Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the new media and digital literacy curriculum is adapted to support children with special educational needs and disabilities to sufficiently learn media and digital literacy skills and knowledge.

Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

Media literacy is currently covered in the citizenship, relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and computing curricula, while digital literacy is addressed in computing and RSHE.

On 15 July, the government published updated RSHE statutory guidance, introducing new content on artificial intelligence (AI), online safety and pornography, which will become mandatory learning in schools from 1 September 2026. Following publication of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report on 5 November 2025, vital applied knowledge and skills in media and digital literacy will be embedded into the revised curriculum from 2028.

The department will engage with sector experts in working out how best to reflect this in the updated curriculum, including to ensure that the curriculum is accessible to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities and adaptable to remain current in a rapidly changing context. There will be a public consultation on the updated curriculum programmes of study to seek views on the content before it is finalised.

To support schools with teaching in the short and longer-term, Oak National Academy, an independent arm’s length body, provides adaptable, optional and free curriculum support for schools, including resources for computing and secondary citizenship, which can be found here: https://www.thenational.academy/.

In addition, the Educate Against Hate website hosts a series of online media literacy resources to support teachers and school leaders to build resilience to extremist narratives online in children and young people. The National Centre for Computing Education also provides teachers with subject knowledge courses and resources to support the teaching of computing topics, including digital literacy and AI.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government how media and digital literacy education in the new curriculum will be kept up-to-date with trends in technologies and emerging threats.

Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

Media literacy is currently covered in the citizenship, relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and computing curricula, while digital literacy is addressed in computing and RSHE.

On 15 July, the government published updated RSHE statutory guidance, introducing new content on artificial intelligence (AI), online safety and pornography, which will become mandatory learning in schools from 1 September 2026. Following publication of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report on 5 November 2025, vital applied knowledge and skills in media and digital literacy will be embedded into the revised curriculum from 2028.

The department will engage with sector experts in working out how best to reflect this in the updated curriculum, including to ensure that the curriculum is accessible to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities and adaptable to remain current in a rapidly changing context. There will be a public consultation on the updated curriculum programmes of study to seek views on the content before it is finalised.

To support schools with teaching in the short and longer-term, Oak National Academy, an independent arm’s length body, provides adaptable, optional and free curriculum support for schools, including resources for computing and secondary citizenship, which can be found here: https://www.thenational.academy/.

In addition, the Educate Against Hate website hosts a series of online media literacy resources to support teachers and school leaders to build resilience to extremist narratives online in children and young people. The National Centre for Computing Education also provides teachers with subject knowledge courses and resources to support the teaching of computing topics, including digital literacy and AI.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they plan to take to support children’s media and digital literacy education in the period before the curriculum is updated in 2028.

Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

Media literacy is currently covered in the citizenship, relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and computing curricula, while digital literacy is addressed in computing and RSHE.

On 15 July, the government published updated RSHE statutory guidance, introducing new content on artificial intelligence (AI), online safety and pornography, which will become mandatory learning in schools from 1 September 2026. Following publication of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report on 5 November 2025, vital applied knowledge and skills in media and digital literacy will be embedded into the revised curriculum from 2028.

The department will engage with sector experts in working out how best to reflect this in the updated curriculum, including to ensure that the curriculum is accessible to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities and adaptable to remain current in a rapidly changing context. There will be a public consultation on the updated curriculum programmes of study to seek views on the content before it is finalised.

To support schools with teaching in the short and longer-term, Oak National Academy, an independent arm’s length body, provides adaptable, optional and free curriculum support for schools, including resources for computing and secondary citizenship, which can be found here: https://www.thenational.academy/.

In addition, the Educate Against Hate website hosts a series of online media literacy resources to support teachers and school leaders to build resilience to extremist narratives online in children and young people. The National Centre for Computing Education also provides teachers with subject knowledge courses and resources to support the teaching of computing topics, including digital literacy and AI.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take to ensure that teachers are provided with up-to-date, relevant and engaging resources to feel confident to teach media and digital literacy in the new curriculum.

Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

Media literacy is currently covered in the citizenship, relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) and computing curricula, while digital literacy is addressed in computing and RSHE.

On 15 July, the government published updated RSHE statutory guidance, introducing new content on artificial intelligence (AI), online safety and pornography, which will become mandatory learning in schools from 1 September 2026. Following publication of the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review’s final report on 5 November 2025, vital applied knowledge and skills in media and digital literacy will be embedded into the revised curriculum from 2028.

The department will engage with sector experts in working out how best to reflect this in the updated curriculum, including to ensure that the curriculum is accessible to pupils with special educational needs and disabilities and adaptable to remain current in a rapidly changing context. There will be a public consultation on the updated curriculum programmes of study to seek views on the content before it is finalised.

To support schools with teaching in the short and longer-term, Oak National Academy, an independent arm’s length body, provides adaptable, optional and free curriculum support for schools, including resources for computing and secondary citizenship, which can be found here: https://www.thenational.academy/.

In addition, the Educate Against Hate website hosts a series of online media literacy resources to support teachers and school leaders to build resilience to extremist narratives online in children and young people. The National Centre for Computing Education also provides teachers with subject knowledge courses and resources to support the teaching of computing topics, including digital literacy and AI.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government what engagement they have had with the data centre industry about the infrastructure and connectivity requirements associated with AI growth zones.

Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)

Ministers and officials frequently meet with the data centre industry to understand their needs. Details of Ministers' and Permanent Secretaries' meetings with external individuals and organisations are published quarterly in arrears on GOV.UK.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government, regarding Replacing animals in science: A strategy to support the development, validation and uptake of alternative methods, published on 11 November, whether they will consider including monoclonal antibodies as part of their priority areas for targeted replacement of animal tests; and how the target to replace the use of animal-derived polyclonal-type antibodies by 2030 will be enforced.

Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)

The Government’s strategy to support replacing animals in science commits to, from 2026, publish biennially a list of alternative-methods research and development priorities, to coalesce UK scientists and incentivise partnerships between research organisations, CROs and industry. These priority areas will be developed collaboratively between Government, academia, industry, and other partners. Monoclonal antibody testing will be considered as a potential area.

Enforcement of the target to replace animal-derived polyclonal antibodies is provided for by existing law which states animals cannot be used where a validated alternative exists. Therefore licences would not be granted once alternative methods have been validated and agreed.

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the economic cost of the outages of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in October.

Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)

The Government monitors systemic risks to UK critical national infrastructure, including resilience measures and contingency planning, including cloud providers. The Government recognises the importance of robust protections for the services essential to our society and economy. That is why we introduced the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill on 12 November. The Bill will make sure more types of essential and digital services adhere to robust cyber security practices.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the risks of over-reliance on dominant cloud services providers, as identified in the Competition and Markets Authority's cloud services market investigation; and what steps they are taking to mitigate those risks.

Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)

The Government has not carried out an assessment of the risks of over-reliance on dominant cloud service providers in the market. The Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) cloud services market investigation examined the state of competition in the market. The CMA is independent of Government and any decisions on initiating strategic market status investigations are for the CMA Board.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government, with regard to the recommendations of the cloud services market investigation, published on 5 October 2023, what steps they are taking to ensure the initiation of strategic market status investigations for Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.

Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)

In July 2025, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its final report on the UK cloud market. The key recommendation was for the CMA Board to prioritise commencing investigations under the digital markets regime and to consider designating the two largest providers —Microsoft and AWS — with strategic market status in relation to cloud services. The CMA is independent of Government and any decisions on initiating strategic market status investigations are for the CMA Board.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking for procurement to diversify their cloud services providers.

Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)

The Government recognises its dependence on a small number of key suppliers for cloud services. As set out in the Blueprint for Modern Digital Government, we are addressing this by establishing the Digital Commercial Centre of Excellence to strengthen digital procurement capability and improve supplier management. This includes working with Government Commercial Agency on the National Digital Exchange which is intended to make it easier for public sector organisations to access services from new cloud service providers, including SMEs. Together with the Procurement Act 2023, this will help ensure competition, innovation and resilience in government cloud services.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to diversify their cloud service providers following the outages of those services in October.

Answered by Baroness Lloyd of Effra - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)

The Government recognises the importance of resilience in cloud services. Following the outages in October, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology worked with affected providers and the Government Cyber Coordination Centre to assess impacts and strengthen contingency planning. Alongside this, the forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will improve resilience standards. In February 2025, DSIT published guidance supporting multi-region cloud adoption to help departments improve resilience. I also refer the Noble Lord to the answer given on 4 November 2025 to Question HL11169.

Found: I am copying this letter to Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Clement-Jones and placing a copy in the library