Written questions by Maguire.

How many unique visitors with (a) a UK IP address and (b) IP addresses from elsewhere have accessed the prepare.campaign.gov.uk website since the sub-domain was first set up.

The Prepare website brings together advice and useful material from a range of sources into one place to help individuals, households and communities prepare for emergencies. The civil service hours were not recorded. The cost of creating the content for the campaign site was £60,000. Of the unique users recorded between 22nd May 2024 and 13th October 2025, 327,555 were from the UK (92%) and 29,756 were from outside the UK (8%). These figures only include users who accepted GOV.UK cookies. To date, no paid-for-marketing activity has taken place to promote prepare.campaign.gov.uk. The Government’s Resilience Action Plan has committed to do more to provide households with preparedness information. In September, the Prepare website was included in the message sent out to UK mobile phones as part of the Government’s test of the Emergency Alerts system. We continue to work with our local and national partners, including organisations from the voluntary, community and faith sectors, to raise awareness of advice on the Prepare website and to seek feedback to inform updates to the content. The Government is currently considering what further public communications activities might support improvements to public preparedness for emergencies. We published the first annual UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness in July 2025. The results will be used to inform the development of future public preparedness communications and to monitor trends.

What steps his Department is taking to increase the UK’s readiness against cyber-attacks.

The CEO of the National Cyber Security Centre said this week that the gap between the rising pace of the cyber threat and the UK’s collective resilience against it continues to grow. Cyber attacks are increasing in scale and impact. The number of nationally significant cyber incidents has more than doubled in the last year, including the recent attacks against Jaguar Land Rover, Marks & Spencer and other major British businesses. The Government is committed to strengthening cyber security across the UK. I wrote to chief executives and chairs of the FTSE 350 this week asking them to make cyber security a top priority. The forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will strengthen the UK’s cyber defences and ensure that critical infrastructure and the digital services that companies rely on are secure. Our proposed legislative measures on ransomware - a targeted ban on ransom payments, a payment prevention regime and mandatory reporting - will build on the foundation that the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will set. Together they form part of a series of cyber legislation that will secure the UK against cyber threats. Early next year the Government will publish a new National Cyber Action Plan that will set out how we will respond to the growing threat and work with industry to raise resilience levels across the economy.

What steps he is taking in response to the findings by Together for Short Lives in their report entitled The State of Children’s Palliative Care 2025.

Children and young people’s hospices do incredible work to support seriously ill children and their families and loved ones when they need it most, and we recognise the incredibly tough pressures they are facing.We are providing £26 million in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices for 2025/26. This is a continuation of the funding which, until recently, was known as the Children’s Hospice Grant.I can also now confirm the continuation of this vital funding for the three years of the next spending review period, 2026/27 to 2028/29 inclusive. This funding will see circa £26 million, adjusted for inflation, allocated to children’s and young people’s hospices in England each year, via their local ICBs on behalf of NHS England, as happened in 2024/25 and 2025/26. This amounts to approximately £80 million over the next three years.This revenue funding is intended to be spent by hospices to provide high-quality care and support for the children and the families they care for, either in the hospice or in the community, including in children's homes. They can, for example, use this funding for providing respite care for children who have high health needs, by providing physiotherapy or occupational therapy, or by providing 24/7 nursing support for a child at the end of their life.We are also supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England to ensure they have the best physical environment for care.

What assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of expanding the eligibility for the Youth Guarantee to include all 16–24-year-olds.

As set out in the Get Britain Working White Paper, we are developing a Youth Guarantee to ensure young people can access high-quality training, apprenticeships, or personalised support to find work. As a first step, we are working with eight Youth Guarantee Trailblazers across England which are testing innovative, locally led approaches to improve support for young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) or at risk of becoming NEET. This includes strengthening local coordination, through local leadership, and outreach to better connect young people with opportunities. The Youth Guarantee Trailblazers have been extended for a further year, to continue supporting young people in 2026/27. The insights gained from the Trailblazers will inform the future design and delivery of the Youth Guarantee. The government is committed to supporting young people to earn and learn. That is why we have announced that we will offer a guaranteed job to young people on Universal Credit, who are unemployed for over 18 months. In parallel, we continue to deliver targeted support through the Youth Offer, which provides tailored assistance to young people aged 16-24 who are claiming Universal Credit. This includes a range of interventions designed to help young people move closer to employment, such as dedicated support from Youth Employability Coaches, access to Youth Hubs, and intensive guidance from Jobcentre Work Coaches during the first 13 weeks of a Universal Credit claim. For those with more complex needs, specialist Youth Employability Coaches provide intensive, tailored support. These coaches work closely with Disability Employment Advisors, to ensure that interventions meet the specific needs of each young person.

What marketing (a) has taken place and (b) is planned to drive traffic to the prepare.campaign.gov.uk website.

The Prepare website brings together advice and useful material from a range of sources into one place to help individuals, households and communities prepare for emergencies. The civil service hours were not recorded. The cost of creating the content for the campaign site was £60,000. Of the unique users recorded between 22nd May 2024 and 13th October 2025, 327,555 were from the UK (92%) and 29,756 were from outside the UK (8%). These figures only include users who accepted GOV.UK cookies. To date, no paid-for-marketing activity has taken place to promote prepare.campaign.gov.uk. The Government’s Resilience Action Plan has committed to do more to provide households with preparedness information. In September, the Prepare website was included in the message sent out to UK mobile phones as part of the Government’s test of the Emergency Alerts system. We continue to work with our local and national partners, including organisations from the voluntary, community and faith sectors, to raise awareness of advice on the Prepare website and to seek feedback to inform updates to the content. The Government is currently considering what further public communications activities might support improvements to public preparedness for emergencies. We published the first annual UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness in July 2025. The results will be used to inform the development of future public preparedness communications and to monitor trends.

What assessment his Department has made of the safety of fertility apps for their users.

No formal assessment has been made of fertility apps and no steps are being taken to regulate them. Fertility apps are privately owned health apps, and as such they do not share data directly with the Department.Where fertility apps meet the definition of a medical device, the safety of these products already falls under the remit of the United Kingdom’s medical device regulations and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Examples of products that would fall within the remit of these regulations would be apps intended to facilitate conception and enable contraception based on basal body temperature.Patients looking for fertility advice should speak to their general practitioner or a licensed fertility clinic. They can also find unbiased information on fertility treatments and UK licenced clinics on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s website, at the following link:www.hfea.gov.uk

What the planned level of ringfenced NHS funding for children’s hospices is after 2025-26.

Children and young people’s hospices do incredible work to support seriously ill children and their families and loved ones when they need it most, and we recognise the incredibly tough pressures they are facing.We are providing £26 million in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices for 2025/26. This is a continuation of the funding which, until recently, was known as the Children’s Hospice Grant.I can also now confirm the continuation of this vital funding for the three years of the next spending review period, 2026/27 to 2028/29 inclusive. This funding will see circa £26 million, adjusted for inflation, allocated to children’s and young people’s hospices in England each year, via their local ICBs on behalf of NHS England, as happened in 2024/25 and 2025/26. This amounts to approximately £80 million over the next three years.This revenue funding is intended to be spent by hospices to provide high-quality care and support for the children and the families they care for, either in the hospice or in the community, including in children's homes. They can, for example, use this funding for providing respite care for children who have high health needs, by providing physiotherapy or occupational therapy, or by providing 24/7 nursing support for a child at the end of their life.We are also supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England to ensure they have the best physical environment for care.

Whether he plans to introduce multi-year funding settlements for children’s hospices.

Children and young people’s hospices do incredible work to support seriously ill children and their families and loved ones when they need it most, and we recognise the incredibly tough pressures they are facing.We are providing £26 million in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices for 2025/26. This is a continuation of the funding which, until recently, was known as the Children’s Hospice Grant.I can also now confirm the continuation of this vital funding for the three years of the next spending review period, 2026/27 to 2028/29 inclusive. This funding will see circa £26 million, adjusted for inflation, allocated to children’s and young people’s hospices in England each year, via their local ICBs on behalf of NHS England, as happened in 2024/25 and 2025/26. This amounts to approximately £80 million over the next three years.This revenue funding is intended to be spent by hospices to provide high-quality care and support for the children and the families they care for, either in the hospice or in the community, including in children's homes. They can, for example, use this funding for providing respite care for children who have high health needs, by providing physiotherapy or occupational therapy, or by providing 24/7 nursing support for a child at the end of their life.We are also supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England to ensure they have the best physical environment for care.

What steps her Department is taking to reduce discrimination faced by people diagnosed with epilepsy in the workplace.

Under the Equality Act 2010 (the Act) protection is available where a worker or job applicant’s condition fits the definition of a disability set out in section 6 of the Act. Under the Act, a person meets the definition of disability if they have ‘a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities’. The Act defines long-term in this context as having lasted, or being likely to last for at least 12 months, or likely to last for the rest of the life of the person. Where a person meets the Act’s definition of disability, the employment provisions make it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against such employees and applicants. The Act also places a duty on employers to make reasonable adjustments to any element of a job, job application or interview process, which may place disabled people at a substantial disadvantage compared to non-disabled people.

What steps his Department is taking to improve support for people with epilepsy from Jobcentre Plus Disability Employment Advisers.

The department recognises that epilepsy is a serious neurological condition, which can greatly affect an individual’s ability to work and live well. Disability Employment Advisers are trained work coaches , followed by additional role specific learning designed to support their role. This learning enables Disability Employment Advisers to treat each claimant as an individual, understand the impact of different disabilities and health conditions, and provide tailored support to help overcome barriers to employment. Disabled people and people with health conditions are a diverse group so access to the right work and support, in the right place, at the right time, is key. We therefore have a range of specialist support to help individuals to stay in work and get back into work, including those that join up employment and health systems. Disability Employment Advisers work with the local community to advocate for customers, collaborate with local partners such as employers, voluntary organisations, the NHS and local government services to facilitate support that meets local needs and promote other programmes such as Disability Confident and Work Well. For those with health conditions and disabled people that would benefit from more intensive support, Jobcentre staff can signpost people to Connect to Work, our local-area led support in England and Wales. This started to go live in April 2025 and we expect it to be live in all areas of England and Wales by early 2026. In Connect to Work, participants are given a dedicated specialist employment support adviser who works alongside them to understand their career goals and help them to address any specific barriers to employment. Participants are supported to have conversations with prospective employers, helping to remove the need to go through complex application processes. The employment adviser works with both the employer and the participant to ensure that the transition into work is smooth and that the workplace is inclusive. We are building towards a guaranteed offer of personalised work, health and skills support for all disabled people and those with health conditions on out of work benefits. We are already making progress, and there are now over 1000 Pathways to Work Advisors in Jobcentres across England, Scotland and Wales who are helping disabled people and people with health conditions towards and into work. And through the new Jobs and Careers Service, the department will enhance support so that customers can access the help they need at the right time.

What steps his Department is taking to increase evacuations of (a) medically vulnerable children and (b) their dependents from Gaza.

I refer the Hon. Member to the Written Statement HCWS899 made to the House on 1 September 2025 by my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Child patients are accompanied by their immediate families. Three groups of patients have now arrived, and we expect further evacuations to happen later in the autumn.

What assessment he has made of the potential impact of the August 2025 data breach for people with outstanding ARAP applications; and what assessment he has made of the potential impact of that breach on the (a) processing and (b) prioritisation of those cases.

The Ministry of Defence assessed that this incident did not pose a significant threat to the safety of ARAP principals. This incident surrounded data for those arriving on flights into the UK, meaning that their eligible decisions had already been made. The data incident of February 2022 was announced in the Defence Secretary’s Oral Statement of July 2025. For this cohort, the published Rimmer Review considered it “highly unlikely” that merely being on the February 2022 dataset would be grounds for targeting by the Taleban, noting the time that has passed since the fall of Kabul and the wealth of data the Taleban already have access to. All outstanding ARAP applications will be considered on their own merits against the ARAP criteria. Where there is a unique or imminent circumstance, officials can also consider expedition on a case-by-case basis. We aim to complete the process of relocation before the end of this Parliament.

Whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of a right to request workplace modifications for employees not covered under the duty to make reasonable adjustments established in the Equality Act 2010.

This Department has made no such assessment. Reasonable adjustments are changes an employer makes to remove or reduce a disadvantage related to someone's disability. All employers have a duty under the Equality Act 2010 to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ in the workplace where a disabled employee, would otherwise be put at a substantial disadvantage compared with their colleagues. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is responsible for enforcing the Equality Act and providing guidance on reasonable adjustments. Employers have a key role to play in supporting workers with long term health conditions or disabilities in the workplace. DWP's current offer to employers includes a digital information service, www.support-with-employee-health-and-disability.dwp.gov.uk/ which provides tailored guidance to businesses to support employees to remain in work. This includes guidance on health disclosures and having conversations about health, plus guidance on legal obligations, including statutory sick pay and making reasonable adjustments.

What steps her Department is taking to support (a) students and (b) parents impacted by reports of abuse at the Bramley Hill School in Surrey.

Independent Schools are regulated under requirements laid out in the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014, and local authorities have no powers to appoint an interim executive board.The department takes any indication of risk of harm incredibly seriously and does not hesitate to take swift enforcement action, from emergency inspections right through to school closure, where necessary and appropriate. Ofsted inspected Bramley Hill School in 2024. All the Independent School Standards were met.

What assessment she has made of the potential merits of using her Section 69 of the Education Act 2006 powers to appoint an interim executive board to the Bramley Hill School in Surrey.

Independent Schools are regulated under requirements laid out in the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014, and local authorities have no powers to appoint an interim executive board.The department takes any indication of risk of harm incredibly seriously and does not hesitate to take swift enforcement action, from emergency inspections right through to school closure, where necessary and appropriate. Ofsted inspected Bramley Hill School in 2024. All the Independent School Standards were met.

How many and what proportion of children in the early adopter scheme free breakfast clubs are eligible for free school meals.

From the start of summer term 2025, we have funded 750 schools to deliver a free breakfast club as part of our early adopter scheme. All reception to year 6 pupils at these schools are able to access the free clubs.Early adopter schools were selected based on a range of characteristics so that the department can test and learn with as many different types of schools as possible. The early adopter schools have an average Free School Meals eligibility rate of around 30%.So far, we have delivered over 2.6 million breakfasts and offered places to almost 180,000 pupils across the country, including nearly 79,000 pupils in disadvantaged areas.

What steps his Department is taking to (a) improve access to effective treatments for migraine and (b) reduce waiting times for (i) diagnosis and (ii) referral to specialist services.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline, Headaches in over 12s: diagnosis and management, sets out best practice for healthcare professionals in the care, treatment, and support of people who suffer from headaches, including migraine. It aims to improve the recognition and management of headaches and migraine.NICE updated its guideline in June 2025. Updates included a change to the strength of recommendations on treatments for migraine prevention to better reflect the balance between their benefits and harms, and incorporation of relevant technology appraisal guidance for treating and preventing migraine with or without aura.At the national level, there are several initiatives supporting service improvement and better care for patients with migraine, including the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Programme for Neurology and the RightCare Headache and Migraine Toolkit. The GIRFT programme published a National Speciality Report, which makes several recommendations in relation to improving recognition and diagnosis of migraine by general practitioners. Additionally, the RightCare Toolkit sets out key priorities for improving care for patients with migraine, which includes correct identification and diagnosis of headache disorders.The Royal College of General Practitioners has developed two e-learning modules about migraine and cluster headaches, which aim to raise awareness amongst primary care clinicians about the different types of migraine and their associated symptoms, and how to differentiate.Over the last four years, a new class of drugs, calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) inhibitors, has been made available on the National Health Service for the prevention and treatment of episodic and chronic migraines. On 15 May 2024, Atogepant became the latest CGRP inhibitor recommended by NICE for use as a preventive medication for the treatment of migraine.A key priority for the Government is to cut waiting lists, including for patients with migraine. We have committed to achieving the NHS Constitutional standard that 92% of patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment by March 2029, including in neurology services. We have reduced the elective waiting list by over 206,000 since July 2024. Between July 2024 and June 2025, we have delivered 5.2 million additional appointments, many of which will have been for patients with migraine.

If her Department will ensure that menstrual products provided through the free school programme are (a) organic and (b) reusable.

Nobody should have to miss out on education because of their period, which is why the department provides free period products to girls and women in their place of study through the Period Products Scheme. ​The scheme offers a broad range of products for organisations to choose from, including certified organic and chemical-free tampons and pads, as well as reusable options such as period pants.

Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what recent discussions she has had with her Israeli counterpart on increasing the number of evacuation days for (a) recipients of the Chevening Scholarship and their dependents and (b) medically vulnerable children and their dependents to the UK.

We continue to work with international partners to facilitate departures from Gaza where possible, and the Foreign Secretary most recently spoke to her Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar on 18 October about the importance of opening more crossings.

When her Department plans to set out a timeline for reforming the SEND system.

This government is determined to deliver reform that stands the test of time and rebuilds the confidence of families, which is why we’re launching a further period of listening and engagement – testing our proposals with parents, teachers and experts in every region of the country, so that lived experience and partnership are at the heart of our solutions. We know that families are crying out for change, and that is exactly why it is critical we get this right. We will set out the full Schools White Paper in the new year, building on the work we’ve already done to create a system that’s rooted in inclusion, where children receive high-quality support early on and can thrive at their local school.