Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of providing financial support to (a) charities and (b) other similar organisations with rising energy costs.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
As households and communities face rising energy prices, charities are seeing increased demand for their services while contending with the same price increases themselves.
With government support, charities have shown significant resilience over the past two years, and will again be crucial in supporting communities and households over the winter.
That is why the government will support all charities, public sector organisations and businesses with their energy costs this winter, offering an energy price guarantee for six months, equivalent to the protection offered to British households. Further details will be announced in due course.
My department will keep engaging with their counterparts across the sector and government to continuously monitor the impact of rising energy costs on the charity and broader civil society sector.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if her Department will take steps to help ensure that every community has access to a (a) swimming pool and (b) safe outdoor swimming area.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
We recognise the importance of ensuring public access to leisure facilities, including swimming pools, which are great spaces for people of all ages to stay fit and healthy, and which play an important role within communities.
Sport England has invested £9,564,322 in swimming and diving projects since April 2019, which includes £6,260,502 to Swim England. This is in addition to the £100 million National Leisure Recovery Fund, which supported the reopening of local authority swimming pools throughout the country after the pandemic.
Regarding outdoor swimming, bathing waters are designated through an application process and Defra welcomes applications for designation for both coastal and inland waters such as rivers.
The ongoing responsibility of providing access to safe places to swim, both in swimming pools and outdoors, lies at Local Authority level, and the government continues to encourage Local Authorities to invest in leisure facilities.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department's delivery on its targets for high-speed broadband rollout.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government has committed to a delivery target of at least 85% gigabit availability by the end of 2025 and we are on track to achieve this. In three years, national coverage has rocketed from 6 per cent to 68 per cent.
We are investing £5 billion through Project Gigabit so hard-to-reach areas can get ultra-reliable gigabit speed and have already upgraded over 600,000 premises.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the penalties for people found guilty of deliberately creating and spreading misinformation on covid-19 vaccines.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government takes the issue of misinformation and disinformation very seriously.
The Online Safety Bill will force companies to take action to prevent the proliferation of illegal content online that is in scope of the Bill, including illegal misinformation and disinformation. This would include misinformation containing direct incitement to violence such as encouraging violence against public health officials on the false premise that COVID-19 is a hoax.
The Law Commission’s recommended false communications offence is also being brought into law through the Bill. This will capture any communications where the individual knows the information to be false but sends this communication intending to cause harm. This would include dangerous disinformation about the vaccine, or hoax COVID-19 treatments. The offence will be summary only and will carry a maximum penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks or a fine, or both.
The Online Safety Bill will also require the biggest companies to address content that is legal but causes significant physical or psychological harm to adults - including some types of misinformation and disinformation, such as anti-vaccination content.
Alongside this legislation, the government has also developed a Media Literacy Strategy and SHARE checklist which aims to increase audience resilience by educating and empowering those who see, inadvertently share and are affected by false and misleading information.