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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the Cyber Essentials scheme in reducing cyber fraud in the public sector.

The purpose of the Cyber Essentials scheme is to show all organisations - including those in the public, private and third sectors - how to put basic, technical cyber security measures in place to protect against the most common online threats.

The Government has a much wider programme of activity to protect public sector organisations online, as set out in the National Cyber Security Strategy. One of the core functions of the National Cyber Security Centre is to help protect our critical services from cyber attacks and provide advice to public sector organisations, helping to make the UK the safest place to live and do business online.