Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill

The UK Government has been working closely with the devolved administrations throughout negotiations with the EU. It is intended that the next meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee (EU Negotiations) will be convened in the coming weeks. Other engagement with the devolved administrations continues, with the Paymaster General speaking to Ministers from the devolved administrations, to update them on the negotiations, last week.

The Government’s position remains that there will be no extension to the transition period.

At this time of national crisis, resources have been redirected to work on Covid-19. There is a robust resourcing process in place that can be used to increase resource capacity on EU exit related work if departments require. This is a temporary arrangement, and at all times consideration has been given to ensuring that sufficient resource remains in place to support negotiations and readiness in line with the end of the transition period on 31 December.

As stated in the Strategic Supplier Risk Management Policy that applied in June 2018, the Government does not publish whether or not a strategic supplier is designated as high risk. This Policy was withdrawn and replaced with a new approach to the monitoring and management of strategic suppliers through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the government and each of its strategic suppliers.

Her Majesty’s Government requires that National Security Vetting is conducted to the same standard for all employees in sensitive roles, including those working for government support services. Vetting is conducted centrally by United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV). Vetting policy, which sits with the Cabinet Office, applies equally to government personnel and private-sector employees on government contracts.

Cabinet Office encourages all government departments to uphold a set of minimum personnel security standards and these may be applicable for certain industry roles. ‘Support services’ is a broad category and could include everything from cleaning and catering to IT provision, security and administration. In that context different roles will have very different requirements and approaches are flexed depending on the risk. It is the responsibility of individual government departments to determine their security needs for each contract that they enter into. The requirement for vetting will be decided based on a given role’s access to sensitive assets, facilities or materials.

The procedures by which a private-sector company or contractor can gain a vetting clearance are currently designed to prioritise security as opposed to ubiquity; individuals must be able to demonstrate they will be working on an active government contract before being granted a clearance. This ensures tighter control of who is cleared, for what purpose and for how long.

A comprehensive, cross-government review of National Security Vetting is underway. This will examine potential reforms in vetting for the private-sector – including how we can improve the timeliness of security clearance and reduce the administrative burden of it for small and medium enterprises.

At Spring Statement, my rt. hon Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that Government will require large company’s Audit Committees to review payments practices and report them in their annual accounts. We are in discussion on the best mechanism to implement this and further details will be published in due course as part of the Government Response to the Creating a Responsible Payment Culture Call for Evidence.

The latest data on the number of smart electricity and gas meters installed in Great Britain is published on a quarterly basis on Gov.UK. As of the end of December 2018, there were nearly 13.8 million smart and advanced meters currently operating in Great Britain.

Data is published only at Great Britain level. Data is not collected from energy suppliers in a format that allows local authority counts to be produced.

On an annual basis BEIS publishes updated energy and emissions projections, which are located on the BEIS website. In the latest report published 11 April 2019, renewables are projected to form 59% of the UK's electricity generation by 2030 (under the reference scenario). Up to the early 2020s, the reference scenario reflects current power sector policies. Beyond the early 2020s, the reference scenario includes assumptions that go beyond current Government policy. The results do not indicate a preferred outcome and should be treated as illustrative.

Since 2003 the Government has made £174m innovation and grant funding available to wave and tidal stream technologies with £80m of that since 2010. Wave and tidal stream projects benefitted from the highest level of support under the Renewables Obligation (5 RO Certificates/MWh) and are eligible to enter the forthcoming Contract for Difference allocation round. As set out in the Clean Growth Strategy, wave and tidal stream technologies could have a role in the long-term decarbonisation of the UK, but they will need to demonstrate how they can compete with other forms of generation.

Solar PV is a UK success story: under the RO and Feed in Tariff schemes, both of which have now closed, a total of 12.3GW of solar PV capacity was delivered. We are now exceeding our historic projections on solar PV deployment. In 2013 we estimated that solar capacity would reach 10-12GW by 2020, but latest figures indicate that we already have over 13GW of solar capacity installed in the UK; enough to power over 3 million homes. Subsidy-free deployment of solar PV may be a viable option for developers in future, with two such sites having already deployed in the UK, and the planned construction of two more large-scale subsidy-free solar projects was announced in February 2019.

The requested information is not held by the department.

The School Workforce Census is the department’s main source of information on teacher and support staff numbers and the subjects taught by teachers. However, this census does not collect information on the subjects taught by primary school teaching staff or support staff.

The reformed National Curriculum in England makes it compulsory for pupils in maintained schools to be taught a foreign language in Key Stage 2.

Education in Wales is a devolved matter for the Welsh Government.

There are a number of initiatives in place to promote the teaching of modern languages in schools in England. The reformed national curriculum makes it compulsory for pupils in maintained schools to be taught a foreign language in key stage 2 and 3, and academies are required by their funding agents to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum. The government has introduced the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) performance measure, which includes languages and the proportion of GCSE entries from pupils in state-funded schools in a modern foreign language (MFL) has increased from 40% in 2010 to 46% in 2018.

Recruiting MFL teachers is a priority. Generous financial incentives are offered for languages teaching, including scholarships in modern foreign languages worth £28,000, and tax-free bursaries, typically worth up to £26,000. We are also working in partnership with Spain’s Ministry of Education and Vocational Training to deliver Spain’s Visiting Teachers programme. This will provide schools with access to a pool of qualified teachers from Spain who are able to teach MFL. For the 2019/20 academic year, the programme will be open to secondary schools and primary schools.

The Teacher Subject Specialism Training programme aims to improve the subject knowledge of non-specialist teachers and returning teachers in MFL and to increase the number of hours taught.

We have also recently launched the new Teacher Recruitment and Retention Strategy, which will attract new teachers to all subjects, including MFLs.

A £4.8 million MFL Pedagogy Pilot commenced in December 2018. It is managed by the newly appointed MFL Centre for Excellence and is run through 9 school-led hubs, to improve uptake and attainment in languages at key stages 3 and 4. We have also launched a pilot project in MFL undergraduate mentoring for secondary school pupils to drive up participation in the subject, specifically targeting areas of high disadvantage to extend access to languages for all pupils.

The final content of the Great Repeal Bill, when it is introduced, will determine the process to take it forward.

The Government fully respects the Sewel Convention and is working closely with the devolved administrations – for example through the Joint Ministerial Committee on EU Negotiations.

This is part of the normal working arrangements between the UK Government and the devolved administrations.

Smart motorways are an important part of the modernisation of England’s motorways. The Government’s policy is to implement smart motorways on the busiest sections of motorway, as they provide a way to increase capacity and improve performance without the need to widen the road.

Smart motorways have reduced congestion and improved journey time reliability, by making the hard shoulder available as a traffic lane and using variable speed limits to smooth traffic flow. Each scheme has to meet a strict safety objective, which is to be at least as safe as a traditional motorway.

An assessment of the first two smart motorway ‘all lane running’ schemes, on the M25, shows that they are delivering the intended benefits. This assessment is detailed in the ‘M25 J5-7 Monitoring Third Year Report’ and the ‘M25 J23-27 Monitoring Third Year Report’, both published on 16 July 2018 by Highways England.

The issuing of penalty notices is a matter for the police force in each area, since Highways England is not an enforcement body.

Highways England has reviewed chargepoint provision within 20 miles of the strategic road network across relevant counties in England to determine the gaps in charge point availability and to identify locations of potential sites for new charge points to meet their commitment that motorists will be no more than 20 miles from a charge point on 95% of the strategic road network. Highways England has so far given grants to 5 local authorities (Mid Suffolk, Ryedale, South Somerset, Worthing and Shropshire) to deliver 19 chargepoints and is working with BP Chargemaster and Swarco to deliver a further 59, which will all be installed by Spring 2020.

The UK now has over 17,000 publicly accessible chargepoints, including more than 1,700 rapid devices – one of the largest networks in Europe. Our vision is to have one of the best infrastructure networks in the world for electric vehicles, and we want chargepoints to be accessible, affordable and secure. In addition to the Highways England funding, the Government provides grants to fund chargepoints at homes, workplaces and on residential streets. These measures, along with the £400m public-private Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund, will see thousands more chargepoints installed across the UK.

We are not considering any particular measures to promote language training to Government Ministers but ministers can apply for Foreign and Commonwealth Office language training if they need, in order to conduct government business.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) does not provide language training to ministers with international portfolios as a matter of course, but ministers can apply for FCO language training if they need it to conduct Government business.

The Government remains committed to ending free movement and introducing a new Points-Based Immigration System.

The Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill will proceed when Parliamentary time allows and taking into account the new virtual operating arrangements in Parliament.

The Government set out proposals for its new Points-Based Immigration system in its policy statement on 19 February.

On 8 April, the Government published the Online Harms White Paper, which sets out our plans for world-leading legislation to make the UK the safest place in the world to go online. Companies will be held to account for tackling a comprehensive set of online harms, including terrorist and extremist content.

We intend to establish in law a new duty of care on companies towards their users, overseen by an independent regulator. This regulator will set clear safety standards, backed up by mandatory reporting requirements and effective enforcement powers.

The Government is consulting on a number of proposals in the White Paper and will bring forward legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows.