Darren Jones

We are fully committed to supporting disabled people in the UK through creating more opportunities, protecting their rights and ensuring they fully benefit from, and can contribute to, every aspect of our society.

Local Authority funding is a matter for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

The Government is committed to banning the practice of all coercive so-called ‘conversion therapy’ in this country, strengthening existing criminal law provisions and introducing an offence which protects under-18s and those who are unwillingly subjected to these abhorrent practices.

The Government is currently consulting on our proposals to legislate for a ban on conversion therapy. The question is how, not whether, we will ban conversion therapy. We are engaging with a wide range of relevant stakeholders, victims and professionals to ensure that the ban is effective in ending different forms of conversion therapy. The consultation runs until Friday 4 February and I would encourage anyone with an interest who has not yet done so to respond at: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/banning-conversion-therapy.

The consultation responses will be used to further refine the Government’s policy proposals on banning conversion therapy and inform the process of developing legislation. We will prepare a Bill for this Spring to be introduced as soon as Parliamentary time allows.

GOV.UK is updated regularly with the terms of reference and membership of Cabinet Committees, including the Climate Action Strategy Committee and Climate Action Implementation Committee.

The membership and terms of reference have not been published for the following officials’ forums: the National Strategic Implementation Group Net Zero Sub-Group; the National Strategic Implementation Group Domestic Adaptation and Resilience Sub-Group; and the 25 Year Environment Board.

It is a long-established precedent that information about the discussions that have taken place in Cabinet and its Committees, and how often they have met, is not normally shared publicly.

The DEFRA-led Cross-Government 25 Year Environment Plan Board was established in December 2020. The Board meets every two months and has had five meetings to date.

The Government ran an Expression of Interest process earlier this year to identify stakeholder interest in participating within UK Government managed spaces at the summit, receiving 3,966 proposals from across 93 countries. Following an extensive evaluation process, we have longlisted a range of proposals for further consideration. At this stage, no organisation has received confirmation of space within UK Government managed spaces at the summit.

An events programme and list of exhibitors within the UK Government managed Green Zone will be made available to the public in due course.

The Attorney General’s Office (AGO), Government Legal Department (GLD), Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) are committed to tackling climate change and delivering our world-leading net zero target. Each department is located on separate premises and therefore their steps to climate responsibility differ.

The AGO is located within a building shared with other tenants. The department engages with the landlord to support any opportunities to reduce greenhouse emissions. Emissions data is produced for the building and is not identifiable for each tenant. Information relating to the government vehicle is collated and reported by the Department for Transport. The AGO ensures that all travel is kept to a minimum.

The CPS actively seeks to understand and mitigate its sustainability impacts associated with delivering its core organisational responsibilities. The CPS’ sustainability objectives include delivering on the Greening Government Commitments1 (GGC) for reducing energy, water, paper and other resource use, reducing travel and managing waste and assessing and managing social and environmental impacts and opportunities in policy development and decision making.

The GLD has not made any specific assessment of the effect of climate change on the work of the Department. They provide legal advice in support of our clients’ considerations of climate change and the impact on their business, whilst we have made changes to our operations over time to reduce the consumption of natural resources, including the consumption, movement and storage of paper files, and travel‎.

No formal assessment has been made on how climate change may impact the work of the SFO. However, the Serious Fraud Office is committed to playing its part in meeting the government’s ambitious targets to reduce emissions and deliver on the Greening Government Commitments.

Yes.

The location of all Government Ministerial visits since 2019 is not centrally held.

The Prime Minister has appointed the National Security Adviser, Sir Tim Barrow, as the UK's G7 and G20 Sherpa.

Ministers across HM Government represent the UK at G7 and G20 ministerial meetings, in line with relevant areas of policy responsibility. The Prime Minister represents the UK at the G7 and G20 Summits, preparation for which is led by the Cabinet Office with the support of other relevant Departments.

Details of Government contracts above £10,000, and £25,000 in the wider public sector, are published on Contracts Finder: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Search.

The Government has carried out significant work towards audit and corporate governance reform legislation but has not set a date for publication of a draft Audit Reform Bill. The Government is committed to legislating when Parliamentary time allows.

The Department for Business and Trade is reforming its approach to external engagement to meet the needs of industry and match the priorities of the new Department. A new approach will be set out in due course, but in the meantime the Department continues to engage with a full range of interested parties on key issues.

The department has previously set out its intention to publish a biennial FTA monitoring report. The department is currently considering the approach to these reports to ensure they are robust, useful, and proportionate.

Ongoing monitoring of our FTAs helps to deliver benefits to business and inform the approach to governments future trade policies.

I met representatives of Vesa Equity Investment, including Daniel Kretinsky, in January 2023 to discuss a wide range of issues across their current and potential future UK investments.

The initial analysis published in the Government’s scoping assessment suggests that UK accession to CPTPP is not expected to have significant impacts on greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 and Non-CO2) and energy usage.

The Government do not at this stage have figures on the number of care home residents who have applied for the Energy Bills Support Scheme Alternative Funding. The figures for the number of eligible households who have applied for the scheme will be available in May.

The Government’s position is that tidal stream power has a role to play as we transition towards a carbon-neutral energy sector. For that reason, tidal stream is included in the scope of the draft National Policy Statement for Energy published in March 2023.

This builds on the success of the fourth Contracts for Difference Allocation Round last year in which over 40MW of new tidal stream capacity was secured in Scotland and Wales and the announcement of a ringfenced budget for the fifth round this year.

Due to the dispersed and/or isolated nature of many of the households living on boats and in caravans not on registered sites, it is difficult to estimate the exact number of individuals who are unable to receive the Energy Bill Support Scheme. Officials are also working to establish whether there is a robust method for these households to provide proof of eligibility, whilst protecting public funds, so they can claim the EBSS payment.

The Department through its Direct Air Capture and Greenhouse Gas Removal Innovation Programme is supporting five biochar pilot demonstrators for carbon capture, at a value of £18.7million, to be completed by March 2025. UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) is also funding a biochar demonstrator project that will investigate the stability of biochar, as well as its impacts on the environment and soil ecosystems, in different UK land management scenarios. Use of biochar as a technology is at an early stage of development and therefore deployment potential, costs and possible side-effects from use are uncertain. Results from the projects supported will help to inform future government policy on biochar as a greenhouse gas removal method.

Data on fuel consumed and electricity produced by power stations are published in the annual Digest of UK Energy Statistics table 5.6, and quarterly Energy Trends table 5.1, under ‘Major Power Producers’.

The first major global summit on AI safety, hosted by the UK, will bring together key countries, as well as leading technology companies and researchers, to agree on the safety measures needed to evaluate and monitor the most significant risks emerging from the newest developments in AI technologies.

The Department is committed to engaging with a wide range of stakeholders as it develops AI policy and has, throughout consultation on the AI Regulation White Paper, engaged with a wide range of stakeholders across industry, academia, regulators and civil society. The feedback received will be factored in the Department’s response to the consultation and inform the development of the regulatory framework.

We are adopting this same spirit with regards to our international policy and the Summit, for which preparations are still ongoing. We look forward to sharing more information in due course.

The UK will host the first major global summit on AI safety this autumn, bringing together countries to agree measures needed to mitigate the most significant AI risks. Officials across the Government are working to deliver the Summit, including teams in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office as well as the UK’s diplomatic network, and work continues on the exact scope and outcomes. We look forward to updating the House further as our preparations for the Summit continue.

The Government is committed to ensuring that people have access to accurate information. We are taking steps to promote trusted news sources to tackle the spread of disinformation and combat attempts to artificially manipulate the information environment. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Counter Disinformation Unit responds to periods of acute disinformation risk, including UK general elections.

The Government regularly meets with a range of social media platforms to aid our understanding of the spread of misinformation and disinformation on their services, including artificially manipulated media, and the range of steps they are taking to address this. This work includes encouraging platforms to ensure that their Terms of Service (ToS), policies and enforcement are fit for purpose, whilst still respecting freedom of expression.

The National Security Bill will give the UK more tools to tackle these threats, including a new offence of foreign interference. The foreign interference offence is a priority offence in the Online Safety Bill and as such will require digital platforms to proactively take action against a wide range of state-sponsored disinformation and state-linked online interference, including digitally manipulated content where this has the aim of interfering with UK elections.

As set out in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s (DSIT) 2023 priorities, we will optimise public R&D investment to support areas of relative UK strength and increase the level of private R&D to make our economy the most innovative in the world.

This, in part, will be achieved via the largest ever increase in public R&D budget over a Spending Review (SR) period. At the 2022 Autumn Statement, my Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer recommitted to increasing public expenditure on R&D to £20 billion per annum by 2024/2025.

By 31^st January 2023, the UK Government’s Horizon Europe Guarantee Scheme had issued grants worth up to £750m to 1,548 successful applicants. The scheme is demand-driven, reflecting the success rate of UK applicants to the Horizon Europe programme. The UK remains first for successful proposals to Horizon Europe’s European Research Council (ERC) and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) schemes, maintaining our Horizon 2020 position.

On 21^st November 2022, an additional £484m of funding was announced to support the UK’s R&D sector and bolster talent and investment in R&D infrastructure while delays to association continue.

The Trade and Cooperation Agreement covers the UK’s terms of participation in Horizon Europe.