Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether she has had recent discussions with her Ukrainian counterpart on providing support for the cataloguing of Ukrainian cultural artefacts which have been damaged or lost during Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
Since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, DCMS Ministers and officials have been in regular contact with their Ukrainian counterparts, international partners and UK cultural institutions regarding the protection of Ukrainian cultural heritage. The UK is currently providing financial support through DCMS’s flagship Cultural Protection Fund, a partnership with the British Council. This covers among other activities the documentation of damage to cultural heritage, safeguarding Ukraine’s cultural heritage in-situ, and supporting Ukrainian artists and cultural practitioners.
DCMS officials are also working across Government to ensure that cultural heritage protection is integrated into all relevant apparatus around war crimes. Officials are examining how to support baseline evidence collection on cultural heritage destruction in Ukraine, as well as developing longer-term approaches.
Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of offering the Ukrainian Government funding for the use of training facilities in the UK by Ukrainian athletes.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The UK has helped to build and lead the international response in this area, including two collective statements signed by 35 or more like-minded nations on Russia’s war on Ukraine and international sport.
The UK Government has been proud to facilitate support provided on a sport-to-sport basis between governing bodies in the UK and Ukraine, including in taekwondo, fencing and football. We continue to encourage our Ukrainian counterparts to inform us of where assistance is needed.
Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
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 make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing a taskforce to (a) identify, (b) catalogue and (c) act on Russian disinformation on the war in Ukraine on social media channels.
Answered by Damian Collins
Certain states routinely use disinformation as a foreign policy tool. The UK has a strong record of responding robustly to hostile state activity, in collaboration with our international partners, and we continue to take action in response to this form of malign influence.
That is why the DCMS-led Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) is working to identify and counter Russian disinformation targeted at UK and international audiences. We are working closely with the major social media platforms to encourage them to cooperate at speed to swiftly remove disinformation and coordinated inauthentic or manipulated behaviour, as per their Terms of Service. We also engage with platforms to understand policy changes and other countermeasures related to Russian information activities, and the effectiveness of these actions.
This work aids HMG assessment bodies and the UK Government Information Cell, which brings together the government’s counter-disinformation expertise and capabilities to identify and counter Russian information aggression and disinformation targeted at UK and international audiences.
We are also strengthening our new internet safety protections in the Online Safety Bill to make sure social media firms identify and root out state-backed disinformation. Along with the National Security Bill, it provides the legislative tools to ensure that service providers are forced to take proactive action against attempts by foreign actors to manipulate the online environment to interfere in our society and democracy.
Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of potential risks to the consumer of fibre to the cabinet products being sold as fibre products.
Answered by Matt Warman
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is the UK’s independent regulator of advertising across all media.
In 2017, the ASA considered the case of whether fibre to the cabinet products could be marketed as fibre. Their conclusion was that 'the word ‘fibre’ is unlikely to mislead consumers as it is currently used in the advertising of part-fibre broadband services.'
The Government understands the significant benefits full-fibre broadband brings over fibre to the cabinet technologies, and that is why we are investing £5 billion in Project Gigabit to ensure at least 85% of the UK will have gigabit-capable connectivity by 2025.
Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
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 make an assessment of the potential merits of expanding the Ofcom Code on Sports and Other Listed and Designated Events to include a broader range of Scottish football tournament finals.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government has no intention of further amending the list of events of national interest which are included in the Listed Events Regime.
Although the listed events regime exists to ensure that events of national significance are available to as wide an audience as possible, this must be balanced with the ability of sporting organisations to generate revenues to invest in their sports at all levels. Broadcasting rights provide essential income, which enables sports national governing bodies to invest in better facilities for spectators, improve elite performance, hire the best coaches, and keep-up with mounting competition from rival sports and tournaments.
Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department has taken to ensure UK cultural institutions avoid relationships with non-UK organisations that (a) hold or (b) host items taken from Ukrainian territory.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The government is committed to protecting cultural property and combating the illicit trade in cultural objects. We are working with international partners, and the Ukrainian authorities, to protect Ukraine’s cultural heritage and property from unlawful removal and illicit trade.
All UK cultural institutions, and the art market, are required to ensure that the objects which they handle are of lawful provenance. No UK institutions should therefore have dealings with organisations that knowingly receive cultural objects removed from Ukraine without the appropriate permission of the relevant Ukrainian authorities.
Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to ensure cultural institutions trading in or housing cultural objects and materials looted from Ukraine are sanctioned and unable to operate or trade with (a) institutions, (b) individuals, (c) charities and (d) businesses in the UK.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
No one in the UK should be doing business with any institution which knowingly acquires cultural objects looted from Ukraine. International and domestic UK law includes a range of provisions, including criminal offences, to protect cultural objects from unlawful removal and illicit trade. Art market businesses and museums in the UK subscribe to codes of conduct which set out their responsibilities and procedures for ensuring the lawful provenance of the cultural objects which they handle. The Government expects anyone dealing in cultural objects to ensure that those objects have not been looted from any country, including Ukraine, and that the businesses and institutions they are dealing with are acting lawfully.
Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment her Department has made of the potential sanctions that can be imposed on social media companies that fail to tackle disinformation from Russian-backed sources relating to the war in Ukraine.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
As the Secretary of State set out in her statement on 3 March, we have been engaging regularly with the major platforms, who have taken a number of positive steps in response to the situation. Apple has paused all product sales in Russia, Google has added new safeguarding features to Google Maps and Search and Whatsapp is hosting a helpline for Ukraine’s State Emergency Service that sends people information and critical news about the local situation.
From the moment the Russian President began his invasion, we have been clear that he must not be allowed to exploit our open and free media to spread damaging propaganda in Britain. This is especially true in the case of RT, whose own Editor-in-Chief has called the network an “information weapon” of the Russian state. We welcome the action Youtube has taken to prevent access to RT in the UK, and the Secretary of State has written to other major platforms, including Meta and TikTok, calling on them to take action to block access to RT on UK services.
In addition, the Counter Disinformation Unit continues to works closely with platforms to flag specific pieces of disinformation and have them removed where they violate a platform's terms of service.
Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the remuneration rate paid to authors under the Public Lending Right as a result of the impact of the covid-19 outbreak on (a) authors' incomes and (b) publishing industries supply chains.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
Public Lending Right (PLR) is a legal right to authors for payment from a central fund for eligible book contributors when their books are borrowed from public libraries. It applies to physical books, e-books, and e-audiobooks. Illustrators, photographers, translators and editors are also compensated for the loan of their books from public libraries.
The British Library administers the PLR Scheme and recommends annually to the department the revised PLR rate per loan. The recommended PLR rate per loan is determined by the annual registered loans figure for the relevant year and the available PLR central fund.
The PLR rate per loan was increased in January 2021 from 9.03 pence per loan to 9.55 pence per loan and the department will shortly consult on a revised PLR rate per loan for the PLR Scheme year 2020/21, to be introduced in January 2022.
Asked by: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)
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 to ensure professional athletes training and competing regularly in Europe are not penalised by the need to obtain visas for each nation they intend to operate in as a result of the 90 in 180 days within the EU visa rules.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The EU agreed in 2019 that UK nationals would be able to travel visa-free to the Schengen Area for short-term visits (up to 90 days in 180) for a limited number of activities, including attending sporting and cultural events, tourism and short-term study. For those undertaking longer-term stays (exceeding the 90 days limit) a visa and/or work permit may be required. It is up to the individual (including professional athletes) to check the rules of each country they intend to travel to ahead of time, in case they need to apply for a visa, work permit, or provide other documentation.