The Care Act 2014 clarifies and strengthens the processes to support adults who are at risk from abuse or neglect in the following ways:

- Where local authorities have reasonable cause to expect a person is at risk of abuse or neglect they must carry out a safeguarding enquiry, consider what if any actions are needed, and who should carry these out. This makes clear that there is no eligibility threshold and allows authorities flexibility to respond to a safeguarding issue appropriately, which may be through the authority or one of its partners such as the police.

- The statutory Care Act guidance clarifies that where a local authority has started a safeguarding enquiry but identifies a potential need for a care and support service, it should continue the needs assessment for care and support in parallel, and determine whether the person has eligible needs which it must meet. The eligibility criteria is based upon whether the person’s needs have a significant impact on their wellbeing, which includes abuse and neglect. While the authority is likely to have already identified any safeguarding issues earlier and made an enquiry, it would still consider these at the eligibility determination as it would clearly impact on the person’s wellbeing.

- The care and support system should support the above by having a comprehensive preventative strategy that promotes wellbeing and independence, and one that does not wait to respond when people reach a crisis point.

I refer the Rt. Hon. Member to the answer I gave on the 12 January 2015 to Question UIN 220004.

The recent Supreme Court decision upholds the long standing interpretation of Section 4 of the Abortion Act that the right to object to participate in abortion treatment is limited to those staff who actually take part in treatment administered in a hospital or other approved place.

The revised autism statutory guidance will be written in clear and accessible language. It will include existing obligations from the 2010 strategy and recent legislation such as the Care Act 2014. Local authorities and NHS bodies are required to take the guidance into account, or provide a good reason for not doing so.

No NHS foundation trusts self-certified to Monitor in their quarterly return for January to March 2014 that they were not compliant with the criteria in the Monitor risk assessment framework, relating to meeting health needs of people with a learning disability.

We will be discussing a number of issues the Bill raises at a roundtable stakeholder event in the new year and which will include a number of representatives from medical research charities.

Under current arrangements clinicians can prescribe for their patients the medicine which best meets their clinical needs, including medicines outside their licensed indications. The Bill proposes changes to these arrangements by introducing, for the first time, a duty to apply for a licence when a new indication for an off-patent drug becomes apparent. We are concerned this will carry a message that off-label prescribing is not allowed without a licence and thus end the current flexibility that allows clinicians to make their patients’ needs their first concern.

I refer the hon. Member to the Answer I gave the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on 19 November 2014 to Question 213936.

The Care Act will be implemented from April 2015.

A period of consultation is underway until 19 December on revised statutory guidance for local authorities and the NHS to implement Think Autism, the 2014 update to the 2010 Adult Autism Strategy. This includes coverage of preventing, delaying or reducing the care needs of adults with autism or their carers by providing low level preventative support and enabling people with autism to be connected with peers and with local community groups in line with the duties of the Care Act. The statutory guidance when it is issued in February 2015 will complement the existing Care Act guidance on prevention.

Information about deaths of people with a learning disability in assessment and treatment units is not collected centrally by the Department, NHS England or the Care Quality Commission.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre collects hospital episode statistics data. These data identify the number of hospital episodes where a patient had a primary or secondary diagnosis of a learning disability where the patient died.

From 2008-09 to 2012-2013 there were a total of 817 deaths for admitted patients at all hospitals in England. This number includes all deaths from all causes while a hospital patient.

The breakdown for each of the last five years is in the following table.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, Health and Social Care Information Centre

These data are not available by individual departments or units within hospitals. They also do not represent the deaths of people with learning disabilities where learning disability is not recorded as a primary or secondary diagnosis.

NHS England is setting up a National Learning Disability Mortality Review to better understand what causes people who have a learning disability to die, on average, at a younger age than other people; and to learn from what has happened to ensure that NHS services improve the way they care for people with a learning disability.

The Disability and Health Employment Strategy published in December 2013 sets out our expectation that the work carried out by DEAs in Jobcentres will continue.

The Disability and Health Employment Strategy published in December 2013 sets out our expectation that the work carried out by DEAs in Jobcentres will continue.

Negotiations with Iran on a comprehensive agreement have been tough but productive. It was not possible to reach a deal by 20 July, but both sides are committed to building on the progress that has been made. We have therefore agreed with Iran to extend the Geneva interim agreement until 24 November to give us the time to bridge the differences, in particular on the core issue of enrichment.

We are working with NHS England to set out clear expectations for progress and improved rates of discharge. This includes NHS England producing an action plan to measure progress against. The Winterbourne View joint improvement programme is working with local areas to identify issues and to support them to make progress.

The Government recognises that register integrity is an important issue. This Department is carefully considering with Companies House and others what checks are necessary to ensure integrity of data and that the registration of company information in the UK remains quick, simple and inexpensive.

The current UK register is one of the most open in the world, and is accessed over 240 million times a year. This means the information is policed on a significant scale by the public, who report anomalies to Companies House for follow up.

The Department has already conducted four independent reviews of the WCA, the most recent of which was completed on 12 December 2013 and is published online at the following address:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/work-capability-assessment-independent-review-year-4

A fifth and final independent review is currently under way and is due to be completed by the end of the year.

In addition to these independent reviews the Department has conducted an evidence based review of the WCA in which the descriptors for mental health and fluctuating conditions were examined by an independent panel against an alternative assessment designed in conjunction with representative groups and charities. On 12 December 2013 the Department published the results of this online at the following address:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/work-capability-assessment-evidence-based-review

Credit ratings will take into account a number of different variables, including late payment, but it is a commercial judgment taken by credit reference agencies.

I refer the right hon. Member to the Explanatory Note for Clause 117 of Finance Bill 2014, which can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/298680/ENs_Finance_Bill_2014__1_.pdf