Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment she has made of the capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises in Buckingham and Bletchley constituency to meet the new procurement requirements.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Government is committed to supporting small and medium-sized enterprises across the country, including in Buckingham and Bletchley. The new measures provide a clearer, simplified approach that will make it easier for businesses of all sizes to bid for government contracts.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps her Department is taking to increase AI capability across the Civil Service.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Government is committed to building AI capability across the Civil Service to deliver better, more efficient public services. We are driving this through targeted training, skills development, and specialist recruitment.
Training: Following the "One Big Thing 2025" campaign where a record 221,000 civil servants took part in foundational AI training, we are launching "One Big Thing 2026: AI in Action" this autumn to equip every civil servant with practical AI skills and boost productivity by driving adoption of AI across the Civil Service.
Skills: The new National School of Government and Public Services, launching this year and scaling over three years, will provide a dedicated curriculum covering AI, data, and digital capability.
Recruitment: To attract top technical talent, 36 organisations have adopted the Government Digital, Data and Cyber Pay Framework. This supports our commitment to double the tech workforce from 5% to 10% of the Civil Service by 2030, reinforced by an expanded Digital Fast Stream featuring new Data Scientist and Software Engineer pathways.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment she has made of barriers to AI adoption across government departments.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Government continually assesses barriers to AI adoption to ensure we unlock significant productivity gains and modernise public services. As identified by the State of Digital Government review, there are several notable barriers: a national skills shortage, outdated legacy computer systems, and a risk-averse administrative culture.
We are tackling the skills gap by launching the National School of Government and Public Services to upskill our existing workforce. To fix legacy infrastructure, our Shared Services Strategy is replacing 286 vulnerable, outdated computer systems with modern, cloud-based platforms. To combat risk-aversion, "Project RESET" is stripping back bureaucratic spending controls so departments can procure and test new digital tools faster and more effectively.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the new procurement requirements on competition for public contracts.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
Simplifying the social value requirements in central government procurement will simplify the procurement process and make it easier for businesses of all sizes to bid for government contracts.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he is taking with international partners to improve the collection and preservation of evidence relating to serious acts of violence in the West Bank.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
I refer the Hon. Member to the Foreign Secretary's statement in the Commons on 8 September.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what metrics her Department will use to assess the effectiveness of restrictions on energy drink sales.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the Hon Member to the documentation published at the following link:
The final Impact Assessment will be published on the GOV.UK website in due course.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of energy drink consumption on children’s health.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the Hon Member to the documentation published at the following link:
The final Impact Assessment will be published on the GOV.UK website in due course.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps her Department plans to take to ensure consistency in the application of the new procurement requirements across contracting authorities.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The Cabinet Office will publish detailed guidance on the application of social value criteria in central government procurement in the autumn. This will include standard reporting metrics.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the impact of declining uptake of modern foreign languages on the UK’s (i) future skills needs and (ii) international economic competitiveness.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The UK has taken the positive step of rejoining Erasmus+ from 2027, the EU’s flagship education exchange and partnerships programme. Erasmus+ will give learners, trainees and staff across schools, further and higher education, adult education, youth and sport opportunities to study, train, work or volunteer abroad. These experiences will bring language learning to life, inspiring more young people to study modern foreign languages and helping build the skills the UK needs to compete internationally.
Alongside this, the government is committed to strengthening the languages pipeline and increasing uptake of modern foreign languages. We are taking forward the recommendations of the Curriculum and Assessment Review, supporting high-quality teaching through the National Consortium for Languages Education, and helping recruit specialist teachers through a £20,000 tax-free bursary, or a £22,000 scholarship for French, German and Spanish trainees. We also support a broad range of language qualifications, with GCSEs and A levels available in up to 15 languages.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of sovereign AI capabilities in strengthening the UK's economic resilience.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Jointly with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Technology)
The Government is working to build domestic capability in AI where the UK has strengths; collaborate with trusted partners where this increases UK access and influence; and secure access to frontier capabilities where this is essential. We have taken significant steps to build sovereign capability through establishing the £500m Sovereign AI Fund to support UK AI companies; provision of compute via the AI Research Resource; establishing AI Growth Zones to build data centres; and the £1.1bn AI Hardware Plan to build out critical capabilities in key parts of the AI value chain.