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).

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.

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.

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 World Health Organisation Air Quality Guidelines are intended to inform the setting of air quality standards and are not ready-made targets for adoption. We will continue to keep our targets under review and consider in line with the best available evidence, specific to our national circumstances.

I refer the Hon Member to my answer to Question UIN 13601 on 22 February 2024.

The May local elections will be held on the same day as scheduled Police and Crime Commissioner Elections, and so the Government has taken the decision to fund a ‘national’ sweep on polling day this year. This will mean that Royal Mail can conduct ‘sweeps’ of their mail centres to ensure completed postal ballot packs are pulled out at mail centres on the evening of polling day and delivered directly to local Returning Officers.

Returning Officers are required at elections to record the number of postal ballot packs received after the close of poll and this information is available for public inspection after the election.

I refer the Hon Member to my answer to Question UIN 13601 on 22 February 2024.

The May local elections will be held on the same day as scheduled Police and Crime Commissioner Elections, and so the Government has taken the decision to fund a ‘national’ sweep on polling day this year. This will mean that Royal Mail can conduct ‘sweeps’ of their mail centres to ensure completed postal ballot packs are pulled out at mail centres on the evening of polling day and delivered directly to local Returning Officers.

Returning Officers are required at elections to record the number of postal ballot packs received after the close of poll and this information is available for public inspection after the election.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is aware of the issues raised by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concerning quality control and design problems with plastic syringes manufactured in China. Whist the MHRA works on the basis that CE or UKCA marked plastic syringes originally produced in China are in use within the United Kingdom healthcare system, one of the main suppliers of plastic syringes into the UK healthcare system, Becton, Dickinson and Company, has confirmed that their products are not affected by this issue.

Medical device safety issues may affect different global regions to varying extents. Whilst awareness and active information exchange between regulators is critical to focus national investigations, regulatory action is taken based on UK relevant evidence. Device safety corrective actions communicated via so-called Field Safety Notices (FSNs) related to the specific problems highlighted in the FDA alert have not been issued in the UK. FSNs issued in the UK are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/drug-device-alerts

The MHRA is an active member of the International Medical Device Safety group. Representatives of regulatory authorities across the world meet on a regular basis to discuss emerging safety issues related to medical devices. The current issue was identified and MHRA are closely monitoring the situation. At this stage, there is insufficient evidence to justify actions against specific manufacturers of these products supplying into the UK.

The North Sea Transition Authority plays a crucial role in helping to achieve the Government's commitment to reach Net Zero emissions by 2050. Its Strategy reflects the ongoing energy transition and features a range of net zero obligations on the oil and gas industry, including stepping up efforts to reduce production emissions, supporting carbon capture and storage projects and unlocking clean hydrogen production.

As a precautionary measure, and going above and beyond UK Health Security Agency advice, the Home Office disembarked all asylum seekers on 11 August 2023.

We take the welfare of individuals on the vessel seriously. The asylum seekers had health assessments, and nobody has presented with symptoms.

We are beginning to move people back on the Bibby Stockholm in Portland. All necessary tests including all health, fire and water checks have been completed, and are all satisfactory.

The number of people on board will increase gradually with more arrivals in the coming days and months, as part of a carefully structured phased approach.

The Energy Act 2016 requires the North Sea Transition Authority’s (NSTA) performance to be reviewed at least every three years. The report (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/oil-and-gas-authority-review-2022) following the second such review, which also met the requirements of the Cabinet Office’s Arm’s Length Body Review Programme, was published in June 2023. It found that the NSTA is in good health and effective in meeting its statutory requirements. The Authority plays a crucial role in helping to achieve the Government's commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050 while supporting energy resilience and the drive to develop home-grown hydrogen and carbon storage.

Asylum Operations provides staff with specialist training through a comprehensive programme of classroom-based learning and a mentoring framework as part of our plan for a highly skilled workforce. This is delivered by a dedicated team of senior grade trainers and higher-grade technical experts, thereby helping to maintain case-working expertise and improve decision maker capability.

Work has been undertaken to review and redesign the training of Asylum decision makers. The focus of the project is to ensure that the right training is given at the right time. The expectation is that by moving to this model it will help decision makers become more productive in a quicker timeframe as the training will be more focused on the type of casework that they are assigned and the tasks they will need to undertake at that time.

The Home Office continues to work with Migrant Help in line with their contract to ensure that they take all rectification actions to bring about improvements. Migrant Help have increased their headcount to respond to the significant increase in demand for their services which is due to increased volumes of those destitute asylum seekers requiring accommodation.

We intend to consult this year on the technical specification for the Future Homes Standard. The Building Regulations on energy efficiency will continue to set a performance-based standard rather than mandating the use of any specific technologies. Under the current performance standards, most new homes are likely to be built with solar panels.

Reducing the backlog in asylum cases and establishing a more efficient and robust decision-making system is not in and of itself a strategy to stop illegal migration, but it is important for taxpayer value and we have prioritised it. We have transformed the productivity of asylum decision making by streamlining processes, creating focused interviews and instilling true accountability for performance. As of 1 September, we have met our commitment to have 2,500 decision makers, an increase of 174% from the same point last year. As a result, I am pleased to report to the House that we are on track to clear the legacy backlog by the end of the year, and that recently published provisional figures for July show that the overall backlog fell.

On 13 December 2022, the Prime Minister pledged to clear the backlog of the 92,601 initial asylum decisions relating to claims made before 28 June 2022 (“legacy claims”) by the end of 2023.

We have taken immediate action to accelerate decision-making and rapidly speed up processing times by streamlining guidance, accelerating decision-making procedures, including more focused and fewer interviews, as well as enhancing the use of technology.

Information regarding processing times for family reunion applications is not routinely published and could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost. We are working outside the 60 working day service standard, with the majority of applications being considered at over double the service standard timescale.

We remain committed to improving and speeding up processing times for family reunion applications.

The latest Immigration system statistics, year ending June 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) show that since 2015, 46,511 family reunion visas have been granted to family members of refugees.

We prioritise all applications where the application has been made by an unaccompanied child, under the age of 18. We will also prioritise applications where there is an evidenced urgent or compelling reason.

The rise in the number of small boat crossings has placed significant pressures on local authority care placements for young people. Out of necessity, and with the best interests of the child in mind, we have had no alternative but to temporarily use hotels to give unaccompanied children a roof over their heads whilst local authority accommodation is found.

As set out in the National Transfer Scheme (NTS) protocol on 24 August 2022 the transfer timeframe was reduced to five working days for all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children transferring from interim hotels not currently in the care of a local authority. Based on local management information, approximately half of all children transfer within 5 days.

The NTS has seen 4,875 children transferred to local authorities with children’s services between 1 July 2021 and 31 March 2023, which is over six times the number of transfers in the same time frame in previous years. (October 2019 – June 2021 there were 793 transfers). The time it takes for a local authority to identify a placement varies and has meant some children experience delays in transferring. Where there are significant delays we will look to move the child to Kent County Council’s Reception and Safe Care Service or reallocate the child to a different local authority. Delays may also occur where a child refuses to transfer to the placement. Social workers from the emergency hotels and local authorities work close with the children to encourage them to take the offered placement.

The safety and wellbeing of those in our care is our primary concern. Robust safeguarding and welfare procedures are in place to ensure all children are safe and supported as we seek urgent placements with a local authority. This includes support workers being onsite in the hotels 24 hours a day, supported by nurses and social workers. UASC are not detained and are free to leave the accommodation. All contingency sites have security staff and providers liaise closely with local police to ensure the welfare and safety of vulnerable residents.