Gordon McKee

The Cabinet Office encourages all departments to conduct or participate in exercises on cross-cutting risks in line with the National Security Risk Assessment, via the National Exercising Programme. The Cabinet Office is not responsible for exercising across the entire system but offers support and guidance.

The Cabinet Office oversaw three cross-system exercises within this period. Exercise MIGHTY OAK on preparedness for a national power outrage ran in March 2023. Exercise PEGASUS on pandemic preparedness was conducted in three primary phases in September and October 2025. A classified cross-system cyber resilience exercise was also conducted in 2026.

Keeping the country safe is the government's first responsibility. The Cabinet Office has successfully coordinated across a number of national security priorities, such as agreeing support for Ukraine, responding to terrorist incidents or delivering the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the Cold War. The government keeps the effectiveness of its cross-government coordination on national security priorities under continuous review to ensure the UK remains resilient against evolving threats.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Parliamentary Question of 15th July is attached.

The Cabinet Office measures the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) training that we provide to civil servants through a range of methods aligned with government evaluation guidance in the magenta book. We are further developing our approach to the measurement of the impact of AI training on productivity and public services, and are planning to publish a monitoring and evaluation framework later this year.

The Cabinet Office recognises the valuable role that the voluntary, community and faith sector (VCFS) can play in all aspects of resilience. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 requires local Category 1 responders ‘to have regard’ to the activities of voluntary organisations while carrying out their duties. This is reinforced in guidance and standards, which provide further detail on the benefits of including the VCFS within local exercising.

The Cabinet Office is committed to conducting one major ‘Tier 1’ ministerial-led exercise annually under the National Exercising Programme. On 15th July and as part of the national resilience annual statement, the government announced that the next Tier 1 exercise (Exercise ALBISTON SHADOW) will focus on homeland defence.

Under a Tier 1 exercise, Government departments, agencies, non-governmental organisations and local responders are all involved to deliver the objectives and requirements of each year's exercise. In support of this, work is also underway to ensure that guidance, best practice, frameworks and other tools are made available to all parts of the system so that high-quality exercising can happen at all levels, not just during Tier 1 exercises.

The Department recognises Glasgow’s role as a European leader in small satellite manufacturing.

The National Space Innovation Programme (NSIP), National Earth Observation Programme, Connectivity in Low Earth Orbit and wider Space Ecosystem supports UK businesses and researchers develop satellite communications, resilient navigation, Earth observation and manufacturing capabilities.

Since July 2024, NSIP funding has supported two Glasgow-based projects with £8.3 million, backing HyImpulse’s sub-orbital rocket test from SaxaVord and £4.9 million, backing Spire Global’s weather data technology.

Glasgow-based companies have also received €5.25million in ESA contracts.

The Department supports Space Scotland and the UK Space Cluster Network to strengthen Scotland’s space ecosystem.

The Department has not made a specific assessment of the impact of private equity ownership on long-term investment in UK high street businesses. Decisions on ownership structures and investment strategies are matters for individual businesses and investors.

The Small Business Plan sets out the Government’s approach to supporting high street businesses to thrive, including through expanding access to finance, reductions to business rates, and supporting and nurturing a range of alternative business models like co-operatives and mutuals.

The Government is committed to supporting UK businesses trading with the European Union and to reducing unnecessary barriers to trade with our closest partner and biggest market to help delivery growth to every post code.

Ministers and officials in my department regularly engage with Cabinet colleagues on matters affecting exporters and economic growth.

We also provide a range of business support services, information, training, events and expert support to both new and experienced exporters, including through ‘Unlock Europe’, a free webinar series which features regular sessions for businesses on how to navigate EU regulations.

The Government uses a range of international and UK metrics to track progress on innovation.

For international comparisons, we use several metrics such as rankings from the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index, data from the OECD Science and Technology Indicators, and numbers of patents, academic publications, citations and other bibliometric data from several other sources.

To understand UK innovation, we use official statistics such as the number of innovation active businesses from the UK Innovation Survey, R&D expenditure by government and businesses from the Office for National Statistics, and R&D tax credit data from HMRC. We also utilise metrics on university knowledge exchange and commercialisation from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

The Government also uses our Innovation Clusters Map to identify emerging clusters. The 2025 update will allow year-by-year performance tracking of priority clusters with metrics such as levels of public R&D investment, company formation, and job creation.

The Government is committed to scaling the UK’s domestic compute capacity to support national resilience and security, ensuring that the UK has the infrastructure needed to benefit from frontier AI. AI Growth Zones are central to this effort, helping to establish more compute capacity in the UK while creating opportunities for UK companies to participate in major AI infrastructure projects.

The Government also recognises that many cloud services used in the UK are delivered by internationally owned providers. We therefore focus on the resilience and security of the services on which the UK depends, rather than ownership alone. Our approach is to manage risks arising from concentration, dependencies and supply chains through regulatory oversight, operational resilience measures and a diverse cloud market.

Future electricity demand for both data centres and artificial intelligence overall is inherently uncertain. This is because different scenarios for capacity, efficiency, utilisation and ramp-up rates of data centres, as well as scenarios for AI adoption and speed of technological change, interact in complex ways and translate into varying annual electricity consumption.

The Government continues to work with the National Energy System Operator, Ofgem and industry to monitor developments and test how a range of scenarios interface with final consumption.

The Government monitors and assesses the cyber resilience of UK energy infrastructure through a combination of annual regulatory assurance returns, on-site inspections conducted under the Network and Information Systems (NIS) Regulations, and regular engagement with industry. This is supported by technical assessments and threat intelligence provided by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

The cyber threat continues to evolve, and the Government keeps the resilience of the energy sector under continual review to ensure our defensive posture is appropriate and proportionate to the cyber threat. The Cyber Security and Resilience Bill will further strengthen resilience by expanding the scope of cyber regulation and enhancing requirements to manage cyber risk and respond to incidents.

The UK uses diverse gas supply sources to meet winter demand, including domestic UK Continental Shelf production, pipeline and interconnector imports, and Europe’s second largest LNG import infrastructure.

Gas storage, filled from these sources, provides system flexibility to respond to short-term changes in supply and demand. In winter 2025/26, gas storage supplied 5% of total GB gas use and we expect it to contribute a similar amount this winter.

As set out in our interim response to the Gas System in Transition: Security of Supply consultation, we recognise that gas infrastructure needs may change through the energy transition. We will further assess whether additional infrastructure, including strategic gas storage, is required, and will publish a full response in due course.

Energy suppliers are extending smart metering Home Area Network connectivity in properties including tenement buildings where there are obstacles such as concrete floors between the apartment and the meter.

'Dual band' communications hubs serve many previously hard to reach properties. For the minority of properties where these cannot provide connectivity, the Alternative Home Area Network solution provides an additional smart metering HAN connectivity option for properties such as the higher floors of high-rise buildings. Finally, the Crowded Meter Room Resolution model is now available in buildings where meter room space constraints previously prevented installation of the Alt HAN solution.

Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE-N) has an ambition that 70% of supply chain products will be British built across the small modular reactor (SMR) fleet, including both on-site and off-site activity. We intend for this ambition to be met.

Now that GBE-N and Rolls Royce SMR have entered into contract, the two organisations are working jointly to progress supply chain planning.

GBE‑N is actively considering, as part of an SMR Industrial Strategy, the critical enablers needed to ensure the UK nuclear supply chain is match-fit and globally competitive. GBE-N's SMR Industrial Strategy is expected to be submitted to government later this year.

The government is committed to building a digitally skilled workforce to support long-term economic growth, drive innovation and expand individual opportunity across the UK.

Skills England has developed a framework outlining the foundational AI skills that are needed to thrive in today’s AI economy. AI Skills Boost courses are underpinned by this framework, and a number of these courses carry additional accreditations.

Anyone who completes an AI Skills Boost Course covering all 6 foundation skills will receive a virtual badge to show they have met this benchmark, which can be displayed on their LinkedIn profile to demonstrate their skills to employers. These courses and virtual badges help employers to know that workers can use AI tools in a safe, effective and responsible way.

There are currently around 36 social tariffs with at least one of these being available across 99% of the UK. Government's approach has been to work with industry and Ofcom to improve awareness, simplify access, and support switching to cheaper deals and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology continues to work with Ofcom to monitor take-up of social tariffs.

The Government has taken steps to increase uptake among eligible households. In February 2026, Government secured commitments from major telecoms providers through the Telecoms Consumer Charter, which requires providers to proactively signpost social tariffs to eligible customers and make them easier to find.

The Government does not hold Workforce Commission data specifically at Glasgow City Region level. The latest available data indicates approximately 2,800 civil servants in digital, data and technology roles across Scotland.

The Government's ambition is for Digital, Data and Cyber Professions to reach 10% of the Civil Service workforce by 2030, up from approximately 5.8% today. This is being taken forward through the Roadmap for Modern Digital Government and the forthcoming Digital Workforce 2030 Strategy, which set out plans to address workforce shortages, strengthen digital leadership, and improve recruitment, retention and cross-sector mobility.

This includes expanding entry and development routes such as TechTrack apprenticeships, the Digital Fast Stream, AI and Data Science Accelerator programmes, returnship opportunities, and access to learning and accreditation through initiatives such as Get Tech Certified and the Government Digital and Data Hub. The Government is also reforming the Digital, Data and Cyber Pay Framework and strengthening profession capability frameworks to support recruitment and retention of specialist talent.

The State of Digital Government Review, published in January 2025, highlighted that concentrating workloads on a limited number of suppliers creates systemic concentration risks. The National Risk Register 2026, published on 14 July, further identifies disruption to third-party suppliers and digital infrastructure as a significant resilience risk.

Existing Government cyber policy and technology frameworks already support a range of resilience measures to tackle this, by requiring departments to assess security, resilience and business continuity risks when procuring and operating cloud.

The Government's Cloud First policy encourages organisations to consider all suitable suppliers and supports competition in cloud procurement, while the Multi‑Region Cloud Policy promotes deployment across multiple regions to improve resilience. Public procurement seeks to maintain a diverse supplier base, while the Competition and Markets Authority is independently examining competition in the UK cloud market.

Alongside this, Government is tackling these risks through the implementation of the Government Cyber Action Plan, which sets out our approach to enhancing cyber security and resilience across the public sector, including through enhanced cyber assurance and oversight.

To improve the recruitment and retention of cyber security professionals across Government, DSIT launched the Government Cyber Profession in February 2026. The profession will introduce a competitive total employee offer, establish a dedicated Cyber Recruitment Hub to streamline recruitment, and create a clear career framework aligned with UK Cyber Security Council professional standards. This will directly address our cyber skills gaps, increase access to and help retain talent, establish cross-government standards, and provide learning and development programmes.

At the national level, the £200 million TechFirst programme is building the UK's domestic cyber talent pipeline, complemented by the UK Cyber Security Council's professional standards which support recruitment and retention across industry.

The Government has been clear that arenas and stadiums have a vital role to play to accelerate adoption of the £1 ticket contribution to support grassroots music. The Government has convened the live music industry, including arena and stadium operators and their representative bodies, to drive further uptake of the voluntary levy and to understand remaining challenges and opportunities. As set out in our Music Plan, published on 13 July, we support the industry's leadership on this so far, with the LIVE Trust already having distributed £1.5 million to vital initiatives. However, we want to see uptake increase further, and we have consistently said that we are prepared to explore legislative options if required.

DCMS is working with Sally Davies, AI Champion of the Creative Industries, and others to consider how best to support AI adoption. Sally has been engaging closely with the sector to inform her AI Adoption Plan for the Creative Industries, which was published in June.

Sally’s recommendations are not formally part of government policy, however we will carefully consider next steps in order to allow our creative industries to best seize the opportunities for innovation and growth presented by AI. This includes recommendations to raise the practical AI knowledge and confidence and develop trusted guidance, standards and tools for AI adoption.

We aim to help creative businesses, especially SMEs and the self-employed, build the skills and confidence to use AI safely and effectively. The government joins the AI Champion in supporting an augmentation-first approach to AI Adoption in the creative industries. AI should support human creativity, not displace it.

We are committed to working with Sally and the sector to increase accessibility to industry-backed knowledge, infrastructure and support, so as to empower creatives to make an informed decision on whether they’ll use AI or not.

We recognise the impact on public interest news publishers of generative AI platforms and services, including AI assistants and answer engines, which risk diverting audiences and advertising revenue by presenting news summaries which limit the need to click through to news websites.

As set out in our Local Media Action Plan, published in March, these summaries can also be inaccurate or misleading, with one recent study finding that 81% of news-related responses from AI assistants contained issues relating to accuracy, editorialisation, sourcing errors or limited contextualisation. These summaries also risk distorting the market by drawing on a narrow range of prominent newsbrands. Over the long term, this risks further commercial harm to local media and other news providers, to public trust in news as a whole, and to the quality of news accessed by citizens.

The Action Plan committed to helping news providers adapt to the emerging challenges of AI-generated news summaries, and supporting a healthy licensing ecosystem while also working with industry to ensure proportionate transparency. We want to support all rights holders, including news publishers, to be able to license their work in the digital age, while allowing AI developers to benefit from access to creative material in the UK. Our taskforce on AI labelling will put forward proposals for Government on best practice to ensure consumers understand whether content has been made using AI. Alongside this, we will also publish a review of the mechanisms available for creators to control their works online. This will include standards, technical solutions and best practice on input transparency. This review will inform where there are gaps and whether there is an appropriate role for government in addressing them.

This builds on other work already underway in this area. The CMA recently imposed the first Conduct Requirement under the Digital Markets regime on publisher controls in Google Search and search advertising, aiming to ensure transparency, attribution and choice for publishers in how their content is used in Google’s AI services. We also welcome the news industry’s proactive efforts to address concerns in this area, including through the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition, which is focused on bridging the gap between news publishers and AI developers and developing shared industry standards. SPUR has recently published a draft of a Content Telemetry standard, an open standard which enables publishers and content owners to directly understand how AI systems are using their content.

The Government is committed to growing the UK screen sector across all nations. Glasgow, identified as a high-potential creative cluster in the Creative Industries Sector Plan, is well placed to benefit from the Government's £75 million Screen Growth Package.

This includes the UK Global Screen Fund, with Scottish-led co-productions securing significant awards and Screen Scotland contributing to the Fund's Advisory Board. The British Film Institute also supports Scotland's screen sector through UK-wide funding, including the National Lottery Skills Cluster, which helps address skills and crew shortages.

We are also investing in skills through the National Film and Television School, including its Glasgow hub at BBC Scotland's Pacific Quay and the Edinburgh-based Sean Connery Talent Lab. This complements our refreshed £9 million Creative Careers Programme, which was piloted in Scotland.

We continue to work with Screen Scotland and the wider sector to strengthen screen production across Scotland and the UK, supported by stable and competitive tax reliefs that benefit all nations. The BBC Charter Review also provides an opportunity to support the BBC's central role in Scotland's screen economy.

Football reaches communities like nothing else. The department is working with partners to develop the largest-ever UEFA EURO Community Programme, backed by a social impact fund of around £45 million, which will ensure the impact supports communities far beyond the tournament itself. Plans for the programme and fund are in development, and more details will be shared in due course.