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, if she will introduce a national register of people with silicosis.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
There are no plans to introduce a national register of people with silicosis. Data on the diagnosis of, and deaths due to, silicosis is collected by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Office for National Statistics. The HSE’s report, Silicosis and Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis Statistics in Great Britain, contains the latest data of the estimated number of new cases and deaths.
Asked by: Stephen Kinnock (Labour - Aberavon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum claimants, excluding foreign national offenders, have been subject to electronic monitoring as a condition of immigration bail since 1 January 2024.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The information requested is not available from published statistics.
The Home Office does not electronically monitor asylum claimants as a matter of course. However, Schedule 10 of the Immigration Act 2016 provides a discretion for the SSHD or the First Tier Tribunal to impose such a condition which may mean that a small number of individuals who have claimed asylum may be subject to electronic monitoring as a condition of bail. In such instances, an individualised assessment of the claimant’s suitability for electronic monitoring would be undertaken either by the Home Office, the relevant Immigration Judge, or both.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government, following the publication of figures by the Office for National Statistics which show UK services exports grew 63 per cent in real terms between 2010 and 2023, while goods exports grew only seven per cent, what steps they are taking to boost the export of goods.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Department for Business and Trade is backing British businesses to export by knocking down trade barriers and signing new trade deals.
In 2022, the Government committed to resolving a ‘hit list’ of priority barriers worth more than £20 billion over five years. Since the start of 2022, we have resolved barriers all over the world estimated to be worth over £15 billion (over a five-year period) to UK businesses.
Businesses can access the department’s wealth of export support options on great.gov.uk, including trade advisers, Export Champions, the Export Academy, our International Markets network and UK Export Finance.
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) male and (b) female live births there were in each lower layer super output area in each year since 2007.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has published Births by Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA), England and Wales: mid-year periods (1 July to 30 June) 2000 to 2021. This is available at the following link:
The ONS has also published Births by Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) in England and Wales mid-year 2021 to 2022. This is available at the following link:
Both releases include a breakdown of births by gender. Information from 2023 onwards is not available in the requested format.
Asked by: Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of new data from the Office for National Statistics showing that alcohol-specific deaths are now 32.8 per cent higher than in 2019 and at an all-time high; and what steps they plan to take to tackle rising alcohol harm.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government keeps all official health data related to alcohol consumption and alcohol related harms under regular review. The 2021 Public Health England publication, Monitoring alcohol consumption and harm during the COVID-19 pandemic, found that increases in alcohol consumption since the beginning of the pandemic tended to be among people who were already heavy drinkers before this period, which may be a factor in the increase.
The most effective way to prevent alcohol specific deaths, is drinking within the United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers’ low-risk drinking guidelines, namely under 14 units per week. The Government is supporting people who drink above low-risk levels to reduce their alcohol consumption. As part of the NHS Health Check, questions are asked about alcohol consumption, and appropriate advice given to support people to make healthier choices. Those identified to be drinking at higher-risk levels are referred for liver investigation. The Department is also supporting people with alcohol dependency through the Drug Strategy and NHS Long Term Plan, by facilitating more people in need of treatment into local authority commissioned alcohol treatment services.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of the level of risk to women and girls arriving in the UK via small boats of trafficking for sexual exploitation in 2024.
Answered by Michael Tomlinson - Minister of State (Minister for Illegal Migration)
The Home Office publishes statistics on small boat arrivals to the UK in the ‘Irregular migration to the UK statistics’ release. Data on small boat arrivals by year, sex and age group is published in table Irr_D01 of the ‘Irregular migration to the UK detailed datasets’, with the latest data up to the end of December 2023.
Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. Future irregular migration publication release dates can be found on the research and statistics calendar.
No assessment has been made of the risk to woman and girls arriving in the UK via small boats to trafficking for sexual exploitation. However, all individuals arriving on small boats will be assessed on arrival, including assessments to identify vulnerability and safeguarding needs. Where there are indicators of modern slavery, the individual will be referred into the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). The NRM aims to lift victims out of situations of exploitation, provide them with a short period of intensive support and specialist care, and put them in a position where they can begin to rebuild their lives with increased resilience against future exploitation. In the last two years alone almost 30,000 people have had access to the protections of the NRM.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) women and (b) girls have arrived in the UK via small boats in each year since 2018.
Answered by Michael Tomlinson - Minister of State (Minister for Illegal Migration)
The Home Office publishes statistics on small boat arrivals to the UK in the ‘Irregular migration to the UK statistics’ release. Data on small boat arrivals by year, sex and age group is published in table Irr_D01 of the ‘Irregular migration to the UK detailed datasets’, with the latest data up to the end of December 2023.
Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. Future irregular migration publication release dates can be found on the research and statistics calendar.
No assessment has been made of the risk to woman and girls arriving in the UK via small boats to trafficking for sexual exploitation. However, all individuals arriving on small boats will be assessed on arrival, including assessments to identify vulnerability and safeguarding needs. Where there are indicators of modern slavery, the individual will be referred into the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). The NRM aims to lift victims out of situations of exploitation, provide them with a short period of intensive support and specialist care, and put them in a position where they can begin to rebuild their lives with increased resilience against future exploitation. In the last two years alone almost 30,000 people have had access to the protections of the NRM.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many deaths involving (a) nitazenes and (b) fentanyls have been confirmed by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities in 2024 as of 25 April.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are actively monitoring, and responding to, the continued threat posed by the growing levels of potent synthetic opioids in the United Kingdom. The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities receives intelligence via its networks on reported deaths from drug misuse, including those that involve nitazenes or fentanyls. There have been 14 deaths confirmed to have involved nitazenes, and no deaths confirmed to have involved fentanyls in England in 2024, as of 25 April.
Statistics on the annual number of deaths related to drug poisoning, including those involving synthetic opioids, are reported by the Office for National Statistics, and will be published in due course.
Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many individuals seeking asylum have been detained pending deportation to Rwanda.
Answered by Michael Tomlinson - Minister of State (Minister for Illegal Migration)
To maintain the highest standards of accuracy, the Home Office prefers to refer to published data, as this has been subject to rigorous quality assurance under National Statistics protocols prior to publication.
Information about those detained who are liable to be removed to Rwanda is not available in our published data
Published data on detentions and returns is available at the following link Migration statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how she is monitoring deaths from synthetic drugs.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has a longstanding surveillance system in place to collect information on the nature and location of novel drug use and drug markets, and receives reports alerting us to harms experienced. Work is ongoing to improve drug surveillance on synthetic opioids, through development of an early warning system which will include new data feeds, such as ambulance call-out data.
For surveillance purposes, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities reconciles local and regional reports received via our drug alerts system, with police force reports received by the National Crime Agency, to arrive at an agreed figure for recent nitazene deaths. Statistics on the number of deaths related to other synthetic drugs are reported by the Office for National Statistics, and will be published in its annual report on the number of deaths related to drug poisoning.