise that because of the damaged NHS this Government inherited, patients with cancers with non-specific symptoms such as blood cancer, are waiting too long for diagnosis and subsequent treatment.
There are no current plans to introduce a specific proxy staging measure or a corresponding national target to support the earlier diagnosis of blood cancers. However, the Department will continue to engage with blood cancer charities and key stakeholders to determine how to support the best outcomes for blood cancer patients.
At this time no current assessment has been made on the potential merits of a proxy measure for early diagnosis in unstageable blood cancers. However, we remain committed to making improvements across different cancer types and reducing disparities in cancer survival. Early cancer diagnosis is also a specific priority within the NHS’s wider Core20Plus5 approach to reducing healthcare inequalities. The NHS currently track early diagnosis in stageable blood cancers by combining the percentage of diagnoses within stage 1 or 2, as it would for any other stageable cancer.
Furthermore, to tackle late, emergency setting diagnoses of blood cancers, the NHS is implementing non-specific symptom (NSS) pathways for patients who present with symptoms such as weight loss and fatigue, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. There are currently 115 NSS services operating in England with blood cancers being one of the most common cancer types diagnosed through these pathways.
The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS), through the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Services, collects information on how many people in England have cancer. Blood cancer is included as a distinct category, labelled haematological neoplasms. The NDRS website also shows the number of people treated for different tumour types by treatment type, as well as survival rates, mortality rates, and data on urgent suspected cancer referrals. Further information is available at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/ndrs/data/data-outputs/cancer-data-hub
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on improving outcomes for cancer patients in England, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment. It will ensure patients, including those with blood cancer, have timely access to the latest treatments and technology.
Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what metrics are used to track early diagnosis in blood cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department continues to support the National Health Service to diagnose and treat cancer as early and fast as possible. There have been improvements in the prognosis of blood cancer patients, with patients now living twice as long. However, we recognise that because of the damaged NHS this Government inherited, patients with cancers with non-specific symptoms such as blood cancer, are waiting too long for diagnosis and subsequent treatment.
There are no current plans to introduce a specific proxy staging measure or a corresponding national target to support the earlier diagnosis of blood cancers. However, the Department will continue to engage with blood cancer charities and key stakeholders to determine how to support the best outcomes for blood cancer patients.
At this time no current assessment has been made on the potential merits of a proxy measure for early diagnosis in unstageable blood cancers. However, we remain committed to making improvements across different cancer types and reducing disparities in cancer survival. Early cancer diagnosis is also a specific priority within the NHS’s wider Core20Plus5 approach to reducing healthcare inequalities. The NHS currently track early diagnosis in stageable blood cancers by combining the percentage of diagnoses within stage 1 or 2, as it would for any other stageable cancer.
Furthermore, to tackle late, emergency setting diagnoses of blood cancers, the NHS is implementing non-specific symptom (NSS) pathways for patients who present with symptoms such as weight loss and fatigue, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. There are currently 115 NSS services operating in England with blood cancers being one of the most common cancer types diagnosed through these pathways.
The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS), through the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Services, collects information on how many people in England have cancer. Blood cancer is included as a distinct category, labelled haematological neoplasms. The NDRS website also shows the number of people treated for different tumour types by treatment type, as well as survival rates, mortality rates, and data on urgent suspected cancer referrals. Further information is available at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/ndrs/data/data-outputs/cancer-data-hub
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on improving outcomes for cancer patients in England, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment. It will ensure patients, including those with blood cancer, have timely access to the latest treatments and technology.
Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 11 June 2025 to Question 56079 on Agriculture: Land Use, what proportion of the 50% of land with solar panels that is still being used for agricultural production is being used for livestock grazing.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The statistics are based on results from the annual Defra June Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture. The specific survey category was “Area of solar panels on land also used for grazing or agricultural production” but no breakdowns of the type of production were collected and are therefore not available.
Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 11 June 2025 to Question 56079 on Agriculture: Land Use, what the breakdown in the type of agricultural production on the 50% of land with solar panels which is used for agricultural production is.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The statistics are based on results from the annual Defra June Survey of Agriculture and Horticulture. The specific survey category was “Area of solar panels on land also used for grazing or agricultural production” but no breakdowns of the type of production were collected and are therefore not available.
Asked by: Sarah Bool (Conservative - South Northamptonshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many appointments to ministerial private offices since July 2024 have been made by civil service recruitment principles exceptions including the transfer of civil servants from other departments who were appointed by exceptions without open and fair competition.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has made one appointment to ministerial private offices since July 2024 to 4 September 2025 by exception to the Civil Service recruitment principles.