Asked by: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of support for BAME charities that are helping people disproportionately affected by covid-19.
Answered by John Whittingdale
My department is committed to ongoing, regular and in depth engagement with the charity and social enterprise sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic. DCMS will continue to work closely to assess how we can support BAME charities and social enterprises in doing their important work. The Minister for Civil Society holds a fortnightly roundtable to hear directly from BAME civil society organisations to highlight concerns and responses to covid-19.
The Government's £750m targeted funding package and a further £150 million from dormant bank accounts will help charities, social enterprises and vulnerable individuals. We are proactively engaging across government and directly with the sector to maintain a complete picture of the impact and to better understand unmet needs at a national and local level that are not already addressed by existing plans.
My department and the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF - our distribution partners for the Coronavirus Community Support Fund) have been - and continue to - engage extensively with BAME organisations during the development of the response and are working with a number of organisations to improve the reach of the Coronavirus Community Support Fund. A diverse advisory panel has been set up to support the distribution process for the fund.
Asked by: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to ensure that BAME charities are receiving support through the charity relief package announced in April 2020.
Answered by John Whittingdale
My department is committed to ongoing, regular and in depth engagement with the charity and social enterprise sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic. DCMS will continue to work closely to assess how we can support BAME charities and social enterprises in doing their important work. The Minister for Civil Society holds a fortnightly roundtable to hear directly from BAME civil society organisations to highlight concerns and responses to covid-19.
The Government's £750m targeted funding package and a further £150 million from dormant bank accounts will help charities, social enterprises and vulnerable individuals. We are proactively engaging across government and directly with the sector to maintain a complete picture of the impact and to better understand unmet needs at a national and local level that are not already addressed by existing plans.
My department and the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF - our distribution partners for the Coronavirus Community Support Fund) have been - and continue to - engage extensively with BAME organisations during the development of the response and are working with a number of organisations to improve the reach of the Coronavirus Community Support Fund. A diverse advisory panel has been set up to support the distribution process for the fund.
Asked by: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he has taken to protect BAME charities from closure during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by John Whittingdale
My department is committed to ongoing, regular and in depth engagement with the charity and social enterprise sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic. DCMS will continue to work closely to assess how we can support BAME charities and social enterprises in doing their important work. The Minister for Civil Society holds a fortnightly roundtable to hear directly from BAME civil society organisations to highlight concerns and responses to covid-19.
The Government's £750m targeted funding package and a further £150 million from dormant bank accounts will help charities, social enterprises and vulnerable individuals. We are proactively engaging across government and directly with the sector to maintain a complete picture of the impact and to better understand unmet needs at a national and local level that are not already addressed by existing plans.
My department and the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF - our distribution partners for the Coronavirus Community Support Fund) have been - and continue to - engage extensively with BAME organisations during the development of the response and are working with a number of organisations to improve the reach of the Coronavirus Community Support Fund. A diverse advisory panel has been set up to support the distribution process for the fund.
Asked by: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will ring-fence part of the charity relief package, announced in April 2020, for BAME charities.
Answered by John Whittingdale
My department is committed to ongoing, regular and in depth engagement with the charity and social enterprise sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic. DCMS will continue to work closely to assess how we can support BAME charities and social enterprises in doing their important work. The Minister for Civil Society holds a fortnightly roundtable to hear directly from BAME civil society organisations to highlight concerns and responses to covid-19.
The Government's £750m targeted funding package and a further £150 million from dormant bank accounts will help charities, social enterprises and vulnerable individuals. We are proactively engaging across government and directly with the sector to maintain a complete picture of the impact and to better understand unmet needs at a national and local level that are not already addressed by existing plans.
My department and the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF - our distribution partners for the Coronavirus Community Support Fund) have been - and continue to - engage extensively with BAME organisations during the development of the response and are working with a number of organisations to improve the reach of the Coronavirus Community Support Fund. A diverse advisory panel has been set up to support the distribution process for the fund.
Asked by: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent East)
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 effect of limited (Exchange Only) internet speeds on businesses operating in the Cricklewood Broadway area.
Answered by Matt Hancock
No specific assessment has been made of the effect of Exchange Only (EO) lines on businesses operating in the Cricklewood Broadway area.
Upgrading EO lines is more complicated (and more expensive) as there are greater engineering challenges. For instance, because EO lines do not have the copper lines routed through a copper cabinet, there is no aggregation point to which a fibre cabinet can be connected. For these reasons it can take longer for EO lines to be upgraded. Openreach have confirmed this, and have advised that they currently fall outside any commercial rollout. However, they have said there is potential for EO lines to be brought into scope for upgrading through their Community Fibre Partnerships.
For those that do not see improved connectivity through publicly funded and commercial investment, we will ensure universal broadband coverage of at least 10Mbps, so that no home or business is left behind
We are keen to ensure even better digital connectivity in the UK. We announced a package of measures worth £1.1 billion at Autumn Statement 2016 to support this:
Together, these investments and incentives will stimulate the market to deliver the increase in capacity that is needed.
Asked by: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to increase representation of black and minority ethnic individuals in the football coaching profession.
Answered by Tracey Crouch
Sport England is investing £2 million per year into the Football Association to support their work to enhance the quality and diversity of the coaching workforce in football, including providing bursaries to support women and Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) coaches to develop their coaching abilities from the grassroots to the elite levels of the game.
Coaching across all sports forms a key element of the government's sport strategy, which aims to promote physical and mental wellbeing and individual, community and economic development through sport and physical activity. With 37 per cent of BAME people playing sport once a week but only five per cent of qualified coaches being from BAME backgrounds, Sport England's Coaching Plan for England, published in November 2016, aims to create a more diverse coaching workforce so that more participants are able to be coached by people who are immediately empathetic to their needs and reflective of their social environment.
The coaching plan is available at
https://www.sportengland.org/media/11317/coaching-in-an-active-nation_the-coaching-plan-for-england.pdf.
Asked by: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if she will issue a Written Statement outlining how each of the four accepted candidates recently appointed for the Channel 4 board met the appointment criteria as set out by Ofcom for those board positions.
Answered by Rob Wilson
Non-executive members of the Channel 4 Corporation board are appointed by Ofcom with the approval of the Secretary of State. Ofcom advertised for four vacancies for candidates with specific sector skills and experience. The Secretary of State approved the four candidates on the basis that they met the skills and experience set out the advertised job descriptions.
The government is committed to ensuring diversity within public appointments. The Cabinet Office aspiration is for 50% of new appointments made by each Government Department to go to female candidates, and 10% to candidates from a BAME background. This target is also contained within the DCMS Departmental Plan, and, in the first two quarters of 2016/17, 50% of new DCMS appointments went to women and 18% to BAME candidates.