Asked by: Lisa Smart (Liberal Democrat - Hazel Grove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of violence prevention measures in accident and emergency departments; and what steps she is taking to help improve the safety of NHS staff working in A&E settings.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Everyone working in the National Health Service has a fundamental right to be safe at work, including those working in accident and emergency settings providing rapid and critical care.
Individual employers are responsible for the health and safety of their staff, and they put in place measures, including, security, training, and emotional support for staff affected by violence.
In April 2025, my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, announced that the Social Partnership Forum’s recommendations on tackling and reducing violence, part of the 2023 Agenda for Change pay deal, had been accepted in full. This includes measures to improve data and reporting, strengthen risk assessment, and improve training and support for victims. This will be bolstered by the introduction of a new set of staff standards, as detailed in the 10-Year Health Plan.
Asked by: Ben Obese-Jecty (Conservative - Huntingdon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to page 12 of the Police reform white paper entitled From Local to National: A New Model for Policing” (CP1489), what plans she has to bring forward legislative proposals for vetting standards to allow police forces to retrospectively suspend police officers under investigation for (a) domestic abuse and (b) sexual offences.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The recently published police reform White Paper sets out the Government’s plans to further strengthen the police vetting and misconduct systems
These reforms will, for the first time, place police vetting standards into legislation. These new regulations will include robust measures which will enable forces to exclude individuals from policing who have a caution or conviction for relevant violence against women and girls offences, and will be subject to consultation with the Police Advisory Board for England and Wales (PABEW)
Police forces have existing powers to suspend police officers who are subject to an allegation, but must first consider temporary redeployment to alternative duties or location. We will therefore strengthen these arrangements, placing greater requirements on police forces to suspend officers who are under investigation for crimes such as domestic abuse or sexual offences.
Subject to the statutory consultation process, we intend to make these changes this summer.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average length of time was between charge and trial in a) rape, b) murder and c) GBH cases in each year between 2009 and 2025 for each court in England.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Data showing the time from charge to main hearing for defendants dealt with for the selected offences following the entry of a not guilty plea at the Crown Court from 2016 to 2024 can be found in the attached tables. Data is not available for years prior to 2016.
Data has been provided at the lowest geographical level of our published Accredited Official Statistics, Local Criminal Justice Board Level (LCJB).
Please note that many of the averages are based on very small volumes of defendants and as such the figures should be treated with caution.
Our published timeliness metrics are produced at a sufficiently 'high' level to reduce the volatility and fluctuations associated with low volumes of cases i.e. offence groups. Where court level offence breakdowns are based on fewer than five cases in these tables, timeliness values are suppressed as they are particularly volatile and can be misleading.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle youth knife crime and serious violence in (a) Leicester and (b) the East Midlands.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
We are already making clear progress against our ambition to halve knife crime. In our first year in Government, police-recorded knife crime offences fell by 5%.
We have banned zombie knives and ninja swords and are holding online sellers criminally responsible removing almost 60,000 knives from streets in England and Wales. We are taking a range of action in the Crime and Policing Bill to strengthen legislation on knives.
New crime mapping tools are already allowing us to identify highly specific knife crime concentrations and focus police and community safety resources where they are needed most. Further investment in cutting-edge capabilities, such as knife detection technology, improved data platforms, and live facial recognition will further enhance our ability to target knife crime.
Preventing young people from getting involved in crime is crucial to achieving our ambition. As part of the Young Futures programme, we are piloting new Young Futures Panels. These pilots proactively identify and refer children who may be falling through the gaps, to a range of different support services much earlier. More than 50 panels went operational in October and November, including in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
This financial year (2025/26), we have also allocated £47m to the network of 20 Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) across England and Wales to support their valuable work. VRUs bring together partners to understand and tackle the drivers of serious violence in their area. This includes over £1m in VRU grant funding to Leicestershire specifically. We have also allocated £194k to Leicestershire and £1.9m across the East Midlands in grant funding to continue the implementation of the Serious Violence Duty.
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were (a) convicted for a violence against the person offence and b) did not receive an immediate custodial sentence, by year of conviction and number of previous occassions the offender has been convicted for a violence against the person offence.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The information requested is provided in the attached excel tables. These tables include data covering the period 2020 – 2024 on the number of offenders who were convicted of a specified offence but did not receive an immediate custodial sentence, by the number of previous convictions for that specified offence.
This data is not regularly published or held in an easily accessible format. The information supplied has been sourced from a bespoke retrieval from the Police National Computer database.
Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for the independent judiciary. When deciding what sentence to impose, courts must consider the circumstances of the case, including the culpability of the offender, the harm they caused or intended to cause, and any aggravating and mitigating factors, in line with any relevant sentencing guidelines, developed by the Sentencing Council for England and Wales.
Previous convictions are already a statutory aggravating factor, with Sentencing Guidelines being clear that sentencers must consider the nature and relevance of previous convictions, and the time elapsed since the previous convictions.
Asked by: Warinder Juss (Labour - Wolverhampton West)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle violence against women and girls.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
We have published our transformative VAWG Strategy, which sets out an ambitious cross-government vision and concrete commitments to halve VAWG in a decade. I chair a cross-government ministerial Board with Minister Davies-Jones to oversee the implementation of these commitments. We have already delivered a pilot for the Domestic Abuse Protection Orders in five forces and £13.1 million of funding for the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection to improve the policing response to these crimes. We have also appointed Richard Wright KC to lead the Stalking Legislation Review ensuring the criminal law on stalking is fit for purpose.Asked by: Chris Webb (Labour - Blackpool South)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle violence against women and girls.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
We have published our transformative VAWG Strategy, which sets out an ambitious cross-government vision and concrete commitments to halve VAWG in a decade. I chair a cross-government ministerial Board with Minister Davies-Jones to oversee the implementation of these commitments. We have already delivered a pilot for the Domestic Abuse Protection Orders in five forces and £13.1 million of funding for the National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection to improve the policing response to these crimes. We have also appointed Richard Wright KC to lead the Stalking Legislation Review ensuring the criminal law on stalking is fit for purpose.Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps her Department has taken to reduce the risk of children being groomed through applications and games accessible to children such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Roblox.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Grooming through social media, messaging apps, and online games is a serious threat. Government is unequivocal in its commitment to protecting children from these crimes and we are determined to ensure that offenders cannot use these platforms to target children with impunity.
The Online Safety Act introduces world‑leading protections for children by placing robust duties on tech to mitigate risks to children. Crucially, the Act requires companies whose services pose heightened risks to children’s safety companies, such as those with chat functions, friend‑finding features and livestreaming tools, to implement stronger and more proactive safeguards, including effective moderation, robust age assurance and safer design. Ofcom, as the regulator, will have strong enforcement powers to ensure compliance.
Alongside platform regulation, the Government is taking decisive action to prevent harm before it occurs. In line with new commitments in the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy, we are clear that children must be protected from being coerced into sharing nude images and from being drawn into cycles of sextortion, grooming and abuse. That is why we have set out an ambitious goal to make it impossible for children in the UK to take, share or view a nude image, and we are working proactively with industry to make this a reality. This complements wider work to ensure that children’s access to smartphones and digital services is safe, appropriate and protective of their wellbeing.
The Government continues to work closely with law enforcement, industry, and child protection experts to ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of efforts to tackle online child sexual abuse.
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether she is taking steps with international counterparts to bring those responsible for crimes in Gezeira state in Sudan to justice.
Answered by Chris Elmore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
I refer the Rt Hon Member to the statement made to the House by the Foreign Secretary on 18 November 2025, and to the most recent Urgent Question debate on 15 December 2025. The UK Government is working intensively with our international partners in an effort to end the violence in Sudan, secure humanitarian relief for the millions in need, and deliver justice for the victims of atrocities committed in this conflict. We will continue to keep the House updated on the latest developments, as we have done in recent months, including on critical issues such as the protection of civilians that the Rt Hon Member has raised.
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 assessment he has made of trends in the level of attacks on healthcare workers in the last 12 months.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Everyone working in the National Health Service has a fundamental right to be safe at work. Trends in violence towards NHS staff have generally stayed at the same levels in recent years.
Individual employers are responsible for the health and safety of their staff, and they put in place measures, including security, training, and emotional support, for staff affected by violence. My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has been clear that there is zero tolerance of violence and harassment against NHS staff, and in April 2025 accepted all the Social Partnership Forum’s recommendations on tackling and reducing violence, part of the 2023 Agenda for Change pay deal. These measures will be strengthened by the introduction of a new set of staff standards, as detailed in the 10-Year Health Plan. These are likely to focus on areas such as improving staff health and wellbeing and dealing with violence, racism, and sexual harassment in the NHS workplace.