Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to promote English Tourism Week from 18 to 27 March 2022.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
English Tourism Week will be an excellent opportunity to showcase some of the best tourist attractions and destinations around the country. The ‘Be Our Guest’ campaign will highlight the opportunities of domestic tourism for inbound visitors as well as our domestic population.
Our arms-length body, VisitEngland, has launched the next phase of its domestic marketing campaign, Escape the Everyday. The campaign will focus on cities as they are impacted by lower numbers of international visitors and it will target a ‘pre-nester’ audience (18-34 year olds), encouraging them to book a short city-break.
The National Lottery Days Out Scheme will still be running during English Tourism week, therefore there will be opportunities for National Lottery Players to visit attractions by claiming a £25 voucher.
I also plan to visit some of England’s fantastic tourist destinations and attractions during the week. The Government is committed to the sector’s recovery post-pandemic and English Tourism Week will be an opportunity to celebrate the resilience of the sector and demonstrate our world-class offer.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will commit to bringing forward legislative proposals to reform football governance in the next Queen's Speech.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The Government welcomes the Independent Fan Led Review of Football Governance and has endorsed in principle the primary recommendation of the review, that football requires a strong, independent regulator to secure the future of our national game.
The Government will continue to engage with stakeholders as we work towards issuing a full response to the report in the Spring. We will, of course, consider the requirement for legislation in due course.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to help increase internet connectivity in the West Midlands.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
It is the government's view that the best way to achieve nationwide gigabit coverage is to create a competition-friendly environment in areas where deployment is commercially viable, while focussing government funds on the 20% of the country where commercial deployment is unlikely. As a result of this approach, over 65% of premises in the UK can access gigabit-capable networks, up from just one in ten in November 2019. By 2025 the government is targeting a minimum of 85% gigabit-capable coverage.
Based on data from www.thinkbroadband.com, almost 74% of premises in the West Midlands currently have access to gigabit broadband, while 98% have superfast broadband availability. Delivery of superfast and gigabit broadband continues in a number of areas within the West Midlands including Herefordshire, Shropshire and Warwickshire through projects under the Superfast Broadband Programme. Warwickshire, Wolverhampton and Stoke-on-Trent have also benefitted from the government’s Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) programme, which provides public funding to support the installation of full-fibre broadband infrastructure.
The Government is now investing £5 billion through Project Gigabit to support gigabit broadband coverage in areas not covered by commercial roll-out. The latest Project Gigabit Quarterly Publication, published in October 2021, provides an update on the delivery plan and target timeline for the regional supplier procurements for the West Midlands counties of Warwickshire (Lot 11), Staffordshire (Lot 19), Shropshire (Lot 25), Worcestershire (Lot 24) and Herefordshire (Lot 15). Further Regional Supplier procurements for areas including Birmingham and the Black Country (Lot 35), where very extensive commercial delivery continues, are also being considered, and further information will be provided in future quarterly updates.
As part of Project Gigabit, the government is also investing up to £210m in the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) to support rural communities with the cost of installing new gigabit-capable connections. The GBVS provides a micro-grant of up to £1,500 for residents and up to £3,500 for businesses towards the cost of installing gigabit-capable broadband. Home and business owners can check the eligibility of their addresses at the GBVS website.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to support the disability sports sector.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The Government’s sport strategy, 'Sporting Future'', stresses the importance of helping under-represented groups and isolated communities, including disabled people, to take part in sport and physical activity.
Sport England, DCMS's arm’s length body for grassroots sport in England, launched their ten year strategy earlier this year, ‘Uniting the Movement’. The strategy reinforces their commitment to tackle inequalities in sport and physical activity, and provide opportunities to people that have traditionally been left behind, including disabled people. Sport England have also ensured that each of their programmes impact directly on disabled people, along with specific initiatives like the 'We Are Undefeatable' campaign, the Tackling Inequalities Fund and partnerships with groups such as Disability Rights UK, Activity Alliance, Aspire, Sense, International Mixed Ability Sport.
In addition, we are committed to championing disability sport at the highest levels, with continued support for Paralympic sports through UK Sport funding. We support the hosting of major sporting events in the UK such as the Rugby League World Cup in 2022, which will, for the first time in the event’s history, concurrently host the Men’s, Women’s and Wheelchair tournaments. We are also hosting the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham which will be the most inclusive Games ever, featuring the largest ever integrated para sport programme and which builds on the Games’ ambition of being the ‘Games for everyone’. We have also ensured the continued visibility of the Paralympics by adding the games to the list of protected sporting events that must be available to free-to-air broadcasters.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to embed physical activity over the course of people's lives.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Sports and physical activity are crucial for our mental and physical health. The Chief Medical Officer is clear that being physically active is important to long-term health and crucial for keeping people healthy. That is why we made sure that people could exercise throughout the national restrictions and provided an unprecedented £1 billion of financial support to sport and leisure organisations during the pandemic.
The government launched its sports strategy, Sporting Future in 2015 and we’ve achieved a huge amount since then. Sport England has allocated over £1.5 billion to nearly 5,000 organisations across the UK. Sport England has also published its new ten year strategy which focuses on driving up activity levels and helping to improve physical and mental health. We want to see physical activity embedded in people’s lives, with children doing at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day, and adults 2.5 hours a week.
At the recent Spending Review, £205 million was announced to build or transform up to 8,000 state-of-the-art community football pitches and multi-use sports facilities across the UK. Earlier this month, we announced £30 million for PE teacher training and to open up school facilities to provide access to the wider community. This was in addition to, £30 million package to renovate 4,500 park tennis courts across the country.
The government believes these steps will help ensure that everyone can keep active throughout their lives.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what financial support is available to help museums and other historic sites undertake upgrades or expansion projects.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Historic England, funded by DCMS, is the government's statutory advisor on heritage and tasked with protecting the historical environment of England by preserving and listing historic buildings, ancient monuments and advising central and local government. Historic England currently offers c. £11 million per year for capital works to heritage sites across the country, through their Repair Grants for heritage at risk.
The National Lottery Heritage Fund is an arms length body of DCMS and distributes both Lottery player funding and government funding. The National Lottery Heritage Fund has a range of grants open to both museum and heritage organisations from £3,000 - £5M, which includes grants for maintenance and capital projects.
National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England also offer support by distributing grants via the government funded Culture Recovery Fund which includes a significant allocation for capital funding to cultural and heritage sites. In 2021/22 £33.6 million is available through the Grants for Programmes of Major Works and Additional Repair Grants for Heritage at Risk schemes.
Investment is also being made in vital infrastructure, repair and maintenance work for museums.
The Museum Estate and Development Fund (MEND) will provide £18.8m in capital funding grants of between £50k-£5m for infrastructure, repair and maintenance work in regional accredited museums.
In addition, over the past three years, government has distributed £131m capital funding among DCMS-Sponsored bodies, including the national museums and galleries, to enable them to carry out essential estates maintenance and improvement works.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to enhance online safety.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
In May we published the Online Safety Bill in draft. This is a major milestone in the development of a new regulatory framework to keep users safe online. For the first time, tech companies are going to be accountable to an independent regulator to keep their users safe. The draft bill will be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny in this session, with the Joint Committee due to report by 10 December.
We are also taking steps to educate and empower users to make more informed and safer choices online. In July we published the first government Online Media Literacy Strategy, which sets out the government’s approach to improving media literacy capabilities among internet users in England. The Media Literacy Strategy will promote media literacy as a complementary tool to the new regulatory regime, providing coordination to the main organisations seeking to empower users with the skills and knowledge they need to stay safe online.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what support is available to assist with the upkeep of places of worship to prevent the need for major remedial works.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
We recognise the importance of carrying out routine repairs and maintenance in order to reduce the need for major remedial works in places of worship, and the great challenge to raise funding to carry out this work, particularly at the present time. Listed places of worship represent some of the nation's finest heritage, and we support them through the DCMS run Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme, which makes grants equal to the VAT paid on maintenance and repairs. The scheme will continue to benefit listed places of worship across the country, all of which have provided a much needed space for rest, contemplation and well-being during these difficult times, when they have been able to be open.
Listed places of worship may also benefit from the latest round of Cultural Recovery Funding with the £300 million package announced in June representing the latest and final tranche of funding for the CRF. The National Lottery Heritage Fund is distributing £40m in partnership with Historic England, based on criteria set by DCMS.
There are a number of sources of funding available for places of worship. The National Lottery Heritage Fund supports a broad range of projects that connect people and communities to the national, regional and local heritage of the UK. This includes historic buildings, monuments and the historic environment. This funding can be used for repairs and conservation.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
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 open-access youth services.
Answered by Matt Warman
As part of the Youth Review, announced in the 2020 Spending Review, we are assessing the level of provision of youth services across England. Findings from the Youth Review will be published at the time of the 2021 Spending Review.
The Youth Investment Fund remains a Manifesto commitment, designed to achieve levelling up across the country over the course of this parliament. In the 2020 Spending Review, £30 million of this was committed to the fund as capital investment for 2021-22. This will provide investment in new and refurbished safe spaces for young people in left behind places, so that they can access youth workers, and enjoy beneficial activities outside of school, including sporting and cultural pursuits. Plans for the remainder of the Youth Investment Fund will be announced at the 2021 Spending Review, based on findings from the Youth Review.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions he has had with representatives of the youth sector on ensuring that the Youth Investment Fund tackles local priorities.
Answered by Matt Warman
Ministers and officials are in regular contact with the youth sector during the development of the Youth Investment Fund. Officials are working with representatives from the youth sector and young people to shape the design and delivery of the fund. Feedback from the sector on previous funding programmes such as the Youth Covid Support Fund has also been key to development of the Youth Investment Fund. This will ensure a delivery model that is inherently placed based and locally led, achieving maximum impact for young people in left behind places.