Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Clapham and Brixton Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, for what reason funding from the Youth Investment Fund has yet to be released; and what her plans are for the release of that funding.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Our priority in the pandemic has been to stabilise youth charities and help them through the impact of this, so that they are in a position to deliver the outcomes envisaged for young people through the Youth Investment Fund (YIF). We have achieved this through our unprecedented charity sector package, from which £100 million has gone to organisations supporting children and young people during the pandemic, including £15.6 million through the Youth Covid Support Fund which provided emergency funding specifically for youth services.
Following the 2021 Spending Review, we are investing £560 million in youth services in England, including the Youth Investment Fund and ongoing support for the National Citizen Service.
Access to youth facilities is not felt equally, with young people in many parts of the country struggling to gain access to them. The YIF will seek to remedy this, creating and expanding youth facilities to level up opportunity in left behind places, giving young people access to support from youth workers and enabling them to engage in beneficial activities. Full details of the YIF's eligibility criteria will be announced in due course.
Government funding for the National Youth Agency has led to an increase in qualified youth workers and sustained professional standards within the youth work sector. Over the past two years we have worked with the National Youth Agency to help more than 900 youth workers gain qualifications and institute a new youth work apprenticeship. Through these joint endeavours we have supported the renewal of a range of national standards, qualifications and training programmes for youth work.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Clapham and Brixton Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will make an assessment of adding touring artists to the list of jobs that qualify for covid-19 travel exemptions.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Government is committed to supporting our world-leading creative industries and to help them to recover from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Covid-19 travel exemptions are kept under review and any changes are driven by the public health risks.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Clapham and Brixton Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sports, what steps his Department is taking to support businesses in the events industry who have had to cancel events at short notice in response to new covid-19 lockdown restrictions.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
We are aware that the events industry has been severely impacted by Government measures to control the spread of Covid-19. Events businesses and individuals can seek support in the form of various government-backed loans, business grants and the extended furlough and self-employed support schemes.
In light of the national restrictions announced on 4 January, the Chancellor has announced one-off top up grants for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses worth up to £9,000 per property to help businesses through to the Spring. He also announced that a £594 million discretionary fund will be made available to support other impacted businesses. This comes on top of the existing Additional Restrictions Grant discretionary funding and the Local Restrictions Support Grants.
The Culture Recovery Fund has already supported a wide range of cultural organisations, including venues, festivals and theatres. The £1 billion already committed has supported 3000 organisations and more than 75,000 jobs. £300 million in grants and £100 million in loans is available to support cultural organisations including businesses in the events industry.
We continue to engage with stakeholders, including through the Tourism Industry Council and the Events Industry Senior Leaders Advisory Panel, to monitor the situation facing the sector.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Clapham and Brixton Hill)
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 response to BT Group's reported plans to make 10,000 British workers redundant in the next five years.
Answered by Matt Warman
BT Group announced a modernisation programme in its 2019/20 results, which it says will enable the organisation to re-engineer old and out of date processes, switch off legacy services and make substantial cost savings over a 5-year period. Any redundancies as part of this process are a commercial decision for BT Group. However, we understand BT’s approach is to minimise redundancies through natural attrition and to provide opportunities to reskill and redeploy workers whenever possible.
More generally, the Government is committed to delivering nationwide gigabit connectivity as soon as possible, and is investing £5bn to deliver gigabit-capable services to the hardest to reach parts of the UK. Nationwide gigabit rollout will create thousands of high-quality jobs in the UK and help the country build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chancellor also announced the ‘Plan for Jobs’ during his Summer Economic Update, through which the Government is making available up to £30 billion to create, protect, and support jobs, and to spur the UK’s recovery following COVID-19.