Asked by: Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether the Government plans to sign up to the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Answered by Michael Ellis
It is necessary to carefully prioritise resources towards those Conventions that will have the most impact on the safeguarding of our heritage, such as the ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property undertaken last year. However, the Government fully recognises the contribution that the UK’s oral traditions, social practices and festive events make to the country’s cultural fabric, and continues to encourage communities to celebrate these practices, keeping them alive for future generations.
Asked by: Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, when the Government plans to publish the report relating to the funding of Welsh language channel S4C.
Answered by Margot James
We published the S4C independent review, 'Building an S4C for the future' on 29 March, alongside the government's response.
Asked by: Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps the Government is taking to promote community banking facilities.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
The Government is committed to creating the right regulatory environment that allows banks to enter and expand within the market, and serve customers and communities effectively. The Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority established the New Bank Start-up Unit to help prospective new banks enter the market and through the early days of authorisation. In addition, the Government created the Payment Systems Regulator to ensure all banks can access payment systems on fair and equal terms.
The Government supports credit unions, which provide vital banking services to financially under-served communities. To help expand credit unions’ reach, at Autumn Budget 2017 the Government announced that where a credit union’s membership conditions are based on a local area, a credit union will be able to increase the number of potential members it can have from 2 to 3 million. The legislation to make this change was laid in November 2017 and comes into force in April 2018.
The Government also supports the provision of over the counter banking services via the Post Office. 99% of banks’ personal and 95% of banks’ business customers are now able to withdraw cash, deposit cash and cheques, and make balance enquiries at a Post Office counter via its network of 11,600 branches. At Autumn Budget 2017, my predecessor wrote to the Post Office and UK Finance to ask them to raise public awareness of the banking services available at the Post Office for individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises. The Government looks forward to seeing both parties implement their plans for doing this over the year to come.
Asked by: Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending the unduly lenient sentence scheme to certain cases tried at Magistrates Courts.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The Government is considering further expansion of the unduly lenient sentencing scheme, to ensure it covers offences that are of particular concern to the public. We recently added further terrorism offences to the scheme.
Given that the scheme requires a reference by the Attorney General to the Court of Appeal, it is right that the scheme is focused on the more serious offences sentenced in the Crown Court. As a result, we have no immediate plans to expand the scope of the scheme to cases sentenced in the Magistrates’ Court.
Asked by: Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to ensure that UK passports can be provided bi-lingually in English and Welsh for people living in Wales.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
Her Majesty’s Passport Office complies with the Welsh Language Scheme, providing Welsh language passport application services in Wales, upon request.
The current passport includes Welsh language translations on page one of the passport and of the captions present on the biographical details page. Her Majesty’s Passport Office intends to continue providing a Welsh translation of these sections within the new design of the passport.
There are currently no plans to translate additional sections of the passport into Welsh.
Asked by: Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, when she plans to announce the allocation of funding by the Independent Dormant Assets Commission.
Answered by Tracey Crouch
The independent Dormant Assets Commission reported to Government on the feasibility of expanding the current dormant assets scheme to include a wider range of dormant financial assets in March 2017. The Government is considering the Commission’s report and will publish its response in due course.
Asked by: Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of committing a proportion of the funding from the Independent Dormant Assets Commission to prepare charities for compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation.
Answered by Tracey Crouch
The independent Dormant Assets Commission reported to Government on the feasibility of expanding the current dormant assets scheme to include a wider range of dormant financial assets in March 2017. The Government is considering the Commission’s report and will publish its response in due course.
Asked by: Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether the telephone helpline for small businesses on the General Data Protection Regulation, run by the Information Commissioner's Office, will be open to small charities.
Answered by Matt Hancock
Yes. The phone service is aimed at people running small businesses or charities and recognises the particular problems they face getting ready for the new data protection regime. There are already resources on the Information Commissioner's Office website (ico.org.uk) to help smaller organisations to prepare for the data protection regime.
Asked by: Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether she plans to extend her Department's support for smaller charities to include training on data protection before the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation in May 2018.
Answered by Matt Hancock
Small charities and SMEs can make use of the ICO's advisory visit service which provide organisations with practical advice on improving their data protection practices. Through an advisory visit charities will be able to benefit from the ICO's knowledge and expertise to identify what they are doing well and where they need to improve. The ICO has also: launched a helpline aimed at small organisations; updated its SME toolkit to include GDPR requirements; and begun working on simplifying its 12-step GDPR preparation guidance.
Asked by: Susan Elan Jones (Labour - Clwyd South)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to encourage universities and research institutions to conduct plant-based research to improve food security.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
The UK’s main public funders of food-related research are working together through the Global Food Security programme to meet the challenge of providing the world’s growing population with access to safe, affordable and nutritious food, all of the time and in ways the planet can sustain into the future.
Government policy on research funding is governed by the Haldane principle. The principle states that decisions on individual research proposals are best taken by researchers themselves and therefore competitive funding for science research is allocated by the UK Research Councils on the basis of the scientific quality of the proposals.
We are increasing research and development investment by £4.7 billion over the period 2017-18 to 2020-21. This equates to an extra £2 billion per year by 2020-21 and is an increase of around 20% to total government R&D spending, more than any increase in any parliament since 1979. This R&D investment funding is additional to the protection of science resource funding that was announced at the spending review in autumn 2015.