Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of providing longer term funding for violence reduction units, beyond the current one year settlement.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Crime prevention is key to the government’s Safer Streets mission and ambition to halve knife crime. Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) play an important role by uniting local partners to collectively identify and address the underlying drivers of serious violence within their communities.
This financial year (2025/26), we have allocated £47m to a network of 20 VRUs, in the areas experiencing the most severe challenges, to support their valuable work. In addition, we have provided further funding to enable the roll out of Young Futures Panels in the first year of their establishment.
The most recently published independent evaluation demonstrates that VRUs, in combination with additional hotspot police patrols, are reducing hospital admissions, with a clear impact on their target cohort of young people under 25. There were statistically significant reductions in hospital admissions for violence amongst this age group. In addition, VRUs continue to demonstrate progress and show signs of maturing and becoming embedded in local responses to prevent violence.
Allocations decisions on Violence Reduction Units and the wider policing system will be finalised early this year.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of central Government funding for Violence Reduction Units.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Crime prevention is key to the government’s Safer Streets mission and ambition to halve knife crime. Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) play an important role by uniting local partners to collectively identify and address the underlying drivers of serious violence within their communities.
This financial year (2025/26), we have allocated £47m to a network of 20 VRUs, in the areas experiencing the most severe challenges, to support their valuable work. In addition, we have provided further funding to enable the roll out of Young Futures Panels in the first year of their establishment.
The most recently published independent evaluation demonstrates that VRUs, in combination with additional hotspot police patrols, are reducing hospital admissions, with a clear impact on their target cohort of young people under 25. There were statistically significant reductions in hospital admissions for violence amongst this age group. In addition, VRUs continue to demonstrate progress and show signs of maturing and becoming embedded in local responses to prevent violence.
Allocations decisions on Violence Reduction Units and the wider policing system will be finalised early this year.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of Violence Reduction Units in reducing youth violence.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Crime prevention is key to the government’s Safer Streets mission and ambition to halve knife crime. Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) play an important role by uniting local partners to collectively identify and address the underlying drivers of serious violence within their communities.
This financial year (2025/26), we have allocated £47m to a network of 20 VRUs, in the areas experiencing the most severe challenges, to support their valuable work. In addition, we have provided further funding to enable the roll out of Young Futures Panels in the first year of their establishment.
The most recently published independent evaluation demonstrates that VRUs, in combination with additional hotspot police patrols, are reducing hospital admissions, with a clear impact on their target cohort of young people under 25. There were statistically significant reductions in hospital admissions for violence amongst this age group. In addition, VRUs continue to demonstrate progress and show signs of maturing and becoming embedded in local responses to prevent violence.
Allocations decisions on Violence Reduction Units and the wider policing system will be finalised early this year.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when her Department will announce funding arrangements for Violence Reduction Units for future financial years.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Crime prevention is key to the government’s Safer Streets mission and ambition to halve knife crime. Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) play an important role by uniting local partners to collectively identify and address the underlying drivers of serious violence within their communities.
This financial year (2025/26), we have allocated £47m to a network of 20 VRUs, in the areas experiencing the most severe challenges, to support their valuable work. In addition, we have provided further funding to enable the roll out of Young Futures Panels in the first year of their establishment.
The most recently published independent evaluation demonstrates that VRUs, in combination with additional hotspot police patrols, are reducing hospital admissions, with a clear impact on their target cohort of young people under 25. There were statistically significant reductions in hospital admissions for violence amongst this age group. In addition, VRUs continue to demonstrate progress and show signs of maturing and becoming embedded in local responses to prevent violence.
Allocations decisions on Violence Reduction Units and the wider policing system will be finalised early this year.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to introduce a funded programme of national CPD to build teacher confidence in delivering Citizenship education.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department recognises the importance of providing schools with the tools they need to deliver high quality teaching.
Oak Academy draws expertise from the best in the sector and shares it with teachers. Its curriculum partners include high performing school trusts, subject associations, education charities, publishers and universities. All resources are openly licensed and free for anyone to use and adapt.
The Educate Against Hate website has a range of resources to support education staff, governors and parents in protecting children from radicalisation and building their resilience to extremism.
National Professional Qualifications (NPQs) are part of a wider evidence-based national continuing professional development offer available to teachers throughout their career. This begins with initial teacher training through to the implementation of an early career framework-based induction for early career teachers and NPQs for more experienced education professionals.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment her Department has made of the projected financial impact of the new 12% premium insurance rate for Motability leases on (a) Motability users and (b) the car industry.
Answered by Lucy Rigby - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
At Budget 2025, the government announced tax changes to the Motability scheme, which will save over £1 billion over the next five years.
The VAT relief for top-up payments made to lease more expensive vehicles will be removed for new leases from 1 July 2026, and Insurance Premium Tax will apply at the standard rate to new insurance contracts on the Scheme from 1 July 2026. The tax changes will not apply to vehicles designed, or substantially and permanently adapted, for wheelchair or stretcher users.
These tax changes ensure Motability can continue to deliver for its customers, for example through the continued provision of a broad range of vehicle models available without any top-up payments. Further detail on the impacts of the tax changes can be found in the Tax Impact and Information Note here:
Motability Scheme: reforming tax reliefs - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 17 November 2025 to Question 91415 on Citizenship: Teachers, what steps she is taking to train and support teachers to teach citizenship as a national curriculum subject at Key Stages 1 and 2; and if she plans to fund additional training routes to help meet this need.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Work is underway to deliver a new curriculum and assessment system, including Programmes of Study for citizenship at key stages 1 and 2. Working closely with the sector, we are working towards a first teaching of the new curriculum from September 2028.
Proposals will be consulted on from 2026 to ensure that we are capturing the important views from those most impacted. This will inform decisions about teacher training to support implementation. We will provide time for familiarisation and high quality digital resources through Oak National Academy (Oak).
Oak draws expertise from the best in the sector and shares it with teachers. Its curriculum partners include high performing school trusts, subject associations, education charities, publishers and universities. All resources are openly licensed and free for anyone to use and adapt.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 17 November 2025 to Question 91414 on Citizenship: Teaching, what method her Department uses to assess whether citizenship is a shortage subject in schools in the absence of subject-specific data.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The Teacher Workforce Model (TWM) is used each to year estimate required number of teachers, which the department then uses to calculate the number of trainees needed. This includes those on postgraduate initial teacher training (PGITT), which is the largest source of new trainees. Required PGITT trainee numbers and actual numbers of PGITT trainees are published annually.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what recent progress his Department has made towards publishing the details of the Warm Homes Plan.
Answered by Martin McCluskey - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
We are working across Government on a comprehensive Warm Homes Plan to cut energy bills for good, we will publish more details soon.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what recent progress his Department has made towards publishing the details of how funding will be allocated to different schemes under the Warm Homes Plan.
Answered by Martin McCluskey - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
We are working across government on a comprehensive Warm Homes Plan to cut energy bills for good.
At almost £15 billion, the Warm Homes Plan is the single biggest public investment programme in energy efficiency in UK history. This includes £1.5 billion increased capital in this Budget to support driving forwards with home upgrades.