The ‘Care Planning, Placement and Care Review (England) Regulations 2010’ and statutory guidance outline duties on local authorities regarding out of area placements, including to notify and consult other local authorities if they place a child in care within their area. A link to the regulations is available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2010/959/contents/made. The statutory guidance is also available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60e6fb43d3bf7f56896127e5/The_Children_Act_1989_guidance_and_regulations_Volume_2_care_planning__placement_and_case_review.pdf.

The needs of the child are paramount when deciding the right care placement. Though the department wants to reduce out of area placements, they will always be part of the care landscape and sometimes circumstances make it the right decision for a child to be placed elsewhere, for example when they are at risk from sexual exploitation, trafficking or gang violence.

The government recognises that there are challenges in the placements market and that is why the government is investing £259 million of capital funding to help local authorities create more beds in their local areas. The funding for open residential placements, match-funded equally by the department and local authority investment, is expected to create 95 new children’s homes, providing 360 additional placements across England.

Under the Legal Services Act 2007, the legal profession in England and Wales, together with its regulators, operate independently of government. The oversight regulator for the legal services sector is the Legal Services Board (LSB). The Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) is the board responsible for administering the Legal Ombudsman Scheme (LeO), and as such, the OLC is required to report on the performance of the Legal Ombudsman to the LSB.

The OLC and LeO have been transparent that waiting times experienced by consumers and legal providers needing input from LeO remain too long. Against a backdrop of increasing demand, LeO has made progress in reducing waiting times in recent years. A key driver of improvements to date has been the introduction of early resolution approaches from 2022/23. Before this transformation, all complaints referred to LeO would have been put in a queue waiting to be assessed. Today, over half of complaints are resolved through early resolution and customers can expect to have their cases resolved within an average of 60 days.

Following a consultation process in 2021, new Scheme Rules were introduced on 1 April 2023. These rules were designed to enable the LeO to further improve the customers’ experience by increasing efficiency and removing obstacles to resolving complaints, helping to ensure they are able to give an outcome at the earliest possible stage. So far in 2023/24 44% of all cases have been resolved within 90 days. In 2021/22 80% were taking more than 180 days.

Further steps the LeO has taken to improve its efficiency, and in turn improve customers’ experience, are outlined in the OLC’s most recent annual report and accounts, draft strategy and business plan, published at https://www.legalombudsman.org.uk/who-we-are/corporate-publications/. These include a focus improving the quality of legal providers’ own complaints handling, as one way of helping address rising demand for LeO’s service.

Between January and April 2023, 99.5% of customers using the standard UK service received their passport within the published processing timeframe of ten weeks.

Between January and April 2023, 99.5% of customers using the standard UK service received their passport within the published processing timeframe of ten weeks.

Appointments for urgent passport services are released up to three weeks in advance to help meet the needs of the small proportion of customers who need a passport sooner than ten weeks. Appointment capacity is at normal levels.

The Secretary of State has not held discussions with representatives of Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust on the level of delayed discharges in that trust. Minister Caulfield met with the Chief Executive Officer and Chair of Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board on 20 December 2022 and discussed a range of subjects including delayed discharge.

An improved process for managing Additional Needs Disability Adaptations (ANDAs) for Service personnel and their families, including disabled children, was implemented in April this year with the introduction of the new Future Defence Infrastructure Services (FDIS) Accommodation contracts.

Required works must be approved within a target of 15 days of receiving ANDA applications and an accompanying Occupational Therapist's report. Pinnacle, the Ministry of Defence's (MOD) National Accommodation Management Services supplier, is responsible for providing weekly progress reports to families and each family is provided with a dedicated contact person.

The MOD, through the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), give the highest priority to ANDAs and work closely with the Service Families Federations and Welfare Teams to ensure families and their children are provided with fit-for-purpose adaptations to meet their changing needs. DIO also liaise with the Forces Additional Needs & Disability Forum (FANDF) which gives families the opportunity to express their concerns and suggestions for further service improvements to DIO.

Dental patients are not registered to a particular practice outside a course of treatment. A practice can accept a patient for a course of treatment and there are no geographical restrictions on which dental practice a patient may attend. An additional £50 million for National Health Service dentistry was provided for the final quarter of 2021/22 to provide urgent care to patients. The appointments were targeted to patients in most need of urgent dental treatment, including vulnerable groups and families with children.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have asked practices to deliver 100% of contracted units of dental activity and 100% of units of orthodontic activity to safely improve access for patients, including children and vulnerable patients. As well as general dental services, specialist community dental services which treat particularly vulnerable people, including children, have also benefited from additional funding. The Department and NHS England and NHS Improvement are working with stakeholders, including the British Dental Association, on improvements to the NHS dental system. This aims to increase patient access, reduce health inequalities and make the NHS a more attractive place to work for dentists.

I have had assurances from the Foreign Office that it carefully evaluated the bids in line with its procurement process, and that the answers and documentation supplied provided limited assurance that either supplier could deliver electronic countermeasure systems within the procurement timeframe required. However, I commend my hon. Friend for standing up for his constituents and seeking redress of grievance, which is what this House exists for, and I will question the Foreign Office further to give him further reassurance that the process was carried out fairly and his constituents were not disadvantaged.

Our two Departments are working closely together on matters of procurement policy on a continuing basis, as demonstrated by the provisions being made in the Procurement Bill for defence contracts. I have had regular conversations with my hon. Friend the Minister for Defence Procurement during the drafting of the Bill.

In February 2020, the Government reformed the police complaints and discipline systems to make them more transparent, more independent and more proportionate. New measures were also introduced to improve timeliness of investigations, including a requirement for forces and the IOPC to provide written explanations where cases take more than 12 months.

The Home Affairs Select Committee have recently published their report into police conduct and complaints which highlighted areas of progress, including on timeliness of investigations. We will be responding to the report in due course.

The Department and the National Health Service (NHS) have published the Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care. This plan sets out a clear vision for how the NHS will recover and expand elective services over the next three years.

To support elective recovery the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, this is in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available to systems this year to help drive up and protect elective activity.

The ambitions for patients are supported with a clear plan to deliver £9 million additional treatments and diagnostic procedures over the next three years and around 30% more elective activity by 2024/25 than before the pandemic.

Throughout the pandemic the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s contact centre has actively managed its operation and flexed the services for customers in line with the available resources. To help respond to more enquiries, remote working has been increased with staff handling email, webchat, social media and telephone customer contacts. The DVLA has also procured the use of an additional building to increase the number of staff able to take calls.

I would be delighted to do that. I have first-hand experience of negotiating bridleways over motorway bridges and level crossings with two small daughters on their ponies, and I very much appreciate that one of the benefits of improving the bridleway network will be increased safety. The schemes we are introducing will incentivise farmers to enhance public access across the piece.

The Government share my hon. Friend’s ambition to improve safety and access for horse riders. Our 25-year environment plan and landscapes review explain how we will help to connect people with nature. Our new environmental land management schemes will include payments to ensure that those goods are delivered.

During the pandemic, we have seen a shift to remote delivery of talking therapies delivered by the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. Remote delivery has ensured that people can continue to access help from the safety of their own home and access IAPT services from anywhere in England. For those with severe needs or in crisis, all National Health Service mental health providers have established 24 hours a day, seven days a week urgent mental health helplines

We are increasing investment in community mental health care for adults year-on-year, up to almost £1 billion extra by 2023/24. To improve eating disorder services, we recently announced additional early intervention services for young people aged 16-25 years old, to be rolled out in 18 sites across the country. We remain committed to the ambitions in the NHS Long Term Plan to expand and transform mental health services in England and to investing an additional £2.3 billion a year in mental health services by 2023/24.

Law enforcement, including the handling of 101 calls is an operational matter for the police. It is for elected Police Crime Commissioners and Chief Constables to decide how best to manage their communications and response to the public based on their knowledge and experience of the communities they serve.

Everyone leaving prison should have the tools they need to avoid a life of crime, including a job, a home and treatment for substance misuse issues.

Offenders typically have complex needs, many of which drive offending. The prison and probation system provides an opportunity to address these, but we also need a concerted effort across Government to rehabilitate individuals on release from prison.

For example, we are working with NHS England to develop their care after custody service, RECONNECT, to engage and support more people into treatment upon release.

The Government greatly appreciates the valuable work that responsible animal sanctuaries and rehoming organisations do in caring for animals. Evidence provided by respondents to the consultation on banning commercial third-party sales of puppies and kittens, reflected concerns about profit-driven activity and variations in welfare standards across the sector. The Government is committed to fully understanding the views of rescue and rehoming organisations themselves, and the possible impacts of introducing regulations to the sector and is currently engaging with the sector on assessing these issues. Any proposals to bring forward regulations on animal welfare standards for the sector will be subject to full public consultation.

The department is committed to promoting effective special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support within schools and colleges, and good social care provision for all, including autistic children and young people. The department has issued guidance that encompasses all forms of SEND.

The SEND Code of Practice (2014) places a duty on schools and colleges to use their best endeavours to support all pupils with SEND, including those with autism. Support should be focused on the needs of individual children and young people, which can vary enormously even for those who have the same condition and where they may have more than one condition. This means that the educational interventions that may be effective for one child will not necessarily work for another with the same diagnosis. This need for a flexible and child-centred approach is why, as a department, we do not prescribe specific guidance on supporting particular conditions.

In order to support schools and colleges to put in place good practice for supporting autistic children and young people according to their individual needs, the department have, since 2011, funded the Autism Education Trust to deliver autism training to over 239,000 education staff, to provide resources for practitioners and education settings, and to develop communities of practice to facilitate mutual support and shared learning in good support for autism.

In terms of ensuring good social care practice, all children and young people, including those with autism, should have access to the support they need to keep them safe, ensure their wellbeing and overcome challenges to achieving their potential, as informed by the Children Act (1989), Children and Families Act (2014) and Care Act (2014). Working Together to Safeguard Children (2018) sets out how local authorities should provide effective, evidence-based services to protect and promote the welfare of children, including children with autism.

There are several developments currently underway, which will be of benefit to autistic children and young people (and their families). The department is working closely with the Department for Health and Social Care to produce an all ages Autism Strategy which will outline how education, health and social care systems will work to improve support for, and reduce inequalities experienced by autistic people. Alongside the Autism Strategy, a major review of the SEND system, announced in September 2019 and due to report in spring 2020, is aimed at improving support for children with SEND, including those with autism.

We recently announced a £780 million increase to local authorities’ high needs funding, boosting the budget by 12% and bringing the total spent on supporting those with the most complex needs to over £7 billion for 2020-21.