Asked by: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which Minister or official authorised the Counter Disinformation Unit to collect data related to public statements, social media and internet activity as part of the unit's work.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Counter Disinformation Unit was established in 2019 as part of DCMS’s departmental responsibility for counter-disinformation, and as part of the government's manifesto commitment to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online while defending freedom of expression.
The monitoring of harmful disinformation narratives and trends, using publicly available information online, is an essential part of DCMS’ role in understanding the information environment and working with partners across government and with social media companies to counter narratives that have the potential to cause real world harm. The CDU reports regularly to ministers who have full oversight of the team’s work.
Asked by: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many applications to de-list a listed building were (a) made and (b) successful in each year since 2010.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
(a) The total number of applications received each year for the de-listing of a Listed Building is not recorded.
(b) The number of Listed Buildings de-listed each year since 2010 is detailed below:
Year | Number of Listed Buildings de-listed |
2010 | 138 |
2011 | 116 |
2012 | 131 |
2013 | 235 |
2014 | 207 |
2015 | 250 |
2016 | 306 |
2017 | 203 |
2018 | 258 |
2019 | 185 |
2020 | 83 |
2021 | 46 |
2022* | 114* |
* Up to 15th December 2022.
Asked by: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the answer of 11 October to Question 53272 on Social Media: Disinformation, how many times the Counter Disinformation Unit team has referred content to social media platforms in each year since the Unit was set up; and to which companies the content was referred.
Answered by Damian Collins
The primary purpose of the Counter Disinformation Unit is not to spot every instance of disinformation across all social media platforms, but rather to understand overall trends and coordinated attempts to artificially manipulate the information environment. When the Unit does identify particular pieces of harmful content which may violate platforms’ terms of service these are referred to the relevant platform for consideration, who in turn decide what action to take.
As an operational matter it is not appropriate for the government to publicly provide details of content reported to platforms as doing so would give malign actors insight into our capabilities.
Asked by: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will publish a list of the occasions when her Department's Counter Disinformation Cell has requested social media platforms remove posts from their platforms and what the grounds were for classifying the posted information as disinformation.
Answered by Damian Collins
The Government takes the issue of disinformation very seriously. The Counter Disinformation Unit team, based in DCMS, works to understand the scope, scale and reach of disinformation and works with a range of partners, including social media platforms, to tackle it.
The primary purpose of the team is not to spot every instance of disinformation across all social media platforms, but rather to understand overall trends and coordinated attempts to artificially manipulate the information environment. When the Unit does identify particular pieces of harmful content which may violate platforms’ terms of service these are referred to the relevant platform for consideration, who in turn decide what action to take.
As an operational matter it is not appropriate for the government to publicly provide details of content reported to platforms as doing so would give malign actors insight into our capabilities.
Asked by: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether volunteers in the Royal National Lifeboat Institution will be eligible for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Of the volunteers you ask about, only Royal National Lifeboat Institute volunteers are eligible for the Platinum Jubilee Medal.
To qualify for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal recipients must be in an eligible public sector role in a frontline emergency service accessed via a call to the 999 emergency telephone number, or equivalent.
Individual departments, the Devolved Administrations and Crown Dependencies are responsible for applying the criteria and making eligibility decisions regarding the award of the Medal to their staff and other organisations that fall under their sponsorship. The criteria are in line with that of the Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.
Asked by: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether volunteers in the St Andrew's First Aid will be eligible for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Of the volunteers you ask about, only Royal National Lifeboat Institute volunteers are eligible for the Platinum Jubilee Medal.
To qualify for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal recipients must be in an eligible public sector role in a frontline emergency service accessed via a call to the 999 emergency telephone number, or equivalent.
Individual departments, the Devolved Administrations and Crown Dependencies are responsible for applying the criteria and making eligibility decisions regarding the award of the Medal to their staff and other organisations that fall under their sponsorship. The criteria are in line with that of the Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.
Asked by: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether volunteers in the St John Ambulance will be eligible for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Of the volunteers you ask about, only Royal National Lifeboat Institute volunteers are eligible for the Platinum Jubilee Medal.
To qualify for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal recipients must be in an eligible public sector role in a frontline emergency service accessed via a call to the 999 emergency telephone number, or equivalent.
Individual departments, the Devolved Administrations and Crown Dependencies are responsible for applying the criteria and making eligibility decisions regarding the award of the Medal to their staff and other organisations that fall under their sponsorship. The criteria are in line with that of the Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.
Asked by: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether volunteers in the Princess Royal's Volunteer Corps will be eligible for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Of the volunteers you ask about, only Royal National Lifeboat Institute volunteers are eligible for the Platinum Jubilee Medal.
To qualify for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal recipients must be in an eligible public sector role in a frontline emergency service accessed via a call to the 999 emergency telephone number, or equivalent.
Individual departments, the Devolved Administrations and Crown Dependencies are responsible for applying the criteria and making eligibility decisions regarding the award of the Medal to their staff and other organisations that fall under their sponsorship. The criteria are in line with that of the Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.
Asked by: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether volunteers in the Red Cross will be eligible for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Of the volunteers you ask about, only Royal National Lifeboat Institute volunteers are eligible for the Platinum Jubilee Medal.
To qualify for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal recipients must be in an eligible public sector role in a frontline emergency service accessed via a call to the 999 emergency telephone number, or equivalent.
Individual departments, the Devolved Administrations and Crown Dependencies are responsible for applying the criteria and making eligibility decisions regarding the award of the Medal to their staff and other organisations that fall under their sponsorship. The criteria are in line with that of the Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.
Asked by: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether volunteers in the Samaritans will be eligible for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Medal.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
To qualify for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Medal recipients must be in an eligible public sector role in a frontline emergency service. This does not include volunteers in the Samaritans. Equally, volunteers in the UK vaccination effort are not eligible for the Medal.
The Government does however recognise the extraordinary contributions made by people across communities in response to the pandemic, and notes the outstanding work of Samaritans’ volunteers.
The Prime Minister has announced that the government will establish a UK Commission on COVID Commemoration to consider the appropriate way to remember those who have lost their lives and to recognise those involved in the unprecedented response across all critical sectors. The Government will set out the Commission membership and terms of reference in due course.