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Written Question
Sports: Government Assistance
Tuesday 18th April 2023

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to support grassroots sport.

Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

Supporting grassroots sport is a key government priority. Last year, Sport England - our Arm’s Length Body responsible for growing and developing grassroots sport - received almost £350 million from the Government and National Lottery to fund grassroots sports projects. The Government also invests £18 million a year into community sport facilities via the Football Foundation alongside the English Football Association and the Premier League.

Sport England uses its funding to support and encourage the development of sport and recreation with the view to increasing participation rates across England. This includes the over £2.2 million of funding Sport England has provided in the Woking constituency since 2019, £240,000 of which supported projects through the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We are investing £300 million to develop thousands of state-of-the-art community football pitches and multi-use sports facilities across the UK. The Football Foundation has also invested over £400,000 in nearly 20 grants across the constituency, funding pitches, changing facilities, maintenance and equipment.

We have committed £30 million a year for 3 years to school sport facilities in England, and over £20 million with the Lawn Tennis Association to renovate park tennis courts across England, Scotland and Wales.

At the Spring Budget, we also announced a £63 million package to address the cost pressures facing some public swimming pool providers, and provide investment in energy efficiency measures to make facilities sustainable in the long-term. Both of these interventions aim to ensure that children and adults up and down the country have accessible opportunities to get active.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has committed to delivering a new sport strategy that will set the direction for the Government's priorities and its role in the sport sector. This strategy will support grassroots sport by having a specific focus on ensuring that everyone has access to appropriate and accessible opportunities to get active.


Written Question
Football: Finance
Tuesday 18th April 2023

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department is taking steps to help ensure the financial stability of football clubs in England.

Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

On 23 February 2023, the Government published a White Paper on reforming club football governance. This set out our detailed plans to improve the financial stability and governance of football clubs across all leagues through the introduction of an independent regulator. The regulator’s primary strategic purpose will be to ensure that English football is sustainable and resilient for the benefit of fans and the local communities football clubs serve.

We recognise the need for urgent action to safeguard the future of football clubs throughout the English football pyramid, so we will legislate to put the regulator on a statutory footing as soon as parliamentary time allows.


Written Question
Internet: Advertising
Wednesday 13th July 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress her Department has made to ban fraudulent online advertisements.

Answered by Damian Collins

Fraudulent online advertisements are illegal. However, the government recognises that more should be done to tackle the devastating effects caused by fraudulent online advertisements that are placed.

The Online Safety Bill includes a standalone duty on the largest online platforms and search services (Category 1 and 2A services) to prevent the publication of fraudulent adverts on their services.

In addition, the Online Advertising Programme will look at the entire online advertising ecosystem in relation to fraud, as well as other harms caused by online advertising. It will consider the role of all actors not currently covered by regulation. The Online Advertising Programme consultation closed on 8 June, and the government will set out its response in due course.


Written Question
Freedom of Expression
Wednesday 13th July 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 protect freedom of expression.

Answered by Damian Collins

Freedom of expression and the media are essential qualities of any functioning democracy.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is taking a number of steps to protect freedom of expression and democratic values online. This includes our Online Safety Bill, the G7 work on open societies, and our work on press freedom and sustainability.

We introduced the Online Safety Bill on 17 March 2022. It has recently passed its Commons Committee stage and will begin the Report stage shortly. These laws will usher in a new era of accountability for tech companies, and uphold free expression and pluralism online.


Written Question
Television Licences: Pensioners
Tuesday 12th July 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 help low-income pensioners claim their free TV licence.

Answered by Matt Warman

On 23 June my department laid a statutory instrument to amend the Television Licences Act 2000, that will ease the administrative burden put on eligible over-75s when applying for a free licence.

Under the new plans the BBC will be able to automatically verify whether a person applying for a free TV Licence is on Pension Credit with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). It will mean in most cases the 7,000 people who apply to TV Licensing for a free licence per month will simply need to apply online or over the phone without any need to supply additional paperwork.

The changes to the application process are expected to come into effect next year.


Written Question
Broadband
Monday 11th July 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 deliver full-fibre and gigabit-capable broadband by 2025.

Answered by Matt Warman

The Government is delivering the biggest broadband upgrade in UK history. Currently, 69% of UK premises can access gigabit-capable broadband, continuing a rate of incremental growth in line with meeting the target of at least 85% gigabit-capable coverage across the country by 2025. This is not the limit of our ambitions and we will continue to work closely with the industry to get close to complete gigabit coverage as quickly as we can thereafter.

To support this, we are investing £5 billion through Project Gigabit so hard-to-reach areas can get ultra-reliable gigabit speeds. We have already upgraded coverage to over 600,000 premises, and we have over half a billion of pounds of contracts out for tender right now.

In addition to our Project Gigabit contracts, we are investing up to £210 million in the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme to support rural communities with the cost of installing new gigabit-capable connections.

We are also providing funding to connect rural public buildings like schools, GP surgeries and libraries. We recently announced a joint £82 million investment with the Department for Education (DfE) to connect up to 3,000 eligible schools to lightning-fast gigabit broadband.


Written Question
Museums and Galleries
Thursday 31st March 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 support local art galleries.

Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)

The latest awards from the joint DCMS-Wolfson Museums and Galleries Improvement Fund, announced on 17 March, will provide £4 million of new funding to improve displays, protect collections and make exhibitions more accessible. Over the past 20 years, the Fund has provided more than £48 million to over 400 projects and more than 370 museums and galleries are eligible for it.

The Government has also confirmed an extension to the Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief for a further two years, until 31 March 2024. The rates have temporarily increased from 20% (for non-touring productions) and 25% (for touring productions) to 45% and 50% respectively. From 1 April 2023, these rates will be reduced to 30% and 35%, and will return to 20% and 25% on 1 April 2024.

Art galleries may also benefit from The Museums and Galleries VAT Refund scheme, known as Section 33A, which allows eligible museums and galleries providing free admission to reclaim VAT.

Our unprecedented Culture Recovery Fund has seen more than £1.5 billion awarded to around 5,000 organisations and sites. Over £100 million has gone to more than 200 museums and galleries across England through the CRF programme. This includes some of the most well-loved and culturally significant organisations within communities across England.


Written Question
Tourism
Wednesday 30th March 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 support the tourism industry throughout the UK.

Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)

Our Tourism Recovery Plan (TRP) sets out an ambition to recover domestic tourism to pre pandemic levels of 99m overnight trips and spend of £19 billion by the end of 2022. We have been committed to supporting the sector to remain resilient and have already provided £37 billion to the tourism, leisure and hospitality sectors in the form of grants, loans and tax breaks.

The TRP also announced plans for a new rail pass, which we hope to launch this year, to help make it easier and more sustainable for domestic tourists to get around Scotland, England, and Wales.

The National Lottery Days Out Campaign is still running until 31 March, it offers people the chance to redeem a lottery ticket for a £25 voucher to be used in a variety of attractions around the UK, to support domestic tourism.

On 9 February, VisitBritain launched its £10 million international GREAT Britain marketing campaign ‘Welcome to Another Side of Britain’. The aim is to put Britain’s cities in the spotlight who have suffered most from the lack of international visitors during the pandemic. It will also capture the major events this year including HM The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and ‘Unboxed,’ the UK-wide celebration of creativity. VisitBritain is also working with partners including British Airways in the USA and TripAdvisor in Europe to extend the campaign’s reach and drive bookings.

Related to the domestic campaign, in February the second round of the Escape the Everyday DMO Recovery Marketing Fund was launched. It provides the opportunity for English DMOs to apply for grant funding to deliver local marketing activities aligned to, and following on from, this national campaign.

In early March, VisitBritain welcomed 50 international travel trade buyers for a series of educational visits across Britain. Buyers from the UK’s three largest inbound tourism markets, the USA, France and Germany.

VisitBritain’s flagship global travel trade event ExploreGB is currently running virtually (21-25 March). ExploreGB Virtual is bringing together more than 330 global buyers to connect online and do business with 370 tourism industry suppliers and destinations from across the UK. More than 10,000 pre-scheduled one-to-one virtual business meetings will take place during the event.


Written Question
Public Libraries
Wednesday 30th March 2022

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

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 support local libraries.

Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)

On 12 March HM Government announced an investment of £5 million in 25 library services through the Libraries Improvement Fund (LIF) to upgrade their buildings and technology, and to enable them to be resilient and equipped to meet the needs of local communities. Details of the successful projects are published on the Arts Council England website.

Through the Cultural Investment Fund the Government will invest up to a further £128.4 million of capital investment in innovative cultural and creative projects, libraries, and museums across the country over the Spending Review period (22/23 - 24/25).


Written Question
Charities: Coronavirus
Friday 5th March 2021

Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what fiscal steps his Department is taking to support charities during the covid-19 outbreak.

Answered by Matt Warman

The Government made a £750 million package of support available, specifically for charities, social enterprises and the voluntary sector. This ensured that charities and other civil society organisations, including those at risk of financial hardship, could continue their vital work during the Covid-19 outbreak. To date, over 15,000 charities have received funding. This includes household names such as St John Ambulance, NSPCC, Age UK, Barnardo’s and the British Red Cross as well as over 8,000 small organisations.

On top of this, the Government continues to make an unprecedented multi-billion-pound package of support available across the economy to enable organisations to get through the months ahead. Charities continue to access these schemes, including the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, grants for organisations that have been required to close, including retail and leisure facilities, deferral of VAT bills to the end of June, and government backed loan schemes.