Lord Mott

The Competition and Markets Authority ("CMA") employs 35 staff in its Communications Team. The team was restructured, and its remit redefined, several times over the last six years, including in 2024. Therefore, the CMA does not have a readily available comparison for the previous six years. The Communications Team budget for the current financial year (2024/24) is £3.2m.

The CMA employs 131 staff in its Competition Enforcement Directorate.

The CMA employs 118 staff in its Consumer Protection and Markets Team.

Expenditure for each year from 2019-20 to 2023-24 is shown in the table below for the Competition Enforcement Directorate and Consumer Protection function. Since 2024, the latter has sat in a newly formed Consumer Protection and Markets Directorate. It would not be possible to provide directly comparable expenditure figures for 2018-19 because these were not separate reporting areas at that time.

The Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) currently employs five full time equivalent staff in its advocacy team with a total annual budget of £0.6m.

The CMA employs 11 full time equivalent staff in its strategy team with a total annual budget of £1.1m

Full time equivalent staff numbers have been rounded to the nearest whole number.

The CMA currently employs 35 people in its Communications Team, which includes stakeholder and business engagement, compliance communications, digital communications, media relations and strategic communications. It has a total annual budget of £3.2m in the current financial year (2024-25). Like other organisations, the CMA is in the process of reviewing its future budgets, and expects to reduce the budget for the Communications Team by at least 10%.

The Competition and Markets Authority employs approximately 1,120 staff. Full Time Equivalent staff numbers have been rounded to the nearest whole number. These figures include individuals with a CMA contract of employment, irrespective of the length of contract, whether being paid or not and so includes those on parental leave, a career break or those loaned or seconded out of the CMA. It excludes agency workers and CMA Board and Panel members.

The breakdown for each Directorate is as follows:

Senior Executive Team - 11

Competition Enforcement - 131

Consumer Protection and Markets - 118

Digital Markets Unit - 70

Mergers - 76

Office for the Internal Market and Subsidy Advice Unit - 33

Office of the Chief Economic Adviser - 160

Legal Service - 176

Corporate Services - 121

Data, Technology and Insight - 133

Strategy, Communications and Advocacy - 91

This Government is determined to address concerns about the complexity and structure of the regulatory system by providing clear and consistent strategic direction, enabling regulators to plan effectively and deliver long-term objectives in line with the Government’s priorities. This is why the Prime Minister, in conjunction with the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, wrote to key regulators asking them to provide concrete proposals to prioritise growth with the support of Government. Our overall regulatory vision, which will address these will issues, will be set out in due course.

Current planning policies guide developments away from using Best and Most Versatile agricultural land where possible. Developers will submit information on land use and classification when seeking planning consent, and this information will be taken into account by decision makers. However, Government does not set a prescriptive approach and as such does not hold this information.

The Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA), part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, is committed to enabling the use of secure and trusted digital verification services across the UK economy for those who want to use them.

This work is informed by responses to a 2019 call for evidence on digital identity that requested views on how the Government can support the development and secure use of digital identities and was followed by an extensive consultation process.

OfDIA continues to regularly engage with stakeholders, including digital verification providers, industry bodies, civil society, academics and organisations interested in adopting digital identities.

In response to the 2019 call for evidence on digital identity, the Government committed to enabling the use of secure digital identities in the UK by creating a framework of standards, legislation and governance. In 2021, a consultation on digital identity gathered further views on the development of a legal and regulatory framework.

The Government’s UK digital identity and attributes trust framework sets out rules for digital verification services. It has been developed iteratively through extensive engagement with the ICO, civil society and industry stakeholders to help ensure that it meets the needs of users. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 will underpin this framework with statutory duties on the Secretary of State, including a duty to consult and to conduct annual reviews. Over 50 services are already certified against the trust framework and delivering digital verification services across the UK economy.

The Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA), within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, is responsible for maintaining the standards, governance and legislation that helps people to identify trusted and secure digital identity services.

OfDIA regularly engages with cross-government colleagues regarding digital identity policy, including work to remove regulatory barriers to adoption in different use cases where these exist. OfDIA also facilitates regular technical working groups for cross-government collaboration, which provide input into the development of standards, guidance and best practice that support the Government’s digital identity work.

The Government continues to assess international trends and standards in digital identity policy and implementation. This includes benchmarking the UK’s digital identity and attributes trust framework against other comparable international frameworks and guidelines. The Government also regularly engages with a range of international partners on a bilateral and multilateral basis.

The Office for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA), within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, is committed to enabling the use of secure and trusted digital verification services across the UK economy for those who want to use them.

In response to the findings of the 2019 call for evidence on digital identity, the Government set out six principles to inform the development of digital identity policy in the UK. These are privacy, transparency, inclusivity, interoperability, proportionality, and good governance. The Government’s UK digital identity and attributes trust framework, which sets out rules for digital verification services that wish to be certified as trustworthy and will be underpinned by provisions in the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, is based around these principles.

The report contains testimonies that are deeply concerning. I have heard first-hand from students about their experiences of antisemitism at an event in this House held on 11 March.

​Universities must take reasonably practicable steps to protect freedom of speech and academic freedom within the law. Unlawful harassment or violence, hate speech against staff and students on campus or inciting others to violence or terrorism are not protected.

Encouraging terrorism and supporting proscribed terrorist organisations are criminal offences, and higher education providers must not provide a platform for these activities. The department expects university leaders to take robust action, particularly where there are concerns that a criminal act may have been committed, including reporting crimes to the police.

My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education will shortly host a round table to which she has invited several Vice Chancellors, many of whose students and universities are featured in StandWithUs UK’s testimonials. This will be an opportunity to discuss what more can be done collectively, and at all levels, to make our universities a safe and inclusive environment for all.

We have confirmed £7 million in funding to address antisemitism in education.

The report contains testimonies that are deeply concerning. I have heard first-hand from students about their experiences of antisemitism at an event in this House held on 11 March.

​Universities must take reasonably practicable steps to protect freedom of speech and academic freedom within the law. Unlawful harassment or violence, hate speech against staff and students on campus or inciting others to violence or terrorism are not protected.

Encouraging terrorism and supporting proscribed terrorist organisations are criminal offences, and higher education providers must not provide a platform for these activities. The department expects university leaders to take robust action, particularly where there are concerns that a criminal act may have been committed, including reporting crimes to the police.

My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education will shortly host a round table to which she has invited several Vice Chancellors, many of whose students and universities are featured in StandWithUs UK’s testimonials. This will be an opportunity to discuss what more can be done collectively, and at all levels, to make our universities a safe and inclusive environment for all.

We have confirmed £7 million in funding to address antisemitism in education.

All children, from whatever background and no matter what challenges they face, deserve a safe environment in which they can learn. The department recognises the impact that a parent going to prison can have on a child’s learning, behaviour, mental health and wellbeing.

The government’s ‘Keeping children safe in education 2024’ statutory guidance for schools and colleges outlines specific guidance concerning children with a family member in prison or who are affected by parental offending. The guidance asks schools to consider the additional needs of these children and highlights the risk of poor outcomes including poverty, stigma, isolation and poor mental health. It also signposts staff to the National Information Centre on Children of Offenders (NICCO) website, which provides specialist advice and resources to support professionals working with offenders’ children and their families to help mitigate negative consequences for those children. The NICCO website can be accessed here: https://www.nicco.org.uk/.

The government is committed to identifying and better supporting children of prisoners. The department will be working closely with the Ministry of Justice to deliver on this commitment.

Defra announced on 24 February that the Environmental Land Management standalone Capital Grants scheme will re-open in summer 2025. We will confirm the date that it will re-open in due course.

The Government recognises the importance of innovative approaches and novel technologies to boosting productivity sustainably.

In August 2024, the Government’s UK Research and Innovation body (UKRI) invested £15 million in the new National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre (NAPIC). This National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre will drive research and innovation bolstering the alternative proteins sector in the UK, fostering innovation across a variety of protein sources, including plant-based proteins, cultivated meat and protein-rich algae.

Innovate UK and BBSRC have also invested £15.6 million to support innovation funding (32 projects) as part of the Novel Low Emission Food Production Systems competition to address sustainable agriculture. These industry-led, collaborative projects include development of alternative proteins such as plant-based and cultivated meat.

The Land Use Consultation and its analytical annex clarify the land use change implied by the Environment Act Targets and Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry sector contributions to Net Zero.

The Land Use Framework will not prescribe changes in agricultural management. There are opportunities for grazing on grassland to contribute to target delivery, such as peat restoration in the uplands and restoration of species-rich grassland in other parts of the country. The Framework will provide guiding principles and tools for land managers to make informed decisions about their land and businesses.

The UK is a world leader on tackling climate change and an international advocate for the highest possible environmental standards. We recognise the growing pressure to extract deep-sea resources and are concerned about the potential impacts of mining activities on the fragile marine environment.

This is why the UK supports a moratorium on the granting of exploitation licenses for deep sea mining projects by the International Seabed Authority (ISA). We will not sponsor or support the issuing of any such exploitation licences for deep sea mining by the ISA until there is sufficient scientific evidence about the potential impact on deep sea ecosystems. This is why the UK has been driving the need for strong enforceable environmental regulations, standards and guidelines to be developed by the ISA and put in place before any mining commences.

To support this, the UK successfully launched a new multi-disciplinary UK deep sea mining environmental expert network to champion UK expertise in environmental sciences, leading on filling gaps in knowledge in order to provide sufficient scientific evidence to fully understand the potential environmental impacts of deep sea mining. The Network has gained 75 members who are multidisciplinary across environmental sciences, and plans are underway for the Networks inaugural meeting to take place early in 2025.

We recognise the need to take action to ensure that UK consumption of forest risk commodities is not driving deforestation, and we will set out our approach to addressing this in due course.

The Department does not hold or collect the information requested.

We know that industrial action has hugely damaging impacts on hospital care, including elective waiting times. National Health Service industrial action cost taxpayers £1.7 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. Nearly 1.5 million appointments were rescheduled due to strikes between December 2022 and July 2024.

Planning and mitigation for any prospective strikes are underway, supported by internal assessments of the possible impact based on previous industrial action.

NHS England has published data on the impact from previous industrial action on completed pathways for consultant-led elective services on the days of, and immediately surrounding, the strikes, with further information available on the NHS England website.

School based vaccination is provided by School Age Immunisation Services (SAISs). In January 2025, some SAIS providers trialled expanding their flu vaccination offer by running catch up clinics in nurseries located in primary schools. This was to encourage flu vaccine uptake for two to three year-olds who had not already been vaccinated via their general practices (GPs). As these were local pilots, delivered by some providers in Yorkshire and the East of England, NHS England does not hold this data nationally.

Ahead of the flu 2025/26 season, the SAIS Service Specification 2025/26 is currently being improved. This will enable SAIS providers to support flu vaccination for two to three year olds, in a variety of different settings, and any plans, supplementary to the core GP offer, will be based on if there is a need locally. Evaluations will be undertaken at a local level by NHS England’s regional commissioning teams as part of their contract and performance management.

This initiative aligns with broader efforts to strengthen the childhood vaccination offer and improve vaccine uptake, including exploring the role of community pharmacies, as outlined in the NHS Vaccination Strategy, and trialling the use of health visitors to administer childhood immunisations, thereby increasing access for underserved families across selected areas.

In 2023, at the request of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), a forum for the four nations of the United Kingdom on inequalities and declining coverage across the routine immunisation programmes was set up. This time-limited group brought together relevant stakeholders from across the UK nations of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Ten deep dives took place in total, ending in June 2025.

These forums facilitated sharing experiences and learning within and across each nation. They explored possible contributing factors to declining coverage across the UK routine immunisation programmes. Areas for further activity included data collection systems, attitudinal work, delivery models, system leadership and coordination, commonalities and difference with other public health programmes.

Immediate actions have included expanding annual attitudinal surveys of parents of infants from England to UK wide, to further strengthen understanding of barriers and facilitators to vaccination uptake. Updating and strengthening training and quality standards for healthcare professionals providing clear expectations and guidance. Sharing expertise to improve data systems and data collection as well as strengthening collaboration with the Department of Education to improve uptake in educational settings.

A final report from the outputs of the UK Forum will be compiled and presented to a future JCVI meeting.

In 2023, at the request of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), a forum for the four nations of the United Kingdom on inequalities and declining coverage across the routine immunisation programmes was set up. This time-limited group brought together relevant stakeholders from across the UK nations of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Ten deep dives took place in total, ending in June 2025.

These forums facilitated sharing experiences and learning within and across each nation. They explored possible contributing factors to declining coverage across the UK routine immunisation programmes. Areas for further activity included data collection systems, attitudinal work, delivery models, system leadership and coordination, commonalities and difference with other public health programmes.

Immediate actions have included expanding annual attitudinal surveys of parents of infants from England to UK wide, to further strengthen understanding of barriers and facilitators to vaccination uptake. Updating and strengthening training and quality standards for healthcare professionals providing clear expectations and guidance. Sharing expertise to improve data systems and data collection as well as strengthening collaboration with the Department of Education to improve uptake in educational settings.

A final report from the outputs of the UK Forum will be compiled and presented to a future JCVI meeting.