Mike Wood

The Government is sharing with the EHRC all the submissions that met the criteria of the previous Government’s call for input on single-sex spaces guidance.

It is vitally important that service providers understand the single-sex service exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 and feel confident using them. The Government has committed to ensuring that there is guidance in place which gives service providers assurance about the rights afforded by the Act and how to lawfully apply its single-sex exceptions. We will set out our next steps on this soon.

The Government is sharing with the EHRC all the submissions that met the criteria of the previous Government’s call for input on single-sex spaces guidance.

It is vitally important that service providers understand the single-sex service exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 and feel confident using them. The Government has committed to ensuring that there is guidance in place which gives service providers assurance about the rights afforded by the Act and how to lawfully apply its single-sex exceptions. We will set out our next steps on this soon.

The public consultation seeks views on the proposed approach to mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting in order to inform the drafting of the legislation.

We are separately engaging with a wide range of organisations, including employers, and gathering evidence in a more systematic manner on the likely costs and benefits of the proposed reporting requirements. This work will inform the impact assessment that will be published alongside the draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

The Equality Act defines the protected characteristic of gender reassignment as a person that is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of gender reassignment.

The scope of the Public Sector Equality Duty (the PSED) is set out in the Equality Act 2010 (the Act). It extends to all public authorities listed in Schedule 19 of the Act and all parties carrying out public functions. This came into force in April 2011 and includes private sector and voluntary organisations.

The PSED requires organisations in scope to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations between different people.

The government remains committed to upholding the PSED and ensuring that all parties exercising public functions comply with its provisions.

Whoever you are, wherever you come from, Britain should be a country where hard work means you can get on in life. Our work in the Opportunity Mission aims to break the link between background and success to ensure all children, including those from white working-class backgrounds, are able to achieve and thrive today so they can succeed and flourish tomorrow.

We are currently considering our position on caste discrimination. We will announce our plans in due course.

We have not provided internal guidance on diversity networks since 14 May 2024. The Civil Service Code, which is published and available here, sets out the standards of behaviour expected of all civil servants.

As per the detailed Government Communication Service (GCS) Propriety & Ethics Guidance, when civil servants are acting as departmental spokespeople they must establish impartiality and neutrality with the news media, and ensure that they deal with all news media even-handedly. GCS also provides training and support to media officers.

As per the data published in the Civil Service EDI Expenditure Review Data on 29 May 2025, the expenditure in this category was £800,000 for all responding organisations during the twelve months prior to their return in July 2023. Naming organisations may breach commercial agreements between departments and providers.

The requested information is not centrally held, and complying with this request would incur a disproportionate cost to the department.

The Cabinet Office uses zero hours contracts to selectively manage temporary demand. To end exploitative zero hours contracts, under the government’s plans to Make Work Pay legislation will be brought in to give workers on zero hours contracts and workers with a ‘low’ number of guaranteed hours, who regularly work more than these hours, the ability to move to guaranteed hours contracts which reflect the hours they regularly work over a 12-week reference period.

I refer the hon. member to the answer given to PQ25449, given on the 29 January 2025.

The Cabinet Office has reported eight data breaches to the Information Commissioner since 4 July 2024. The breaches and the data they related to is set out as follows:

In line with the 2025 Spending Review, we are restructuring the Cabinet Office into a more strategic, specialised, and smaller department to achieve £110 million in annual expenditure savings by the 2028/29 financial year. Our focus is on identifying budgetary savings rather than meeting a specific headcount target.

The scope of the powers of the Commissioner for Public Appointments to request information relevant to his inquiries are set out in Article 4(6) of the Public Appointments (No. 2) Order in Council 2023.

We have set out plans to reduce back office costs by 16% over the next five years, delivering savings of over £2.2 billion a year by 2030 and targeting spending on front line services.

Each department will take a decision on its individual size and shape as per the financial settlements that have now been agreed with HMT in the Spending Review.

These plans will take a whole workforce approach based on the cost of civil servants, Contingent Labour, Consultancy and Managed Services.

None of the listed flags have been flown from a Government Property Agency managed Government Building since 4 July 2024. We do not hold information relating to buildings not managed by the Government Property Agency.

The Cabinet Office has purchased a total of 6,376 lanyards for £5,069.99 since 4 July 2024. This includes those bought for the aforementioned business units and Crown Commercial Service as an executive agency.

On 6 April, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster announced the ban on unnecessary branded merchandise. Whilst it was agreed that some expenditure on merchandise items is necessary for operational purposes (security lanyards), all of these orders were made prior to the ban on unnecessary branded merchandise.

In comparison, the Cabinet Office purchased a total of over 18,000 lanyards for £17,322.76 in the 12 months to July 2024.

Staff will continue to be able to wear existing lanyards.

The Director of Policy, Delivery and Innovation is a special adviser. A list of special advisers is published as part of the Annual Report on Special Advisers by the Cabinet Office on gov.uk. The next report will be published in due course.

The Government will soon publish the new Resilience Strategy which will set out our approach to building national resilience for all with particular focus on supporting our most vulnerable individuals and communities.

In April, the Cabinet Office published updated Vulnerable People Guidance to strengthen the capability of emergency responders in developing local action plans identifying and supporting vulnerable individuals and groups in an emergency. Additionally, the Cabinet Office has developed a Risk Vulnerability Tool which incorporates data such as ethnicity, age, gender, disability to improve understanding of the scale and location of disproportionately impacted populations to enable targeted support before and during crises.

The recently launched UK Resilience Academy will provide learning and leadership to government, local authorities, organisations, communities, and individuals. We will also use the National Exercising Programme to test how well our planning supports vulnerable people and communities in an emergency.

We will also continue to ensure that our current, and future, resilience guidance, including the Prepare website on GOV.UK reflects the diverse needs of individuals, households and communities.

To establish the number of FOI responses in the last two years which have detailed Government Procurement Card spending below £500 would require a review of all responses issued by the Cabinet Office during that period and can only be provided at disproportionate cost.

In support of the Government’s Transparency agenda, the Cabinet Office publishes Government Procurement Card spend data over £500 on GOV.UK at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/government-procurement-card-data--2

The Plan for Change sets out clear and transparent milestones, and our plan to achieve them. We published graphs and links to the statistics on the outcomes for these milestones. The statistical annex published on gov.uk on the Plan for Change – Milestones for mission-led government provides further detail. These milestones will allow the public to track our progress and hold the government to account for their delivery.

The Government publishes an annual report on the National Security and Investment (NSI) Act 2021, with information about the transactions that it has been notified about and reviewed. The period from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025 will be covered in the next annual report, which will be published later this year.

NSI Annual Reports do not present the number of acquisitions reviewed involving private equity firms connected to state-backed sovereign wealth funds as the Investment Security Unit does not routinely collect this information.

I refer the Hon Member to my previous answers [UIN42570 and UIN46864] given on the 7th April and 28th April 2025.

The Government has no current plans to publish this data as an Application Programming Interface.

Following updates to the Ministerial Code in November 2024, the Government moved publication of Ministers' gifts and hospitality from quarterly to monthly. This brought declarations broadly in line with those required by Members in Parliament.

As with previous administrations, departments publish transparency data on senior officials and special advisers on a quarterly basis.

I refer the Hon. Member to the answer of 23 January 2025, Official Report, PQ 24138.

I refer the Hon. Member to my answer of 04 June 2025, Official Report, PQ 54015.

I refer the Hon. Member to my answer of 21 May 2025, Official Report, PQ 47333.

I refer the Hon. Member to the transcript of the Prime Minister's speech at the press conference on 12 May 2025, available on gov.uk.

It is important that ethnicity pay gap reporting by employers is accurate and statistically valid.

The public consultation on mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting seeks views on the proposed approach, including questions about data collection, reporting and minimum sample size. The proposed minimum of 10 employees is intended to protect the privacy of employees and to produce statistically robust data.

We are also engaging with a wide range of organisations and specialists, including employers who are already reporting, to understand the challenges of data collection.

The findings from the consultation will inform the development of measures in the draft Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

There is no Deputy Director for Meaningful Work. Meaningful work refers to work that an employee must be provided with and undertake during the redeployment process. The nature of the work should be appropriate for their grade, skills and competencies and may take place within or outside of their existing business area.

The current text was agreed by the previous administration and has not changed under the current government.

The text included in Civil Service Job adverts is:

Diversity and Inclusion

The Civil Service is committed to attract, retain and invest in talent wherever it is found. To learn more please see the Civil Service People Plan and the Civil Service Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.

The Inclusive Leadership Programme is delivered by a third party supplier, who owns the intellectual property. The learning objectives for this course can be found on the prospectus online:

https://prospectus.governmentcampus.co.uk/03-diversity-equality-and-inclusion/inclusive-leadership-programme-inclusive-cultures-decision-making-and-relationships/

Equality Analysis: Making Scrutiny Relevant to Promoting Equality is delivered by a third party supplier, who owns the intellectual property. An outline for this course can be found on the prospectus online:

https://prospectus.governmentcampus.co.uk/02-diversity-equality-and-inclusion/equality-analysis-making-scrutiny-relevant-to-promoting-equality/

I have no plans to make an assessment of the potential impact of the changes referred to.

This is already in place. Under the current terms of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS), if an individual leaves an organisation with a compensation payment and then returns to any other organisation which uses the CSCS within six months, they are required to pay back a proportion of their compensation.

The exemption requirement from the Civil Service Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Expenditure Guidance does not apply to arm’s-length bodies. As stated in paragraph four of the guidance, for arm’s-length bodies, the Principal Accounting Officer, in consultation with the Board, must authorise the expenditure.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon gentleman’s Parliamentary Question of 30th May is attached.