Asked by: Theresa Villiers (Conservative - Chipping Barnet)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, if she will have discussions with the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs on tackling gender-based violence in other countries.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
The department works closely with the Foreign Secretary on many issues, including tackling violence against women and girls in other countries.
The UK is a global leader on action to address conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) and has committed £60m since the launch of the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative(PSVI) in 2012.
We have also put forward the first ever UK nomination to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Professor Shazia Choudhry, whose academic work
focuses on violence against women and girls.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Streatham)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, whether she has had discussions with employers on the (a) public reporting of ethnicity pay gaps and (b) inclusive early talent pipelines.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
As part of the government’s ambitious Inclusive Britain action plan, we published comprehensive guidance in April 2023 for employers on how they can measure, report on and address any unfair ethnicity pay gaps within their workforce. We have engaged with employers and representative bodies in both developing and promoting the new guidance.
We have also worked with employers to deliver other relevant actions in Inclusive Britain including:
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps to implement the recommendations of MBRRACE-UK's report entitled Saving Lives, Improving Mothers’ Care: Lessons learned to inform maternity care from the UK and Ireland Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths and Morbidity 2019-21, published in October 2023.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The recommendations made in the Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries across the UK’s (MBRRACE-UK) report have informed a series of work programmes to improve maternity safety. This includes ongoing work delivered through NHS England's Three-Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services, which sets out how care will be made safer, more personalised, and more equitable for women, babies, and families. This is supported by an additional investment of £186 million a year to improve maternity and neonatal care, compared to 2021, on top of an additional £35 million over three years, from 2024/25 to 2026/27.
Asked by: Damien Egan (Labour - Kingswood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential implications for her Department’s polices of recent trends in levels of (a) children, (b) women and (c) people unable to access NHS dental services in Kingswood constituency.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our Dentistry Recovery Plan, backed by £200 million, will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for National Health Service dental patients. It will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. A New Patient Premium is supporting dentists to take on new patients and since the end of January, nearly 500 more practices have said they are open to new patients.
The Dentistry Recovery plan also sets out a new emphasis on prevention and good oral health in children. This includes supporting nurseries and early years settings to incorporate good oral hygiene into daily routines, and providing advice to expectant parents on how to protect their baby’s teeth. The plan will deploy mobile dental teams into schools to provide advice and deliver preventative treatments to more than 165,000 children.
A new patient premium is supporting dentists to take on new patients, and a new marketing campaign will help everyone who needs an NHS dentist in finding one. We have further supported dentists by raising the minimum Units of Dental Activity rate to £28 this year, making NHS work more attractive and sustainable. We are committed to evaluating the impacts of the measures included in our plan, and we will publish monthly data on progress, once available. Annual dental statistics, including the number of adults and children who have seen an NHS dentist since 2015, are available at the following link:
Asked by: Lord Browne of Ladyton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to support the Colombian Ministry of Equality and Equity, particularly pertaining to its work on reparations for victims of sexual and gender-based violence during conflict.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Colombia is a Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) and Women, Peace and Security National Action Plan focus country. Colombia is current chair of the UK-founded International Alliance on PSVI, a key forum for coordinating global action on conflict-related sexual violence. The UK contributed to the opening of a landmark case to address sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) from the armed conflict in the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP), the authoritative transitional justice body providing reparations to SGBV victims. We continue to support this work, as well as assistance to victims and survivors seeking access to justice.
Asked by: Baroness Coussins (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what representations they have made to the government of Colombia about reparations for victims of sexual and gender-based violence during the armed conflict.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Colombia is a Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative (PSVI) and Women, Peace and Security National Action Plan focus country. Colombia is current chair of the UK-founded International Alliance on PSVI, a key forum for coordinating global action on conflict-related sexual violence. The UK contributed to the opening of a landmark case to address sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) from the armed conflict in the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP), the authoritative transitional justice body providing reparations to SGBV victims. We continue to support this work, as well as assistance to victims and survivors seeking access to justice.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many times Ministers in his Department have met with representatives of the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign since 2015.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Departmental Ministers met with representatives from the WASPI campaign group on 29 June 2016. The department did not meet with representatives from the campaign group for the duration of the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman's investigation which began in 2018.
In laying the report before Parliament at the end of March, the Ombudsman has brought matters to the attention of this House, and I will provide a further update to the House once I have considered the report's findings.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether there have been any outcomes from the work of the Maternity Disparities Taskforce.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Maternity Disparities Taskforce has met six times. The taskforce will meet again in due course, to further explore and consider evidence-based interventions to tackle disparities in maternity outcomes and experience.
The taskforce is currently focused on developing a targeted pre-pregnancy toolkit, aimed at women from ethnic minorities and deprived areas, which will encourage healthy behaviours and planning for pregnancy by supporting women to make informed choices about their health and wellbeing.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of providing access to pelvic floor (a) training and (b) physiotherapy for every new mother.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Last October, NHS England published a national service specification for Perinatal Pelvic Health Services. The specification sets out the expected standards of care to improve the prevention, identification, and access to physiotherapy for pelvic health issues during pregnancy, and for at least one year following birth. Perinatal Pelvic Health Services will work with local Maternity and Physiotherapy services so that all women receive quality information about the risk of developing pelvic health problems before they have their baby, the key signs of pelvic floor dysfunction, and things they can do to help prevent these issues from developing, for instance performing pelvic floor exercises. The aim is to reduce the number of women living with pelvic health problems postnatally and in later life.
The specification also states that Perinatal Pelvic Health Services will work with maternity services across England to implement the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ Obstetric Anal Sphincter Injuries Care Bundle, to reduce rates of perineal tears resulting from labour and vaginal birth, and improve outcomes for women. This has been shown to reduce serious birth injuries by as much as 20%. Perinatal Pelvic Health Services are currently being rolled out across England.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to help ensure equitable provision of Hormone Replacement Therapy for women.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The menopause is a priority area within the Women’s Health Strategy, and the Government and National Health Service are implementing an ambitious programme of work to improve menopause care, so all women can access the support they need, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
We have reduced the cost of HRT prescriptions through the HRT prescription prepayment certificate (PPC), which enables women who pay for their prescriptions to pay less than £20 for all their HRT prescriptions for a year. In the first year, 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024, 566,042 HRT PPCs have been purchased.