Gregor Poynton

Through our Trade Strategy, Industrial Strategy, and Small Business Plan, we're putting in place the policies, support, and services needed to drive export-led growth, particularly in high-growth potential sectors like advanced manufacturing.

We routinely run targeted trade missions, support business at international trade shows, and connect international buyers with exporters at home to help them grow their businesses. In addition, businesses have access to support from tailored market advice and free training to UK Export Finance and our on-the-ground international network.

We continue to review how we can improve our support, including how we connect firms to new opportunities, and build the capability to seize them.

We keep the effectiveness of our enforcement regime under review. The Product Regulation and Metrology Act 2025, received Royal Assent in July and contains powers to strengthen product enforcement.

The Office for Product Standards and Safety (OPSS) is the UK's national product regulator. It uses risk to target its enforcement activities, protecting people and places from product-related harm. OPSS has established a co-ordinated system of targeted product safety checks at the border. In 2024-25 this resulted in checks covering over 14 million goods at the border, with 2.63 million non-compliant goods refused entry to the UK.

Through our Trade Strategy, Industrial Strategy, and Small Business Plan, we are putting in place the policies, support, and services needed to drive export-led growth. For the first time, DBT is integrating its support for SMEs across all sectors in a single, accessible platform - the Business Growth Service - designed to help businesses across the UK start, scale, and succeed globally.

From tailored market advice and free Export Academy training to UK Export Finance and our on-the-ground network around the world that facilitate trade missions, we are making it easier for businesses to navigate global markets. We continue to review how we can improve our support, including how we connect firms to new opportunities, and build the capability to seize them.

Though our Trade Strategy, Industrial Strategy, and Small Business Plan, we are putting in place the policies, support, and services needed to drive export-led business growth.

We continue to review how we can improve our support, and as part of this process, we target resources that will have the greatest impact for UK businesses.

From tailored market advice and free training to UK Export Finance and our on-the-ground international network, we are helping connect firms to new opportunities, and build the capability to seize them.

Our modern Industrial Strategy will drive growth in Scotland's globally competitive sectors – from advanced manufacturing in Glasgow and the UK’s second-largest financial services sector in Edinburgh, to life sciences in Dundee and Aberdeen’s status as a global energy capital. Investments including up to £750 million in a new supercomputer at the University of Edinburgh and our support for the Acorn Carbon Capture and Storage project will have a major positive impact on Scottish growth.

The Department places significant importance on the tenants needs, and complying with consumer protection standards when completing retrofit works.

The Department takes an iterative approach to schemes - such as increasing the provision of modern low carbon heating technologies under the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund Wave 3 – and conducts robust evaluation of delivery. These findings, such as in the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund Wave 2.1 Process Evaluation report (available here), highlight delivery successes and challenges, and enable the adoption of new techniques.

The government is currently consulting on introducing minimum energy efficiency standards for the social rented sector. We will be engaging closely with the sector throughout the consultation process.

The Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund provides grant funding for social housing landlords to improve the energy performance of their properties through installing energy efficiency measures and low carbon technologies. Wave 3 of the fund, for which allocations were announced in March 2025, will deliver up to £1.29 billion of funding.

The Government has committed £13.2 billion over the Spending Review period for the Warm Homes Plan, which will support investment in insulation and low carbon heating to homes across England. Within Wave 3 of the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund, which launched earlier this year, there is a new optional low carbon heating incentive for homes on the gas grid. Up to 10% of homes in an application can access a £20,000 grant per home to install low carbon heating measures. I appreciate Mitsubishi Electric’s recent report, and my officials are engaging with Mitsubishi regarding these findings.

This Government supports significant growth in consumer-led flexibility, as set out in the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan. We are grateful to the Association for Decentralised Energy for its work in this area. In our Action Plan, Government committed to publishing a Flexibility Roadmap in 2025. The Roadmap will set out further detail on how the benefits of clean flexibility will be unlocked for the consumer, following the assessment of relevant evidence.

Consumer led flexibility reduces electricity system costs for all by minimising the amount of peaking generation and associated network infrastructure that needs to be built in the long term. Modelling shows that deploying short duration flexibility such as consumer led flexibility, battery storage and interconnectors, could reduce electricity system costs by up to £70bn by 2050.

Our reforms through the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements to the current national pricing model deliver better incentives for industrial investment in Scotland in the coming years by encouraging market stability and investment. This will support the timely delivery of new generation in the right places – which is designed to lower consumer bills in GB, including Scotland.

Scotland is at the forefront of the drive towards clean energy, with Great British Energy headquartered in Aberdeen and Cromarty Firth recently being awarded £56 million to become the UK’s first floating offshore wind port capable of making turbines at scale.

The Government recognises the importance of tackling AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Creating, possessing, or distributing CSAM, including AI Generated CSAM, is illegal. The Online Safety Act requires services to proactively identify and remove this content. We are taking further action in the Crime and Policing Bill to criminalise CSAM image generators.

As set out in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, we believe most AI systems should be regulated at the point of use, with our expert regulators best placed to do so. Departments are working proactively with regulators to provide clear strategic direction and support them on their AI capability needs.

The Government recognises the importance of tackling AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Creating, possessing, or distributing CSAM, including AI Generated CSAM, is illegal. The Online Safety Act requires services to proactively identify and remove this content. We are taking further action in the Crime and Policing Bill to criminalise CSAM image generators.

As set out in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, we believe most AI systems should be regulated at the point of use, with our expert regulators best placed to do so. Departments are working proactively with regulators to provide clear strategic direction and support them on their AI capability needs.

The Government recognises the importance of tackling AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Creating, possessing, or distributing CSAM, including AI Generated CSAM, is illegal. The Online Safety Act requires services to proactively identify and remove this content. We are taking further action in the Crime and Policing Bill to criminalise CSAM image generators.

As set out in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, we believe most AI systems should be regulated at the point of use, with our expert regulators best placed to do so. Departments are working proactively with regulators to provide clear strategic direction and support them on their AI capability needs.

The Government recognises the importance of tackling AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Creating, possessing, or distributing CSAM, including AI Generated CSAM, is illegal. The Online Safety Act requires services to proactively identify and remove this content. We are taking further action in the Crime and Policing Bill to criminalise CSAM image generators.

As set out in the AI Opportunities Action Plan, we believe most AI systems should be regulated at the point of use, with our expert regulators best placed to do so. Departments are working proactively with regulators to provide clear strategic direction and support them on their AI capability needs.

Child online safety is of utmost importance to the government. Under the Online Safety Act, all user-to-user services likely to be accessed by children have a duty to include provisions in their terms of service specifying how children of any age are prevented from encountering the most harmful content and protected from encountering other types of harmful content.

Services that have age restrictions must specify in their terms of service what measures they are taking to prevent underage access, and they are required apply these terms consistently.

We continue to work with industry to support a sustainable second-hand zero emission vehicle market. The Government expects that the Electric Car Grant (ECG) will have some benefit in the used market due to a higher supply of affordable vehicles in future years, and the grant’s requirement for an 8-year or 100,000-mile warranty for the vehicle’s battery, ensuring it will have a long useful life.

To build demand for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in the UK, the Government introduced a SAF Mandate scheme on 1 January 2025. The scheme sets annually increasing targets for fuel suppliers to ensure a proportion of their jet fuel is SAF, starting at 2% in 2025, reaching 10% by 2030 and 22% by 2040. To help meet the demand generated by the SAF Mandate, government is committed to unlocking investment in UK SAF production. To that end, the government has introduced a SAF Bill which will enable us to deliver a Revenue Certainty Mechanism. We are also supporting the UK SAF industry through a grant funding scheme, the Advanced Fuels Fund, for which £63m of funding is available in 2025/26. Together, these measures will give the investment community the confidence to invest in SAF production in the UK.

The social security system will always be there for those who can’t work.

As part of the recent announcements, we are making changes to the rates in Universal Credit, we will ensure that the incomes of those with the most severe, lifelong conditions who will never be able to work have their incomes protected.

We will also guarantee that for both new and existing claims, those in this group will not need to be reassessed in future.

We are committed to raising the healthiest generation of children ever and giving mental health the same importance as physical health.

Children are being brought up in increasingly digitised environments and are facing new and complex challenges in their childhoods.

We welcome further research exploring the relationship between screentime and social media use and children’s physical and mental health. Departmental policies will remain agile in light of this emerging evidence base.

United Kingdom residents travelling to areas with mosquito-borne diseases face risks that depend on their health, the reason and length of their trip, and the precautions they take, such as vaccinations and measures to prevent bites.

The National Travel Health Network and Centre advises UK travelers to stay safe and healthy while travelling. This includes information on mosquito-borne diseases, tips for avoiding mosquito bites, and specific advice for different destinations on their website, which is available at the following link:

https://travelhealthpro.org.uk

Travelers from the UK going to areas with mosquito-borne diseases should consult a healthcare professional, like a general practitioner or pharmacist, before their trip. Currently, there is no local transmission of these diseases in the UK, and the risk to the public is low.

The UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) Health Effects of Climate Change report indicates that current temperatures in the UK are too low for vectors or transmission cycles to develop. The report can be accessed at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/climate-change-health-effects-in-the-uk

The UKHSA monitors mosquito-borne diseases and has a national plan for invasive mosquitoes, which you can find at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-contingency-plan-for-invasive-mosquitoes

Our National Cancer Plan will cover the whole pathway, including diagnosis.

The Health and Social Care Select Committee's inquiry in 2021 examined evidence relating to the safety of maternity services. Its report, The Safety of Maternity Services in England, made 15 recommendations. The Government's response to the recommendations made by the inquiry is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/safety-of-maternity-services-in-england-government-response/the-governments-response-to-the-health-and-social-care-committee-report-safety-of-maternity-services-in-england

We are not aware of a specific recommendation made by this inquiry regarding the development of guidance for maternity services on involving fathers in those services and using fatherhood to engage men in the health service. The Government response did, however, set out plans to address variations in the quality of care and outcomes, tackle poor workplace culture, consider workforce levels, implement training for delivering safe care, and address disparities in maternal and neonatal outcomes.

We are determined to ensure women, and their families, receive safe, personalised, and compassionate care, and we will continue to work with the National Health Service as it delivers its three-year maternity and neonatal plan, a key theme of which is listening to and working with women and families, including fathers, with compassion.

We are committed to improving men’s health in England, bringing a renewed focus on preventing adverse health outcomes and reducing health inequalities. On 28 November 2024, we announced plans for a Men’s Health Strategy at a Men’s Health Summit, held in partnership with Movember and hosted by Arsenal and the Premier League. The strategy will look at the outcomes and evidence surrounding men’s health and the action we need to take to improve the health of all men. This will include consideration of how to prevent and tackle the biggest health problems. The strategy will be informed by a call for evidence to understand what is working and what more needs to be done.

Travel health services in the United Kingdom are provided by a range of National Health Service and independent healthcare services. In England, all providers offering travel health services that are delivered by a doctor or a nurse must be registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and are subject to normal CQC assessment and inspection procedures. The CQC has specified a minimum standard of practice for practitioners who deliver travel health services and require that training is in line with professional standards published by either the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow or RCN Travel Health Nursing: career and competence development. Further information is available at the following link:

https://www.rcn.org.uk/Professional-Development/publications/rcn-travel-health-nursing-uk-pub-010-573

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) contributes to the health of UK travellers through surveillance, testing, guidance and advice. Surveillance reports on travel-associated infections are published regularly on GOV.UK. UKHSA provides the scientific secretariat for the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the Government on vaccination and immunisation matters, including for travel vaccines. The UK Malaria Expert Advisory Group is responsible for guidelines on malaria prevention for health professionals. UKHSA does not have a remit to standardise the provision of travel health clinical services in the UK.

The Government is fully committed to the transition to electric vehicles and a strong second-hand market for EVs plays an important role in this.

The Company Car Tax regime helps support the used electric vehicle markets, where electric company cars are sold after the end of their lease.

The majority of cars are bought in the UK’s second hand markets. At Autumn Budget the Government announced new Company Car Tax rates for 2028-29 and 2029-30 which will maintain very generous incentives to support electric vehicle take-up, and therefore the entry of electric vehicles into the second-hand market.

Many businesses and public bodies already use e-invoicing in the UK. As announced at Budget 24, HMRC and DBT have run a joint consultation on promoting e-invoicing among UK businesses and the private sector. This consultation closed on 7 May and the government will publish a summary of responses and update on the next steps following this consultation in due course.