Written Statements

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Written Statements

Tuesday 25 April 2023

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

Today, the Government are introducing the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill. The Bill will drive growth, innovation and productivity, ensuring that businesses and consumers in the UK reap the benefits of competitive markets. The Bill will:

boost innovation by increasing competition in digital markets, taking action against a small number of the most powerful tech companies that force businesses and consumers to sign up to unfair terms and pay inflated prices;

grow the economy by enhancing our wider competition regime to focus it on the areas of greatest harm, delivering a level playing field for businesses; and

protect consumers by strengthening the enforcement of consumer protection law and introducing new consumer rights, for example tackling subscription traps that currently set consumers back £1.6 billion a year.

Digital technologies have transformed the way we buy products and services, increasing accessibility, flexibility and choice, but we need to act now to address their potential for consumer harm. For instance, companies can make it unreasonably difficult for consumers to cancel a subscription, or inhibit choice by artificially ranking their own products higher in search results.

The Bill will give consumers greater choice and drive innovation, leading to new products that transform lives. It will also establish new, faster tools to address the unique barriers to competition in digital markets, allowing the Competition and Markets Authority to proactively drive more dynamic markets and prevent harmful practices such as making it difficult to switch between operating systems.

We are using the freedoms we have gained by leaving the EU to address these issues in a way that best works for the UK. We can now make our own decisions on how we maintain a proportionate system of regulation that drives innovation and protects consumers. Our new pro-competition regime, focused on the most powerful tech companies, is flexible and principles-based rather than following the EU Digital Markets Act’s blanket set of obligations on all “gatekeepers”, which risks creating unnecessary regulatory burdens for firms. Our more targeted and pro-innovation approach involves investigating specific harms, developing tailored obligations and taking more evidence-based regulatory decisions—informed by significant engagement with the firms themselves. We are also taking a power to ban unfair commercial practices, such as fake reviews, and are strengthening oversight of alternative dispute resolution services that would have been more constrained while in the EU.

The Bill will also support consumers through new and improved rights to deal with bad business practices such as subscription traps. This includes better information up front as well as easier exiting and earlier cancellation rights. These and other new measures will save consumers’ hard-earned cash and protect them from scams and rip-offs. We expect the Bill’s enforcement reforms to increase consumer benefits by tens of millions of pounds above the CMA’s current estimate of £146.5 million a year.

The Bill will grow the economy by boosting competition, better placing UK businesses to succeed in export markets. It will allow the CMA to more effectively deter, prevent and, where necessary, enforce against monopolistic behaviours, to ensure that the free market can operate effectively.

[HCWS737]

Resilience Update

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Written Statements

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Secretary of State (Oliver Dowden)]

On Sunday, the Cabinet Office, working alongside the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the UK’s mobile network operators, delivered a successful test of the emergency alerts system.

The test was the largest simultaneous public message in UK history and was conducted in line with established international best practice. The test had two objectives: to test the operational performance of the system with a view to making technical or performance adjustments; and to raise public awareness of the system in advance of any use in a real emergency.

As I set out in my written ministerial statement to the House on 23 March, this is a critical step forward in the UK’s ability to respond to and inform the public about emergency situations that present a threat to life or property. It is an important new tool in our toolkit to help keep the country safe.

The vast majority of compatible devices—4G and 5G enabled, an estimated 80% of the total number of mobile phones in the UK—received the alert. The alert was approved by the Cabinet Office at 14:59:08 and issued by networks within seconds. This was timed to minimise disruption to events, showings and fixtures due to begin at 15:00:00. Two versions of the alert were issued: one in English and the second a bi-lingual alert in English and Welsh. As intended, the broadcast continued until 15:21:00, when the Cabinet Office issued the instruction for networks to stop transmitting the alert.

No security or public safety issues have been reported as a result of the test. Likewise, no events or sporting fixtures were materially disrupted. The public were well prepared, following a wide-reaching public communications campaign in the six weeks prior to the test, including extensive engagement with organisations which support domestic abuse victims who might have a secondary hidden phone.

The Cabinet Office, the mobile network operators and other stakeholders are now conducting an exercise to identify and action operational issues following the test. One mobile network provider, Three UK, experienced an issue with supporting multiple messages. This led to some Three UK customers failing to receive the emergency alert. The Cabinet Office is working closely with Three UK to implement an appropriate fix to ensure that that does not happen with future emergency alerts.

A further issue arose with the Welsh version of the test message. Following a short internal review, we believe that this error occurred as a result of an operational process, whereby an online system made a small autocorrect, rendering one word in the Welsh test message incorrect. The essence of the message remained unchanged. We are also aware that a very small number of devices received more than one alert. Early technical assessment shows that this is due to a small number of cellular masts continuing to broadcast after the end of the test, which could affect users especially in areas of low mobile coverage. Anyone travelling between England and Wales during the test would also have experienced two alerts. This issue will be addressed as part of the lessons learned exercise.

The system is now fully operable in the event of a real emergency. Sunday’s test serves as an important development in the roll-out of an emergency alerting system. It has allowed us to further validate the effectiveness of the system and to build public awareness, familiarity and trust. Following the UK-wide test, the Cabinet Office will conduct further operational testing. There are no current plans for a further UK-wide, or public, test of the system, though it is likely that there will be further public tests in the coming years to ensure the system is operational to help keep the British people safe.

[HCWS740]

Further Education: Capital Loans Scheme

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Written Statements

[The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)]

I am today announcing the opening of a new capital loans scheme. The scheme will provide loans to colleges in England with capital projects, either underway or in advanced stages of planning, that have a funding gap because of restrictions on commercial borrowing following the Office for National Statistics decision to classify colleges as part of central Government. The college capital loans scheme is in addition to the package of measures we announced at the point of reclassification, including an additional £150 million allocation of capital grant funding to be provided in April 2023, an additional £53 million focused on delivering small-scale energy efficiency improvements across the college estate provided in December 2022, and investing £300 million in reprofiling of payments before the end of the current financial year.

The Department for Education is making great progress in transforming the further education estate. In the current spending review period, we are investing £2.8 billion in England’s college estate to build a world-class skills system that delivers the skills that the economy needs. This investment is improving the condition of the estate; providing new places in post-16 education; supporting the purchase of specialist equipment and facilities needed for T-Levels; and delivering the commitment to establish 20 institutes of technology across England. Most recently, we confirmed the £286 million FE capital transformation fund allocation. This will allow eligible colleges to prioritise and deliver projects to improve the condition of their estate.

I remain fully committed to the successful delivery and completion of all college capital projects benefiting from grant funding from my Department. All colleges delivering DFE grant-funded capital projects with evidence of intent to borrow commercially prior to reclassification will be eligible to apply for this new scheme. The scheme will also provide a route for meeting funding gaps faced by other capital projects being delivered by colleges themselves, including those funded by other Government Departments, subject to meeting the eligibility and assessment criteria set out in guidance published today.

We aim to offer loans to eligible DFE grant-funded capital projects by the summer, and self-funded capital projects by the autumn.

The new college capital loans scheme will ensure that our skills reforms stay on track, providing a ladder of opportunity that enables young people and adults to get good jobs and progress in their careers and build the skilled workforce that businesses need.

[HCWS739]

Energy Bills Discount Scheme

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Amanda Solloway)]

On 9 January 2023, the Government announced details of the energy bills discount scheme, which will come into force on 26 April 2023, with support backdated to 1 April 2023. This will follow on from the energy bill relief scheme, which ended on 31 March 2023, and has supported businesses and public sector organisations such as schools and hospitals by providing a discount on wholesale gas and electricity prices. The Government provided an unprecedented package of support for non-domestic users through the winter in the shape of the Energy Bill Relief Scheme, with total support of £7.3 billion expected to be provided under this scheme, shielding businesses and saving some around half of their wholesale energy cost.

Wholesale energy prices have fallen significantly since the introduction of the energy bill relief scheme. The energy bills discount scheme reflects this change and makes adjustments to the support provided under the energy bill relief scheme. The energy bills discount scheme strikes a balance between supporting businesses between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024 and limiting taxpayer’s exposure to volatile energy markets. The scheme provides long-term certainty for businesses and reflects how the scale of the challenge has changed since September last year.

The energy bills discount scheme will provide all eligible businesses and other non-domestic energy customers with a discount on high gas and electricity bills until 31 March 2024, following the end of the energy bill relief scheme. It will also provide businesses in energy and trade-intensive industry sectors with a higher level of support as they are less able to pass these higher costs on to customers due to international competition. The energy bills discount scheme price reduction will be linked to the wholesale element of a non-domestic customer’s gas and electricity bill and Government will reimburse suppliers in accordance with the scheme.

Further support will be available to domestic end users on heat networks, who fall under the energy bills discount scheme due to heat network operators having commercial energy contracts, to ensure they do not face disproportionately higher energy bills than consumers in equivalent households who benefit from the energy price guarantee. Heat suppliers will be required to apply for this support and then pass on any discounts to their customers in a “just and reasonable” way.

Eligibility for support under the energy bill relief scheme and the energy bills discount scheme will also be extended to additional non-standard cases not previously eligible. This includes: where non-domestic customers have received gas or electricity from licence-exempt suppliers via private wire—localised electricity grids connected to local distribution networks but linked to a privately-owned central plant which produces electricity; or pipe, where gas is conveyed to the customer’s premises by pipe; and where prices paid are pegged to wholesale energy prices.

Statutory instruments were made on 24 April and laid on 25 April. These will establish the energy bills discount scheme and ensure that essential energy bill support is provided to UK businesses in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, that are supplied both by licensed gas and electricity suppliers and licence-exempt suppliers. They will also ensure that any non-domestic business or individual that receives energy through an intermediary will also benefit from the energy bills discount scheme in a “just and reasonable” way.

The Government are also running a number of other energy support schemes. These include the energy bill support scheme which delivered a £400 discount to consumers during the winter period and the energy price guarantee which has been extended until the end of June and protects customers from increases in energy costs by limiting the amount suppliers can charge per unit of energy used.

[HCWS741]

Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

This Government have been clear that sewage discharging into our rivers is completely unacceptable. In August 2022 this Government published the “Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan”, with an accompanying impact assessment. It is a plan that sets stringent targets to protect people and the environment. This will require water companies to deliver the largest infrastructure programme in water company history, totalling an estimated £56 billion.

Today we are announcing plans to enshrine the plan further in law. Through the Environment Act 2021, we will legislate for a clear target on storm overflow reduction in line with our plan. A clear, credible, costed and legally binding target will add to our transparent and determined approach to solve this issue, while keeping consumer bills low. This will also be backed by existing separate interim targets for bathing waters and our most precious habitats. This will build on the direction we placed on water companies to introduce monitoring in 2013, which will reach 100% by the end of this year. We will also deliver our commitment to further reform penalties to make them easier to apply, including proposing an unlimited penalty. We have also demanded that water companies provide action plans on every storm overflow by the summer.

[HCWS735]

Women, Peace and Security National Action Plan: 2022 Annual Report

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Leo Docherty)]

I wish to inform the House that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, together with the Ministry of Defence, is today publishing the 2022 annual report on progress against the UK’s fourth national action plan on women, peace and security.

Published on 18 January 2018, the national action plan set out the Government’s objectives on the women, peace and security agenda for the period 2018 to 2022. The report published today outlines the progress made in 2022, including our work in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. It focuses on the seven strategic outcomes that were the focus of the NAP.

On 23 February 2023, the UK launched its fifth NAP (2023 to 2027), setting out the Government’s strategy for how we will continue to meet our women, peace and security commitments, under UN Security Council Resolution 1325, to reduce the impact of conflict on women and girls, and to promote their inclusion in conflict resolution and in building peace and security. The UK Government are committed to putting women and girls at the heart of the UK’s foreign, defence and security policy, as we have seen from the recent publication of the “International Women and Girls Strategy”.

The annual report will be published on www.gov.uk.

[HCWS736]

Law Commission Review of Hate Crime Laws: Recommendation 8

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Miss Sarah Dines)]

I am pleased to announce the Government’s formal response to recommendation 8 of the Law Commission’s review of hate crime laws, which was published in December 2021. This review considered whether additional protected characteristics, including sex or gender, should be added to hate crime laws.

Section 72 of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2022 requires the Government to respond to recommendation 8 of the Law Commission’s review within a year of the Act coming into effect. This followed considerable parliamentary interest in the issue dealt with by this recommendation, commonly known as “making misogyny a hate crime”.

In recommendation 8, the Law Commission states:

“We recommend that sex or gender should not be added as a protected characteristic for the purposes of aggravated offences and enhanced sentencing.”

The Government are extremely grateful for the comprehensive and thoughtful work that the Law Commission gave to its review, as well as the quality and depth of its consultation with the many stakeholders interested in this issue.

The Government agree with the Law Commission’s recommendation. The Law Commission report highlights concerns relating to the potential negative consequences of adding sex or gender to hate crime laws, concluding that to do so would be

“more harmful than helpful, both to victims of violence against women and girls, and also to efforts to tackle hate crime more broadly.”

The Government agree with these concerns. Accordingly, the Government do not intend to bring forward legislation to add sex or gender as a protected characteristic in hate crime law.

The Government’s full response to recommendation 8 has been laid before Parliament and will also be available to view on www.gov.uk. This response fulfils the statutory commitment made in the PCSC Act 2022.

The full Government response to the remaining 33 recommendations made in the Law Commission’s review of hate crime laws will be published in due course.

[HCWS734]

Intellectual Property Office: Performance Targets

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Paul Scully)]

I am repeating the following written ministerial statement made today in the other place by my noble Friend, the Minister for AI and Intellectual Property, Viscount Camrose:

Our innovation strategy sets our ambitions for an innovation-led economy. Now, more than ever, delivering the Government’s bold plan to grow the UK economy and make it the most innovative and creative economy in the world is vital.

Intellectual property (IP) is a crucial component to unlocking this. IP rights provide incentives for our innovative businesses, our world-renowned scientists and cutting-edge creators to innovate and create, ensuring they are rewarded for their efforts, and wider society can benefit from their work.

We are well-known for our leadership in research and for our excellent scientific and academic institutions. Our innovative nature means businesses continue to start and grow in all areas of the UK. Our creative industries have a global reputation, particularly in music, cinema, literature and computer games. Our world-class IP system underpins this success, and it must continue to do so.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) plays a critical role in ensuring the right frameworks are provided to stimulate our innovative economy. The IPO are committed to delivering excellent IP services and developing world-leading IP policies and legislation so that customers can access, use and protect their IP effectively. In order to deliver these commitments, the IPO is also working to support and develop its people and set out a clearly stated organisational culture. The IPO Corporate Priorities 23/24 document sets out a clear plan to deliver during this financial year.

As an Executive Agency and trading fund of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), the IPO have set targets which are agreed by Ministers and laid before Parliament. I am pleased that today I can inform the House that for the financial year 23/24 the IPO’s strategic targets are:

Launch our Transformed One IPO rights granting service for selected patents customers by end of March 2024.

Achieve an average overall customer satisfaction of 85% or more.

Define the ideal culture to deliver our strategy by October 2023 and develop a detailed culture change plan by January 2024 setting out how we will move from our current culture to our future ideal culture.

Achieve efficiencies worth at least 3.5% of our core operating costs.

The IPO will work with DSIT and other partner organisations to deliver on their priorities, ensuring they support wider Government aims and that resources are focused in areas that will drive innovation and creativity in the UK.

[HCWS738]