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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much of the £360 million allocated to charities to help mitigate the effect of the covid-19 outbreak has been allocated to disability charities.

The £750 million funding package announced by the Government on 8 April is to ensure charities providing frontline services to vulnerable people affected by the pandemic can continue their vital work. £360 million of this is being distributed via individual government departments based on evidence of service need. £200 million of this will directly support hospices and be administered by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Departments are using a range of approaches to allocating the remaining funding in order to meet identified needs quickly, including bidding processes and awarding funding directly. Applications are now open for funding for the distribution of food to vulnerable people, safe accommodation for survivors of domestic abuse, armed services charities, and charities working to tackle loneliness and homelessness. Further announcements from individual departments are expected shortly. Further information has been released on GOV.UK.

As applications are still open for several of the funds and there are announcements yet to be made, it is not possible to determine how much of this funding has been allocated to disability charities at this stage. Disability charities will be eligible for a range of the funds.

On 20 May the government committed £200 million to the Coronavirus Community Support Fund, which will be distributed by the National Lottery Community Foundation. The fund will support small and medium sized charities and social enterprises and will be open for applications on 22 May. Disability charities will be eligible to apply for this funding.