Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that employment data submitted to public regulators such as Companies House, the Charity Commission for England and Wales, and the Mutuals Public Register are standardised, include full-time equivalent figures, and are accessible in machine-readable formats.
Answered by Baroness Twycross - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
All charities registered in England or Wales, regardless of their annual income, must send a digital annual return to the Charity Commission. These returns are publicly available in a machine readable PDF format on the Charity Commission's website.
The Charity Commission is committed to further digitalisation of the submission of annual accounts information and will continue to explore solutions which are proportionate, affordable and minimise the regulatory burden on charities.
Currently, there are no steps being taken to standardise full time equivalent employment data across companies, charities and mutuals filed with regulators/registrars.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential benefits of requiring all registered charities and non-profits with an annual turnover of over £25,000 to submit annual returns to the Charity Commission for England and Wales in machine-readable formats.
Answered by Baroness Twycross - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
All charities registered in England or Wales, regardless of their annual income, must send a digital annual return to the Charity Commission. These returns are publicly available in a machine readable PDF format on the Charity Commission's website.
The Charity Commission is committed to further digitalisation of the submission of annual accounts information and will continue to explore solutions which are proportionate, affordable and minimise the regulatory burden on charities.
Currently, there are no steps being taken to standardise full time equivalent employment data across companies, charities and mutuals filed with regulators/registrars.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have plans to amend the legislation governing the Mutuals Public Register to enable the publication of its electronic data holdings for public and research use.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Mutuals Public Register is the official record of mutual societies in the UK and is maintained by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Following an FCA programme of work that concluded in 2021 to digitise paper records, the register is available in electronic format. While some historic records remain in paper form, members of the public can request their digitisation via the FCA website.
The Government is not planning any legislative changes affecting the FCA’s authority in this area.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the role of administrative data and data intermediaries in improving understanding of employment patterns in the cultural and creative sectors.
Answered by Baroness Twycross - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
DCMS publishes official statistics on Culture and Creative Industries employment. These include statistics on the number of filled jobs using the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Annual Population Survey and Labour Force Survey, both household surveys, and skills gaps and shortages from the Department for Education’s Employer Skills Survey.
The department also supports research into the creative industries and jointly with the Creative Industries Council has funded the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre to undertake the creative employers skills survey. This is a new survey of 1,300 businesses across the creative industries in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland that aims to add to our understanding of the skills challenges of today and the talent and skills that will be crucial to the success of the industry in the future.
The understanding that we gain from this data is important for informing our policy work on workforce practice, job quality, careers and training pathways in the creative industries. The main data sources that DCMS currently draw on in these areas are survey based and are not based on administrative data. However, DCMS keeps its statistics and research requirements under review to ensure decision making is based on the best available evidence, including exploring administrative and other data sources where relevant.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have made an assessment of the case for requiring publicly funded arts councils in each of the four UK nations to publish per-organisation data on staffing costs, freelance volumes, and artistic expenditure on a consistent and comparable basis.
Answered by Baroness Twycross - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Arts Councils of each of the four UK nations are devolved responsibilities.
Ministers have not made an assessment of the case raised in the question. However, we are aware of the need for data collection to be consistent, proportionate, and manageable for publicly-funded arts organisations. Baroness Hodge of Barking has been appointed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to conduct a Review of Arts Council England. This includes in its terms of reference to consider how effective the relationships between ACE and the organisations it funds are; and how far ACE cooperates and shares knowledge with the United Kingdom’s Arts Councils in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Arts Council England publishes an Annual Data survey of its National Portfolio Organisations, which provides a breakdown of expenditure for those organisations. Data from this survey is available on line from the year 2016-17 onwards. ACE also publishes data on its own staff and expenditure in its Annual Report - the latest of which covering 2023-24 can be found on their website.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to supporting the development of national, machine-readable cultural data dashboards, such as those piloted in Bradford by MyCake, designed to identify financially at-risk cultural organisations using administrative data and predictive analytics.
Answered by Baroness Twycross - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
DCMS is looking more widely into the cultural sector's data needs as the digital data ecosystem grows and evolves. This includes supporting both the Bradford City of Culture team's work on cultural data dashboards and North East Culture Connect, an open access data platform, delivered in collaboration with Northumbria University, North East Combined Authority, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The platform brings together a subset of cultural data from across the North East in a series of dashboards that are intended to be expanded with new data. The data includes information on income streams, funding recipients, and sector economic characteristics, which can support analysis of the financial health of the sector. Furthermore, DCMS is on the Steering Group for the National Cultural Data Observatory project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, led by the Centre for Cultural Value at the University of Leeds, with partners including MyCake, and The Audience Agency. The project aims to develop a blueprint for a national cultural data observatory for the UK, incorporating a range of data.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government which ministers, officials, and external experts attended the meeting held at 10 Downing Street on Wednesday 16 April regarding the establishment of UK sovereign AI capacity; and what criteria were used to select the expert participants.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The AI Opportunities Action Plan, launched in January, outlines 50 actions to drive AI development. We are committed to strengthening the UK sector and supporting the emergence of leading UK AI companies. A broad programme of engagement is a critical part of this commitment. The sovereign AI team has engaged with a wide range of stakeholders, including academics, founders, and investors throughout the UK and will continue to do so.
This recent event, focused on building UK capabilities, was part of that ongoing engagement, and participants were invited accordingly.
Ministerial meetings are published according to normal transparency requirements on the GOV.UK website.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to develop UK sovereign AI capacity; and on what timeframe.
Answered by Lord Vallance of Balham - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The AI Opportunities Action Plan, launched in January, outlines 50 actions to drive AI development and deployment. The government has committed to taking forward all recommendations, including the establishment of a new, sovereign AI unit with a clear mandate to maximise the UK's stake in frontier AI.
Building sovereign capabilities will enable the UK to harness the economic potential of advanced AI whilst safeguarding our national security, in the context of rapid AI development. The government has already partnered with leading AI companies, such as Anthropic, to explore AI opportunities in the UK. More details of the sovereign AI programme will be announced in due course.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the costs and benefits of the UK Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai; and whether the findings of that assessment will be made publicly available.
Answered by Baroness Gustafsson - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
DBT conducted an evaluation of the UK presence at Expo 2020 Dubai. This provided accountability and learning to inform continuous improvements. The lessons are directly feeding into planning and delivery of the UK presence at Expo 2025 Osaka.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the use of AI-integrated health monitoring tools to manage unsupervised use of medications such as semaglutide.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Currently, no assessment has been made on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor the unsupervised use of these medications. However, we recognise the potential of AI and monitoring systems to support people’s health and care, including through the monitoring of vital signs. The United Kingdom has a world-leading regulatory system which ensures that medical technologies on the market are safe for use, including AI technologies. Should the National Health Service begin to assess AI-integrated health monitoring tools, they will be held to the same regulatory standards as other tools used by the NHS.
Medications such as semaglutide are prescription only medicines and should not be used unsupervised. It is illegal to obtain a prescription medicine without a prescription.