The Teaching Regulation Agency’s (TRA) Senior Leadership Team (SLT) sit on the TRA Executive Board. The TRA SLT includes the Chief Executive and Senior Managers who lead the two operational units within TRA. Board members are not formally appointed as they are existing civil servants employed by the TRA. The purpose of the Board is to develop and monitor the strategic planning, risk management and leadership priorities of the Agency.

An independent Professional Conduct Panel, appointed under the Public Appointments process, hear cases of serious teacher misconduct. The independent Professional Conduct Panel determine whether the evidence proves unacceptable professional conduct, conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute, or a conviction of a relevant offence. If so, the Professional Conduct Panel will make a recommendation to my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education on whether to prohibit the individual from teaching. Following recommendation, the decision to impose a prohibition order is taken by a member of the TRA SLT, on behalf of the Secretary of State. Individual cases and decisions are not discussed at the TRA Executive Board.

It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the Member.

Alexei Navalny's politically motivated detention demonstrates Russia's increasing clampdown on freedom of expression and democratic rights. The UK will continue to make clear to Russia that it should release Mr Navalny immediately, as required by the decision of the European Court of Human Rights. HMG officials are in regular contact with Mr Navalny's team, and where possible, attend his court hearings. Following Mr Navalny's latest politically motivated sentence in August, the Foreign Secretary and Minister Docherty issued statements reiterating the call for his release. We will continue to seek opportunities for further statements in support of Mr Navalny.

The Government have not made an assessment of whether personal health budgets are available to people receiving NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) that need them.

The Department is responsible for CHC policy and legislation, which includes the National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare and National Health Service-funded Nursing Care. Operational delivery of CHC is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs) with oversight from NHS England. Quarterly performance data is used by regional NHS England teams to inform ICB assurance.

Legislation requires ICBs to provide people eligible for CHC with information about personal health budgets, to promote their availability and to provide advice and assistance with respect to requesting such budgets.

The Intelligence & Security Committee’s 2022 report on Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism (ERWT) considers “far-right political outlook” as “views that Western civilisations are under threat from ‘non-native’ people and ideas.”

The report categorises ERWT as ‘Cultural Nationalism’, ‘White Nationalism’ and ‘White Supremacism’.

The Government remains focused on supporting those who stand up to extremism.

We keep our response to extremism under constant review to ensure it is best placed to tackle the evolving threat.  Alongside the police, we regularly review potential threats to ensure as are doing everything we can to protect our communities.

Advice on the safety of individuals is a matter for the police.

The department is unable to comment on individual cases as the police are responsible for investigating such incidents and will take action where they deem appropriate.

Where the department is made aware of incidents of this nature, the local authority and the police will be engaged where appropriate to seek assurances and offer support to schools.

The department’s school and college security guidance provides advice and support to the sector including how to deal with bomb threats. The guidance is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-and-college-security.

The department recognises that gender is a complex and sensitive issue, and that some schools and colleges feel that they need more support in this area in order to help pupils, students and parents deal with concerns raised. That is why the department is working with the Minister for Women and Equalities to develop guidance to support schools and colleges in relation to gender questioning children.

The department has committed to publishing a draft for consultation at the earliest opportunity.

The Government has not made an assessment of whether personal health budgets are available to people receiving National Health Service Continuing Healthcare (CHC) that need them. Operational delivery of CHC is the responsibility of integrated care boards (ICBs) with oversight from NHS England. Quarterly performance data is used by regional NHS England teams to inform ICB assurance.

Legislation requires ICBs to provide people eligible for CHC with information about personal health budgets, to offer them the option of taking them up, and to support them to do so.

NHS England expects that, unless there are exceptional circumstances, everyone living in their own home who is in receipt of CHC funding will have a personal health budget. In 2022/23, approximately 30,000 individuals eligible for CHC were in receipt of a personal health budget.

Maintained schools and academies are required to conduct a daily act of collective worship which is wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character. Most schools with a religious designation may conduct collective worship which aligns with their trust deeds or tenets of their religion.

Daily acts of collective worship, subject to the right of withdrawal, must include all pupils attending a school. As a rule, all acts of collective worship should take place on the school premises and schools are free to determine where in the school it takes place. Schools have discretion to organise collective worship elsewhere on special occasions.

The government continuously assesses threats posed to the UK. As a matter of longstanding policy, the department is unable to release information regarding threat assessments on the grounds of national security.

The government is clear that any challenges to its core values, whatever their origin, will not be tolerated.

If there is a concern that a school is not fulfilling its legal duties, complaints procedure should be followed. Where the department is made aware that schools are not fulfilling their legal duties, it will investigate.

The department has been made aware of a small number of incidents of this nature initiated by individuals who have Islamist and other extremist views.

The department is clear that it is never acceptable to threaten or intimidate teachers and schools. Where the department has been aware of incidents of this nature, it has engaged with the school, local authority and the police to ensure an appropriate response.

The police, who are operationally independent, are responsible for investigating criminal activity associated with these incidents and will take action where they deem appropriate.

To support the sector, the department has published School and College security guidance, which includes dealing with incidents such as bomb threats.

The Government remains dedicated to our commitment to tackling those who spread views that promote violence and hatred against individuals and communities in our society and must always stand up to those who seek to undermine our fundamental values and spread hate.

The Home Office does not hold information on police protection in relation to this case. This is a matter for West Yorkshire Police, which is operationally independent of Government.

It is important that processes relating to teacher misconduct are progressed without any political involvement. Decisions on whether to progress cases are taken independently by the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA).

An independent Professional Conduct Panel is appointed to hear cases and determine whether the evidence proves unacceptable professional conduct, conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute, or a conviction of a relevant offence. If so, the Professional Conduct Panel will make a recommendation on whether to prohibit the individual from teaching.

Following the recommendation, the decision to impose a prohibition order is taken by a senior TRA official. Although that decision is taken on behalf of the Secretary of State, neither she or any other Ministers in the department can have any involvement in these independent investigations, related processes, and decisions.

Freedom of expression has been interpreted in case law, for example on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and under the common law. The concept of freedom of speech is also described for specific purposes in legislation such as the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023. The fundamental right to freedom of speech is widely understood and protected by the courts. The Government has no plans to outline the specific content of freedom of speech on an issue-by-issue basis.

All schools have a duty to share information about their curriculum with parents and, whilst this does not require them to share all of the teaching materials they use with parents routinely, the department has been very clear that schools should respond positively where parents request to see specific materials. On 31 March 2023, the Secretary of State wrote to all schools to set out that, under current arrangements, schools can and should share curriculum materials with parents, and the department would expect schools to avoid entering into any agreement with an external agency that seeks to prevent them from ensuring parents are properly aware of the materials that are being used to teach their children.

The department is aware that some parents have particular concerns about materials used to teach Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE). The department will consider, as part of the review of the RSHE statutory guidance, whether any further changes are needed to reinforce the need for transparency around RSHE materials.

In May 2023, the Secretary of State announced the details of the independent expert advisory panel who will advise on the review of the RSHE curriculum. They have been tasked with identifying the topics within the curriculum which would benefit from age limits.

It will remain important that schools take full responsibility for ensuring lessons and materials are age appropriate, suitable, and politically impartial, particularly when using materials produced by external organisations.

Oak National Academy, the independent provider of freely available online curriculum and lesson resources, will develop curriculum materials to make sure every school can access high quality, compliant RSHE resources.

Schools may choose to use curriculum materials developed by Oak, an Arm’s Length Body, working independently of Government and collaboratively with the education sector. Oak works with teachers across the country, giving them and their pupils access to free, optional, and adaptable high quality digital curriculum resources. Its current resources can be viewed online at: https://www.thenational.academy/. Oak is developing new resources which will begin to become available from this Autumn.

Schedule 4 Paragraph 7(a) of the School Information Regulations (England) 2008/3093 requires all maintained schools to publish their school curriculum on their website. The guidance for this is outlined online at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/what-maintained-schools-must-publish-online.

All academies must follow a similar process for their school curriculum. The guidance for this is outlined online at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/what-academies-free-schools-and-colleges-should-publish-online.

If a parent feels that a maintained school is failing to comply with its legal requirements relating to the provision of the curriculum, or that the school is acting unreasonably in the way it complies with them, they can make a formal complaint to the governing body by following the school’s statutory complaints procedures.

Our assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood remains as set out in the summary report published in December 2015, which concluded the movement is a secretive organisation and that parts of it – globally – have a highly ambiguous relationship with violent extremism. The UK Government continues to stand by the judgments of the review.

The Government keeps under review the Muslim Brotherhood’s activities and views when appropriate to ensure our position is based on the latest information available and we will consider action in accordance with the five commitments included in the former Prime Minister’s statement to Parliament, if and where legal thresholds are met.

The Ministry of Justice publishes information on the number of prosecutions for offences under section 127(1) or (2) of the Communications Act 2003, in England and Wales, in the Outcomes by Offence tool, available via the following link: Criminal Justice System statistics quarterly: December 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Using the Offence filter, select ‘196 Communications Act 2003 S.127 - Sending grossly offensive message/matter by electronic communications network’.

The data requested is also provided in the table below.

Total number of defendants prosecuted for offences under section 127(1) or (2) of the Communications Act 2003, England and Wales, 2020 to 2022:

Source: Court Proceedings Database

Notes:

1) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

2) The figures given in the table relate to defendants for whom these offences were the principal offences for which they were dealt with. When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more offences it is the offence for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe.

3) The figures given in the table relate to the following offence under section 127(1) or (2) of the Communications Act 2003: '19607 - Improper use of public electronic communications network'.

The Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism defines Far Right as “an umbrella term to encapsulate the entire movement which has a Far-Right political outlook in relation to matters such as culture, race, immigration and identity”. The Home Office uses the definition as set out by the ISC in this report.

Some groups publicly demonstrate behaviours that oppose the values and principles that underpin our society. The Government is committed to tackling those who spread Islamist views that promote violence and hatred against individuals and communities in our society. This includes using existing mechanisms to analyse, prevent and disrupt the spread of ideologies that can lead to community division.

We assess all evidence of those that radicalise others though their support for or justification of violence and will not tolerate those who spread divisive and harmful narratives.

We work with local, regional and national partners, including with policing, to reduce the impact of these groups in communities and limit their influence as a potential driver for radicalisation. We continue to work with law enforcement agencies and multi-agency partners to increase our understanding of new and emerging radicalising threats to society. Any violent threat is assessed and managed by the police and security services based on the threat that it is deemed to pose.

The Home Office avoids publicly commenting on whether or not specific groups or individuals are of Islamist extremist concern, as this could have a detrimental effect on our ability to take future action against them.