A pesticide may only be authorised and placed on the GB market once the active substance it contains has been approved. This happens following a thorough risk assessment carried out by our expert regulator, the Health and Safety Executive. Glyphosate is currently approved as an active substance for use in pesticide products in GB.

Glyphosate was reviewed in 2016 (when the UK was an EU Member State). The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose any risks to human health and the environment. When the GB approval of glyphosate is next reviewed, we will again consider our position based on the legal requirements and a careful scientific assessment of the evidence and risks. The Government’s first priority with regard to pesticides is to ensure that they will not harm people or pose unacceptable risks to the environment.

It is for each Local Authority to decide the best way of delivering effective and cost-effective weed control in its operations without harming people or the environment. There is a legal requirement to minimise the use of pesticides along roads and in areas used by the public.

We want to address some of the key barriers to uptake of integrated pest management in the amenity sector and reduce reliance on pesticides, whilst recognising the continuing role pesticides will play, for example, in making sure public highways are accessible and safe.

The Women’s Health Strategy sets out our ambitions for improving the health and wellbeing of women and girls in England. It is a 10-year strategy, as many of the improvements we want to see require structural change. We have committed to updating Parliament annually on the progress of the Women’s Health Strategy. In January 2024, my Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care updated Parliament on our priorities for 2024.

To support local implementation of the strategy, we have established a Network of Women’s Health Champions, made up of senior leaders from every integrated care system. The network is working together to implement priority commitments in the strategy, including women’s health hubs.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to the hon. Member for West Derby on 24 April 2024, PQ 22419.

The Government has made the unprecedented commitment to end rough sleeping within this Parliament and to fully enforce the Homelessness Reduction Act. We have already embarked on a strategy to shift the focus to prevention and move vulnerable individuals into multi-agency support, backed by £2.4 billion over three years.

The government’s ‘Ending Rough Sleeping for Good’ strategy published in 2022 recognises that young people face particular challenges in accessing and maintaining accommodation. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is funding £2.5 million is being provided through the Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 to fund youth services in local areas. The youth interventions provide funding to 8 local authorities across England to develop specialist youth support such as outreach workers, prevention officers and specialist housing for those under 25. The Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) is also delivering over 2,000 homes by March 2025, including 650 homes for young people sleeping rough or at risk of rough sleeping and funding for wrap-around support tailored to individual needs.

Where anyone is arrested, Liaison and Diversion (L&D) services have been introduced into police custody, to seek to ensure that vulnerable people are identified and offered access to the help they may need. A key component of these schemes is to provide referrals to community treatment and support services and to provide advice to police custody staff on how best to support people with these vulnerabilities.

In certain circumstances, local authorities have a duty to provide accommodation to young people in their area aged under 18 deemed ‘in need’ under the Children’s Act 1989.

The government does not collect figures on police usage of the Vagrancy Act where this does not result in prosecution. Policing is operationally independent of the Home Office, and we cannot comment on operational decisions.

An industry-owned code of practice for the use of snares to control foxes in England sets out clear principles for the legal use of snares, using evidence from snare-use research to improve snare deployment and design.

Anyone using snares has a responsibility under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 to ensure their activities do not harm protected species or cause any unnecessary suffering. Anyone committing an offence can face prosecution, an unlimited fine or even a custodial sentence.

We are looking at how snares are regulated as part of our continued drive to maintain the highest animal welfare standards in the world, and working to ensure the regulated use of the most appropriate trap and cull method which causes the least suffering whilst providing the greatest protection to crops, game birds or endangered species.

The Government is committed to tackling all forms of homelessness and rough sleeping, including youth homelessness.

Between 2018 and 2025, Government has provided £938 million through the Rough Sleeping Initiative, to support local authorities to tackle rough sleeping. We expect councils to commission services based on an assessment of the needs of their local community to make sure that all groups’ needs are considered, which will include young people. During this period, we have also committed £17.4 million to support local authorities to prevent homelessness and rough sleeping for care leavers.

Since 2021, we have invested £1.6 billion through the Homelessness Prevention Grant, giving councils the funding they need to prevent homelessness and help more people sooner, including young homeless people.

In 2022, we announced the £200 million Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP) which is delivering over 2,000 homes and support services for people sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough, including young people. Of these, over 650 are specifically for young people sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough.

The decision to authorise the short-term emergency use of a pesticide is never taken lightly and is based on robust assessment of the risks and benefits. The emergency authorisation we have issued this year for the use of a neonicotinoid on sugar beet is subject to strict conditions to mitigate risks to the wider environment.

We remain absolutely committed to the targets agreed in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. UK diplomatic leadership was critical to agreeing the framework and we will continue to champion the framework’s implementation.

We welcome the text in target 7, as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) lies at the heart of the UK's approach to minimise the environmental impact of pesticides.

In addition, the Government recently held a roundtable with members of the British sugar industry and environmental organisations to discuss the industry’s progress on implementing alternative pest control measures to neonicotinoids. I urge British Sugar and others in the sector to drive forward these plans, so that their outputs can be implemented in the field at pace.

The Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Pilot, launched in August 2022, and expanded further in February 2023, has provided funding to deliver 3,400 chargepoints and 1,000 gullies.

The full fund was launched in March 2023 and we announced five successful applications on February 5, 2024. Further successful applications will be announced in coming months.

The Electric Vehicle Chargepoint Grant (EVCG) scheme provides support for those who own and live in a flat or rent any residential property (including shared ownership). Grants of up to £350 per chargepoint are available for eligible applicants to help with the costs of purchase and installation.

As of 1^st July 2023, the EVCG has funded the installation of 3,433 domestic sockets since the scheme was launched in April 2022.

Previous domestic grant schemes funded by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme and Domestic Recharging Scheme) have delivered 380,555 domestic charging devices since 2013.

The Online Safety Act (OSA) received Royal Assent last year and will require the tech sector to tackle fraud on their platforms or face significant fines from Ofcom.

Alongside the OSA, on the 30^th November, the Government announced the Online Fraud Charter. This is the first voluntary agreement of its kind, in which the largest tech companies in the world have committed to implementing new measures to combat fraud in the UK. The Charter’s commitments seek improvements to blocking fraud at source, making reporting fraud easier for users and decreasing the time it takes to remove content and ads found to be fraudulent. The Charter also seeks to improve data sharing across the sector and with law enforcement, and to increase the transparency of risks on platforms and services.

The Government and the telecommunications industry also signed the Telecommunications Fraud Sector Charter in 2021. Since then, the sector has introduced firewalls that detect and stop scam texts from reaching customers, as well as deploying measures to prevent scam calls. The firewalls have stopped 870 million scam text messages since January 2022.

The Government is also taking legislative action to ban “SIM farms”, devices that allow criminals to send scam texts to thousands of people at the same time.

The Home Office and HM Treasury lead the policy response to economic crime for government and are responsible for coordinating the public-private Economic Crime Plan 2, published in March 2023.

Fraud and economic crime are complex and multifaceted issues that touch upon much of the economy and manifest in many different ways. It is right that these two departments jointly lead the government’s response, to support system leadership that fully considers the long-term ramifications of decisions that impact both the UK’s prosperity and security.

A single departmental approach or single Economic Crime minister would, in the government’s view, undermine our efforts to tackle holistically the challenge that economic crime presents.

Under current regulations, victims of unauthorised bank fraud are automatically entitled to reimbursement in virtually all cases. This is not the case with victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud – currently ten of the UK’s largest banks are signed up to the voluntary Contingent Reimbursement Model (CRM) Code.

The government have legislated through the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 to require the Payments System Regulator (PSR) to introduce mandatory reimbursement for APP scams within the Faster Payment System, where 98% of APP fraud takes place.

The PSR have confirmed that mandatory reimbursement will come into force in October 2024.

Under current regulations, victims of unauthorised bank fraud are automatically entitled to reimbursement in virtually all cases. This is not the case with victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud – currently ten of the UK’s largest banks are signed up to the voluntary Contingent Reimbursement Model (CRM) Code.

The government have legislated through the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 to require the Payments System Regulator (PSR) to introduce mandatory reimbursement for APP scams within the Faster Payment System, where 98% of APP fraud takes place.

The PSR have confirmed that mandatory reimbursement will come into force in October 2024.

The Government is committed to ensuring that all electric vehicle drivers can easily find public chargepoints that they can use. The Government and industry have supported the installation of over 53,600 publicly available charging devices.

The Publicly Available Standard (PAS) 1899 provides specifications on designing and installing accessible chargepoints. It also considers chargepoints in the context of their wider built environment, to ensure that the needs of other road and pavement users are reflected.

The Government will continue to monitor progress to assess whether further intervention is required, including through a 24-month review into implementation of PAS 1899.

The Government is actively encouraging local authorities, and other relevant parties, to incorporate accessibility into their procurement models, including through the Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Fund. This £381 million fund will support local authorities to work with industry to ensure that the transition to EVs takes place in every part of the country.

The Government published a draft Mental Health Bill on 23 June 2023 and it remains our intention to bring forward a Mental Health Bill when Parliamentary time allows. The Bill is designed to reform the Mental Health Act 1983, which exists to be able to compel people to stay in hospital and be treated for a severe mental illness. The legislative reforms contained in the Bill aim to provide greater autonomy to individuals to inform their care and treatment, including children and young people. They also aim to ensure that inpatients, including those detained under the Mental Health Act, have improved support to access their rights under the Act. The Bill therefore does not include provisions to tackle loneliness.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport launched the world’s first government strategy on loneliness in October 2018. It set out a clear vision for this country to be a place where we can all have strong social relationships.  The Government’s work to tackle loneliness focuses on reducing the stigma associated with loneliness; supporting organisations across society to take action; and improving the evidence base on loneliness.

Many people experience loneliness and social isolation, and the Government is committed to reducing the stigma associated with loneliness, and building a more connected society. Government, local councils, health systems and voluntary and community sector organisations all have an important role to play in achieving this.

Since publishing the first ever government Strategy for Tackling Loneliness and appointing the world’s first Minister for Loneliness in 2018, we have invested almost £80 million in tackling loneliness. These interventions include a national communications campaign that aims to reduce the stigma of loneliness, which has reached at least 25 million people across the country. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is also delivering the ‘Know Your Neighbourhood Fund’ to boost volunteering and reduce loneliness in 27 disadvantaged areas across England. We have also brought together over 750 people from across the public, private and charity sectors through our Tackling Loneliness Hub, where members can learn from events and workshops, share the latest research and collaborate on new initiatives.

Last March, we published the fourth annual report of our Tackling Loneliness Strategy. It contains over 60 new and ongoing commitments from 11 government departments. So far, we have made progress against at least 46 of these commitments and at least 7 have been completed. Due to the nature of the commitments many have now been incorporated into business as usual. The fifth annual report will provide a full update on commitments, and is due to be published in March.

Our 13 Environment Act 2021 targets were set in law by January 2023 and are included in our revised Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP23). Interim targets were also set at this point and will help tackle some of the biggest environmental pressures and make tangible progress over the next five years of EIP23.

We have been making progress in delivery of our new environmental targets and are due to report on them, and other EIP commitments, in our EIP Annual Progress Report in the summer.

We will continue to monitor and adjust our delivery to reach the long-term environmental goals outlined in the EIP23, including on our wider statutory targets.