Women and Equalities<p>I responded to the correspondence from Ms Catherine Utley on 24<sup>th</sup> August.</p>Baroness Williams of Trafford2018-09-17false2018-09-17T12:35:48.29Z31Women and EqualitiesWomen and Equalities2018-09-04Home Office: Correspondence2House of LordsTo ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 20 July (HL Deb, col 1413), when the reply to Catherine Utley will be sent to her.falseLord LexdenHL9986Home Office<p>The Government does not keep a record of how individual police forces are structured. Team structures and deployment of officers within police forces are rightly decisions for Chief Constables, working with their democratically accountable Police and Crime Commissioners.</p><p>We recognise the need for police forces to be properly equipped to deal with the changing nature of crime. We have provided significant extra investment through the Police Transformation Fund to support policing to respond to changing crimes and threats including against vulnerable children.</p>Baroness Williams of Trafford2018-09-17false2018-09-17T12:46:42.377Z1Home OfficeHome Office2018-09-04Offences against Children2House of LordsTo ask Her Majesty's Government how many police forces in England and Wales have disbanded their specialist child protection teams and allocated their work to Criminal Investigation Departments.falseLord LamingHL9984Women and Equalities<p>The Government Equalities Office has met with a range of representatives from political parties to consider what could help to increase the number of women standing for elected office. As part of the response to this the Centenary Fund supported an Ask Her to Stand event in London. 350 women who are interested in standing for elected office heard from women politicians from the main parties and took part in workshops providing practical advice on getting into politics and public life.</p><p> </p><p>In addition, the Government Equalities Office has been funding projects through the Government’s £5m Suffrage Centenary Fund that help deliver our aim to increase women’s participation in politics.</p><p> </p><p>Some of these projects are providing women with practical training in political skills – for example a political leadership programme for women in Bradford and Birmingham, and training in public speaking and media relations for women in the East Midlands, West Midlands and London.</p>Baroness Williams of Trafford2018-09-17false2018-09-17T12:44:20.2Z31Women and EqualitiesWomen and Equalities2018-09-04Political Parties: Females2House of LordsTo ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the response by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 16 January (HL Deb, cols 527–528), what steps they have taken to consult political parties on increasing the number of women who stand as candidates for political and public office; and what have been the results of any such consultations.falseBaroness GaleHL9951Women and Equalities<p>We keep any uncommenced provisions from the Equality Act 2010 under review. However, political parties are responsible for their candidate selection and should lead the way in improving diverse representation. I welcome the many efforts already ongoing from political parties to do so.</p><p>We believe diversity is important, as reflected in this Parliament as the most gender and LGBT diverse ever, but there is still more to do. The Government Equalities Office continues to work on supporting political participation, we have recently announced a fund to support disabled candidates to seek electoral office.</p>Baroness Williams of Trafford2018-09-17false2018-09-17T12:43:03.837Z31Women and EqualitiesWomen and Equalities2018-09-04Political Parties: Equality2House of LordsTo ask Her Majesty's Government when they plan to commence section 106 of the Equality Act 2010.falseBaroness GaleHL9950Home Office<p>The Government has made no assessment of the statement by Prevent Watch and has no plans to.</p><p>The Government’s 2015 Counter-Extremism Strategy sets out its commitment to protect communities from the wider social harms, beyond terrorism, caused by extremism. Extremists use their twisted narratives to justify hatred and division, spread intolerance, isolate communities and erode the rights of women and minorities. If left unchallenged these narratives fragment and divide our communities.</p><p>The Government launched the independent Commission for Countering Extremism in March 2018 alongside a Charter setting out the Commission’s purpose and early outputs. The Charter confirms both that the Commission will have no remit on counter-terrorism policies, including Prevent, and its status as a transparent organisation operating independently from Government.</p><p>The Commission’s weighting of the evidence it has gathered is a matter for the Commission.</p>Baroness Williams of Trafford2018-09-17HL10167false2018-09-17T12:42:23.317Z1Home OfficeHome Office2018-09-06Commission for Countering Extremism2House of LordsTo ask Her Majesty's Government what weight will be given to academic evidence reviewed as part of the Commission for Countering Extremism’s evidence drive compared to evidence from other sources.falseThe Lord Bishop of St AlbansHL10168Home Office<p>The Government has made no assessment of the statement by Prevent Watch and has no plans to.</p><p>The Government’s 2015 Counter-Extremism Strategy sets out its commitment to protect communities from the wider social harms, beyond terrorism, caused by extremism. Extremists use their twisted narratives to justify hatred and division, spread intolerance, isolate communities and erode the rights of women and minorities. If left unchallenged these narratives fragment and divide our communities.</p><p>The Government launched the independent Commission for Countering Extremism in March 2018 alongside a Charter setting out the Commission’s purpose and early outputs. The Charter confirms both that the Commission will have no remit on counter-terrorism policies, including Prevent, and its status as a transparent organisation operating independently from Government.</p><p>The Commission’s weighting of the evidence it has gathered is a matter for the Commission.</p>Baroness Williams of Trafford2018-09-17HL10168false2018-09-17T12:42:23.237Z1Home OfficeHome Office2018-09-06Commission for Countering Extremism2House of LordsTo ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the joint statement published by Prevent Watch on 27 July about the Commission for Countering Extremism’s "evidence drive"; and how they intend to respond to the concerns raised in the statement.falseThe Lord Bishop of St AlbansHL10167Home Office<p>The UK is a world-leader in the fight to stamp out the brutal practice of forced marriage, with our joint Home Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office Forced Marriage Unit (FMU) which leads efforts to combat it both at home and abroad. We made forced marriage a criminal offence in 2014 to better protect victims and send a clear message that this abhorrent practice is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated in the UK. Forcing someone into marriage is an offence regardless of whether the marriage is legally binding.</p><p>We are aware of concerns over the use of parental consent in relation to U18 marriages such marriages and will continue to keep this under review.</p>Baroness Williams of Trafford2018-09-17false2018-09-17T12:41:14.033Z1Home OfficeHome Office2018-09-06Marriage: Young People2House of LordsTo ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 5 September (HL Deb, col 1787), what plans they have to review the minimum age of marriage in England and Wales.falseBaroness HaymanHL10145Home Office<p>We remain fully committed to delivering our commitment to transfer the specified number of 480 children under Section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016 and are working very closely with participating States, to deliver the scheme in line with their national laws.</p><p>Over 220 children are already in the UK. We will not provide a running commentary on numbers and will publish the details once all children are in the UK.</p>Baroness Williams of Trafford2018-09-17false2018-09-17T12:45:25Z1Home OfficeHome Office2018-09-06Refugees: Children2House of LordsTo ask Her Majesty's Government how many children in total have been transferred to the UK to date under section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016; and of the remaining places, how many children in total have been allocated a place but have not yet been transferred to the UK.falseLord DubsHL10142Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs<p>The experiments conducted by University of York in collaboration with the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) demonstrated that exposing starlings to a maximal environmentally relevant concentration of an anti-depressant (fluoxetine) altered courtship behaviour in wild-caught starlings (<em>Sturnus vulgaris</em>). The males sang less and were more aggressive towards females that had been dosed with an anti-depressant than to the untreated females and in addition the treated females were also initially more aggressive towards males than the untreated females. However there were no effects on female courtship behaviour or on circulating female hormones in treated females. These findings suggest that exposure to this dose of anti-depressant reduced female attractiveness to the male but the reasons why are not clear. Whether these levels of anti-depressants in the environment would have a significant effect on an individual’s fitness or the population as a whole requires further investigation.</p><p> </p>Lord Gardiner of Kimble2018-09-17false2018-09-17T12:36:31.22Z13Environment, Food and Rural AffairsEnvironment, Food and Rural Affairs2018-09-04Starlings2House of LordsTo ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of low concentrations of anti-depressants on the courtship and breeding of starlings.falseLord TebbitHL10033Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs<p>Researchers at the University of York have published in a peer reviewed journal that earthworms collected at sewage treatment plants contained mean concentrations of 26.20±4.70 ng/g of the anti-depressant fluoxetine (trade name Prozac) (Bean et al. 2017). In a recent paper concerning the effects of low, environmental relevant, concentrations of Prozac on the courtship of starlings (Whitlock et al. 2018), they also refer to work by other researchers showing earthworms at sewage treatment plants to contain other contaminants including pharmaceuticals (Markman et al. 2007 & 2008). There are many other studies globally showing uptake of pharmaceuticals into a variety of invertebrate species.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The uptake of pharmaceutical residues from sewage, sewage effluent and sewage sludge has been shown to negatively impact invertebrates themselves and provides a clear route of exposure to many species of wildlife including birds and bats. The full significance of this is still being assessed.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>References</strong></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Bean, T. G., Arnold, K. E., Lane, J., Bergstrom, E., Thomas-Oates, J. E., Rattner, B., & Boxall, A. B. A. (2017). Predictive framework for estimating exposure of birds to pharmaceuticals. <em>Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry</em>. DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/etc.3771" target="_blank">10.1002/etc.3771</a></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Markman S,Guschina I,Barnsley S,Buchanan K,Pascoe D,et al. (2007) Endocrine disrupting chemicals accumulate in earthworms exposed to sewage effluent. Chemosphere 70: 119–125.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Markman S, Leitner S, Catchpole C, Barnsley S, Müller CT, Pascoe D, et al. (2008) Pollutants Increase Song Complexity and the Volume of the Brain Area HVC in a Songbird. PLoS ONE 3(2): e1674. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0001674</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sophia E. Whitlock, M. Glória Pereira, Richard F. Shore, Julie Lane, Kathryn E. Arnold. Environmentally relevant exposure to an antidepressant alters courtship behaviours in a songbird. <em>Chemosphere</em>, 2018; 211: 17 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chemosphere.2018.07.074" target="_blank">10.1016/j.chemosphere.2018.07.074</a></p><p> </p><p>(12/12)</p><p> </p>Lord Gardiner of Kimble2018-09-17false2018-09-17T12:37:26.273Z13Environment, Food and Rural AffairsEnvironment, Food and Rural Affairs2018-09-04Sewage: Water Treatment2House of LordsTo ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of research by the Environment Department at the University of York which found that worms, maggots and flies at sewage treatment plants contain traces of many drugs, including anti-depressants.falseLord TebbitHL10032100126