Asked by: Alex Sobel (Labour (Co-op) - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, with reference to the survey on Public attitudes to animal research, last conducted for the Office for Life Sciences in 2018, when her Department plans to commission a further survey.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The department does not currently have plans to run the Public Attitudes in Animal Research Survey. Policy teams are working with a variety of external and internal stakeholders to determine the future of the survey.
Asked by: Alex Sobel (Labour (Co-op) - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of a Government scheme to fund internet connectivity improvements in housing estates with copper wires.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Project Gigabit is the Government’s flagship £5 billion programme to enable hard-to-reach communities, left out of commercial delivery plans, to access lightning-fast gigabit-capable broadband.
We expect most premises which require a Government subsidy through Project Gigabit to be in rural areas. However, to achieve our mission of nationwide coverage, which we expect to be at least 99% of premises having access to a gigabit capable connection, we are aware that there are pockets of more urban areas that are left out of commercial plans. Work is ongoing to identify an appropriate course of action for these premises. The solution here may involve working with suppliers to help remove barriers to commercial delivery rather than using public subsidy.
We have already amended building regulations so that new homes are future-proofed with gigabit connectivity; and where this is not available within a per-home cost cap, with gigabit-ready infrastructure to facilitate a gigabit-capable connection when this becomes available.
Alongside government intervention, the telecoms industry is leading on upgrading the UK’s landline network from the analogue Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), delivered over copper wires, to more reliable and future proofed services delivered over digital landlines, also referred to as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). These services will predominantly rely on fibreoptic cables for their infrastructure. Government is monitoring this switch-off closely, to ensure that vulnerable consumers are protected.
Asked by: Alex Sobel (Labour (Co-op) - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether her Department is taking steps to (a) accelerate and (b) support the transition to new approach methodologies for (i) research and (ii) experiments; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by George Freeman
The Government is actively supporting and funding the development and dissemination of techniques that replace, reduce and refine the use of animals in research (the 3Rs). UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is strongly committed to the 3Rs and provides funding for the National Centre for 3Rs (NC3Rs), which works to drive the uptake of 3Rs technologies and ensure that advances are reflected in policy, practice and regulations on animal research. Since it was established, the NC3Rs has invested £77 million in research and almost £27 million in contracts through its CRACK IT Challenges innovation scheme to UK and EU-based institutions.
Asked by: Alex Sobel (Labour (Co-op) - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals on abolishing broadband and telephone line rental charges.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
As the independent regulator for telecoms, it is the responsibility of Ofcom to make decisions relating to pricing regulation. In 2017, Ofcom conducted a review of the market which found that customers who only have a landline were getting poor value for money compared to customers who had bundles of landline, broadband and pay-TV services.
As a result of this review, Ofcom proposed new regulation which requires BT to reduce the price of line rental for these landline-only customers, from £18.99 to £11.99. At the time this represented a saving of £84 a year, or 37%, for up to one million of BT’s customers who didn’t also have a BT broadband service. BT also committed to capping any overall increases to line rental and call charges to inflation for three years.
BT’s original commitments ran to the end of March 2021. However, it committed to continue these protections for a further five years, which Ofcom accepted.
Given Ofcom’s statutory independence, it would not be appropriate for the Government to further comment on its regulatory decisions, which are taken independent of the Government.
Asked by: Alex Sobel (Labour (Co-op) - Leeds North West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what progress her Department has made on delivering fast and reliable broadband in Leeds North West constituency.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Thanks to our efforts to make it as easy and attractive as possible to deploy gigabit-capable networks, 86% premises in Leeds North West can access gigabit-capable broadband, which is up from just 15% in March 2019. This is expected to increase further as suppliers continue to extend their networks. Additionally, 98% of premises in Leeds North West have access to superfast broadband speeds (>=30 Mbps). These coverage increases have been achieved entirely through commercial investment at zero cost to the taxpayer.