Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what proportion of SCS2 civil servants on full-time equivalent contracts in her Department are women.
Answered by John Whittingdale
In the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) 33% of SCS2’s in DCMS are women on full-time contracts. This does not capture the total female/male headcount split at SCS2, as DCMS employs a number of male and female staff part-time at that grade.
This data has been calculated as at 1st November 2023.
The number of female staff at Payband 2 (Director) and working full-time divided by the total number of staff at the department at Payband 2 (where sex is known).
This figure includes employees of DCMS and no executive agencies or non-ministerial departments have been included.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what proportion of civil servants on temporary contracts in her Department are women.
Answered by John Whittingdale
Please refer to the published data here.
In the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) based on the latest published data linked above 66.7% of temporary staff are female (20 out of 30).
The number of female staff on temporary contracts divided by the total number of staff on temporary contracts at the department.
This includes DCMS employees only, no executive agencies or non-ministerial departments have been included.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether she is taking steps to support (a) Backstage At The Green in Ochil and South Perthshire constituency and (b) other grassroots music venues.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government values the strong contribution of grassroots music venues as centres of research and development for the UK’s world leading music industry.
As a devolved policy, the Devolved Administrations receive funding for culture through the Barnett formula. It is for the Scottish Government to decide how to allocate these resources across all its devolved responsibilities.
Support in England is provided for grassroots music venues through Arts Council England (ACE). ACE’s Supporting Grassroots Live Music fund provides a ring-fenced £1.5m to eligible venues (accepting applications for between £1000 and £40,000) and has been extended until 31 March 2023.
DCMS supported culture (including grassroots music) during Covid-19 through the unprecedented Culture Recovery Fund (CRF). As part of this package, funding was included for the Devolved Administrations through the Barnett formula. In England, the CRF provided immediate assistance to prevent 136 of our most loved and enduring grassroots music venues closing their doors for good.
In addition, the Energy Bill Relief Scheme has provided support to all businesses across Great Britain and Northern Ireland, including grassroots music venues, protecting all non-domestic consumers from soaring energy costs, cutting the cost of power bills and providing them with the certainty they needed to plan through the acute crisis this winter.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
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 impact for consumers of copper and cable products being sold as fibre products.
Answered by Matt Warman
In 2017, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK's regulator of advertising, reviewed consumer understanding of the term ‘fibre’ as used in broadband advertising (particularly for part-fibre services such as Fibre to the Cabinet) and any impact the use of this term has on consumers’ transactional decisions. The ASA engaged with stakeholders and received a range of responses from providers of part-fibre and full-fibre broadband services, consumer organisations and other regulators.
The ASA published their findings in November 2017 and concluded by stating the following:“It is not possible to conclude that the word ‘fibre’, as currently used in part-fibre advertising, is likely to mislead and misinform consumers.”
Both the ASA and Ofcom are independent regulators and such matters relating to industry rules on advertising and broadband speed claims are a matter for their discretion.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
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 the potential impact of the mis-selling of fibre broadband products on consumers; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Matt Warman
In 2017, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK's regulator of advertising, reviewed consumer understanding of the term ‘fibre’ as used in broadband advertising (particularly for part-fibre services such as Fibre to the Cabinet) and any impact the use of this term has on consumers’ transactional decisions. The ASA engaged with stakeholders and received a range of responses from providers of part-fibre and full-fibre broadband services, consumer organisations and other regulators.
The ASA published their findings in November 2017 and concluded by stating the following:“It is not possible to conclude that the word ‘fibre’, as currently used in part-fibre advertising, is likely to mislead and misinform consumers.”
Both the ASA and Ofcom are independent regulators and such matters relating to industry rules on advertising and broadband speed claims are a matter for their discretion.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
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 representations to Ofcom on the potential impacts of the mis-selling of fibre products on consumers; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Matt Warman
In 2017, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the UK's regulator of advertising, reviewed consumer understanding of the term ‘fibre’ as used in broadband advertising (particularly for part-fibre services such as Fibre to the Cabinet) and any impact the use of this term has on consumers’ transactional decisions. The ASA engaged with stakeholders and received a range of responses from providers of part-fibre and full-fibre broadband services, consumer organisations and other regulators.
The ASA published their findings in November 2017 and concluded by stating the following:“It is not possible to conclude that the word ‘fibre’, as currently used in part-fibre advertising, is likely to mislead and misinform consumers.”
Both the ASA and Ofcom are independent regulators and such matters relating to industry rules on advertising and broadband speed claims are a matter for their discretion.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the recommendation of the Joint Committee scrutinising the Online Safety Bill that the exemption for news publisher content should be amended to cover consumer and business magazines, what steps her Department has taken to engage with industry bodies to create a definition of news-related material that encompasses IPSO-regulated specialist publishers.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Online Safety legislation has been designed to safeguard access to journalistic content. News publishers’ content will be exempted from platforms’ new online safety duties. The criteria against which an organisation qualifies as a publisher is set in the draft Online Safety Bill. If an organisation meets these criteria, then its content will be exempt. The criteria is clear that it captures news publishers' whose principal purpose is the publication of news-related material.
The Bill will also impose a duty on the biggest and riskiest companies, Category 1 companies, to safeguard all journalistic content shared on their platform. Through this duty, these platforms will need to have systems in place to ensure they take into account the importance of the free expression of journalistic content when operating their services. These protections will cover specialist publishers such as consumer and business magazines, where they are engaged in journalism.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
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 the potential merits of amending the definition of news-related material in the Online Safety Bill to ensure that content produced by all IPSO regulated publications, including specialist magazine titles, is exempted from platforms’ new online safety duties.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Online Safety legislation has been designed to safeguard access to journalistic content. News publishers’ content will be exempted from platforms’ new online safety duties. The criteria against which an organisation qualifies as a publisher is set in the draft Online Safety Bill. If an organisation meets these criteria, then its content will be exempt. The criteria is clear that it captures news publishers' whose principal purpose is the publication of news-related material.
The Bill will also impose a duty on the biggest and riskiest companies, Category 1 companies, to safeguard all journalistic content shared on their platform. Through this duty, these platforms will need to have systems in place to ensure they take into account the importance of the free expression of journalistic content when operating their services. These protections will cover specialist publishers such as consumer and business magazines, where they are engaged in journalism.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
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 prevent children accessing adult applications on tablets and phones.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The strongest protections within the draft Online Safety Bill are for children. Services which are likely to be accessed by or attract a significant number of children will be required to conduct a child safety risk assessment and provide safety measures for child users. This includes services which are not targeted at children, but which they are accessing.
Ofcom will set out the steps companies can take to protect children from harm on their service. Companies will have to ensure that only users who are old enough are able to access services which have age restrictions or risk causing them harm. We expect companies to use age verification technologies to prevent children from accessing services which pose the highest risk of harm to children, such as online pornography or dating sites.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she will take to evaluate the adequacy of social media companies’ risk assessments of the likelihood of children using their adult services.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The strongest protections in the draft Online Safety Bill are for children. The Bill will require social media companies to assess whether their service is likely to be accessed by or appeal to a significant number of children and, if so, deliver additional protections for them.
Ofcom will be required to produce and publish guidance for services on how to undertake this risk assessment. Companies which assess that they are not likely to be accessed by children will need to provide robust evidence to the regulator and keep this assessment under review. The requirement to undertake, and keep up to date, an accurate assessment with regard to child access is an enforceable requirement. Ofcom may take enforcement action where providers do not carry out an adequate assessment and keep it up to date.