Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Glastonbury and Somerton)
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 relative cost benefit of attenuation ponds compared with repeated flood damage to (a) properties, (b) infrastructure and (c) agricultural land.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Attenuation ponds are deployed by Risk Management Authorities as a flood alleviation measure; they are determined by a range of factors including cost to benefit ratio and the standard of protection that can be achieved. In recent years, the highway sector has been innovative in its use of sustainable drainage and green infrastructure to help manage road flooding.
A new three-year £4.2 billion Flood and Coastal Risk Investment Programme will start in April 2026, where new projects will align with the strategic objectives set out in the Government’s new funding rules announced in October 2025. This means investment goes where it is most needed, accounting for flood risk, value for money, natural flood management opportunity and additional contributions to make Government investment go further. This investment will benefit properties, infrastructure and agriculture.
The Government and the Environment Agency are committed to improving England’s picture of flood and coastal erosion risk, including from surface water. The Environment Agency published its new National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA) data in 2025.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
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 (a) diagnosis, (b) treatment and (c) ongoing care for patients with endometriosis.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to prioritising women’s health, including endometriosis diagnosis, treatment, and ongoing care. It is unacceptable that women can wait so long for an endometriosis diagnosis, and we have already taken action to address this.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) updated their guideline on endometriosis in November 2024 to make firmer recommendations on referral and investigations, and this will help women receive a diagnosis and effective treatment faster.
Research has led to new treatments being made available, including the NICE approval of two pills to treat endometriosis this year, namely Relugolix and Linzagolix. Both are estimated to help approximately 1,000 women with severe endometriosis for whom other treatment options haven’t been effective.
Through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), the Department has commissioned several studies focused on endometriosis diagnosis, treatment, and patient experience. At present, the NIHR is funding five active research awards into endometriosis totalling an investment of approximately £5.5 million. A further £2.3 million award on the effectiveness of pain management for endometriosis is due to commence in March 2026.
We are expanding the number of dedicated and protected surgical hubs, of which gynaecology procedures are a key offering.
As announced in September, we will establish an “online hospital”, NHS Online, which will give people on certain pathways the choice of getting the specialist care they need from their home. Menstrual problems that may be a sign of several conditions, including endometriosis, will be among the conditions available for referral to NHS Online from 2027.
NHS England is also updating the service specification for severe endometriosis which is due to be published in due course. This will improve the standards of care for women with severe endometriosis by ensuring specialist endometriosis services have access to the most up-to-date evidence and advice.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to help ensure the guidance on endometriosis published by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is effectively implemented.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government acknowledges the challenges faced by women with endometriosis and the impact it has on their lives, their relationships, and their participation in education and the workforce.
We are committed to improving the diagnosis, treatment, and ongoing care for gynaecological conditions including endometriosis, and we have already taken action to address this.
In November 2024, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) updated its guideline on the diagnosis and management of endometriosis. The guideline, Endometriosis: diagnosis and management, aims to raise awareness of endometriosis symptoms, and to provide clear advice on referral, diagnosis, and the range of treatments available.
NICE will be working with National Health Service systems to ensure adoption of this best practice endometriosis care, including access to approved medicines.
NHS England encourages adherence to guidance publications by NICE. However, professionals and practitioners are expected to exercise their judgement when taking NICE guidelines into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences, and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families, and carers or guardian.
Asked by: Lee Dillon (Liberal Democrat - Newbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to end the use of body mass index as a criterion for determining eligibility for joint replacement surgery.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is the responsibility of individual integrated care boards to determine clinical commissioning policies for their local areas, including eligibility for joint replacement surgery.
As with all surgery, body mass index (BMI) should be considered as part of a holistic, personalised perioperative evaluation of the risks versus the clinical need for joint replacement surgery of an individual patient. BMI should not be considered in isolation as a barrier to surgery.
As part of the NHS Elective Reform Plan, the Government has committed to expanding access to the NHS Digital Weight Management Programme for patients waiting for hip and knee replacements. This will help optimise patients for their surgery, potentially leading to a reduced length of hospital stay and minimising their risk of post-operative complications.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
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 changes to Indicative Action Plans and the introduction of minimum waiting times on patients with ongoing care needs, including those at risk of serious complications such as irreversible sight loss.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) have existing contractual powers to manage activity by providers, which were enhanced in 2025/26 with central support for setting and managing activity. The NHS Standard Contract includes the ability to set indicative activity plans (IAPs) to help providers and commissioners plan demand, capacity and expenditure. Activity management plans (AMPs) allow commissioners and providers to work together to manage elective activity within agreed performance and financial targets.
The setting of IAPs and AMPs must be appropriate, and the designated process needs to be followed. Commissioners’ use of IAPs and AMPs support systems to live within their means and deploy better financial discipline than previous years where systems have overspent.
The provision and use of IAPs and AMPs is designed to deliver the demand and activity levels modelled to achieve the goal of at least 65% of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks for treatment by March 2026 whilst living within financial budgets set for 2025/26.
Any planning assumptions based on waiting times need to support commissioners’ overall duties to the populations they serve and our waiting time targets, including our commitment to return to the 18-week standard. NHS England have worked with commissioners to ensure services are not planned on the basis of waiting times above this standard.
While IAPs and AMPs are implemented to ensure this financial balance, all providers are expected to have their own safeguards to ensure that patients waiting for planned care are triaged, and that appointments take place according to clinical priority and the length of time patients have waited, avoiding risk of serious complications.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
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 ensure that Integrated Care Boards do not (a) implement minimum waiting times and (b) make reductions to Indicative Action Plans in ways that could risk patient harm.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) have existing contractual powers to manage activity by providers, which were enhanced in 2025/26 with central support for setting and managing activity. The NHS Standard Contract includes the ability to set indicative activity plans (IAPs) to help providers and commissioners plan demand, capacity and expenditure. Activity management plans (AMPs) allow commissioners and providers to work together to manage elective activity within agreed performance and financial targets.
The setting of IAPs and AMPs must be appropriate, and the designated process needs to be followed. Commissioners’ use of IAPs and AMPs support systems to live within their means and deploy better financial discipline than previous years where systems have overspent.
The provision and use of IAPs and AMPs is designed to deliver the demand and activity levels modelled to achieve the goal of at least 65% of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks for treatment by March 2026 whilst living within financial budgets set for 2025/26.
Any planning assumptions based on waiting times need to support commissioners’ overall duties to the populations they serve and our waiting time targets, including our commitment to return to the 18-week standard. NHS England have worked with commissioners to ensure services are not planned on the basis of waiting times above this standard.
While IAPs and AMPs are implemented to ensure this financial balance, all providers are expected to have their own safeguards to ensure that patients waiting for planned care are triaged, and that appointments take place according to clinical priority and the length of time patients have waited, avoiding risk of serious complications.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether (a) his Department and (b) NHS England has issued guidance to Integrated Care Boards on the use of minimum waiting times for elective care.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) have existing contractual powers to manage activity by providers, which were enhanced in 2025/26 with central support for setting and managing activity. The NHS Standard Contract includes the ability to set indicative activity plans (IAPs) to help providers and commissioners plan demand, capacity and expenditure. Activity management plans (AMPs) allow commissioners and providers to work together to manage elective activity within agreed performance and financial targets.
The setting of IAPs and AMPs must be appropriate, and the designated process needs to be followed. Commissioners’ use of IAPs and AMPs support systems to live within their means and deploy better financial discipline than previous years where systems have overspent.
The provision and use of IAPs and AMPs is designed to deliver the demand and activity levels modelled to achieve the goal of at least 65% of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks for treatment by March 2026 whilst living within financial budgets set for 2025/26.
Any planning assumptions based on waiting times need to support commissioners’ overall duties to the populations they serve and our waiting time targets, including our commitment to return to the 18-week standard. NHS England have worked with commissioners to ensure services are not planned on the basis of waiting times above this standard.
While IAPs and AMPs are implemented to ensure this financial balance, all providers are expected to have their own safeguards to ensure that patients waiting for planned care are triaged, and that appointments take place according to clinical priority and the length of time patients have waited, avoiding risk of serious complications.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Solicitor General, what information his Department holds on the number of people that have been prosecuted for honour-based offences broken down by (a) local authority area and (b) category of offence in each year since 2010.
Answered by Ellie Reeves - Solicitor General (Attorney General's Office)
The CPS define ‘honour’ based abuse as an incident or crime involving violence, threats of violence, intimidation coercion or abuse (including psychological, physical, sexual, financial, or emotional abuse) which has or may have been committed to protect or defend the honour of an individual, family and/ or community for alleged or perceived breaches of the family and/or community's code of behaviour. These data are accurate only to the extent that the flag is accurately applied.
Management information is available from 2010 which shows the number of prosecuted defendants flagged with the so-called honour-based abuse monitoring flag. The number of prosecuted defendants last year were at their highest level for seven years.
Table 1 (below) shows this information from 1st April 2010 to 30th September 2025, and Table 2 provides the same information by the Principal Offence Category allocated to the defendant at the conclusion of the prosecution proceeding.
Table 1 – Prosecuted defendants charged with ‘honour’ based abuse monitoring flag
| 2010- 2011 | 2011- 2012 | 2012- 2013 | 2013- 2014 | 2014- 2015 | 2015- 2016 | 2016- 2017 | 2017- 2018 | 2018- 2019 | 2019- 2020 | 2020-2021 | 2021- 2022 | 2022- 2023 | 2023- 2024 | 2024- 2025 |
Prosecutions | 234 | 172 | 200 | 206 | 225 | 182 | 171 | 127 | 72 | 61 | 53 | 76 | 68 | 80 | 95 |
Table 2 – Prosecuted defendants by principal offence category and flagged with the ‘honour’ based abuse monitoring flag
| 2010- 2011 | 2011- 2012 | 2012- 2013 | 2013- 2014 | 2014- 2015 | 2015- 2016 | 2016- 2017 | 2017- 2018 | 2018- 2019 | 2019- 2020 | 2020- 2021 | 2021- 2022 | 2022- 2023 | 2023- 2024 | 2024- 2025 |
A Homicide | 13 | 6 | 7 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
B Offences Against the Person | 152 | 119 | 121 | 154 | 183 | 143 | 146 | 93 | 64 | 45 | 45 | 58 | 61 | 65 | 84 |
C Sexual Offences | 9 | 7 | 14 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 4 |
D Burglary | 6 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
E Robbery | 9 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
F Theft and Handling | 1 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
G Fraud and Forgery | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
H Criminal Damage | 7 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 9 | 8 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
I Drugs Offences | 1 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
J Public Order Offences | 13 | 14 | 15 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 11 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
K All Other Offences (excluding Motoring) | 15 | 14 | 14 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
L Motoring Offences | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
Other (Not specified) | 8 | 9 | 14 | 4 | 8 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Data source: CPS Case Management Information System
The CPS collects data to assist in the effective management of its prosecution functions through its Case Management System (CMS). The CPS does not collect data that constitutes official statistics as defined in the Statistics and Registration Act 2007.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to ring fence fencing funding previously allocated to the Darwin Plus programme for environmental protection projects in the UK Overseas Territories.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra’s Darwin Plus programme has invested more than £64 million across nearly 400 environmental projects of benefit to the UK Overseas Territories since 2012. These include projects to increase the Territories’ resilience by responding to, mitigating and adapting to climate change and its effects on the natural environment and local communities.
An independent evaluation in 2022 found that Darwin Plus projects have reduced key threats to the Territories’ natural environments, including climate change. An impact analysis of Darwin Plus projects in 2025 has since estimated that Darwin Plus projects have:
Project applicants for Darwin Plus Local Round 6, which closed on 29 December, will be kept informed of developments. Updates on further future funding rounds will be published on the Darwin Plus website in due course.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
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 role of Darwin Plus in supporting climate resilience and reducing future environmental risks in the UK Overseas Territories.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra’s Darwin Plus programme has invested more than £64 million across nearly 400 environmental projects of benefit to the UK Overseas Territories since 2012. These include projects to increase the Territories’ resilience by responding to, mitigating and adapting to climate change and its effects on the natural environment and local communities.
An independent evaluation in 2022 found that Darwin Plus projects have reduced key threats to the Territories’ natural environments, including climate change. An impact analysis of Darwin Plus projects in 2025 has since estimated that Darwin Plus projects have:
Project applicants for Darwin Plus Local Round 6, which closed on 29 December, will be kept informed of developments. Updates on further future funding rounds will be published on the Darwin Plus website in due course.