Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the increase in cyberattacks by state actors, and what steps they are taking to protect against those attacks.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The National Security Strategy concluded that state-sponsored cyberattacks represent a persistent and intensifying threat to the UK’s national security, with hostile actors using cyber operations to undermine our democratic institutions, economic stability and critical infrastructure.
The Government is taking decisive action to counter this threat by strengthening the UK’s cyber resilience, expanding the capabilities of the National Cyber Security Centre, the National Crime Agency and the National Cyber Force, and introducing the Cyber Security Resilience Bill to enhance protections for critical national infrastructure. We are also deepening cooperation with international partners to deter hostile activity and respond collectively to malicious cyber operations.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of changes in the age at which adults are able (1) to buy a house, (2) to have children and (3) to get married, due to the financial strain of these milestones.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.
Emma Rourke | Acting National Statistician
The Lord Taylor of Warwick
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
14 July 2025
Dear Lord Taylor of Warwick,
As Acting National Statistician, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what assessment has been made of changes in the age at which adults are able (1) to buy a house, (2) to have children and (3) to get married, due to the financial strain of these milestones (HL9248).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) does not make any direct assessment of the extent to which financial strain impacts the age that people buy a house, have children or get married.
The ONS does publish the average age for different types of house buyers, including first time buyers, for years from 1990 to 2023, available in our House Price Data: annual tables - Table 37[1], and based on a sample of the Regulated Mortgage Survey.
In addition, the ONS has published Milestones: journeying through modern life[2] which includes information on age at which people buy a home, first marriage and age of first time mothers.
To assess the changing age of purchasers buying homes, people most commonly use the English Housing Survey, conducted by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). This includes analysis of change over time[3].
Yours sincerely,
Emma Rourke
[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/datasets/housepriceindexannualtables2039
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of how new trade agreements with the European Union will uphold the outcome of the 2016 EU referendum.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in 2016, and this government respects that result. This government has closed deals in the national interest with the USA, India and the EU as an independent, sovereign nation.
The renewed agenda we have agreed with the EU looks to build upon the 2020 Trade and Cooperation Agreement. The 2025 agreement covers a wide range of areas such as energy cooperation, SPS and a security and defence partnership. This package delivers for the British people, without compromising on our red lines - no return to the customs union, no return to freedom of movement and no re-joining the single market.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the level of overseas demand for UK goods in April, and the consequential impact on private sector output.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.
Professor Sir Ian Diamond | National Statistician
The Lord Taylor of Warwick
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
1 May 2025
Dear Lord Taylor of Warwick,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what assessment has been made of the level of overseas demand for UK goods in April, and the consequential impact on private sector output (HL6970).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) UK trade in goods data is currently available up to February 2025[1]. March data will be published on 15 May 2025, while April data will be published on 12 June 2025.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/bulletins/uktrade/february2025
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the United Kingdom is protested from large-scale cyber attacks; and what mitigations are in place to protect core infrastructure in the event of an attack.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Government is working tirelessly to improve the cyber resilience of the UK’s critical infrastructure. We published the Cyber Security and Resilience policy statement on April 1, which set out our plans for the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill. It will strengthen the UK’s cyber defences and ensure that critical infrastructure and the digital services that UK citizens and businesses rely on are secure.
We welcome the findings of the recent National Audit Office report on Government Cyber Resilience, which highlight the need for an accelerated response. We are taking immediate steps to address its recommendations, including developing a cross-government implementation plan for the 2030 target and a new model to clarify and enforce cyber resilience responsibilities. We have published the Cyber Policy Handbook and the Secure by Design Framework to embed best practice throughout the UK’s public services. We are using GovAssure to define clear cyber resilience outcomes and develop an objective view of cyber resilience across the government technology estate.
Our commitment to improving the UK’s cyber resilience includes our engagement with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). The NCSC engages with government, regulators and critical national infrastructure (CNI) operators to improve the cyber security and resilience of CNI, this includes: supporting them to raise their security baseline, improving their understanding the cyber risks they need to manage, such as the Cyber Assessment Framework, and helping them prepare for how they would respond to an incident or a period of heightened risk, leveraging GCHQ expertise.
The NCSC coordinates the government response to significant incidents. In the event of a severe national cyber incident the Cabinet Office activates COBR for enhanced coordination.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure access to accurate and up-to-date statistics, following reports of delays and mistakes in releases of data from the Office for National Statistics.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.
Professor Sir Ian Diamond | National Statistician
The Lord Taylor of Warwick
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
31 March 2025
Dear Lord Taylor,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what steps have been taken to ensure access to accurate and up-to-date statistics, following reports of delays and mistakes in releases of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) (HL6081).
In recent months, as part of routine quality assurance, the ONS identified issues with some of our statistical outputs, resulting in a small number of publications being delayed. Prioritising quality in our statistics is at the forefront of what we do. As such, we are consistently improving systems, investing in quality assurance, and undertaking vital transformation programmes. Further steps to ensure quality in our statistics will be communicated in our 2025/26 Strategic Business Plan. In early April, we will also be publishing our new survey strategy. This will build upon our existing surveys recovery plan, and will chart the pathway to a robust, sustainable survey system that can deliver the critical data required by Government and other key stakeholders.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that Whitehall operates effectively, particularly regarding how different departments collaborate and coordinate with one another.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
Mission-driven government means a focus on ambitious, long-term goals that require coordination and partnership across government and wider society. This a refocusing of the state onto active delivery across departmental boundaries. The Mission Delivery Unit in my departments works to ensure that all parts of government work together to deliver the Plan for Change.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the UK’s Labour Force Survey is providing correct and current data.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
A response to the noble Lord Taylor of Warwick’s Parliamentary Question of 10/02/25 is below and attached.
Professor Sir Ian Diamond | National Statistician
The Lord Taylor of Warwick
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
19 February 2025
Dear Lord Taylor of Warwick,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what steps the Office for National Statistics (ONS) are taking to ensure that UK’s Labour Force Survey (LFS) is providing correct and current data. (HL4910).
In my previous letter to you in February 2024 (HL2453) I included details on the comprehensive recovery plan[1] rolled out by the ONS in the last quarter of 2023 to improve the GB sample of the LFS. Since that letter, we have seen the implementation of further measures[2] introduced in the second half of 2024 to ensure the continued sustainability of the LFS.
These measures cover a combination of improvements to both data collection and methods which help make the survey estimates more representative of the UK population. We have continued measures introduced under the 2023 recovery plan, such as the reintroduction of in-home interviewing, the increased incentive, and the sample boost. We have also recruited and trained additional interviewers to increase the resource assigned to LFS. Interviewers were previously focused primarily on the wave 1 sample of the survey, with waves 2-5 being picked up by field interviewers as a lower priority. Since our letter to the Treasury Select Committee in December 2024[3], which included detail on our planned interviewer up-lift, we have increased the number of interviewers working on waves 2-5 by 50 so far.
As part of our continued efforts to make the survey estimates more representative, the ONS have reweighted[4] the LFS data periods back to 2019 using more recent population information published in January 2024. This reweighting exercise resulted in increased levels’ estimates across most of the labour market series, with rates and averages seeing little change, and reduced the gap between the LFS employment data and payroll estimates of the number of employees. This partial reweighting exercise has also been extended to the two-quarter longitudinal outputs, which we released on 18 February 2025. Further work is under way looking at the implementation of a more comprehensive full reweighting of our data when new population projections are released later this year.
There are ongoing work streams aiming to understand the statistical quality, such as attrition, mode effects and bias in the longitudinal and cross-sectional samples. In addition, we are conducting a number of research projects exploring our approaches to communication with respondents and the incentives to participate in our surveys. These projects will also help us to understand how we can optimise the response to our surveys. As part of our agreed user and methods assurance, we continue to engage with our Stakeholder Advisory Panel and external methods advisors, Ray Chambers and James Brown, to discuss and invite feedback on all work stream developments.
To date, the aforementioned sustainability improvements have had a positive impact. In July to September 2023, the quarterly LFS data included 44,238 individual responses across the UK[5]. By the October to December 2024 quarter this had increased to 63,069 individual responses for the UK[6]. With the additional interviewer resource enhancing our data collection efforts over coming months, we expect the achieved sample and dataset size and its representativeness to improve further.
As we expect to continue seeing higher volatility in LFS data in the short term than might have historically been expected, we continue to advise users to apply caution when observing changes in the survey-based estimates. Users should also consider the commentary we publish alongside our statistical bulletins, as well as consulting the wider range of labour market data we publish when forming a view on the labour market.
In summary, progress has been made in recovering the LFS with the achieved sample now significantly higher and the incorporation of the latest population information into the estimates. The major changes we have made to the LFS will be fully included through all five survey waves by the first quarter of next year, which will inform the LFS estimates for publication in May 2025.
While we are working hard to improve our LFS-based data, our long-term solution for collecting labour market data is delivery of the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS). We conducted a range of tests towards end of 2024, investigating the effects of a shortened questionnaire and specific changes to the content. We are planning to up-date users on the next steps in Spring 2025.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
[1] Labour Force Survey: planned improvements and its reintroduction, ONS article, 2 November 2023,
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/methodologies/labourforcesurveyplannedimprovementsanditsreintroduction
[2] Labour market transformation – update on progress and plans: December 2024, ONS article, 3 December 024, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/labourmarkettransformationupdateonprogressandplans/december2024
[3] UKSA Response to the Treasury Select Committee, UKSA letter, 3 December 2024,
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/45859/documents/227537/default/
[4] Impact of reweighting on Labour Force Survey key indicators: December 2024, ONS article, 3 December 2024,
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/impactofreweightingonlabourforcesurveykeyindicators/latest
[5] Labour Force Survey performance and quality monitoring report: July to September 2023, ONS article, 14 November 2023, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/methodologies/labourforcesurveyperformanceandqualitymonitoringreportjulytoseptember2023
[6] Labour Force Survey performance and quality monitoring report: October to December 2024, ONS article, 18 February 2025, https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/methodologies/labourforcesurveyperformanceandqualitymonitoringreportoctobertodecember2024
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to encourage more cyber experts to work in government departments.
Answered by Baroness Twycross - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Government has been delivering successful cyber programmes for many years.
We bring new talent into His Majesty’s government with our apprenticeship and graduate schemes and a new Government Cyber Skills Academy.
We attract cyber experts into Government with our new Cyber Resourcing Hub which is working to engage with talent pools and support recruiting line managers. The Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance also gives flexibility for departments to offer higher pay for hard-to-recruit-to roles.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of how increasing funding to the Civil Service could (1) support innovation in technology and processes, and (2) improve productivity.
Answered by Baroness Twycross - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
The Government is committed to a strategic plan for the Civil Service which supports improved productivity and drives innovation.
In a speech on 9 December, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster set out the Government’s plans for public sector reform. Phase 2 of the Spending Review will also include a focus on how departments can support innovation and boost productivity in the Civil Service.