Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the consultation, Government Statistical Service Harmonisation: Assessing user needs for additional response options for the new ethnicity harmonisation standard, published on 28 October 2025, whether his Department plans to make a submission.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department notes the plan by the Office for National Statistics for an updated harmonised standard, which will be applied to our departmental statistics where applicable in due course.
This is an open consultation due to close on 4 February 2026, and the Department provided a response on 28 January 2026.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of trends in antisocial behaviour in the West Midlands over the past five years.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Information on the number of incidents of anti-social behaviour recorded by police forces in England and Wales, by force and by year can be found in the year ending March 2025 annual supplementary tables published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), here: Crime in England and Wales: Annual supplementary tables - Office for National Statistics
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the consultation, Government Statistical Service Harmonisation: Assessing user needs for additional response options for the new ethnicity harmonisation standard, published on 28 October 2025, whether her Department plans to make a submission.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office notes plans by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for an updated harmonised standard, which will be applied to our departmental statistics where applicable in due course.
This is an open consultation so anyone can provide a response on an individual basis. The Home Office typically gathers views from across the department prior to making any decisions about whether an organisational response is merited ahead of the deadline to respond.
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department classifies (a) Sikhs and (b) Jews as (i) an ethnic and (ii) a religious group.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The department collects information on the ethnicity of pupils annually through the spring school census, in line with the harmonised standards set by the Office for National Statistics and the Government Statistical Service.
The department publishes the data code sets that must be used when submitting information as part of the Common Basic Data Set (CBDS). The CBDS ethnicity code set does not include separate categories for Sikhs or Jews.
The department does not collect information on pupils’ religion.
Asked by: Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of working days lost due poor mental health in each of the last five years.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the number of working days lost due to mental health conditions in the last five years:
Year | Number of days lost due to mental health conditions (millions) | Proportion of days lost due to mental health conditions |
2020 | 20.5 | 13.7% |
2021 | 14.8 | 9.0% |
2022 | 19.0 | 10.1% |
2023 | 18.8 | 12.4% |
2024 | 16.4 | 13.5% |
Source: Office for National Statistics.
The working day is defined as seven hours and 30 minutes.
These estimates were produced using the Labour Force Survey, which is a household survey representative of the United Kingdom labour market, and it is used to produce estimates of employment, unemployment, and economic inactivity in the UK along with many other labour market statistics. Caution should be taken when analysing total days lost for 2020 and 2021, because of the impact of furlough and other policies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Timpson on 26 January (HL13694), why prisoners from the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities are not recorded in the table attached to that Answer.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
In accordance with the Office of National Statistics Census definitions (also reflected within the more detailed prisoner ethnicity data published as part of our Offender Management Statistics “Prison Population” annual tables), the 'Irish Traveller or Gypsy' and 'Roma' groups are counted as part of the "White" ethnicity group.
The ethnicity grouping presented in the table is consistent with that published quarterly for the prison population in Offender Management Statistics, for comparability.
Asked by: Cameron Thomas (Liberal Democrat - Tewkesbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the health and wellbeing of teachers.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Supporting the wellbeing of our expert education workforce is critical to this government’s mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for children and young people.
The department tracks teacher wellbeing through the longitudinal study, the Working Lives of Teachers and Leaders. Wave 4 shows improved wellbeing across all Office for National Statistics (ONS) validated personal wellbeing measures in 2025. Average life satisfaction, happiness, and feelings of life being worthwhile all increased, while average anxiety decreased.
We also compare teacher and leader wellbeing with the wider population in England. In 2025, these measures remain lower for teachers and leaders.
We commission research to assess teacher wellbeing. For example, the inclusion of ONS-validated personal wellbeing questions in the School and College Voice Survey (SCVS) to capture seasonal differences. The latest data from June 2025 shows that all four wellbeing measures remain broadly in line with the same period last year.
More broadly, our ‘Improve workload and wellbeing for school staff’ service, developed alongside school leaders, contains resources for schools to reduce workload and improve wellbeing. The service can be accessed here: https://improve-workload-and-wellbeing-for-school-staff.education.gov.uk/. The ’Education staff wellbeing charter’ sets out commitments from the department, Ofsted, schools and colleges to protect and promote staff wellbeing. Almost 4,300 schools and colleges have signed up. The charter can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter.
Asked by: Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat - Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment he has made of the impact of pharmaceutical and medical device R&D site closures on the trends in the levels of UK’s scientific research capacity since 2010.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government has made no formal assessment of the impact of pharmaceutical and medical device R&D site closures on trends in the UK’s scientific research capacity since 2010.
The Government does monitor the health of the UK life sciences sector, including R&D performed by UK businesses. Office for National Statistics data shows £9.3 billion of pharmaceutical R&D was performed by UK businesses in 2024, accounting for almost 17% of all R&D undertaken by UK businesses.
We are actively working with industry to boost the UK’s competitiveness and significantly grow the volume of private sector R&D and manufacturing in the UK over the next decade. For instance, the up to £520 million Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund and the pilot £50m Transformational R&D Investment Fund, which are supporting companies like UCB to invest in innovative early manufacturing in the UK.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients died from hospital acquired pneumonia at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon in each of the first six months of 2025.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The UKHSA (UK Health Security Agency) Healthcare-Associated Infection (HCAI) Data (public HCAI statistics) does not currently publish routine counts of hospital-acquired pneumonia deaths. Pneumonia is not one of the standard HCAIs in the UKHSA dashboard.
The Office of National Statistics is the official source of mortality statistics for England. More information is available at the following link:
The Office for Health Improvements and Disparities (OHID) also provide details of mortality indicators that assess outcomes across a range of causes of death in England. These are available at the following link:
Asked by: Jas Athwal (Labour - Ilford South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department holds on health outcomes for (a) Sikhs and (b) Jews.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has access to data from several population health surveys, undertaken by other organisations or departments, which record the religion of respondents, and which include Sikh and Jewish as categories. These include:
- Health Survey for England;
- General Practice Patient Survey;
- Annual Population Survey; and
- Active Lives Survey.
The Department publishes some health outcomes data by religion, including for Sikh and Jewish populations, based on survey data. The Public Health Outcomes Framework includes, for example, a breakdown by religion for its indicators of smoking prevalence, the percentage of the population reporting a long-term musculoskeletal problem, and the percentage of adult social care users who have as much social contact as they would like. Further information on the smoking prevalence in adults, the percentage of the population reporting a long-term musculoskeletal problem, and the percentage of adult social care users who have as much social contact as they would like is avaiable, respectively, at the following three links:
In addition to survey data, the Department manages the National Drug and Alcohol Monitoring System and reports annual data on the religion of those entering drug and alcohol treatment services, with categories including Jewish and Sikh. Further information on substance misuse treatment for adults is avaiable at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/substance-misuse-treatment-for-adults-statistics-2023-to-2024
The Department also has access to published data on health outcomes by religion from other Government departments. These include reports from the Office for National Statistics on Religion and Health in England and Wales, based on data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study, and Religion by housing, health, employment, and education, England and Wales, based on data from the 2021 Census. Both reports include data for Jewish and Sikh populations, and are avaiable, respectively, at the following two links: