The Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman provides members of the public with a vital complaints resolution service for when things go wrong with the public services they rely on. Their investigations provide the public with personal redress and improve the delivery of these services by local authorities. Most of their complaints are about key public services, such as children’s services, adult social care and homelessness.

The Government has no plans to bring town and parish councils within the Ombudsman’s scope. Parish and town councils are accountable through local complaints procedures, audit arrangements and elections.

Fraud and error levels are at their lowest since the pandemic, falling from 4.3% in FYE 2022 to 3.2% (£9.9bn) in 25/26. Thanks to prevention activity, use of data and analytics, and new powers under the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Act we remain on track to meet the OBR forecast of a 2.8% overpayment rate by 2028-29. This would be the lowest cross-welfare overpayment rate since tax credits began in 2003.

HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) recognises that administrative errors have the potential to affect access to justice by causing delays, confusion or inconvenience to court and tribunal users, including litigants in person. HMCTS has procedures and safeguards in place to minimise errors, identify and rectify issues when they occur, and support users throughout their case.

Where court and tribunal users, including litigants in person, are unhappy with the service they have received from us, they can make a complaint, as detailed in our complaints procedure online: Complaints procedure - HM Courts & Tribunals Service - GOV.UK

The Attorney General’s Office does not keep a record of clerical errors. If and when any errors are identified, they are corrected as appropriate on an individual basis.

These educational outcomes relate to the UK-funded education programme ILMpact in Pakistan, implemented by the British Council as the lead partner. The programme used a third-party firm for collection and validation of data on learning levels achieved in English, Urdu and Mathematics. This evidence points to positive learning gains with the UK's support. We used a comparison group to measure impact.

Girls accounted for 91.6 per cent of participants in the learning intervention. Around 35,000 children were brought back to school, and 125,538 children benefitted from disability inclusion initiatives.

Ofqual, as the independent regulator of qualifications in England, is responsible for maintaining standards and public confidence in GCSE, AS and A level qualifications. Ofqual requires awarding organisations to have robust arrangements in place for examiner recruitment and training, standardisation, moderation, marking, grading and quality assurance, including processes to identify and address potential errors before results are issued.

Throughout each assessment cycle, Ofqual monitors awarding organisations' readiness and delivery, including their management of key risks such as marking and grading.

If students believe there were errors, they can access established post-results services, including reviews of marking and appeals. Ofqual regulates these arrangements, sets the requirements that awarding organisations must meet when delivering them and keeps them under review.

To support transparency, Ofqual publishes an annual Delivery Report on the awarding of qualifications. This sets out how examinations and assessments were delivered, including information on marking, grading, incidents, reviews of marking and the action taken to protect students where issues arise.

Ofqual, as the independent regulator of qualifications in England, is responsible for maintaining standards and public confidence in GCSE, AS and A level qualifications. Ofqual requires awarding organisations to have robust arrangements in place for examiner recruitment and training, standardisation, moderation, marking, grading and quality assurance, including processes to identify and address potential errors before results are issued.

Throughout each assessment cycle, Ofqual monitors awarding organisations' readiness and delivery, including their management of key risks such as marking and grading.

If students believe there were errors, they can access established post-results services, including reviews of marking and appeals. Ofqual regulates these arrangements, sets the requirements that awarding organisations must meet when delivering them and keeps them under review.

To support transparency, Ofqual publishes an annual Delivery Report on the awarding of qualifications. This sets out how examinations and assessments were delivered, including information on marking, grading, incidents, reviews of marking and the action taken to protect students where issues arise.

Ofqual, as the independent regulator of qualifications in England, is responsible for maintaining standards and public confidence in GCSE, AS and A level qualifications. Ofqual requires awarding organisations to have robust arrangements in place for examiner recruitment and training, standardisation, moderation, marking, grading and quality assurance, including processes to identify and address potential errors before results are issued.

Throughout each assessment cycle, Ofqual monitors awarding organisations' readiness and delivery, including their management of key risks such as marking and grading.

If students believe there were errors, they can access established post-results services, including reviews of marking and appeals. Ofqual regulates these arrangements, sets the requirements that awarding organisations must meet when delivering them and keeps them under review.

To support transparency, Ofqual publishes an annual Delivery Report on the awarding of qualifications. This sets out how examinations and assessments were delivered, including information on marking, grading, incidents, reviews of marking and the action taken to protect students where issues arise.

The Department is closely monitoring NESO’s implementation of connections reform, including the number of outstanding queries raised by customers and the number of connection offers requiring subsequent re-issue. These are important indicators of whether the accuracy and quality of offers is improving over time.

Ofgem, as the independent regulator, is ultimately responsible for monitoring NESO’s delivery performance and ensuring that appropriate safeguards are in place.

Where a customer remains dissatisfied, relevant disputes can be escalated to Ofgem, which has powers to determine certain disputes under the electricity licensing and regulatory framework.

The National Energy System Operator (NESO) is responsible for issuing transmission level connection agreements under the connections reform programme. Customers can raise queries and potential errors through NESO's online portal.

The Department works closely with NESO and Ofgem to oversee delivery of the programme and monitor the rates of outstanding customer queries. Where errors are identified, NESO has processes in place to investigate and correct them, including reissuing offers where necessary.

The Department works closely with the National Energy System Operator (NESO), Ofgem and network companies to oversee the governance of the connections process and to monitor delivery of the reforms.

Customers who believe there is an error in their connection agreement should in the first instance raise this with NESO through its Connections Portal. NESO also provides complaints processes for customers to seek review of issues that have not been resolved through normal engagement.

Where a customer remains dissatisfied, relevant disputes can be escalated to Ofgem, which has powers to determine certain disputes under the electricity licensing and regulatory framework.

HMRC devotes significant effort to addressing error and fraud. Its strategy focuses on preventing error and fraud from entering the system, promoting compliance, and responding to non-compliance.

Reforms to Research & Development (R&D) relief have more than halved error and fraud levels from 17.6% in 2021-22 to 6.4% in 2023-24, and recent investment in Child Benefit compliance activity of an additional 180 compliance officers over 5 years has already protected tens of millions of pounds and is expected to protect hundreds of millions more in the coming years.

The C&AG is currently considering increasing the current 1 percent materiality threshold at which it assesses the regularity of spending on R&D reliefs and Child Benefit to a level that more accurately reflects the reduction in the level of error and fraud that is attainable with a cost-effective control environment. This will be piloted for Child Benefit in 2026–27 and later extended to R&D reliefs. Full detail can be found here Annual Report and Accounts 2025 to 2026. R40 Part Two - Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The Government is taking action to reduce both releases in error and the risk of prisoners escaping from custody.

Following the independent review led by Dame Lynne Owens on release in error, published on 15 April 2026, all 33 recommendations were accepted in principle. Work is underway to address the issues identified in the review, including improvements to governance, data, processes, accountability, staff guidance and training. This includes introduction of strengthened pre-release checks across prisons, including clearer assurance by authorising governors. The department has also established stronger governance to maintain momentum on the review through a Release Accuracy Board and operational delivery is supported by a specialist headquarters team to offer direct help to prisons, provide guidance and help mitigate the risk of early or late release.

The Government has also committed to simplifying release policy through the Sentencing Act 2026 and is investing in new technology to reduce human error, digitise paper-based prison systems, strengthen manual checks across courts and improve information sharing and tracking of offenders from arrest to release. This includes work to develop Justice ID and a digital rapid response unit focused on options to improve digital systems.

To limit the risk of escapes, HMPPS requires all prisons to maintain a Local Security Strategy, based on local risk assessment, which sets out the security measures in place. These include searching procedures for prisoners, vehicles and cells, accommodation fabric checks to identify vulnerabilities, and use of the Escape List for prisoners assessed as presenting an escape risk.

In February 2026, HMPPS also introduced enhanced management assurance for prisoners escorted from prison to hospital, including additional restraint requirements where needed, strengthened checks on restraint procedures and refreshed competency training for operational staff involved in escort duties.

In 2019 around 150,000 to 500,000 homes in the UK were estimated to have drain misconnections. Defra does not have numbers of misconnections for schools.

Property owners are legally responsible for resolving misconnected pipework on their property; public misconnections are the responsibility of water companies.

Should misconnections not be resolved, the responsible party can be prosecuted; in some cases, local authorities and water companies can access private property to fix misconnections and then recover their costs from the owner.

The statistics on eVisa errors are available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-immigration-status-evisa-ukvi-account-creation-data/evisa-error-correction-volumes-from-the-online-webform

There are currently no plans to publish the data for cancellations of EUSS status or for EUSS status granted in error. All statistical publications are subject to review.

What estimate he has made of the number of prisoners released in error since July 2024.

Because you almost broke the prison system. You built just 500 places in 14 years, and we had to fix that system. You had 17 different forms of guidance on early release in the last year, all done in secret. That is why we introduced the Sentencing Act 2026, which got Royal Assent in January, and why we are doing everything we can to build more prison places—14,000 prison places by 2031.

It is a disgrace that hundreds of prisoners have been released in error under this Government, but more concerning are the thousands it will have been an error to release early. The Secretary of State did not answer the previous question, so let’s try another. As we heard in this House yesterday, child groomers and rapists are due to be let out years early, with their victims being informed by letter, so will he tell my constituents exactly why, under this Government, dangerous criminals will be in their communities rather than in prison?