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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what criteria she will use to make an assessment of the success of the Civil Society Covenant.

The Civil Society Covenant is a new principles-based foundation for resetting the relationship between the UK Government and civil society. Its ambition is to build lasting partnerships between civil society and all forms of government across the UK. This is a significant, long term challenge that will require sustained commitment and buy-in from a wide and diverse range of different organisations.

To help drive momentum and demonstrate leadership, the UK Government has committed to ensuring that every government department publicly supports and works towards implementing the Covenant in order to become a better partner for civil society. We will report annually on actions to honour the Covenant and the impact of this partnership with civil society. A Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, including criteria for measuring success, is currently being developed to inform the annual report.