Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether it is the Department's policy to pay (a) legal costs and (b) damages in relation to allegedly defamatory comments made by Ministers.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade
I refer the hon. Member to the answer of 13 March 2024, Official Report, PQ 17407.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to her letter of 23 October 2023 to UK Research and Innovation on that organisation's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion board, whether her Department has paid a sum to Professor Kate Sang in relation to that letter.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade
I refer the hon. Member to the opening statement by the Secretary of State at the Lords Science, Innovation and Technology Select Committee on 12 March 2024.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of funding for the roll out of fibre broadband.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
As of January 2024, ThinkBroadband reports that over 80% of premises in the UK can now access a gigabit capable connection. To date, most of this rollout has been achieved by the commercial market.
Government acknowledges that there are premises that remain outside of the scope of the commercial build plans despite the commercial market going further than originally expected. These premises are some of the hardest and most expensive to reach in the UK and therefore require government subsidy if we are to achieve our ambition of nationwide gigabit coverage by 2030.
Project Gigabit is the government’s £5 billion investment in ensuring the premises which would otherwise be left out of commercial plans, get access to a gigabit capable connection. As of December 2023, we have 16 Project Gigabit contracts in place worth approximately £667 million of government subsidy. This, combined with the ongoing procurements equals more than £2 billion of investment to support the deployment of gigabit-capable broadband. We expect more procurements to go live and further contracts to be awarded and signed within the coming months.
For further updates on progress, including information on Project Gigabit procurements, Building Digital UK (BDUK) releases a quarterly update on progress towards our mission of nationwide coverage by 2030 with the latest being published in December 2023.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to the data on Senior Officials' travel expenses for her Department, January to March 2023, last updated on 25 July 2023, how much of the £684 cost for the visit by the Director for Digital Infrastructure to Barcelona starting on 26 February was on (a) flights and (b) accommodation.
Answered by George Freeman
On this visit, the Director of Digital Infrastructure’s expenses on flights were £218.44 and accommodation £211.09.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, how many and what proportion of complaints made to the Information Commissioner’s Office met the threshold for action in each year since 2019.
Answered by John Whittingdale
The ICO has provided figures for 2021, 2022 and 2023 where the data is held, related to both data protection and Freedom of Information complaints cases. Due to the ICO’s retention and disposal policy, casework data prior to 2021 is no longer held.
You may wish to note that further information on complaints cases and outcomes dating back to 2016/2017 is available in the ICO’s Annual Reports which can be found here.
Data Protection Complaints
| 2021 | % | 2022 | % | 2023 | % |
Informal Action Taken | 16118 | 37.63 | 13091 | 33.96 | 6351 | 37.51 |
Investigation Pursued | 13 | 0.03 | 9 | 0.02 | 7 | 0.04 |
No Further Action | 26691 | 62.32 | 25440 | 66 | 10570 | 62.43 |
Regulatory Action | 6 | 0.01 | 6 | 0.02 | 3 | 0.02 |
Total | 42,828 |
| 38,546 |
| 16,931 |
|
Freedom of Information Complaints
(these include Environmental Information Regulation cases)
| 2021 | % | 2022 | % | 2023 | % |
Informal Action Taken | 796 | 14.06 | 971 | 14.69 | 486 | 13.80 |
No Further Action | 3524 | 62.23 | 3365 | 50.92 | 1679 | 47.66 |
Decision Notice Served | 1343 | 23.72 | 2273 | 34.39 | 1358 | 38.55 |
Total | 5663 |
| 6609 |
| 3523 |
|
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether her Department has contracted work to a business named in round 18 of the National Minimum Wage Naming Scheme in the last 3 years.
Answered by George Freeman
There is 1 live contract with a business named in round 18 of the National Minimum Wage Naming Scheme in the last 3 years. currently sits across both Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
The Supplier was procured supplier was procured from an audited and regulated government framework, that has public standard terms and conditions including legislation and statute compliance. The main compliance checks are undertaken by the framework owner/ buying authority and not the department. The department validates through supplier professional services rate cards and invoices for the hourly and daily rates of its professionals under this contract.
Contract Title | Main Contractor | Contract End Date | Contract Status | Total Contract Value |
Power platform non clinical and clinical staff | Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited | 31 March 2023 | ACTIVE | £97,500 |
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Bromborough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of potential sources of covid-19 disinformation.
Answered by Paul Scully
DSIT’s Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU) stood up in March 2020 to address COVID-19-related disinformation and has been responding to acute disinformation risks ever since. Mis and disinformation can come from a range of sources, and the CDU takes an actor agnostic approach, working closely with social media platforms to support the introduction of systems and processes that promote authoritative sources of information.