Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what evidence her Department submitted to the Office for National Statistics' review of the ethnicity harmonised standard, including in relation to the recording of Sikhs and Jewish people as ethnic groups.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
A review of the harmonised standard for ethnicity data collection is underway by the Government Statistical Service Harmonisation team.
A public consultation between October 2025 and February 2026 sought views from a wide range of users, including government departments and public bodies, to understand user needs for ethnic group data. This was supplemented by a programme of engagement activity, including with representatives of all government departments.
The Office for National Statistics have committed to providing an initial response to the public consultation in April, and a full report on the consultation in late summer 2026 will include more detailed information on the departments that responded to the consultation.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, to confirm how many child sex offenders have been deported in each year since 2020, broken down by the number of previous convictions.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The information you have requested on foreign national offenders (FNOs) returned from the UK (of which ‘deportation’ is a legal subset) who have been convicted of sexual offences against a child is not available from published statistics.
Work is currently underway to improve the quality of information held by the department on FNOs. The Home Office intends to publish more detailed information on FNOs returned. Further information on this work can be found at: Statistics on foreign national offenders and the immigration system - GOV.UK.
A breakdown by the number of previous convictions is not centrally held, and could only be collected and verified for the purpose of answering this question at disproportionate cost.
Foreign nationals who commit crime should be in no doubt that the law will be enforced and, where appropriate, we will pursue their deportation.
Between this Government coming to power and January 2026, over 8700 FNOs have been returned either voluntarily or by enforced means. This is a 32% increase on the number of FNOs returned in the same period 19 months prior. Figures on deportations, which are a subset of enforced returns, are not separately available.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department was invited by the Office for National Statistics to provide evidence or input into its review of the ethnicity harmonised standard.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
A review of the harmonised standard for ethnicity data collection is underway by the Government Statistical Service Harmonisation team.
A public consultation between October 2025 and February 2026 sought views from a wide range of users, including government departments and public bodies, to understand user needs for ethnic group data. This was supplemented by a programme of engagement activity, including with representatives of all government departments.
The Office for National Statistics have committed to providing an initial response to the public consultation in April, and a full report on the consultation in late summer 2026 will include more detailed information on the departments that responded to the consultation.
Asked by: Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made, and what data they have collected, on the rate of the development of long covid among children and adults of working age.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The most recent data from the Winter COVID-19 Infection Study, a joint study carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the UK Health Security Agency, show that, for the period 6 February 2024 to 7 March 2024, an estimated 1,140,000 people, or 1.9% of the population, in private households in England and Scotland, reported experiencing long COVID symptoms more than twelve weeks after a COVID-19 infection. This includes 66,000 people aged three to 17 years old, and 840,000 people aged 18 to 64 years old.
Data for the four-week period ending 5 March 2023 from the Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK ONS dataset shows that the estimated number of people living in private households in the United Kingdom with self-reported long COVID who first had, or suspected they had, COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, was 1.7 million. This includes 59,000 people aged from two to 16 years old, and 1.5 million people aged 17 to 69 years old.
Data for the four-week period ending 5 March 2022 from the Prevalence of ongoing symptoms following coronavirus (COVID-19) infection in the UK ONS dataset shows that the estimated number of people living in UK private households with self-reported long COVID who first had, or suspected they had, COVID-19 at least 12 weeks previously, was 1.2 million. This includes 99,000 people aged from two to 16 years old, and one million people aged 17 to 69 years old.
Asked by: Patrick Spencer (Independent - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what proportion of local highways maintenance funding allocated by her Department has been received by predominantly rural local authorities in each of the last three years.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
A full explanation of how highways maintenance funding is allocated is available online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/highways-maintenance-funding-allocations. Local highway authorities can choose to spend Highways Maintenance Block funding on all parts of their highway network. Funding is not specifically for potholes.
Rural-urban classification at the level of local highway authorities is published by the Office for National Statistics and can be found online at https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/ons::rural-urban-classification-2021-of-upper-tier-local-authorities-2023-in-ew/about. Local highway authorities are usually large geographies, most of which include a mix of both rural and urban areas, so the rural-urban classification at this level can only give a broad indication of the overall classification of an area.
Asked by: Patrick Spencer (Independent - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the average pothole funding per mile of road is in each local authority.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
A full explanation of how highways maintenance funding is allocated is available online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/highways-maintenance-funding-allocations. Local highway authorities can choose to spend Highways Maintenance Block funding on all parts of their highway network. Funding is not specifically for potholes.
Rural-urban classification at the level of local highway authorities is published by the Office for National Statistics and can be found online at https://geoportal.statistics.gov.uk/datasets/ons::rural-urban-classification-2021-of-upper-tier-local-authorities-2023-in-ew/about. Local highway authorities are usually large geographies, most of which include a mix of both rural and urban areas, so the rural-urban classification at this level can only give a broad indication of the overall classification of an area.
Asked by: Luke Murphy (Labour - Basingstoke)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what consideration he has given to publishing annual data on suicides among armed forces veterans.
Answered by Louise Sandher-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
Any suicide is a tragedy and is one too many. Our thoughts remain with the families, friends and colleagues of all those affected.
In 2024, for the first time ever, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published annual suicide rates (year 2021) for the veteran population in England and Wales using Census 2021 and the Ministry of Defence (MOD) Service Leaver Database (SLD). This analysis was conducted based on a collaboration between ONS and the MOD.
The Government is committed to developing annual statistics for publication, which will provide a clearer picture of the issue and help inform targeted interventions to improve mental health support for veterans.
Asked by: Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what consideration his Department has given to data from the Office for National Statistics highlighting that for the first time there are more adult vapers in Great Britain than there are smokers.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department continues to monitor the latest data on smoking and vaping prevalence, including the figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The 2024 ONS Adult Smoking Habits in the UK data shows that 10% of adults in Great Britain, approximately 5.4 million people, are current vape users, compared with 4.9 million adult smokers, based on the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey.
We are pleased to see a further reduction in the number of smokers and the continued general downward trend in smoking prevalence. The Government is investing an additional £260 million over three years in Stop Smoking Services within the Public Health Grant to support local Stop Smoking Services in England and continue our National Smokefree Pregnancy Incentives scheme to support pregnant smokers to quit.
Our health advice on vaping is clear: vaping can play a role in helping adult smokers to quit, but if you don’t smoke, don’t vape – and children should never vape. Evidence suggests the majority of adult vapers are current or former smokers, demonstrating the role vapes can play in smoking cessation. For those who feel ready to quit vaping and who are confident they can do so without returning to smoking, the Better Health website has a dedicated page on quitting vaping.
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will ban vapes and nicotine products from being deliberately promoted and advertised to children to stop the next generation from becoming hooked on nicotine. The Bill, currently going through Parliament, includes a range of measures to tackle youth vaping and will give the government powers to restrict the display, packaging and product features.
Asked by: Baroness Griffin of Princethorpe (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the number of workers who work more than their contracted hours.
Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
There are no official data sources that provide readily available estimates of the number of contracted hours across the whole labour market. The Office for National Statistics regularly publishes estimates of the number of people on zero hours contracts, where all hours worked are additional to contracted hours: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/emp17peopleinemploymentonzerohourscontracts.
The government has published a comprehensive assessment of the potential impacts of the zero hours contract measures in the Employment Rights Act 2025: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/employment-rights-bill-impact-assessments. We will publish further analysis in due course as we implement those measures.
Asked by: Caroline Johnson (Conservative - Sleaford and North Hykeham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many deaths there have been of (a) women, (b) babies and (c) stillbirths where the termination of pregnancy through pills-by-post has been considered a contributory factor.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not routinely collected centrally.
The Department collects information on abortions in England and Wales via the HSA4 abortion notification form. The HSA4 form includes a section for recording the death of a woman within 14 days of an abortion, where this is known to abortion providers. This is not routinely published because the 14-day time frame limits the data’s usefulness for counting the total number of deaths amongst women following abortion. Also, it does not record whether the method of abortion, including home use of early medical abortion pills, was a contributory factor in a death.
Since 2020, zero deaths of women following an abortion have been reported to the department via the HSA4 form, rounded to the nearest five. Following the 2023 abortion statistics publication, all data is rounded to the nearest five. As a result of this change, counts of zero can mean no or a small number of procedures in the given field.
Information on the deaths of women, babies following a live birth, and stillbirths are recorded by the Office for National Statistics using data derived from information collected in death registrations. However, it is unusual for wider contextual factors such whether the deceased had taken early medical abortion pills at home to be recorded on the death certificate.