Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions (a) he, (b) his officials and (c) advisors have had with representatives of the BBC about internal staff appointments at the BBC.
Answered by John Whittingdale
The BBC is operationally and editorially independent from the government, and the government has no role in internal or executive recruitment at the BBC.
Meetings with external organisations and individuals undertaken in a ministerial capacity are published on GOV.UK on a quarterly basis.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions his Department has had with representatives of the BBC about internal staff appointments at the BBC.
Answered by John Whittingdale
The BBC is operationally and editorially independent from the government, and the government has no role in internal or executive recruitment at the BBC.
Meetings with external organisations and individuals undertaken in a ministerial capacity are published on GOV.UK on a quarterly basis.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will list the members of the interview panel for the first selection process for the Chair of Ofcom.
Answered by John Whittingdale
The first process to appoint the permanent Chair of Ofcom was run in line with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code for Public Appointments, and regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. In line with the requirements of the Governance Code, the members of the interview panel were published in March 2021 on the Cabinet Office’s Public Appointments Website. The panel consisted of Susannah Storey (Director General, DCMS), Paul Potts (Senior Independent Panel Member), Melanie Richards and Lord Livingston of Parkhead.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many applicants in the first process for the appointment of Chair of Ofcom had their applications carried forward automatically to the second process.
Answered by John Whittingdale
A second process to appoint a permanent Chair of Ofcom has not yet been launched but announcements will be made in due course. The process will be a fair and open competition, and run in line with the Governance Code for Public appointments and regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments.
Asked by: Christian Matheson (Independent - City of Chester)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that the payment of the Cultural Recovery Fund for phase three is made in a timely manner.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Our Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) is worth £2 billion in total and is the largest investment in culture, art & heritage in UK history.
Our delivery bodies are working hard to ensure payments from the first two rounds reach organisations quickly, and so far over 83% of all awarded CRF funding has been paid. Payments through the Culture Recovery Fund (CRF) are typically made in multiple tranches. Final payment is typically made at the very end of the grant period, once activities and costs have been reported.
As part of the design process for the third round of the CRF, the Department has conducted various lessons learnt exercises to help us determine where to make design and delivery changes. Details on the third round of funding were published on 25 June, including a specific ‘emergency resource support’ strand that will provide funding quickly to those who are at imminent risk of failure. As with all large and complex funding packages, we will ensure that key lessons learned from the whole process are captured, and used to help improve grant delivery in the future.