Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what progress her Department has made on tackling loneliness.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Many people experience loneliness and social isolation, and the Government is committed to reducing the stigma associated with loneliness, and building a more connected society. Government, local councils, health systems and voluntary and community sector organisations all have an important role to play in achieving this.
Since publishing the first ever government Strategy for Tackling Loneliness and appointing the world’s first Minister for Loneliness in 2018, we have invested almost £80 million in tackling loneliness. These interventions include a national communications campaign that aims to reduce the stigma of loneliness, which has reached at least 25 million people across the country. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is also delivering the ‘Know Your Neighbourhood Fund’ to boost volunteering and reduce loneliness in 27 disadvantaged areas across England. We have also brought together over 750 people from across the public, private and charity sectors through our Tackling Loneliness Hub, where members can learn from events and workshops, share the latest research and collaborate on new initiatives.
Last March, we published the fourth annual report of our Tackling Loneliness Strategy. It contains over 60 new and ongoing commitments from 11 government departments. So far, we have made progress against at least 46 of these commitments and at least 7 have been completed. Due to the nature of the commitments many have now been incorporated into business as usual. The fifth annual report will provide a full update on commitments, and is due to be published in March.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether she plans to provide funding for the additional sports that will be included at the Olympics in 2028.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
We welcome the additional sports that have been approved for the LA28 Olympic Programme.
UK Sport’s investment process for Los Angeles is underway with currently funded sports, in line with their strategic plan. UK Sport will consider new sports that have been added to the programme. Should they make a case for investment, it would be considered alongside the currently funded sports in UK Sport’s evaluation process.
Asked by: Tracey Crouch (Conservative - Chatham and Aylesford)
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 with (a) Cabinet colleagues and (b) social media platforms to prevent the Russian Embassy in the UK from sharing hateful content relating to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine via its official Twitter account.
Answered by Damian Collins
The Government takes the issue of disinformation seriously. The DCMS Counter Disinformation Unit leads the domestic operational and policy response for countering disinformation across HMG, working closely with major social media platforms to encourage them to swiftly remove disinformation and coordinated inauthentic or manipulated behaviour, as per their Terms of Service. We also engage with platforms to understand policy changes and other countermeasures related to Russian information activities, and the effectiveness of these actions. This work aids HMG assessment bodies and the UK Government Information Cell, which brings together the government’s counter-disinformation expertise and capabilities to identify and counter Russian information aggression and disinformation.
It remains of significant concern that the network of Russian diplomatic accounts continues to disseminate pro-Russian content with the aim of sowing distrust and questioning the veracity of reports of Russian atrocities committed in Ukraine. Although the government welcomes steps that platforms have taken in response, including demonetising, deamplifying and labelling content from Russian state affiliated accounts, the government is clear that there is more that needs to be done and that the recent tweets from the Russian Embassy in the UK are unacceptable. In our view Twitter should apply its policies consistently, removing content that it has acknowledged breaches its Terms of Service.