Asked by: Sarah Gibson (Liberal Democrat - Chippenham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the prevalence of cryptocurrency use in illicit finance; and what steps she is taking to reduce this activity.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
Directed by the Economic Crime Plan 2 (and supported by an Economic Crime Levy funding) UK law enforcement is investing in improving both its capacity and capability to investigate the criminal use of cryptoassets. This includes:
Asked by: Baroness Finn (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Education and Skills Funding Agency Annual report and accounts 2023–24, published on 29 July 2024 (HC13), what estimate they have made of the overall fraud and error rate, including undetected losses, across the £72 billion of distributed funding; whether they hold disaggregated estimates of fraud and error by programme areas; and if so, whether they will publish those estimates.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) has not completed a formal estimate of fraud and error rates across its distributed funding.
In 2025, the ESFA delivered year 2 of its Counter Fraud Strategy. Part of this strategy is built on the ‘Prevent’ and ‘Protect’ duties.
With regards to the Prevent duty, the ESFA focuses on fraud prevention through its use of data analytics and collaboration with other government departments to identify and tackle risks and issues early. We continue to identify risk through a programme of fraud risk assessments, with a fraud and error reduction plan to mitigate individual and strategic risks.
With regards to the Protect duty, sector working groups have been developed which enable the sharing of alerts and risks. The publication of the ESFA investigation outcome reports also enhances the sharing of lessons learnt across the sector. In addition, the ESFA successfully benchmarked against the Government Counter Fraud Functional Standards to assess counter fraud maturity.
The ESFA annually publishes its common findings from funding assurance work in relation to education providers. The purpose of this is to raise awareness of common compliance issues and to ultimately reduce error. The full guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/esfa-assurance-work-on-post-16-funding/common-findings-from-funding-assurance-work-on-post-16-education-providers.
The ESFA Counter Fraud and Funding Assurance functions were moved into the department as of 1 April 2025 following the ESFA’s closure.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what role the Artificial Intelligence Directorate plays in supporting the digital transformation of local government services.
Answered by Jim McMahon
MHCLG’s Artificial Intelligence Directorate supports local government to harness the power of artificial intelligence, data analytics and other digital innovations so that their services are more responsive to the needs of their communities, provide better value for money and are secure. The directorate includes the Local Digital team, which has been working with local government since 2018 to improve digital transformation and cyber resilience across local government.
My officials are working closely with local government and key partners across government on this work including with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Asked by: Lord Freyberg (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to supporting the development of national, machine-readable cultural data dashboards, such as those piloted in Bradford by MyCake, designed to identify financially at-risk cultural organisations using administrative data and predictive analytics.
Answered by Baroness Twycross - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
DCMS is looking more widely into the cultural sector's data needs as the digital data ecosystem grows and evolves. This includes supporting both the Bradford City of Culture team's work on cultural data dashboards and North East Culture Connect, an open access data platform, delivered in collaboration with Northumbria University, North East Combined Authority, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The platform brings together a subset of cultural data from across the North East in a series of dashboards that are intended to be expanded with new data. The data includes information on income streams, funding recipients, and sector economic characteristics, which can support analysis of the financial health of the sector. Furthermore, DCMS is on the Steering Group for the National Cultural Data Observatory project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, led by the Centre for Cultural Value at the University of Leeds, with partners including MyCake, and The Audience Agency. The project aims to develop a blueprint for a national cultural data observatory for the UK, incorporating a range of data.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the UK's mobile network performance and 5G roll-out compared to large European markets and the USA since 2017, specifically in relation to (1) network coverage, (2) download speeds, and (3) base station deployment.
Answered by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
Our ambition is that all populated areas will have higher-quality standalone 5G by 2030.
Our most recent assessment on network coverage is from August 2024 where the most recent data available showed that 5G was available outside 92% of premises in the UK, compared to the EU average 5G population coverage at 89% and the USA at 98%. Since this assessment UK coverage has increased to 96%.
According to user testing by Ookla (an independent analytics company) the UK median 5G standalone download speed in the 4th quarter of 2024 was 181.9 Mbps, the US 388.4 Mbps and tests in eight other European countries ranged from 132.1 - 547.5 Mbps.
Ofcom reports that there are 3,300 5G standalone base station deployments in the UK. This is not comparable across markets as it is dependent on factors including topology and spectrum availability.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he is taking to help support efforts to promote conflict prevention in (a) the United Nations and (b) other multilateral fora.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
As the Prime Minister said in New York in September 2024, we must put new energy and creativity into conflict prevention, reverse the trend towards ever-greater violence, make the institutions of peace fit for purpose.
The UK remains a steadfast supporter of United Nations' peacebuilding efforts, including as a top donor to the UN Peacebuilding Fund.
We continue to support the UN's Complex Risk Analytics Fund, investing in better data and analysis to strengthen global risk foresight and enable earlier response.
We will use this year's UN Peacebuilding Architecture Review to press for more systematic focus on early warning and conflict prevention across the UN system, encouraging national prevention approaches that are supported by affected communities, including women and youth.
We promote conflict prevention across our engagement with multilateral fora, including the G7, G20, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the African Union, and advocate for scaled up, targeted support in fragile settings from the World Bank and other international financial institutions.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many members of staff Ofcom employs in each directorate.
Answered by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
This information is set out in Ofcom's Annual Reports and Accounts 2023-24.
Ofcom employs 1,483 employees (full time equivalents). Non-Executive Members of the Ofcom Board, Content Board, Advisory Committees and employees seconded to Ofcom are excluded from employee numbers.
The breakdown for each Directorate is as follows:
Broadcasting and Media Group - 118
Networks and Communications Group - 146
Spectrum Group - 242
Online Safety Group - 189
Economics and Analytics Group - 117
Legal Group - 119
Strategy and Research Group - 157
Corporate Group - 363
Central – 31
The Corporate Group includes Finance, HR, the Contact Centre, ICT, Public Policy and Nations teams, Communications, Governance and Accountability, and Data and Information.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what purposes the UK Health Security Agency has used artificial intelligence in the last 12 months.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has focused artificial intelligence (AI) on both internal operational improvements and on external interventions, to enhance the United Kingdom’s health security.
UKHSA toxicologists have installed and are testing a cutting-edge commercial system integrating advanced data analytics with AI to detect airborne pollen in real-time. Further information is available at the following link:
The UKHSA has also successfully deployed one of its AI projects to the Tuberculosis (TB) Unit. This system enhances the manual review of country-of-origin documentation to identify those born in high-risk countries who are eligible for TB screening in the UK. The system is being trialled alongside standard practice to test performance and quantify the benefits that it brings.
The UKHSA has implemented governance structures to ensure the use of AI aligns to cross-Government guidance and the agency’s mission. In May 2024, details of a UKHSA Advisory Board paper on AI was shared on GOV.UK website, which is available at the following link:
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for what purposes HM Revenue and Customs has used artificial intelligence in the last 12 months.
Answered by James Murray - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
As a department, over the last 12 months, HMRC has made use of more ‘traditional’ AI techniques to improve operations and drive productivity.
HMRC’s current applications of the technology can be divided broadly into supporting compliance, customer service and wider operations:
Asked by: Harriett Baldwin (Conservative - West Worcestershire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps he is taking to to ensure the accuracy of his Department's headcount and payroll data.
Answered by Justin Madders
DBT verifies headcount monthly through commissioning each business area to review employee records, check leaver processing and performs quality assurance to reconcile any data issues.
DBT ensures accuracy of payroll data from our shared service provider (UKSBS) through monthly reviews and control account reconciliations. DBT also: