To recognise the work that is being done to support resilience building in the most climate-vulnerable countries a fixed proportion of 30 per cent International Climate Finance will be applied to programmes delivering and supporting humanitarian work being done in countries that fall into the bottom 10 per cent in terms of recognised climate vulnerability rankings, including Afghanistan.

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.

The Biodiversity Expert Committee is a subgroup of Defra’s Science Advisory Council; and members, terms of reference and meeting notes will be published on their website in due course. Upcoming agendas are not published as they can be reactive.

Lord Walney is the UK Government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption.

Lord Walney’s report, published on 21 May and entitled Protecting our Democracy from Coercion, is an independent report. Therefore, the Home Secretary is not able to make any amends to it.

It would be for Lord Walney as the report’s author to consider any necessary alterations.

Ministers and senior officials continue to engage closely with leaders responsible for HMP Lewes in a variety of ways, not limited to in-person meetings and site visits.

The Prison Group Director for Kent, Surrey and Sussex frequently visits HMP Lewes, and his assessment of conditions at the prison informs consideration by Ministers and senior officials.

HMP Lewes is subject to estate-wide, nationally-led, security and safety improvement programmes. These include the installation of security features such as body scanners and other technology to stop illicit substances, weapons, and mobile telephones from entering prisons. Additionally, we have invested to incentivise drug-free living, and to continue work that is already under way in removing potential ligature points in cells.

A range of ongoing and planned projects to improve the infrastructure at HMP Lewes includes refurbishing showers, upgrading heating systems, replacing windows, and installing more decency features.

As these programmes and projects are funded from a variety of budgets, some of which are estate-wide, it is not possible to provide a breakdown of costs.

Our staffing position has greatly improved across the estate. At prisons where recruitment challenges remain, we will continue to offer an additional supplement to attract new Prison Officers.

More information is available in the Prisons White Paper, which can be accessed via the following link: Prisons Strategy White Paper - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

We are unable to provide data on street homelessness beyond 31 March 2023 as that data is a subset of data due for future publication and releasing it at this time would breach official statistics publication rules, as outlined in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Data for the latest six-month period, October 2022-March 2023, is available is provided in table 1 below.

Table 1: Number not housed on the first night of release from HMP Lewes, with an accommodation status at release recorded as Homeless - Rough Sleeping by month of release, October 2022 to March 2023.

Notes:

1. These figures are drawn from administrative data systems. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent.

2. Data is consistent with metric CU150 Housed on the first night of custodial release, contained within the latest Performance Ratings publication, 2022-2023: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-performance-ratings-2022-to-2023

3. In order to be counted in measure CU150, the release event must be found in both Prison-NOMIS and nDelius. Unmatched release events are excluded. (I.e., the figures provided might not include all cases).

4. Release events with a missing or obsolete status are treated as "negative" in this measure, as are release events with multiple statuses.

Data source: National Delius and Prison NOMIS

We are unable to provide data on releases and recall of offenders beyond 31 December 2023 as that data is a subset of data due for future publication and releasing it at this time would breach official statistics publication rules, as outlined in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Data for the latest six-month period, July 2023 - December 2023, is available is provided in table 2 below.

Table 2: The number of first-time releases from HMP Lewes from July- December 2023, and subsequent recalls by 31 December 2023

Notes:

1. Offenders are counted once in each month of release. There could be a handful of offenders counted twice across different months where they were released for the first time on different sentences.

2. Recalls are counted from date of release up to 31 December 2023. Where further recalls have occurred beyond 31 December 2023, these recalls are not included.

3. Given releases in later months have a shorter time for recalls to occur, direct comparisons across months are biased. The months have different lengths of time for recalls to occur.

4. Disclosure control: An asterisk (*) has been used to suppress values of one or two. This is to prevent the disclosure of individual information. Further suppression may be applied where needed.

5. Data quality: The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

Data source: P-NOMIS and Public Protection Unit Database (PPUD)

We know that having a safe place to stay helps cut crime which is why we are investing in our transitional accommodation service so prison leavers can have a guaranteed 12 weeks of basic, temporary accommodation to provide a stable base on release.

As per my previous answer to UIN 25822 tabled on Thursday 16 May, and as reflected in the Ministerial Code, I do not confirm publicly whether I or any other Law Officer has advised on a particular issue or the content of any advice, save where I, as a Law Officer, explicitly consent. That consent is rarely given.

NHS England will publish new core community all-age mental health waiting time metrics from autumn 2024, which will encompass activity data from April 2024. It will cover the percentage of patients receiving meaningful help within four weeks of referral to community mental health services. Once published, NHS England will focus on improving data quality, including ensuring appropriate Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine data is flowed to show when patients are receiving meaningful help. Improved data quality within community mental health services will provide greater insights into the frequency and types of therapeutic provision.

The publication of the new community waiting times metrics is expected to increase transparency and local accountability on waiting times for community mental health services. Furthermore, NHS England expect that publication of the data will improve the quality of the data, so that the Department and NHS England will be in a better position to assess the costs and benefits of introducing performance standards against these metrics.

Systems have also been asked to focus on reducing long waits in community mental health services and to develop local plans to support this, including by improving data quality. We will work with systems to develop an agreed baseline and improvement trajectories for waits over 104 weeks in autumn 2024, as referenced in NHS England’s 2024/25 Operational Planning Guidance.

I cannot answer your question as to do so would be in breach of the Law Officers’ Convention.

Paragraph 2.13 of the Ministerial Code clearly states that the fact that the Law Officers have advised or have not advised and the content of their advice must not be disclosed outside Government without their authority.

Our Dentistry Recovery Plan, backed by £200 million, will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for National Health Service dental patients. It will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. A New Patient Premium is supporting dentists to take on new patients and as of 8 April 2024, nearly 500 more practices have said they are open to new patients, compared to the end of January 2024. The Find a Dentist website allows people to see which practices have said they are accepting new patients, with further information available at the following link:

https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-dentist

No estimates are currently available on the number of new patients seen by dental practices since the New Patient Premium scheme was introduced, but we are committed to evaluating the impacts of the measures included in our plan, and we will publish monthly data on progress once this is available.

Modernising Support for Independent Living: The Health and Disability Green Paper looks at different options to reshape the current welfare system so that we can provide better targeted support to those who need it most. We are considering these options through our 12-week consultation which was published on Monday 29 April and will close on Monday 22 July at 11:59pm. Any possible impacts on unpaid carers and their eligibility to receive Carer’s Allowance will be considered as necessary.

There will be no immediate changes to PIP, or to health assessments. All scheduled PIP assessments and payments will proceed as normal, and claimants should continue to engage as usual and provide any necessary information or updates regarding their circumstances.

We encourage everyone to respond to the consultation which can be found here, so that we are able to hear from as many disabled people, people with health conditions, their representatives, and local stakeholders as possible on these important issues.

The latest readily available statistics from November 2023 show 145,156 unpaid carers were claiming Carer’s Allowance in England and Wales were also receiving Personal Independence Payment. This data is available on Stat X-plore here.

These statistics show 486,123 people in receipt of Carer’s Allowance in England and Wales were caring for someone in receipt of a Personal Independence Payment, which was 54% of the Carer’s Allowance in receipt caseload.

Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. They should therefore be treated with caution.  

The latest readily available statistics from November 2023 show 145,156 unpaid carers were claiming Carer’s Allowance in England and Wales were also receiving Personal Independence Payment. This data is available on Stat X-plore here.

These statistics show 486,123 people in receipt of Carer’s Allowance in England and Wales were caring for someone in receipt of a Personal Independence Payment, which was 54% of the Carer’s Allowance in receipt caseload.

Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. They should therefore be treated with caution.  

The Defra Secretary of State and the Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat), with consent of the Secretary of State, have the power to request the court to place a company in a special administration regime (SAR) so that its business can either be rescued or transferred as a going concern to new owners. Section 24 (2) of the Water Industry Act 1991 sets out the legal parameters for which a SAR can be applied for.

The Government’s responsibility for delivering Parkinson’s disease research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Between the financial years 2019/20 and 2023/24, the Department of Health and Social Care, via the NIHR, funded Parkinson’s research projects to a total value of £12.9 million of programme spend.

As well as funding research itself, the NIHR invests significantly in research expertise and capacity, specialist facilities, support services, and collaborations, to support and deliver research in England. Collectively this forms the NIHR’s infrastructure. The NIHR’s infrastructure enables the country’s leading experts to develop and deliver high-quality translational, clinical, and applied research into Parkinson’s disease. For example, in the financial year 2022/23, the NIHR Clinical Research Network supported 114 studies related to Parkinson’s disease. UKRI spent over £66 million on research into Parkinson’s disease between the financial years 2019/20 and 2023/24. The following table shows the breakdown of spend on Parkinson's research for the NIHR and UKRI, each year from 2019/20 to 2023/24:

Defra has introduced several improvements to the transparency of processes since 2023 including proactively publishing all regulatory documents relating to GL43 and GL45 on Gov.uk, and by sharing the number of individual licenses approved and rejected in a previous PQ (PQ 202935). Defra has regularly engaged with a broad range of stakeholders to develop an improved risk assessment process, as well as a general licence for Special Protection Areas for birds. Defra has kept stakeholders informed of progress throughout the development of the general licence and individual licensing process.

The UK is delivering on our commitment to spend £11.6 billion International Climate Finance (ICF) between 2021/22 and 2025/26. Much of our ICF is integrated into programmes that seek to tackle climate change alongside other development objectives such as supporting economic growth and boosting sustainable agriculture. UK ICF programmes are all identifiable through a dedicated tag on the Development Tracker website: [https://devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk/].

To recognise the work that is being undertaken to support resilience building in the most climate-vulnerable countries a fixed proportion of 30 per cent International Climate Finance will be applied to humanitarian work being carried out in countries that fall into the bottom 10 per cent in terms of recognised climate vulnerability rankings, including Afghanistan.

The UK recognises that improving indoor air quality is an important public health issue. However, as the Pandemic Accord aims to establish a high-level framework for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, we have instead pursued action on this issue in other multilateral settings. For example, at last year's UN General Assembly, the UK worked with international partners to advocate for action on indoor air quality during the High-Level Meeting on Universal Health Care. The UK supported reference being made to the health impacts of indoor air pollution in the HLM's political declaration, which was subsequently adopted on 5 October 2023.