Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to the Strategic Partnership Arrangement 2024 between Microsoft and the Crown Commercial Service, what guidance is available to civil servants on the use of Microsoft Co-pilot.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Generative AI Framework provides general guidance for civil servants using AI tools. The government is, in addition, currently evaluating Microsoft 365 Copilot via a formal experiment, the findings of which will feed into future guidance for civil servants. Training has been supplied centrally to increase the efficacy of Microsoft 365 Copilot alongside material on Civil service Learn on generative AI to raise awareness of benefits, limitations and risks of Generative AI tools, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft's agreement with its Public Sector customers ensures enhanced privacy assurance on Microsoft 365 Copilot, including a commitment that end-user prompts are not used to train external large language models.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to the Government’s response to the Independent Review of the UK’s Research, Development and Innovation Organisational Landscape, what steps he has taken to explore a sustainable source of funding for Public Sector Research Establishments to support them to undertake grant-based research funded at less than full economic cost.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
There is a commitment in the response to the landscape review to investigate a sustainable source of funding for PSREs who undertake UKRI research funded at less than full economic cost.
Work is in the scoping phase and we are continuing to explore ways to improve the landscape and ease of collaboration across the sector, including for PSREs.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what the budget is for the Government Office for Technology Transfer in the 2025-26 financial year.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The budget for the Government Office for Technology Transfer in financial year 2025-26 has not yet been set. Having now reached agreement with HM Treasury on an overall funding envelope for 2025-26, a business planning exercise is progressing to set budgets within the Department and for its supporting agencies and public bodies.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to the Strategic Partnership Arrangement 2024 between Microsoft and the Crown Commercial Service, what guidance is available to civil servants on securing official documents held online.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Everyone who works with government has a duty of confidentiality and a responsibility to safeguard any government information or data that they access or share, and all government departments are required to meet a range of mandatory security standards. The ‘Government Security Classifications Policy’ and ‘Guidance 1.1: Working at OFFICIAL’ set a range of baseline security behaviours and controls for all civil servants to follow on how to process OFFICIAL information securely, wherever it is collected, stored, processed or shared across HMG (electronically, in hardcopy or verbally) and with the wider public sector and external partners. Government departments and other public sector organisations are responsible for ensuring civil servants understand their duties and responsibilities.
Departments have Knowledge and Information Management professionals, and Digital and Data professionals, to help configure access permissions and other protections within their cloud based systems, such as within Microsoft 365.
Microsoft has produced various pieces of guidance for the UK government, in partnership with the Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), Government Security Group and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). These have been created to support government organisations that use Microsoft 365. They outline how to configure the Microsoft 365 platform to enable a secure and interoperable experience for civil servants operating at the OFFICIAL tier.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, which Minister is responsible for the interface between innovation and business to drive growth.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation is responsible for Innovation across the Missions, including the Growth Mission. However, a wide range of DSIT’s policy areas support businesses and contribute to innovation-led growth, and therefore all Ministers will have an interest. A full list of Ministerial responsibilities is at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-ministers-and-responsibilities.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, pursuant to the answer of 25 November 2024 to Question 14940, on Project Gigabit and Shared Rural Network, how Ofcom tests areas for compliance with their standard for good coverage.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Ofcom’s approach to testing compliance is available on Ofcom’s website. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/coverage-and-speeds/cellular-coverage/
It involves a combination of desk-based assessment against the mobile network operators (MNO) coverage predictions and drive testing in a sample of locations across the UK.
Ofcom uses scanners installed in vehicles to capture a range of information including mobile signal strength across the UK’s road network. This provides signal strength measurement samples for each MNO across different regions and terrains. This data is then used for comparison at an aggregated level with the coverage predictions the MNOs supply to Ofcom.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, pursuant to the Answer of 25 November 2024 to Question 14940 on Project Gigabit and Shared Rural Network, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the minimum signal strength to support remote working.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Ofcom reports that a 10 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload speed connection is needed to support video calls and a consistent connection to the internet, and our expectation is that this would support remote working. Most networks in the UK, including those delivered by Project Gigabit, offer much higher performance.
The mobile signal strength thresholds Ofcom set for the Shared Rural Network are based on Ofcom’s assessment of what constitutes “good” mobile coverage which has been in place for several years and which broadly equates to successfully making a 90 second call and getting a download speed of at least 2Mbit/s. Whether this is sufficient to support remote working will depend on a number of factors, including the nature of the work being undertaken and the level of congestion on the network. We have asked Ofcom to keep under review what constitutes good 4G and 5G connectivity.
In response to my letter to their Chief Executive, Ofcom is considering how to incorporate different signal strength thresholds in its reporting on the availability of mobile networks.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether he plans to consult the research sector on the Government’s plans for 10 year budgets for R&D activities.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
We recognise the importance of stakeholder engagement and are actively involving stakeholders from the research sector throughout the process. Further details on ten-year budgets will be set out in the Spring as part of the next phase of the Spending Review.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, pursuant to the Answer of 13 November 2024 to Question 13205 on Project Gigabit and Shared Rural Network, what minimum service levels his Department expects 4G coverage delivered as part of the Shared Rural Network programme to meet.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Shared Rural Network is delivering good 4G outdoor coverage across rural parts of the UK. For 4G networks, Ofcom defines good coverage based on the minimum signal strength required to deliver a 95% probability of making a 90-second telephone call successfully completed, and of getting a download speed of at least 2Mbit/s.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps his department is taking to help increase diversity in the research workforce.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
DSIT is committed to increasing diversity in the research workforce. We are supporting the pipeline of diverse talent, for example through the CREST Awards and the UKRI funded STEM Ambassador programme. We are supporting UKRI’s EDI Strategy to ensure that those with the best research ideas can access research funding regardless of their backgrounds.
We are improving understanding of the issues through a second edition of the UK-wide Research and Innovation Workforce Survey in July this year. UKRI also publishes diversity data and commissions high-quality research evidence that informs policy and practice in the R&D system, e.g. through its EDI Caucus.