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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 25 January 2021 to Question 140074 on Tech Nation: Equality, what progress Tech Nation has made on (a) capturing data on the ethnic background of applicants to its programmes and (b) developing a diversity data capture framework; and what recent assessment has been made of the level of diversity in the tech companies supported by Tech Nation's programmes.

Tech Nation has been collecting diversity data of applicants to its programmes since September 2020, including on ethnic backgrounds. This is subject to a self-identification process by participants.

Tech Nation developed a diversity data capture framework, which has also been made available to the sector, as part of its Diversity and Inclusion toolkit.

In May 2022, DCMS assessed the level of diversity in the tech companies supported by Tech Nation’s programmes, as part of the Departments’ Public Sector Equality Duty. For this assessment, Tech Nation provided data on the age, ethnicity and gender of its beneficiaries. This data shows that, excluding Libra (a targeted growth programme for ethnic minority founders), 27.2% of founders within Tech Nation’s cohorts identify as non-white (11.8% as Asian, 3.5% as Black, 11.8% as other).

DCMS has recently commissioned Frontier Economics to undertake an independent evaluation of DCMS’ funding to Tech Nation for financial years 20/21- 22/23, which we intend to publish in the first half of 2023. This will include an assessment of the impact of Tech Nation’s activities on particular groups where possible.