Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will hold discussions with representatives of British Cycling on the effect on the sport of Sky's decision to withdraw sponsorship for Team Sky.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Sky’s withdrawal from their sponsorship of cycling at the end of 2019 is a commercial decision for them to make. Interest and participation in cycling across the UK has increased greatly since Team GB and ParalympicsGB’s wonderful achievements at London 2012. UK Sport’s support for British Cycling during the current Tokyo 2020 funding cycle remains unaltered by this decision.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment his Department has made of levels of gender diversity within the UK tech industry; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Margot James
The UK Digital Strategy set out our commitment to enabling a more diverse digital workforce. As the digital revolution progresses, many more jobs will require digital skills and many more tech roles will be created, both in technology companies and in the general economy. We cannot afford for women, who we know only make up 19% of the tech workforce (Tech Nation Report 2018), to be excluded from or unable to progress within these roles.
While there is substantial progress that still needs to be made, there are also significant initiatives aiming to solve the issue.
For example, over 270 companies, from international tech giants right through to start-ups, SMEs and charities, have already signed the Tech Talent Charter (TTC) - an industry led initiative, supported by Government. The TTC gives organisations tangible actions and principles they can adopt to change their hiring and retention practices to become more gender-diverse and commits signatories to measuring the diversity profile of their UK employees and to share this data for (anonymous) collective publication in an annual report.
There are also other industry-led programmes, across the tech ecosystem, doing valuable and innovative work to help make tech more diverse. These include the #SheMeansBusiness initiative (by Facebook in collaboration with Enterprise Nation and FSB); PWC’s Tech She Can charter, focused on getting more school-age girls to choose STEM subject and see a career in tech as a viable option for them; and Backstage Capital, which is an investment fund committed to investing in start-ups with diverse founders.
The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Local Digital Skills Partnership (LDSP), launched in Coventry this month, has increasing diversity built in from the start. The PWC-led Tech She Can project mentioned above has piloted their Tech We Can lesson plans in 4 schools in the Coventry area (all with very diverse and different pupil-bases), with a view to replicating and scaling the programme nationally after the pilot phase. In a similar vein, TTC has created regional ‘communities’ of tech employers to share best practice on regional diversity, with the WMCA LDSP a future regional focus for this work.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent discussions he has had with the Secretaries of State for (a) Defence and (b) the Home Department on the implications for UK security of Huawei's involvement in the development of 5G technology.
Answered by Margot James
DCMS and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) actively manage the potential risks to the UK telecoms industry, and security is part of the 5G Testbeds and Trials programme. Furthermore, DCMS is leading a cross-government review into the supply chain arrangements for the UK’s telecoms infrastructure. The terms of reference are available here (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/telecoms-supply-chain-review-terms-of-reference). The Review will consider the full UK market position, including the resilience and security standards of equipment for 5G.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
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 potential effect of the UK leaving the EU on data regulations in the UK.
Answered by Margot James
The UK is a global leader in strong data protection standards and protecting the privacy of individuals will continue to be a priority for the UK after we leave the EU. The EU Withdrawal Act retains the General Data Protection Regulation in UK law. It also allows the government to make technical corrections to it via regulations so that it continues to be operable when the UK is no longer an EU Member State. The Data Protection Act 2018 will continue to sit alongside the retained GDPR to ensure we have a complete data protection framework.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what information his Department holds on the number of women above the age of 18 that have played football regularly in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Sport England collects data on the number of people aged 16+ who engage in sport and physical activity in England through the Active Lives Survey. The latest data is available online (covering the period May 2017 to May 2018): https://www.sportengland.org/media/13563/active-lives-adult-may-17-18-report.pdf
The table below details Active Lives Survey data on the number of women that have played football regularly in each year since 2015.
Active Lives Survey – women (16+) playing football twice per month:
| Active Lives Year 1 data (covering the Nov 15 - Nov 16 period) | Active Lives 18 month interim data (May 16 - May 17) | Active Lives Year 2 data (Nov 16 - Nov 17) | Active Lives 30 month interim data (May 17 - May 18) |
Whole population | 2,299,000 (5.2% of English 16+ population) | 2,299,700 (5.1%) | 2,222,100 (5.0%) | 2,095,900 (4.7%) |
Female | 215,100 (0.9%) | 212,300 (0.9%) | 196,200 (0.9%) | 187,600 (0.8%) |
The Active Lives Survey replaced the Active People Survey which collected data from the period of October 2005 to September 2016. Archived data from the Active People Survey is available online: https://www.sportengland.org/research/about-our-research/active-people-survey/. Owing to the different methodologies employed, the data sets from the two surveys are not directly comparable.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what funding his Department has made available to netball organisations in the UK in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister (Women)
Government has invested over £47M of Exchequer and Lottery funding since 2010 through Sport England, supporting England Netball and a range of delivery partners across the country to run and promote the sport.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions he has had with representatives from (a) the Football Association and (b) other football governance bodies on the number of gambling companies sponsoring football clubs.
Answered by Jeremy Wright
Ministers have regular meetings with stakeholders in football to discuss a number of topics, and as with all sports, we encourage organisations who benefit from gambling advertising or sponsorship, including football clubs, to look at how they can contribute to raising awareness of the potential risks associated. Gambling logos are already banned on under-18 team shirts and last year the Football Association voluntarily decided to end its sponsorship partnerships with betting companies to avoid conflict with its role in enforcing rules on betting rules.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions he has had with the (a) Chancellor of the Exchequer and (b) Coventry City Council on the future funding for free music festivals in Coventry; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Margot James
We announced, in December last year, that Coventry would be the UK City of Culture 2021. To support this the government will invest £8.5 million in Coventry’s plans to showcase the city which will include a wide range of arts and cultural events.