Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which charities supporting women in receipt of (a) (i) direct or (ii) indirect funding from a Government department or (b) direct funding from local authorities.
Answered by John Whittingdale
On 8 April the Chancellor announced a £750 million funding package for charities.This includes £360 million of targeted funding by central government departments for charities providing vital services during the Covid-19 pandemic. Individual government departments have allocated this funding in line with their usual internal procedures. In addition, part of this package will include an open fund aimed at smaller charities and social enterprises working with vulnerable people affected by the crisis in England delivered through the National Lottery Community Fund.
My department and the National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF - our distribution partners for the Coronavirus Community Support Fund) have been - and continue to - engage extensively with diverse and underrepresented groups during the development of the response and are working with a number of organisations to improve the reach of the Coronavirus Community Support Fund. A diverse advisory panel has been set up to support the distribution process for the fund.
No DCMS funds have been allocated to local government for onward distribution. The department does not hold information on direct funding allocated by local government.
Announcements and the breakdown of government funding can be found on the gov.uk website here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/financial-support-for-voluntary-community-and-social-enterprise-vcse-organisations-to-respond-to-coronavirus-covid-19 . Details of the funds awarded by The National Lottery Community Fund and by DCMS will be published in due course. Individual departments will be responsible for publishing their own data.
Asked by: Baroness Uddin (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that (1) BAME, and (2) Muslim, women’s organisations are allocated enough funding to meet service demands.
Answered by Lord Greenhalgh
Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government?continues to play a facilitative?role?in ensuring?Government?understands?the needs of BAME communities, including Muslim women, and the challenges they?may be currently?facing?in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is some evidence to suggest that BAME communities may be disproportionately affected by coronavirus.
There is a substantial package of targeted support for charities on the frontline of responding to COVID-19. The £750m DCMS-led funding package that the Government has announced will support organisations working with vulnerable groups impacted by COVID-19, including some in BAME communities.
Of this funding, £370m will support smaller, local charities working with vulnerable people. In England, this support will be provided through the National Lottery Community Fund. More details of the funding criteria and application process will be released in the coming days via the National Community Lottery Fund. £60m of the funding will be allocated through the Barnett formula so the devolved administrations are funded to provide similar support in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. DCMS always strives to engage with and represent all British people in its work, including those from ethnic minority backgrounds.
A further £360m will be distributed between Government departments to provide targeted support to the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. This funding will not be allocated via an open bid but will be awarded in line with agreed departmental priorities, with the first £76m going towards supporting survivors of?domestic abuse, sexual violence, vulnerable children and their families and victims of modern slavery announced on 02 May.
As part of this, MHCLG launched a £10m ‘Domestic abuse safe accommodation: COVID-19 emergency support fund’ for charities providing safe accommodation for domestic abuse victims to bid directly into (attached) (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/domestic-abuse-safe-accommodation-covid-19-emergency-support-fund). This includes charities that provide specialist services such as those dedicated to supporting BAME victims. The deadline for charities to put forward an application is Thursday 21 May.
Departments, including MHCLG, continue to work at pace to ensure this funding reaches the areas of greatest need as quickly as possible, with the aim for our key partners to receive money in the coming weeks.
In addition, for 2020/2021, MHCLG has launched a new competitive grant scheme, with a budget of up to £2m for established community organisations and charities to carry out projects that promote shared values and integration, whilst tackling the harmful behaviours which lead to religiously and racially motivated hate crime. We welcome proposals from projects supporting the BAME community and Muslim women.
The Home Offices’ Building a Stronger Britain Together programme is also continuing to support BAME communities and Muslim women’s organisations within its network. These civil society organisations work within communities to tackle all forms of extremism; support victims of extremism and hate crime, as well as challenging the divisive, extremist narratives targeting minority communities. Preparations for 2020/21 delivery of the BSBT programme are currently underway. The programme uses robust grant standards to ensure our funding delivers the greatest impact for these organisations in tackling extremism issues.
Asked by: Baroness Mone (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, following The Alison Rose review of female entrepreneurship, published on 8 March 2019, what progress they have made in increasing the number of female entrepreneurs.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Shadow Minister (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
In response to the Alison Rose Review, the government has set out an ambition to increase the number of female entrepreneurs by 50% by 2030, equivalent to nearly 600,000 additional female entrepreneurs.
In order to help realise this ambition, over the past year the Government has worked closely with industry to implement the eight recommendations of the Rose Review. The Rose Review Board, which is co-chaired by BEIS and HM Treasury Ministers, has been established to oversee progress, which includes:
Asked by: Baroness Harman (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, if she will reintroduce section 138 of the Equality Act 2010 setting out the discrimination and equal pay questionnaire procedure for the collection of information by someone who thinks they may have been unlawfully discriminated against from the person or provider who is thought to be responsible for the unlawful treatment.
Answered by Elizabeth Truss
Section 138 of the Equality Act 2010 was repealed in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013. The government has no plans to reinstate these provisions. Employees can still put questions to their employer or former employer concerning a claim under the Act if they wish. A Court or Tribunal may consider any relevant questions and answers as part of the evidence of the case, and may draw inferences if questions are not answered. At the time of the repeal ACAS produced a good practice guide with advice on how to do this, which can be found here: https://archive.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4971
Asked by: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to improve recruitment in the Armed Forces.
Answered by Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton
We are committed to maintaining the overall size of the Armed Forces. The Services are meeting all their current commitments. To help address Armed Forces manning challenges the Ministry of Defence has introduced its Armed Forces People Programme to modernise the employment offer including scope for flexible working and a new Forces' Accommodation Model. The individual Services have also implemented a wide range of programmes including:
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
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 levels of gender diversity within the UK tech industry; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Margot James
The UK Digital Strategy set out our commitment to enabling a more diverse digital workforce. As the digital revolution progresses, many more jobs will require digital skills and many more tech roles will be created, both in technology companies and in the general economy. We cannot afford for women, who we know only make up 19% of the tech workforce (Tech Nation Report 2018), to be excluded from or unable to progress within these roles.
While there is substantial progress that still needs to be made, there are also significant initiatives aiming to solve the issue.
For example, over 270 companies, from international tech giants right through to start-ups, SMEs and charities, have already signed the Tech Talent Charter (TTC) - an industry led initiative, supported by Government. The TTC gives organisations tangible actions and principles they can adopt to change their hiring and retention practices to become more gender-diverse and commits signatories to measuring the diversity profile of their UK employees and to share this data for (anonymous) collective publication in an annual report.
There are also other industry-led programmes, across the tech ecosystem, doing valuable and innovative work to help make tech more diverse. These include the #SheMeansBusiness initiative (by Facebook in collaboration with Enterprise Nation and FSB); PWC’s Tech She Can charter, focused on getting more school-age girls to choose STEM subject and see a career in tech as a viable option for them; and Backstage Capital, which is an investment fund committed to investing in start-ups with diverse founders.
The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) Local Digital Skills Partnership (LDSP), launched in Coventry this month, has increasing diversity built in from the start. The PWC-led Tech She Can project mentioned above has piloted their Tech We Can lesson plans in 4 schools in the Coventry area (all with very diverse and different pupil-bases), with a view to replicating and scaling the programme nationally after the pilot phase. In a similar vein, TTC has created regional ‘communities’ of tech employers to share best practice on regional diversity, with the WMCA LDSP a future regional focus for this work.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the efforts of technology companies to improve the gender and racial diversity of their staff.
Answered by Lord Ashton of Hyde
The UK Digital Strategy set out our commitment to enabling a more diverse digital workforce. As the digital revolution progresses, many more jobs will require digital skills and many more tech roles will be created, both in technology companies and in the general economy. We cannot afford for certain groups of people, including women and people from ethnic minority backgrounds, to be excluded from or unable to progress within these roles.
While there is substantial progress that still needs to be made by technology companies to improve the gender and racial diversity of their staff, there are also significant industry-led initiatives aiming to solve the issue.
Over 290 companies, from international tech giants right through to start-ups, SMEs and charities have already signed the Tech Talent Charter - an industry led initiative, supported by Government. The Charter gives organisations tangible actions and principles they can adopt to change their hiring and retention practices to become more gender-diverse and commits signatories to measuring the diversity profile of their UK employees and to share this data for (anonymous) collective publication in an annual report.
There are also other industry-led programmes doing valuable and innovative work to help more women, ethnic minorities and other under-represented groups into tech, such as the #SheMeansBusiness initiative (by Facebook in collaboration with Enterprise Nation and FSB); the FDM Getting Back to Business programme; Fujitsu UK’s work on developing diverse role models within their workforce, and Backstage Capital, which is committed to investing in start-ups with diverse founders.
We are also engaging with the work of organisations such as UK Black Tech and other organisations active in improving ethnic diversity in tech, and have recently convened an industry round table on inclusive technology in partnership with the Royal Academy of Engineers.
Under new Government legislation over 10,000 employers reported their gender pay gaps this year. We are now working with employers to help them understand their gender pay gaps, and support them to put plans in place to tackle gaps. Government is also currently consulting on the Ethnic Pay Gap and consultation responses will inform future government policy on ethnicity pay reporting.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress Tech City has made in funding tech start-ups led by (a) women and (b) BAME people.
Answered by Margot James
Tech Nation (formerly Tech City UK) does not directly fund tech start-ups, though they do run programmes such as Rising Stars, Upscale, and Future Fifty, that help start-ups access funding. They have published a report that highlights the state of diversity in the UK tech sector, and the need to do more especially for female founders. The report is available at https://technation.io/insights/diversity-and-inclusion-in-uk-tech-companies/
They have also joined a consortium with Capital Enterprise, Your Startup, Your Story (YSYS) and Diversity VC, funded by JP Morgan, that aims to double the number of female and ethnic minority founders in three London boroughs by 2020.
Meanwhile, as part of the Government’s work to increase diversity and build a Britain in which small businesses continue to thrive, Alison Rose will lead a review into barriers to female entrepreneurship, and exploring what can be done to overcome them. The review will bolster the Government’s work to make it easier for women to access the support they need to get their ideas off the ground and grow their businesses. The government will consider and respond to the findings of the review when it is published in the Spring.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of Growth Hubs in supporting women in the East Midlands who want to (a) start and (b) grow a business.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The network of 38 Growth Hubs across England provides free and impartial advice to anyone wishing to start and a grow a business. At March 2018, Local Enterprise Partnerships in the East Midlands reported that since launch their Growth Hubs have supported over 36,500 businesses; of which 3,835 received intensive support. Furthermore, East Midlands Growth Hubs have helped over 2,000 entrepreneurs start their own business since launch.
Across the UK, there are now 1.1 million women-led small and medium-sized businesses and I want to see that number grow. Access to finance is key area that can support that aim and I am pleased to report that the government-supported Start-Up Loans Company has provided loans worth nearly £436 million to those wishing to start a business, of which nearly 40% have been given to female entrepreneurs at March 2018.
Asked by: Giles Watling (Conservative - Clacton)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he has made an assessment of the effectiveness of Growth Hubs in supporting women who want to start and grow a business; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
There are currently 38 Growth Hubs across England, led and governed by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), providing free and impartial advice and support to anyone wishing to start and a grow a business. At March 2018, Local Enterprise Partnerships have self-reported that since 2015 their Growth Hubs have helped over 26,000 entrepreneurs start their own business.
There are now 1.1 million women-led small and medium-sized businesses in the UK and I want to see that number grow. Access to finance is key area that can support that aim and I am pleased to report that the government-supported Start-Up Loans Company has provided loans worth nearly £436 million to those wishing to start a business, of which nearly 40% have been given to female entrepreneurs at March 2018.