Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what the value of contracts held by his Department with (a) Deloitte, (b) Slaughter and May and (c) Mott MacDonald is in the last two years.
Answered by Margot James
Details of central government contracts above the value of £10,000 are published on Contracts Finder. Contracts published after 26 February 2015 can be viewed at: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Search.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the corrected Answer of 22 January 2019 to Question 206251, how many civil servants in his Department were working part or full-time on projects in the Government Major Projects Portfolio in (a) June 2016 and (b) December 2018.
Answered by Margot James
The GMPP is a continually evolving portfolio of the government’s most complex and high risk projects. Direct comparisons of the GMPP across years should therefore be treated with caution. Projects join and leave the GMPP throughout the year and it is therefore likely that a simple comparison across two time points will refer to different sets of projects.
At the end of June 2016 (i.e. the end of the Quarter 1 reporting period for 2016-17), 58.8 officials in DCMS were working on GMPP projects.
GMPP data for December 2018 (Q3 2018/19) has not yet been cleared and finalised. At the end of September 2018 (i.e. the latest submitted data, at end of the Quarter 2 reporting period for 2018-19), 127.5 officials in DCMS were working on GMPP projects.
This data refers to public sector employees, defined as those who are directly in the employment of the Civil or Crown Service, local government or Arms’ Length Body at the relevant snapshot date, including seconded members of staff who join the team as Civil, Crown or Public servants.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
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 report entitled DCMS gender pay gap 2017/18, published on gov.uk on 19 December 2018, what assessment his Department has made of the reasons for the rise in the median measure for the difference in hourly rate between male and female civil servants between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018.
Answered by Margot James
Machinery of Government change in July 2017, through which we took on responsibility for digital policy, marked the start of a period of significant growth for the Department. The changes to workforce structure that resulted from this growth have caused our median gender pay gap to increase, although our individual mean and median gaps for grades D - A (see attached table) indicate that DCMS employees are paid equally for work of equal responsibility. We are committed to reducing our gender pay gap and are taking action to target the causes of our increased median gap.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much his Department has spent on consultancy fees relating to the UK leaving the EU since July 2016.
Answered by Margot James
DCMS spend on consultancy fees for work relating to EU Exit totals £1.2m since July 2016. The suppliers of this work are PricewaterhouseCoopers and ICF Consultancy, as well as individual contractors.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what proportion of contracts issued by his Department and contractors include provisions to impose, as between parties to the subcontract, that any payment due from the contractor to a subcontractor under the contract is to be made no later than the end of a period of 30 days from the date on which the relevant invoice is regarded as valid and undisputed, as required by the Public Contract Regulations 2015.
Answered by Margot James
Through the Public Contract Regulations 2015, all public sector buyers must include 30-day payment terms in new public sector contracts; and require that this payment term be passed down the supply chain. Public sector buyers must also publish annually on their payment performance.
Government strongly encourages businesses to report poor payment practice and instances of late payment, including late payment through the supply chain, in public sector contracts to its Mystery Shopper service. Mystery Shopper will then investigate.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many leak enquiries his Department has undertaken in the last two years.
Answered by Margot James
It has been the policy of successive Governments not to comment on security matters other than in exceptional circumstances when it is in the public interest to do so. The leak of any Government information or material is not acceptable and the Government takes such incidents very seriously.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what apps his Department has approved for use on mobile phones issued by his Department.
Answered by Margot James
Due to national security concerns it would be inappropriate to publicly supply a list of applications approved for use on mobile phones issued by the Department, as to do so facilitates attacks against official systems by hostile actors.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many of his Department's invitations to tender have received no bidders in the last two years.
Answered by Margot James
There has been one such invitation.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
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 key infrastructure providers on the steps they are taking to protect themselves from cyber-attack.
Answered by Margot James
Government Departments and the National Cyber Security Centre have regular discussions with key infrastructure providers on their management of cyber risk.
Ensuring the UK’s Critical National Infrastructure is secure and resilient against cyber attack is a priority for the Government as set out in the National Cyber Security Strategy. This is supported by a significant programme of work to provide advice, guidance and support to infrastructure providers and develop effective regulatory frameworks.
DCMS has been leading work for Government to improve the cyber security and resilience of critical services through introducing new regulation. On 20 April, DCMS laid the Network and Information Systems Regulations 2018 in Parliament, implementing the Security of Network and Information Systems Directive (known as the “NIS Directive”) which places legal obligations on providers to protect our critical services by improving their cyber-security.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many IT systems which his Department uses are more than (a) three, (b) five and (c) eight years old; and what steps he is taking to ensure that all his Department's IT systems are updated promptly.
Answered by Margot James
DCMS has the following IT systems which meet the criteria:
(a) Nil
(b) Nil
(c) Two
Both systems identified as being 8 years old and over are planned to be re-developed as part of the planned work on the Departments wider IT Delivery programme and Digital Transformation.