My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting autistic people into employment, including through targeted specialist support. Our £1 billion connect to work programme includes a supported employment pathway for neurodivergent people and is now live across most of England and Wales, with recent data showing encouraging early signs. We are also supporting employers to recruit and retain more neurodivergent people.

I am grateful to my noble friend and will be delighted to talk to him about examples and take them back to the department. He is right to focus on the importance of supporting employers; there are many who want to do the right thing but may not know how best to do it. Business-to-business mentoring can be key, and my noble friend will perhaps be reassured to know that we are exploring the benefits of business-to-business mentoring as part of our regional Vanguard employer work as part of Keep Britain Working. In the meantime, the Disability Confident scheme encourages collaboration between employers, including peer-to-peer learning; and connect to work, our specialist voluntary supported employment programme, works directly with employers to help secure and sustain jobs. My noble friend is absolutely right to push on this area.

The early identification of special educational needs and disabilities is critical to improving outcomes for children and young people.

Our consultation proposed that we will introduce clear statutory duties on schools to identify and meet needs as early as possible, enabling timely and effective intervention for pupils with special educational needs (SEN).

To support delivery, we are strengthening the evidence base on what works in early identification and assessment across education settings.

We will also introduce National Inclusion Standards, equipping educators with evidence informed tools and strategies to identify, assess and support pupils with SEN, while sharing best practice nationally. This is backed by £1.8 billion of investment to expand capacity and expertise, ensuring every community can access Experts at Hand.

In parallel, government backed research led by UK Research and Innovation will develop and scale new approaches to early identification, strengths‑and‑needs assessment, and support, for integration into education settings by 2028.

The government will develop a national cost framework for specialist provision packages, and we expect local authorities to commission provision based on that framework, whether that is within a specialist base in a mainstream school, or a special school, including those in the independent sector.

We will undertake a period of evidence gathering and stakeholder engagement to ensure that the framework is appropriately supporting high quality provision whilst tackling excessive prices and profit making.

Individual Support Plans (ISPs) will provide a record of need and provision for any child or young person receiving targeted, targeted plus or specialist support in school or college. They will allow settings to work alongside parents, providing a single, consistent record of what support has been tried, what has worked and what needs to change.

Under the proposals, settings will have a legal duty to produce an ISP for every child with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), including those who also have an education health and care plan. Where there are concerns about provision within an ISP, parents and young people would be able to raise these directly with the setting. The department’s proposals include strengthening the complaints process through having an independent SEND expert on panels to hear complaints concerning provision for a child with SEND.

The government is providing substantial, targeted investment to help local areas grow and strengthen their specialist workforce. Over the next three years, £1.8 billion will be made available to local area partnerships to develop and rollout of the Experts at Hand offer.

Local area partnerships will design and implement their own Experts at Hand models, tailored to local needs and workforce capacity, supported by strong national oversight. The department will set the overall framework, provide guidance and tools, and work closely with local areas to ensure consistent quality. We have also announced £15 million for new speech and language therapy advanced practitioner roles, as well as continuing our investment in the educational psychology workforce with £26 million to train at least 200 educational psychologists per year from 2026 and 2027, building on previous investment.

The department knows that continuing to build the specialist workforce is essential. It is working with the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, as part of wider long-term workforce priorities such as the 10 Year Workforce Plan, to improve access to community health services, including speech and language therapy, for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

Many local authorities have systems which indicate the range of top-up funding that might be provided for children and young people with a particular type and complexity of need, sometimes referred to as ‘banding frameworks’. These can help determine levels of high needs top-up funding for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. A system which agrees likely levels of top-up funding in advance can also be an efficient, clear and transparent way of allocating funding.

The department has published guidance on how local authorities should allocate this funding. Section 7.4 of the high needs funding operational guidance sets out that top-up funding can reflect the costs of provision for a cohort of pupils at or within a school or college. The operational guidance is available on GOV.UK.

Funding does not need to be tied to the detailed provision that may be required or which is specified in education, health and care (EHC) plans, since schools and colleges have flexibility in deploying resources.

The local authority must be satisfied, however, that the final allocation of funding (both the top-up funding and other elements of funding) is sufficient to secure suitable provision for example, as outlined in an EHC plan.

The department recognises that families play a vital role in identifying and understanding their children’s needs, and we expect education settings to work in partnership with parents and carers as part of early identification, ongoing assessment and the timely provision of support.

We will place a duty on settings to produce an Individual Support Plan (ISP) for any child or young person with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The ISP will be developed by settings together with parents and young people, giving every child or young person with SEND a clear and consistent record of their needs and the help they receive, so that support is joined‑up, timely and genuinely centred on what will help them to thrive. ISPs will be used to communicate provision to parents and actions taken between parents and settings, supporting the relationship between home and setting. ISPs must be reviewed at least annually and may be reviewed more frequently as a child’s needs develop.

I share my noble friend’s view of the importance of supporting people into work; that is what Access to Work is there to do. The NAO report, published last month, is a really helpful contribution and highlighted a number of pressures that we already know about. It also noted that the demand on Access to Work has gone up dramatically. It began to escalate significantly coming out of the pandemic—application rates have doubled since 2019-20—and the Government are now spending a record amount, over £320 million, which is the highest ever and 22% more than the year before.

A range of changes have made a difference, partly about the scale and partly about complexity, so we are taking those steps now. We increased the number of staff working in this area by 29% last year and we have looked at operational improvements to speed up cases. We are getting more complex cases coming through, which is making a difference. We also need to reform Access to Work. It has not been looked at properly since it was introduced over 30 years ago; we need to make sure it is fit for the future.

My Lords, Access to Work is a demand-led, personalised discretionary grant programme, which supports the recruitment and retention of disabled people in employment. As part of standard operational practice, the DWP continually reviews how the service has delivered to drive improvements. Access to Work has not substantially changed since its introduction in 1994. In our Pathways to Work Green Paper, this Government consulted on the future of Access to Work and how to improve the scheme so that it helps more disabled people in work.

There is no record of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office having undertaken a formal study of the potential merits of membership of the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB). The government keeps the potential membership of various international organisations under periodic review but our current position on the CEB remains as set out in our previous responses.

No such study has been commissioned under the current Government, and it would not be appropriate for me to ask officials what advice, if any, was provided under the previous administration.

To date, the UK has committed up to £577 million in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and the wider region, including for those who have been forced to flee their homes and are now internally displaced. This funding helps deliver essential services, such as access to food, healthcare, and shelter, through trusted partners working closely with the Government of Ukraine.

The UK has not provided direct funding to the World Bank's Health Enhancement and Lifesaving Ukraine Project, but we work with the World Bank on the delivery of the SPIRIT programme (Social Protection for Inclusion, Resilience, Innovation, and Transformation) and other regional initiatives that strengthen social protection and recovery efforts.

To date, the UK has committed up to £577 million in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and the wider region, including for those who have been forced to flee their homes and are now internally displaced. This funding helps deliver essential services, such as access to food, healthcare, and shelter, through trusted partners working closely with the Government of Ukraine.

The UK has not provided direct funding to the World Bank's Health Enhancement and Lifesaving Ukraine Project, but we work with the World Bank on the delivery of the SPIRIT programme (Social Protection for Inclusion, Resilience, Innovation, and Transformation) and other regional initiatives that strengthen social protection and recovery efforts.

The position remains as set out to the Noble Lord on 29 April 2019 in response to Question HL15270: the UK already has effective instruments to deliver development and investment objectives, including through our multilateral shareholdings such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and therefore has no plans to join the Council of Europe Development Bank.

I refer the Noble Lord to the answers I provided to the House on Ukraine: Forcible Removal of Children on 24 November. We remain, as ever, committed to supporting Ukrainian efforts to facilitate the return and reintegration of children deported by Russia.

The information requested is shown in the below table. The footnotes for the missing data table should be reviewed as they explain some of the limitations to this data.

Data on looked after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in England is published in the annual statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoptions’. The latest data is for year ending 31 March 2025 and has been available since 20 November 2025.

In these statistics, ‘missing’ is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known. A child may have had multiple missing incidents during a year that may have been resolved only to conclude with a further incident that results in the child being missing again on 31 March. Any missing incident is concerning but the vast majority (91%) of incidents, where a child who is looked after and reportedly goes missing, last for two days or less.

The department holds responsibility for the collection and publication of statistics for children looked after by local authorities in England only. Similar statistics for other countries in the UK are the responsibility of the devolved administrations.

Children missing on 31 March who were unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC), 2021 to 2025, England

Footnotes

1. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10. Figures exclude children looked after under a series of short-term placements.

2. Historical data may differ from older publications which is mainly due to amendments made by local authorities after the previous publication. However, users looking for a longer time series may wish to check for the equivalent table in earlier releases.

3. Missing is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known.

4. Since 2017 a growing number of local authorities informed the department that they do not record incidents as 'away without authorisation', but instead report all incidents as 'missing' to maintain consistency with local police reporting. We estimate this could mean an overestimate of missing incidents of up to 13% in 2021, 10% in 2022, 11% in 2023, 13% in 2024 and 12% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 9,600, 11,100, 11,500, 11,500 and 11,300. There is a corresponding estimate of an undercount of away without authorisation incidents of up to 32% in 2021, 30% in 2022, 32% in 2023, 36% in 2024 and 32% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 3,800, 3,600, 3,900, 4,300 and 4,300. However some of these local authorities submitted some 'away without authorisation' information and this can be found in the away from placement without authorisation table.

5. Figures for 2021 exclude data for Hackney.

The information requested is shown in the below table. The footnotes for the missing data table should be reviewed as they explain some of the limitations to this data.

Data on looked after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in England is published in the annual statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoptions’. The latest data is for year ending 31 March 2025 and has been available since 20 November 2025.

In these statistics, ‘missing’ is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known. A child may have had multiple missing incidents during a year that may have been resolved only to conclude with a further incident that results in the child being missing again on 31 March. Any missing incident is concerning but the vast majority (91%) of incidents, where a child who is looked after and reportedly goes missing, last for two days or less.

The department holds responsibility for the collection and publication of statistics for children looked after by local authorities in England only. Similar statistics for other countries in the UK are the responsibility of the devolved administrations.

Children missing on 31 March who were unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC), 2021 to 2025, England

Footnotes

1. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10. Figures exclude children looked after under a series of short-term placements.

2. Historical data may differ from older publications which is mainly due to amendments made by local authorities after the previous publication. However, users looking for a longer time series may wish to check for the equivalent table in earlier releases.

3. Missing is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known.

4. Since 2017 a growing number of local authorities informed the department that they do not record incidents as 'away without authorisation', but instead report all incidents as 'missing' to maintain consistency with local police reporting. We estimate this could mean an overestimate of missing incidents of up to 13% in 2021, 10% in 2022, 11% in 2023, 13% in 2024 and 12% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 9,600, 11,100, 11,500, 11,500 and 11,300. There is a corresponding estimate of an undercount of away without authorisation incidents of up to 32% in 2021, 30% in 2022, 32% in 2023, 36% in 2024 and 32% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 3,800, 3,600, 3,900, 4,300 and 4,300. However some of these local authorities submitted some 'away without authorisation' information and this can be found in the away from placement without authorisation table.

5. Figures for 2021 exclude data for Hackney.

The information requested is shown in the below table. The footnotes for the missing data table should be reviewed as they explain some of the limitations to this data.

Data on looked after unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC) in England is published in the annual statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoptions’. The latest data is for year ending 31 March 2025 and has been available since 20 November 2025.

In these statistics, ‘missing’ is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known. A child may have had multiple missing incidents during a year that may have been resolved only to conclude with a further incident that results in the child being missing again on 31 March. Any missing incident is concerning but the vast majority (91%) of incidents, where a child who is looked after and reportedly goes missing, last for two days or less.

The department holds responsibility for the collection and publication of statistics for children looked after by local authorities in England only. Similar statistics for other countries in the UK are the responsibility of the devolved administrations.

Children missing on 31 March who were unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC), 2021 to 2025, England

Footnotes

1. Numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10. Figures exclude children looked after under a series of short-term placements.

2. Historical data may differ from older publications which is mainly due to amendments made by local authorities after the previous publication. However, users looking for a longer time series may wish to check for the equivalent table in earlier releases.

3. Missing is defined as a looked after child who is not at their placement or a place they are expected to be and their whereabouts is not known.

4. Since 2017 a growing number of local authorities informed the department that they do not record incidents as 'away without authorisation', but instead report all incidents as 'missing' to maintain consistency with local police reporting. We estimate this could mean an overestimate of missing incidents of up to 13% in 2021, 10% in 2022, 11% in 2023, 13% in 2024 and 12% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 9,600, 11,100, 11,500, 11,500 and 11,300. There is a corresponding estimate of an undercount of away without authorisation incidents of up to 32% in 2021, 30% in 2022, 32% in 2023, 36% in 2024 and 32% in 2025; suggesting the true figures could be more like 3,800, 3,600, 3,900, 4,300 and 4,300. However some of these local authorities submitted some 'away without authorisation' information and this can be found in the away from placement without authorisation table.

5. Figures for 2021 exclude data for Hackney.

The Home Office closed the last of the Home Office-run unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children hotels on 31 January 2024 and since then arriving unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children have been accommodated by local authorities in line with their statutory duties.