Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that smart meter software is secure by design.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The Department has worked with industry and security experts, including GCHQ, to design a smart metering system that has robust security controls in place. System security is based on international standards. It includes encryption of sensitive data, protection from viruses and malware, access control, two-party authorisation of important messages to the meters and system monitoring.
Further information on smart metering security and GCHQ’s role in it can be found on GCHQ’s website: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/articles/smart-security-behind-gb-smart-metering-system
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment he has made of whether his Department is on course to complete the roll-out of smart meters by 2020.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The Government is committed to every home and small business being offered smart meters by the end of 2020. The Programme is making good progress. More than 4.2 million meters have been installed in homes and businesses across Great Britain.
Data on the number of smart electricity and gas meters installed in Great Britain is set out in the Government’s ‘Smart Meters, Great Britain, Quarterly report to end June 2016’, published on 29 September 2016: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statistical-release-and-data-smart-meters-great-britain-quarter-2-2016
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, whether his Department has made an estimate of the potential number of jobs which will be replaced by automation over the next two decades.
Answered by Nick Boles
The Department has not made a specific forecast of how many jobs will be replaced (or how many additional jobs will be created) over the next two decades due to automation. However, the Government’s Horizon Scanning Programme exploring the impacts of automation on the labour market, and engaging with our international partners.
Government is taking action to provide individuals with the skills that will help prepare them for changes to the labour market, such as the new school computing curriculum, developing new apprenticeship standards, growing the apprenticeships programme, and introducing the Institute for Coding.
Asked by: Adam Afriyie (Conservative - Windsor)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps the Government is taking to promote action to remove space debris.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
The United Kingdom, through the UK Space Agency (UKSA), is one of the thirteen members of the Inter-Agency Debris Coordination (IADC) Committee, which considers the risks posed by space debris. Our national experts, along with more than a hundred experts from other agencies including NASA, met at Harwell in March 2016 for the annual IADC meeting to discuss many issues, including the need for the removal of space debris from orbit, and how that could best be accomplished.
The UK is leading studies in partnership with other national agencies to model the future space environment and identify the most effective ways of mitigating the future hazard of space debris.
UKSA is working with its international partners in technical forums such as the IADC to develop scientific consensus on the best way to manage the hazard posed by debris, such as how many objects might need to be removed, and from where. UKSA is also working to build political consensus within UN forums such as the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space to enable such missions to go ahead with appropriate supervision and support from the international community. This includes developing appropriate regulatory/oversight frameworks within the UK’s Outer Space Act which allow such technologies to be tested and demonstrated safely in the increasingly congested and contested space environment.