The civilian seafarers of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) play a vital role in providing and supporting Royal Navy outputs; the esteem in which they are held by the Department cannot be overstated.

There are currently no plans to introduce minimum service requirements in the RFA.

Standing charges are regulated by Ofgem. Regional standing charges may be found online at www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/get-energy-price-cap-standing-charges-and-unit-rates-region .

The main factor determining differences in standing charges is the cost of operating and maintaining the gas and electricity networks in each region.

Standing charges are a commercial matter for suppliers, although Ofgem regulates standing charges as they do with other elements of billing. This includes setting a cap on standing charges as part of the overall default tariff cap.

The variance in standing charges is partially due to regional differences in energy distribution costs. These costs reflect the expenses of maintaining and upgrading the distribution network in a specific area, and the number of consumers those costs are spread across.

Ofgem launched a call for input on standing charges, which closed on Friday 19 January 2024, looking at how it is applied to energy bills and what alternatives could be considered.

The regulation of standing charges is a matter for Ofgem. The cost of distributing electricity varies regionally, mirroring differences in distribution expenses across the country. These disparities stem from maintaining and upgrading distribution networks in specific areas and the number of consumers sharing these costs. Consequently, less densely populated and remote regions incur higher operational expenses.

Ofgem launched a call for input on standing charges, which closed in January 2024, looking at how they are applied to energy bills and what alternatives could be considered. I am supportive of Ofgem’s decision to gather information and evidence on the current standing charge model. Ofgem are currently assessing the responses received and will publish a decision in due course here: www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/launch-review-standing-charges-energy-bills.

I regularly meet with Ofgem to discuss the energy retail market, including standing charges. Ofgem’s recent Call for Input (CfI) on standing charges closed on January 19^th 2024. Ofgem are considering the responses they received and are thinking about next steps.

Network charges vary by region to reflect the different costs of supplying consumers in each region. In 2015, Ofgem carried out an assessment of moving away from regional charging and the assessment showed that it would risk an increase in overall costs and reduce accountability to the customers being served.

NHS England is responsible for supporting integrated care boards (ICBs), National Health Service providers, and their local partners, in delivering their plans. The relevant NHS England regional team holds the primary relationship with ICBs and their partner NHS providers.

No such discussions have taken place within the last 12 months, between my Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and NHS trusts in the Liverpool City Region, on the adequacy of mental health provision for adults. In June 2023 ministers met with ICBs to discuss the Right Care, Right Person policy, which included representation from the Liverpool city region.

Through the NHS Long Term plan, the Government is providing record levels of investment, and increasing the mental health workforce, to expand and transform National Health Service mental health services in England. Almost £16 billion was invested into mental health in 2022/23, enabling 3.6 million people to be in contact with mental health services.

As part of this, we’re set to reach nearly £1 billion of additional funding invested by 2023/24, to transform community mental health services. This is the largest area of investment within the NHS Long Term Plan for mental health, aiming to support more people with the care that is most appropriate for their needs, and that is integrated between primary and community mental health services. Over the last full financial year, 2022/23, 288,000 adults and older adults with severe mental illness were able to access mental health support through these new models.

The safety and care of mental health patients is of paramount importance. Those with complex mental health needs in an inpatient mental health facility deserve to receive safe, high-quality care, and to be treated with dignity and respect.

NHS England has established a Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Inpatient Quality Transformation Programme. This programme is working to support cultural change and a new model of care for the future, across all NHS-funded mental health, learning disability, and autism inpatient settings.

The ambition is to increasingly shift mental healthcare towards early intervention and prevention, with treatment primarily delivered in the community. This includes increasing the number of personalised care roles, such as peer support workers, with expansion focused on mental health services where need is greatest.

We know how important clean water is to the public, and we share their concern and outrage about pollution in waterways. That is why we have increased monitoring of storm overflows in England from 7% under Labour in 2010 to 100% today, and we are now holding water companies to account on tackling pollution by quadrupling the

number of checks, increasing unannounced inspections, giving Ofwat new powers to block bonuses, and taking action against water companies that do not link dividends to environmental performance.

I refer the hon. Member to the opening statement by the Secretary of State at the Lords Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee on 12 March 2024.

• On 25 January we introduced new legislation to ban zombie-style knives and machetes. This will come in to force on 24 September 2024.
• In the Criminal Justice Bill, legislating for more powers for police to seize knives held in private, increasing maximum sentences for sale of prohibited weapons and underage sales and a new offence of knife possession with violent intent.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), funded by the Ministry of Justice, functions as an independent body, making decisions autonomously and without ministerial influence. Recognising the need to increase the size of its caseworker team and to carry out more outreach work with people who may need their services, the department has increased funding year on year of CCRC since 2020-21 with the budget for 2023-24 set at just under £8m.

In the period from 31/3/1997 to 30/11/2023, the CCRC completed a total of 30,082 reviews and they referred 829 cases to the appellate courts (Court of Appeal and Crown Court). A breakdown of CCRC data by year is provided in table 1.

The tracking of cases referred to the Court of Appeal based on a) new arguments, b) new evidence, and c) neither, has not been systematically recorded since the establishment of the CCRC in 1997. Case referrals are often a combination of both new evidence and other arguments, making it challenging for the CCRC to categorise cases exclusively into these specified criteria.

The number of referrals by the CCRC utilising the exceptional circumstances grounds outlined in section 13(2) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 has not been systematically documented for each year by the CCRC since its establishment. However, the CCRC are in the process of constructing a public archive for its referrals, and it is their intention to make this data available to the public in the future. It is important to note that a portion of their referrals involves cases classified as 'no appeal,' where applicants have not exhausted the standard appeal process before approaching the CCRC. In such instances, reliance on the exceptional circumstances provision in section 13(2) becomes necessary.

The CCRC receive a significant number of no appeal cases, reapplications and ineligible cases. The final column in table 1 shows the referral rate as a percentage of the cases which pass the ‘triage’ stage and are allocated to a Case Review Manager for investigation.

Table 1

Work on the creation of the public archive is not complete, but the CCRC anticipate it to be approximately 125 referrals that have involved police misconduct. The CCRC do not have a breakdown on the split between corruption cases and other conduct issues, such as breaches of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which governs the powers and procedures of the police in the investigation of criminal offenses.