Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps the Government is taking to ensure the fair and proportionate representation of disabled people in digital and television media.
Answered by Margot James
Our media should reflect the population as a whole. That is why the government has ensured that the BBC’s operating licence stipulates that it must reflect the UK population in its services and its output. The Communications Act 2003 also ensures that Ofcom has the power to promote equality of opportunity for disabled people in television and radio. Government strongly supports industry led monitoring schemes, which can stimulate change by highlighting underrepresentation and urges the wider media sector to improve their diversity monitoring and reporting to bring about change.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking in negotiations with the EU to ensure the sustainability of the UK creative sector after the UK leaves the EU.
Answered by Margot James
We are working closely with the Creative Industries sector to understand the potential impacts and opportunities presented by the UK’s decision to leave the EU. The Secretary of State and I hosted a series of roundtable discussions about the UK's exit with industry representatives from all nine sub-sectors of the Creative Industries, and departmental officials are also in regular contact with stakeholders from these industries to look at the specific concerns of the sectors.
In her Mansion House speech, the Prime Minister spoke of her desire to establish with the EU a ‘far reaching pact’ on education and culture similar to that on science and innovation, which could include participation in, and contributions towards, key programmes alongside our European partners.
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Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps the Government is taking to ensure internet service providers supply customers with the broadband speed those providers have advertised is available for that region.
Answered by Margot James
By 2020 the Universal Service Obligation (USO) will give everyone the legal right to high speed broadband of at least 10Mbps.
We created new powers for this in the Digital Economy Act 2017, and subsequently ran a public consultation on the design of the USO, which we will be setting in secondary legislation very shortly.
Ofcom will then be responsible for implementing the USO, including designating the universal service providers and the design of an industry cost-sharing fund.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps is his Department taking to improve the technological infrastructure of broadband lines in rural areas.
Answered by Margot James
We are undertaking a range of actions to improve telecoms infrastructure across the UK, including in rural areas.
To date, we have invested £1.7 billion of public money and we have delivered 95% superfast broadband coverage of the UK, we will continue to support delivery with at least a further 2% coverage likely to be achieved. For those not covered by the superfast programme, our new broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO) will give everyone the right to request a connection with at least 10Mbps download speed.
In the Spring 2017 Budget, £200m of funding was allocated to the Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) programme. This includes a £190m Challenge Fund designed to stimulate commercial investment in full fibre networks in both rural and urban locations across the UK. A £65m nationwide Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme to support connections to full fibre broadband has also been recently announced.
In addition, £400 million of public funding has been made available for fibre connectivity through the Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund, which will unlock approximately £1 billion of private investment.
Defra has also allocated £30 million of grant funding from the Rural Development Programme for England, targeted at helping to connect businesses with broadband in hard to reach rural areas.
Beyond this, the Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review will assess what further changes could be made to create the competitive conditions to encourage the long term investment needed to deliver the next generation of digital infrastructure in different areas of the UK, including hard-to-reach rural areas.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate her Department has made of average broadband speeds in (a) rural and (b) urban areas.
Answered by Matt Hancock
The Department does not hold information on current average broadband speed in either rural or urban areas. The 2016 Ofcom Connected Nations report showed that across the UK the average download speed is 37Mit/s.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what statistics her Department holds on average broadband speeds on a constituency basis.
Answered by Matt Hancock
The Department does not hold information on current average broadband speed by constituency. This information can be located on Thinkbroadband (http://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/england)
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if he will take steps to ensure that football supporters from all nations of the UK have equal free access to their national team games aired on television.
Answered by Tracey Crouch
I share the enthusiasm of all supporters to be able to watch their home nation on TV. Where home nations compete in the European Championship and World Cup final tournaments, fans can watch them on free to air television as they are Listed Events. Beyond that it is a matter for the Scottish FA to negotiate with UEFA, under a central sales strategy, who broadcasts Scotland qualifying or friendly matches.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate he has made of the proportion of households in East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow constituency that have access to superfast broadband.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
UK Government has allocated £122 million for the two Scottish SuperfastBroadbandprojects, which focus on areas where commercial coverage does not exist or is not planned.
DCMS estimates that commercial coverage will provide superfast broadband availability to 83% of premises inEast Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow, and theDigital Scotland Superfast Broadband Programme will add a further 12% premises to the commercial coverage following completion of the first phase of the project.
In addition the Government is supporting seven pilot projects to explore options for delivering superfast broadband services to the hardest to reach parts of the UK.