On Thursday 10 January 2013 at Business Questions, Valerie asked the Leader about international land grabs.

On Thursday 10 January 2013 at Culture, Media and Sport Questions Valerie asked the following question in Topical questions:

On 9 January 2013, Valerie Vaz MP, Walsall South, met with the Minister for Children and Families, Edward Timpson MP to discuss the proposals to equalise leave, pay and allowance arrangements for adoptive parents with those available to parents whose children are born to them.

The Government has announced changes in the legal structure of charities that affects how small charities will be run in the future.Valerie said,“The Minister for Civil Society in his letter states that the Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) is a new structure “...designed to make it easier for people to set up and run small and medium sized charities.”“The Minister’s letter goes on to say that:“ ...most charities are unincorporated and the trustees can be held personally liable for any debts of the charity. In order to protect their trustees with limited liability, charities could choose to register as companies, but this is time consuming, bureaucratic and costly for small and medium sized charities.”“The CIO will change this. It provides the trustees with limited liability, but without the cost and bureaucracy of running the charity as a company. A CIO is a corporate body with limited liability, registered with and regulated solely by the Charity Commission...it also has the necessary protections for third parties that may wish to do business with it. To read the full letter from the Minister, please click here.

On Wednesday 9 January 2013, the Health Select Committee of which Valerie Vaz MP, Walsall South, is a member, published its report “2012 Accountability Hearing with the Care Quality Commission (CQC)”. The report found that the CQC has not yet successfully defined its core purpose or earned public confidence.