Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
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 ensure that new homes have access to gigabit broadband.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
It is a government priority to ensure that new build homes are future-proofed and are ready for gigabit-capable connections. Working closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, we have developed proposals to require developers to install into new homes the physical infrastructure necessary and to work with network operators to provide a gigabit-capable connection.
The measures will give more people access to fast, reliable and resilient broadband connections and reduce the need for costly and disruptive work to retrospectively install them in homes. A statutory technical consultation on these proposals is underway and closes on 28 February 2022 in advance of legislation being brought forward.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans he has for the future of the Life Chances Fund.
Answered by Matt Warman
The Life Chances Fund was established as a nine-year fund running from 2016 up until 2025; the government remains committed to delivering the Fund within this timeframe. It is expected to support over 48,000 people to achieve improved life outcomes across the country.
DCMS will continue to share insights and learnings from the Life Chances Fund across government, in order to support the commissioning of future programmes and services, based on evidence and data.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment his Department has made of the potential overall cost effectiveness of social outcomes contracting to Government.
Answered by Matt Warman
The Life Chances Fund (LCF) is a fund specifically designed to test the use of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs), also known as social outcomes contracts. The evaluation supporting the LCF has been designed to provide an answer to the question of cost effectiveness. It seeks to determine the comparative cost benefits of using SIBs compared to other commissioning routes.
The evaluation findings are due in 2025, following the completion of LCF funding.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress his Department has made on the rollout of gigabit broadband.
Answered by Matt Warman
The Government is committed to delivering nationwide gigabit connectivity as soon as possible. Today, over two in five premises can access gigabit-capable networks, up from just one in ten in November 2019. By the end of the year, 60% will have access, and by 2025 the Government is targeting a minimum of 85% gigabit-capable coverage, working with industry to reach as close to 100% as possible.
To achieve this, the Government has enacted a number of policies to make it easier to deploy broadband networks in the UK. These include addressing the issue of unresponsive landlords holding up deployment through the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Act and launching the Street Manager service with the Department for Transport to make it easier for operators to access roads for digital infrastructure deployment.
The Government is also investing £5bn as part of Project Gigabit to ensure the hardest-to-reach areas in the UK receive coverage.The first Project Gigabit areas are set to reach some one million hard to reach homes and businesses, with Phase 1a covering up to 510,000 premises, announced in March 2021. Phase 1b is expected to be confirmed in the summer and reach up to 640,000 more hard to reach homes and businesses. These are areas with a high percentage of hard to reach premises and a relatively high proportion of premises without access to superfast speeds.
Project Gigabit was designed to be flexible as it runs alongside commercial rollout. As with other market data, we will review intervention areas to ensure we target truly left-behind places. The next Project Gigabit Delivery Plan update is expected shortly.
Concurrently, premises in rural areas may also be in line for funding through the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, with up to £210m allocated to the scheme over the next four years to support hard to reach communities. Cheshire East has made good use of the scheme, seeing 338 voucher connections worth £772,487, with a further 308 vouchers to be connected, totalling £1.4 million.
Home and business owners can check the eligibility of their address and then look up suppliers in their area by going to https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/. The voucher scheme offers up to £1,500 for homes and £3,500 for businesses to help to cover the costs of installing gigabit broadband to people’s doorsteps when used as part of a group scheme.
Additionally, 4,000 premises in Cheshire will also benefit from access to gigabit capable broadband as a result of a £4.5million investment under the Superfast Broadband programme that was agreed in December 2020.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to support the recovery of the tourism industry.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
We recognise the severe impact of COVID-19 on tourism and have published the Tourism Recovery Plan to help the sector recover back to pre-pandemic levels and build back better for the future. The plan aims to recover domestic tourism to pre pandemic levels by 2022 and international tourism by 2023; both at least a year faster than independent forecasts predict.
The British Tourist Authority (BTA) will deliver a £10 million consumer promotion with the National Lottery to support the domestic tourist industry. In addition, the Government and VisitBritain will develop a new domestic rail tourism product, similar to the Britrail Pass for international visitors, working with the Rail Delivery Group.
The Government has allocated at least £19 million to domestic and international marketing activity, with a £5.5 million domestic campaign already underway. The Government will work with VisitBritain to welcome back international visitors as soon as it is safe to do so.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to improve digital infrastructure and connectivity in rural areas.
Answered by Matt Warman
The government is committed to delivering lightning-fast, reliable broadband to everyone in the UK. ‘Project Gigabit’ is ambitious, challenging and central to how we build back better. Our plan - to stimulate investment, bust barriers and drive competition - is working. We are on track for one of the fastest rollouts in Europe and for 60% of all households to have access to gigabit speeds by the end of the year. It is a huge leap forward from 2019, when it was 9%.
We are backing Project Gigabit with £5 billion so hard to reach communities are not left out - starting to level up now, not waiting for the end of the commercial rollout, and building on the half a half a million rural homes and businesses already connected through our support.
As part of Project Gigabit we are funding up to £210 million worth of vouchers over the next three years to help with the costs of installing gigabit to people’s doorsteps and up to £110 million to connect up to 7,000 rural public buildings such as GP surgeries, libraries and schools. All premises not covered through these measures or expected to be addressed by commercial coverage will be in scope for new Project Gigabit contracts.
Premises which can’t access a decent broadband connection remain eligible for the broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO). The broadband USO was launched in March 2020 and gives every eligible premises the legal right to request a decent, affordable broadband connection, providing download speeds of at least 10 Mbps and upload speeds of 1Mbps.
Furthermore, on 9 March last year, the government agreed a £1 billion deal with the Mobile Network Operators to deliver the Shared Rural Network. This will see the operators collectively increase 4G mobile phone coverage throughout the UK to 95% by the end of the programme, underpinned by legally binding coverage commitments. The programme will level up the country by improving mobile coverage for an extra 280,000 premises and 16,000km of roads with areas around the UK starting to see improvements to 4G coverage long before the programme completes.
On 29 June we announced the next step of the Shared Rural Network so people who live and work in rural areas will be able to see how 4G coverage will increase through this world leading programme.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the support provided to the culture and arts sector during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
I know the cultural and arts sectors have been hugely impacted by Covid, with the effects felt across individual business and organisations, as well as staff, freelancers and supply chains. That is why last year the government announced the unprecedented £1.57 billion support package for the culture sector. To date, over £1.2 billion has been allocated from this fund, reaching over 5000 individual organisations and sites.
In the 2021 Budget, the Chancellor announced an additional £300 million to support theatres, museums and other cultural organisations in England through the Culture Recovery Fund. This extra funding, together with other cultural support such as funding for our national museums, means that our total support package for culture during the pandemic is now approaching £2 billion. These are unprecedented sums and this is the largest one-off investment in UK culture.
The arts and culture sector has also been eligible to access pan economic Government COVID-19 support throughout the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak. This includes various Government-backed loans, business grants, reduction in VAT and the extended furlough and self-employed support schemes. Organisations in this sector were also able to access the discretionary Local Restrictions Support Grant and Additional Restrictions Grant which provided Local Authorities with funds to support businesses who met the eligibility criteria. And, earlier this year the Chancellor also announced one-off top up grants for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses worth up to £9,000 per property to help businesses through to the Spring and eviction protection has been extended for businesses most in need.