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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will take steps to ensure that her Department and its agencies remove all internal covid-19 related policies, restrictions and mask mandates.

The government’s Working Safely guidance continues to require organisations to carry out a risk assessment which includes the risk from COVID-19. It also sets out additional actions organisations can take to protect employees and customers in the workplace, such as ensuring adequate ventilation, frequent cleaning, asking people to wash their hands frequently and asking people with COVID-19 to stay away. The guidance advises that people continue to wear face coverings in crowded and enclosed settings where they come into contact with people they do not normally meet, when rates of transmission are high. DCMS will continue to follow this guidance and align their policies accordingly.

Government advice for self isolation (following a positive test) still remains in place, so DCMS will continue to follow this and DCMS will not be asking people with Covid symptoms or a positive test to come into the office. It remains good practice for employees to inform close contacts following a positive result, therefore DCMS will continue to assist with case response support.

DCMS will assess the new public health guidance, from 1 April and use this advice to inform decisions on how to manage the risk on a long term basis.