Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 25 April (HL Deb cols 642GC–644GC), whether they plan to provide official development assistance to the government of Pakistan for the purposes of seizing assets of owners of brick kilns illegally using bonded labour so that those assets can be reused for the education and welfare of families trapped in bonded labour.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK is committed to eradicating all forms of modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking anywhere in the world. In Pakistan, our Aawaz II Accountability, Inclusion and Reducing Modern Slavery Programme and Asia Regional Child Labour Programme are working with partners, including the Government of Pakistan, to reduce child and bonded labour. Meanwhile, our Girls and Out of School Action for Learning programme is improving education outcomes for marginalised children from the most vulnerable sections of society. The UK is aiming to triple Official Development Assistance to Pakistan this financial year. We will continue to use our funding to support Pakistan's long-term development, focusing on improving human capital (health, education, gender equality), governance and human rights, macroeconomic stability and trade, and climate resilience.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 25 April (HL Deb cols 640GC–644GC), whether any development funding for Pakistan will be allocated to providing advice and assistance to the government of that country to create a national trust fund to support the education of children from the families of bonded labour.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK is committed to eradicating all forms of modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking anywhere in the world. In Pakistan, our Aawaz II Accountability, Inclusion and Reducing Modern Slavery Programme and Asia Regional Child Labour Programme are working with partners, including the Government of Pakistan, to reduce child and bonded labour. Meanwhile, our Girls and Out of School Action for Learning programme is improving education outcomes for marginalised children from the most vulnerable sections of society. The UK is aiming to triple Official Development Assistance to Pakistan this financial year. We will continue to use our funding to support Pakistan's long-term development, focusing on improving human capital (health, education, gender equality), governance and human rights, macroeconomic stability and trade, and climate resilience.
Asked by: Matt Hancock (Independent - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when his Department plans to announce the long-term funding solution for internal drainage boards.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Internal drainage boards (IDBs) are mainly funded locally through drainage rates paid directly by agricultural landowners and special levies issued to district or unitary authorities.
Defra and DLUCH are working together to review the funding pressures reported by IDBs and the contributing local authorities, to consider whether any changes to current funding arrangements may be needed in the future.
For the current financial year, the Government has announced a £75 million fund, for IDBs to support agricultural land and rural communities recover from recent flooding events and modernise infrastructure to increase future resilience. In addition, the Government is providing an additional £3 million in grant funding to support local authorities most significantly impacted by the increase in special levies in 2024-25.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to provide financial assistance to farmers in debt.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The recent ‘Balance Sheet Analysis’ publication highlights that average liquidity in the sector has been consistently improving over the latest five years of data and reached a ten-year high in the latest year of data (2022/23). This suggests that levels of debt in the farming sector are lower than average.
We support farmers in a range of ways to ensure they have profitable and sustainable businesses. This includes free business advice as well as access to a wide range of Government funding to improve business resilience, productivity and environmental performance.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to encourage a greater emphasis on developing essential skills for life in schools and colleges.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The department wants all children to leave school with the knowledge, skills and values that will prepare them to be citizens in modern Britain. There are many aspects of the curriculum that help young people develop essential life skills, including through the teaching of Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE), citizenship, mathematics and design and technology (D&T).
In primary schools, age-appropriate relationships education involves supporting children to learn how to develop mutually respectful relationships in all contexts, including online. In secondary schools, this broadens to become age-appropriate relationships and sex education. In health education, there is a strong focus on mental wellbeing, including a recognition that mental wellbeing and physical health are linked. The statutory guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/relationships-education-relationships-and-sex-education-rse-and-health-education.
The department is currently reviewing the RSHE statutory guidance. The review has been informed by an independent expert panel to advise the Secretary of State for Education on the introduction of age limits for sensitive subjects. A draft of the amended guidance will be published for consultation as soon as possible.
The national curriculum for secondary citizenship develops pupils’ awareness and understanding of democracy, government and how laws are made and upheld. Teaching should equip pupils with the skills and knowledge to explore political and social issues critically, to weigh evidence, debate and make reasoned arguments. The citizenship programmes of study are available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-citizenship-programmes-of-study.
Primary maintained schools and all academies are encouraged to cover citizenship as part of their duty to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum following the non-statutory framework for citizenship.
Pupils should be prepared to manage their money well, make sound financial decisions and know where to seek further information when needed.
Financial knowledge is a compulsory part of the national curriculum for mathematics at key stages 1 to 4 and citizenship at key stages 3 and 4. The mathematics curriculum provides young people with the mathematical knowledge that underpins their ability to make important financial decisions. At primary schools, there is a strong emphasis on enabling pupils to develop fluency, mathematical reasoning and competence in solving increasingly sophisticated problems. At secondary schools and in GCSE mathematics, pupils solve problems in financial contexts. The mathematics programme of study can be found on GOV.UK.
Through primary citizenship curriculum, pupils should be taught to realise that money comes from different sources and can be used for different purposes. They should also be taught how to spend and save money sensibly and that economic choices affect individuals and communities. This is expanded in secondary citizenship where pupils are taught the function and uses of money, how to budget, and manage credit and debt, as well as concepts like insurance, savings and pensions.
Cooking and nutrition is a discrete strand of the national curriculum for D&T. This was introduced as part of the 2014 D&T curriculum and is compulsory for key stages 1 to 3. The curriculum aims to teach children how to cook, with an emphasis on savoury dishes, and how to apply the principles of healthy eating and nutrition. It recognises that cooking is an important life skill that will help children to feed themselves and others healthy and affordable food.
RSHE and citizenship sit alongside extra-curricular programmes to develop a variety of life skills such as resilience, leadership, persistence, and teamwork. Schools are best placed to understand and meet the needs of their pupils and so have flexibility to decide how they deliver the curriculum and what range of extra-curricular activities to offer. The department supports a range of initiatives to expand access to extra-curricular activities through schools, such as working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to offer the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award to all state secondary schools in England.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has undertaken consultations with (a) stakeholders and (b) investors in relation to Operation Timber in the last 12 months.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Fundamentally water companies are commercial entities, and it would be inappropriate to comment further on the specific situation of any individual company.
The Government and Ofwat – the financial regulator for the water sector – are carefully monitoring the situation, and Ofwat continues to engage with Thames Water to support it in improving its financial resilience within the context of its licence and broader statutory obligations.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government, following the findings of the Financial Conduct Authority survey indicating a decrease in savings and investing among UK adults, what steps they are taking to help individuals and families save and invest.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is committed to incentivising greater saving and investment, to help hard working people save for their future goals and build greater financial resilience.
The Help to Save scheme was launched in September 2018 and is intended to promote financial resilience among working households on low incomes by supporting them to kickstart a regular, long-term savings habit and build a financial buffer for a rainy day.
Individuals can also save up to £20,000 into an Individual Savings Account (ISA) each year, and any savings income received within an ISA is tax free. This, along with the Personal Savings Allowance of up to £1,000 for basic rate taxpayers means that around 85% of people with savings income pay no tax on that income.
However, the Government also recognises that people need support to make effective investment decisions. This is why the Government and FCA are working on a joint review of the boundary between financial advice and guidance to ensure people can access appropriate support with their financial decision-making.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when the eligibility criteria for the Property Flood Resilience repair grant scheme changed from 25 affected properties to 50; and whether his Department made an assessment of the potential impact of changing the eligibility criteria on the number of properties that would no longer be eligible before making the change.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The activation of the schemes in 2019 and 2020 was based on a qualifying criteria of 25 homes per local authority (including District level).
Feedback from local authorities following those schemes suggested that some reported that they missed out on financial support under the 2019/20 activations of the FRF because they did not meet the 25 flooded homes threshold, but they would have qualified if all flooded properties (both domestic and commercial) were considered eligible, which disadvantage small rural district authorities due to property density in those areas.
As a result, the FRF was revised in 2021 and published on 28 October, recognising these issues. Eligibility was to be based on flooded properties, both domestic and commercial, across LLFA geographies.
The 50 flooded property threshold at LLFA area was introduced as part of the FRF and PFR Grant activation in respect of Storm Babet in October 2023, and has resulted in properties in many districts that would have been excluded under the previous threshold being able to participate.
Asked by: Dan Jarvis (Labour - Barnsley Central)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of her Department's media literacy strategy in countering (a) mis- and (b) dis-information.
Answered by Saqib Bhatti - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Improving media literacy is one of the government’s key tools in tackling the harm caused by misinformation and disinformation. To demonstrate how the Government is delivering against the objectives of the Online Media Literacy Strategy, we are publishing annual Action Plans each financial year until the end of 2024/25. Through media literacy grant schemes, we have provided almost £2 million in funding to a range of educational projects.
These projects seek to build the online safety and critical thinking skills of internet users, empowering them to respond effectively to the threats posed by mis- and disinformation, along with other online harms. All funded projects are evaluated robustly, including by independent experts, and findings will be published on gov.uk upon completion. This will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of future media literacy initiatives and inform government policy moving forward.
As part of this work, we established the Media Literacy Taskforce to bring together organisations in the media literacy landscape to amplify, increase and improve media literacy provision across underserved parts of the UK. Taskforce members advised the government on which projects should be awarded funding, and then helped grant recipients to maximise the impact of their projects.
Alongside the Strategy, the Online Safety Act updates Ofcom’s statutory media literacy duty to require it to take tangible steps to prioritise the public's awareness of and resilience to misinformation and disinformation online.
Asked by: Emily Thornberry (Labour - Islington South and Finsbury)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many miles vehicles in the Government Car Service fleet drove in financial years (a) 2021-22, (b) 2022-23 and (c) 2023-24; and how many vehicles were in the fleet at the end of each of those years.
Answered by Anthony Browne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Please see below in relation to fleet mileage and numbers. Figures for the fleet mileage for the financial year 2023/2024 are not available. This is due to the legacy reporting system used by GCS no longer being supported by the Department for Transports IT suite. Figures for 2021/2022 and 2022/2023 are available as they have had been produced in previous years. The figures for fleet numbers have been collated manually.
| 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/2024 |
Fleet mileage | 793,836.00 | 838,113.00 | Unavailable |
No. of vehicles | 87 | 111 | 122 |
Given the ongoing security context, demand for Ministerial cars has naturally increased. New cars are also purchased before older models are disposed of to ensure operational resilience and we anticipate at least 10 cars will be disposed of in the coming months. Our budget for new cars has remained consistent over recent years and we continue to take into account value for money for the taxpayer, bearing down on costs wherever possible.