Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking in response to BT Group's reported plans to make 10,000 British workers redundant in the next five years.

BT Group announced a modernisation programme in its 2019/20 results, which it says will enable the organisation to re-engineer old and out of date processes, switch off legacy services and make substantial cost savings over a 5-year period. Any redundancies as part of this process are a commercial decision for BT Group. However, we understand BT’s approach is to minimise redundancies through natural attrition and to provide opportunities to reskill and redeploy workers whenever possible.

More generally, the Government is committed to delivering nationwide gigabit connectivity as soon as possible, and is investing £5bn to deliver gigabit-capable services to the hardest to reach parts of the UK. Nationwide gigabit rollout will create thousands of high-quality jobs in the UK and help the country build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Chancellor also announced the ‘Plan for Jobs’ during his Summer Economic Update, through which the Government is making available up to £30 billion to create, protect, and support jobs, and to spur the UK’s recovery following COVID-19.