Asked by: Alison Taylor (Labour - Paisley and Renfrewshire North)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking to train civil servants in the use of AI.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
DSIT has published guidance and launched training to upskill civil servants in the use of AI. These resources include the AI Playbook for the UK Government offering public services up-to-date guidance on AI technologies, their capabilities and limitations and 70 AI Civil Service Learning courses. The AI Community of Practice builds on this, offering knowledge sharing from teams who have developed AI solutions in government. GDS has built AI content into their Faststream Graduate and TechTrack Apprenticeship upskilling programmes, which are open to Civil Servants. In addition GDS has launched the AI Accelerator, an upskilling pipeline for existing civil servants within the Government Digital and Data profession to gain Machine Learning Engineering skills to work on AI tools.
Asked by: Alison Taylor (Labour - Paisley and Renfrewshire North)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if she will (a) reinstate VAT-free shopping for visitors and (b) allow VAT refunds on departure.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government has no plans to introduce a new tax-free shopping scheme in Great Britain.
According to the OBR, the withdrawal of the VAT Retail Export Scheme will save the Exchequer around £540 million per year by 2025-26.
Recent ONS data shows that UK tourism numbers and spending has recovered at a similar rate following the pandemic to other European economies.
The Government has considered analysis supporting the introduction of a new tax-free shopping scheme and found that there is insufficient evidence that a new scheme would have greater benefits to the UK than costs.