Matt Vickers

On 14 May, the Government announced it will be:

• Strengthening its presence in 13 cross Government locations across the UK.

• Ensuring that 50% of UK-based SCS are located outside of London by 2030.

• Strengthening the talent pipeline by launching a new apprenticeship programme, setting an ambition for 50% of Fast Stream roles to be based outside London by 2030, and committing to develop and launch a local government interchange programme in partnership with the Local Government Association (LGA).

• Reducing the number of Civil Service buildings in London, closing 11 buildings by 2030 to deliver £94m in savings per year.

• Launching two new thematic campuses, an Energy Campus in Aberdeen and a Digital & AI Innovation Campus in Manchester.

In June, the Government announced that PfG’s existing thematic campuses in Darlington, Sheffield and Leeds will be leading a new approach to bring together policy makers with those on the frontline to support mission delivery.

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On 14 May, the Government announced it will be:

• Strengthening its presence in 13 cross Government locations across the UK.

• Ensuring that 50% of UK-based SCS are located outside of London by 2030.

• Strengthening the talent pipeline by launching a new apprenticeship programme, setting an ambition for 50% of Fast Stream roles to be based outside London by 2030, and committing to develop and launch a local government interchange programme in partnership with the Local Government Association (LGA).

• Reducing the number of Civil Service buildings in London, closing 11 buildings by 2030 to deliver £94m in savings per year.

• Launching two new thematic campuses, an Energy Campus in Aberdeen and a Digital & AI Innovation Campus in Manchester.

In June, the Government announced that PfG’s existing thematic campuses in Darlington, Sheffield and Leeds will be leading a new approach to bring together policy makers with those on the frontline to support mission delivery.

The Government has launched a modern Industrial Strategy, removing barriers to investment and improving access to finance to drive nationwide growth.

The expanded Office for Investment (OfI) now offers enhanced commercial expertise and a broader regional presence, working closely with Mayors and Devolved Administrations to connect investors with high-potential opportunities across the UK.

Additionally, UK Export Finance has strengthened its support for international investment through its new ‘Invest-to-Export’ Guarantee, helping overseas firms establish UK-based exporting facilities. These initiatives aim to create a more dynamic, attractive environment for strategic investment and long-term economic development.

We recognise the vital role hospitality businesses play in driving economic growth and strengthening community cohesion across the country.

We also increased the Employment Allowance to £10,500, meaning 865,000 employers will pay no National Insurance Contributions (NICs) next year. This allows businesses to employ up to four full-time staff on the National Living Wage and pay no employer NICs and we’re committed to introducing permanently lower business rates for Retail, Hospitality and Leisure businesses with rateable values of less than £500,000.

We have recently launched Sector-based Work Academy Programmes (SWAPs), which help jobseekers move quickly into hospitality roles through flexible training and support. In addition the Hospitality Fund is backing projects that will include addressing skills gaps in the sector and boosting productivity.

Rural areas offer significant potential for growth and are central to our economy. Addressing the needs of businesses in rural areas is at the heart of our policymaking and we continue to revisit and improve our support offers. The upcoming Business Growth Service will unify existing core services nationally while delivering locally, collaborating with local and devolved governments and Growth Hubs.

All businesses, including rural enterprises, can access Local Growth Hubs for tailored support throughout their development journey. Growth hubs customise their offerings based on specific community needs, whether in towns or rural locations.

The Department for Business and Trade publishes data on participant enrolments and completions on the Help to Grow: Management course among transparency documents on gov.uk linked here. Up to the end of March 2025, the programme has supported 11,850 business people since its launch in June 2021.

The recently-published UK Export Finance (UKEF) Annual Report and Accounts (ARA) for the last financial year show that it provided a record £14.5 billion of support for exports, supported up to 70,000 UK jobs, and contributed up to £5.4 billion to the UK economy. The report is available online, along with those from previous years, at: UK Export Finance annual reports and accounts - GOV.UK.

The Office for Clean Energy Jobs is funding targeted Regional Skills Pilots across the UK which will address skill gaps in a limited number of places which have been identified as priority areas for clean energy, including Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.

The Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire pilot, the Oil and Gas Transition Training Fund, is being delivered in partnership between UK Government, Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland. This is a targeted pilot for workers in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.

Pilots are also running in Cheshire West and Chester, North and North East Lincolnshire and Pembrokeshire, with local and devolved partners empowered to develop their own plans for how best to target the funding. The Department will publish a Clean Energy Workforce Strategy setting out our approach to creating good jobs across the country.

We will shortly be publishing a Clean Energy Workforce Strategy which will set out our approach to upskilling and reskilling the workforce into clean energy roles through initiatives including the Energy Skills Passport, in collaboration with industry, which is helping oil and gas workers to identify routes into roles in offshore wind including construction and maintenance.

The skills system is delivering training for existing workers looking to retrain or upskill into clean energy. Support includes the announcement of 10 Technical Excellence Colleges for construction, which will transform existing further education colleges to deliver the skills needed for growth-driving sectors like clean energy; the Growth and Skills levy to deliver greater flexibility for learners and employers in England; and Skill Bootcamps to address the need for clean energy skills where this reflects regional priorities.

The Department (DESNZ) established the Office for Clean Energy Jobs (OCEJ) to engage industry and employers on skills needs and challenges. In partnership with Skills England, it leads workforce planning by identifying skills gaps and supporting reskilling.

DESNZ consulted with all stakeholders, including employers on ‘Building the North Sea’s Energy Future’. It included questions on supporting the oil and gas workforce to transition to clean energy sectors. A Government response will be published in due course.

These engagements have informed recent initiatives, including the Energy Skills Passport, the Oil and Gas Transition Training Fund pilot in Aberdeen, and the training guarantee for at-risk workers at Petroineos and Prax oil refineries.

The North Sea basin is super-mature, and production is in natural decline. Oil and gas production fell by 72% between 1999 and 2023. Direct jobs in oil and gas extraction fell by around a third between 2014 and 2023.

The clean energy transition creates an opportunity for our expert oil and gas sector to play a central role in the future of energy supply.

Robert Gordon University estimates that the renewables workforce could grow from 39,000 in 2024 to 84,000-153,000 by 2035, subject to realised deployment across those technologies and proportion of UK content delivered by the domestic supply chain.

The Government believes that our mission to deliver clean power by 2030 is the best way to break our dependence on global fossil fuel markets and protect billpayers permanently.

The creation of Great British Energy will help us to harness clean energy and have less reliance on volatile international energy markets and help in our commitment to make Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030. This, combined with our Warm Homes Plan to upgrade millions of homes to make them warmer and cheaper to run is how we will drive down energy bills and make cold homes a thing of the past.

We recognise that we need to support households struggling with bills whilst we transition to clean power by 2030. This is why we are delivering the Warm Home Discount to around 3 million eligible low-income households this winter. On 25 February, we published a consultation on the expansion of the Warm Home Discount, giving more eligible households £150 off their energy bills. These proposals would bring around 2.7 million households into the scheme – pushing the total number of households that would receive the discount next winter up to around 6 million. The consultation has now closed and the Department is evaluating the responses.

The Prime Minister announced on 3 June 2025 that responsibility for government and public sector cyber security moved from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to strengthen the resilience of digital public services by better integrating cyber security responsibilities and expertise into the Government Digital Service.

The government is progressing work on an implementation plan to support the delivery of the Government Cyber Security Strategy and is developing a new, more interventionist operating model to clarify, enable, and enforce cross-government responsibilities for cyber and digital resilience.

Additionally, important steps have been taken to understand and mitigate cyber risk through the launch of the GovAssure cyber assurance regime and the Government Cyber Coordination Centre (GC3).

The Government does not record or monitor data breaches across government departments centrally.

Green skills are essential to driving economic growth and achieving the UK’s net zero target by 2050. Clean energy and advanced manufacturing have been identified as priority sectors in the Industrial Strategy.

To support this, the government will invest an additional £1.2 billion annually in skills by 2028/29, expanding opportunities across high-growth industries. As part of this, over £100 million will be directed toward engineering skills development through education, apprenticeships, and the establishment of Technical Excellence Colleges in key sectors like advanced manufacturing.

The government will provide approximately £1.4 billion in funding for the adult skills fund in the 2025/26 academic year. This includes funding the Free Courses for Jobs offer, which gives eligible adults the chance to access a high value level 3 qualification for free, helping support them to gain higher wages or a better job in key sectors, for example in heat pump installation.

The government will also support adult learners through our technical education offer, including through a range of apprenticeships and Skills Bootcamps.

​​I refer the hon. Member for Stockton West to the answer of 1 September 2025 to Question 69622.​

The government is determined to break down barriers to opportunity for all our young people and transform their life chances. A key pillar of the government’s opportunity mission is to ensure there are clear pathways through further and higher education and into employment, including technical training.

In the ‘Get Britain Working’ White Paper, the government set out its commitment to establish a Youth Guarantee of support to access training, an apprenticeship, or to find work for all 18 to 21 year-olds. £45 million has been allocated to Youth Guarantee trailblazers to develop the Youth Guarantee. The department and the Department for Work and Pensions are working at pace with strategic authorities in initially eight areas, including in the hon. Member for Stockton West’s constituency in the Tees Valley.

The Youth Guarantee builds on entitlements that young people have to participate in education and training up to age 18. Local authorities have statutory duties to support young people into education and training, including identifying and helping those who are currently not in education, employment or training.

The funding for Opportunity North East (ONE) ended in 2022. The programme aimed to improve 28 secondary schools in the region through the ONE Vision school improvement programme. ONE also delivered projects that aimed to improve transition from primary to secondary, teacher recruitment, and post-16 outcomes.

18 of the 28 schools that were in the ONE Vision programme now have Ofsted judgements with single headline grades of good or better or, where schools have been inspected since September 2024, sub-judgements that are all good or better. However, it is hard to establish the cause and effect of this programme in isolation from other changes and government interventions that have happened over time. Of the remaining ten ONE Vision schools, four schools have not been inspected in their current structure, and six schools that have not yet improved their Ofsted performance are all part of the targeted regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) programme.

The government will provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school by expanding Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs). By April 2026, we estimate that 60% of pupils in schools and learners in further education in England will be covered by an MHST, up from 52% at the end of March 2025. In the Northeast, 57% of pupils in schools and learners in further education were covered by an MHST in March 2025.

Expansion to all schools and colleges by 2029/30 will prioritise rollout based on local need and reaching the most vulnerable children first. The operating principles and core functions of MHSTs ensure consistency in their support offer, whilst also allowing for flexibility in the model to best meet local needs.

To support education staff, the department provides a range of guidance and quality assured resources on promoting and supporting pupils’ mental health and wellbeing.