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 Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to make (a) the Music Venue Trust and (b) other charities statutory planning consultees.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The list of statutory consultees is under constant review. Whilst particular organisations or bodies might not be statutory consultees on planning applications, they can work proactively with local councils to identify developments where they might have an interest and can comment on proposals within the statutory public consultation period. The decision to grant or refuse a planning application ultimately rests with the local planning authority, who will take into account all relevant planning considerations and not just the advice from one consultee.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many lecturers at UK universities teach courses on video games.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects and publishes statistics on staff in the higher education (HE) workforce. Cost centres are an accounting concept used as a proxy for academic departments. All HE providers arrange their academic schools, faculties, and departments differently. HESA cost centres are designed to be as comparable as possible between different providers.
Information on the number of academics by cost centre can be accessed at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/staff/table-26. The table shows that in the 2020/21 academic year, there were 8,720 academic staff at UK providers allocated to cost centre 121, named ‘IT, systems sciences & computer software engineering’. Video game academics could be allocated in other cost centres, but the aforementioned 121 is the most likely.
This is the most granular breakdown available and does not specify video games or computer games. As such, lecturers who teach video games comprise some subset of that number. Additionally, not all academic staff are engaged in teaching, therefore the number includes researchers and other staff, in addition to lecturers.
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many students have graduated with a degree in video games in each year since 2010.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) collects and publishes statistics on enrolments and qualifications obtained at UK higher education institutions. Latest statistics refer to the 2020/21 academic year.
The tables below show the numbers of first-degree qualifiers in computer games subjects between the 2012/13 and 2020/21 academic years. Counts are on the basis of full-person equivalents and figures have been rounded to the nearest five.
Information on the number of qualifiers in these subjects has been available since the introduction of the third version of the Joint Academic Coding System (JACS3) in 2012/13. Figures cannot be provided for any year prior to that. Information for 2019/20 and 2020/21 is provided in a separate table, due to the introduction of a new subject classification system, the Higher Education Classification of Subjects (HECoS). Figures for 2019/20 and 2020/21 are not directly comparable with previous years.
Qualifiers in games subjects (JACS3) include games, computer games programming, computer game design, and computer games graphics. Qualifiers in games subjects (HECoS) include computer games, computer games design, computer games graphics, and computer games programming.
Academic years 2012/13 to 2018/19
Academic Year | Number of qualifiers in computer games subjects (JACS3) |
2012/13 | 595 |
2013/14 | 625 |
2014/15 | 690 |
2015/16 | 900 |
2016/17 | 1,290 |
2017/18 | 1,265 |
2018/19 | 1,380 |
Academic year 2019/20 to 2020/21
Academic Year | Number of qualifiers in computer games subjects (HECoS) |
2019/20 | 2,510 |
2020/21 | 2,460 |
Asked by: John Nicolson (Scottish National Party - Ochil and South Perthshire)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the recommendations made by the Ending Conversion Practices Expert Advisory Group in Scotland on 4 October 2022.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government has been liaising with territorial offices and the devolved administrations including the Scottish Government, Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Executive on this important issue.
Officials will continue to work with their counterparts across the devolved administrations to discuss the UK Government’s approach to protecting everyone in England and Wales from conversion therapy practices.
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.