Ian Paisley

In recent years we have seen significant improvements in day-ahead wholesale electricity market liquidity. In July 2014 just under 50% of GB final consumption was traded through day-ahead power exchanges. Two years earlier this figure was 28% and 3 years earlier 4.2%1. However, liquidity in forward markets is crucial and this remains a barrier to entry.

In April 2014 Ofgem introduced its reform package (‘Secure & Promote’2) to improve forward market liquidity and wholesale market access for independent market participants. The Government took backstop powers in the Energy Act 2013 to allow it to act should Ofgem’s liquidity reforms be delayed or frustrated.

Competition is at the heart of the Government’s Electricity Market Reforms and independent participants have responded positively to pre-qualification for the Capacity Market. Of the 11GW pre-qualified, this includes 7GW of large CCGT plant – more than 5GW of which is from independent generators. In addition the Off-taker of Last Resort has been introduced to address route-to-market concerns of independent renewables developers. We have also seen significant participation from non-integrated utilities in the early Investment Contracts awarded under the FID Enabling for Renewables process – only 2 of the 8 contracts have been awarded to integrated utilities.

Finally, the independent Competition and Markets Authority is investigating the GB energy markets and will determine whether there are any adverse effects on competition and, if so, what action is required to address them.

[1] Sources: Elexon, Nord Pool, APX Group

2 https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-updates/wholesale-power-market-liquidity-decision-letter

Energy policy is devolved in Northern Ireland, and the responsibility of the Department for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, Northern Ireland. I have had no conversations with power companies in Northern Ireland about their preparations for bad weather.

The Government recognise the value of young people having a hands-on experience of enterprise in schools, colleges and universities.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has introduced a number of measures to help inspire young people and open up opportunities for future careers. For example, seed funding the launch of a new enterprise competition in primary schools, 'Fiver', in partnership with Young Enterprise and Virgin Money.

Last year we asked Lord Young, the Prime Minister's advisor on enterprise, to look at what more could be done. His report, Enterprise for All, was published in June 2014 and makes a number of recommendations across all education sectors to encourage a lifelong experience of enterprise. The Government welcomed the report and will be responding in full this autumn.

We are also recognising the excellent practice that already exists. For example, the Small Business Charter was set up this year to recognise business schools that work with students and local small businesses to promote enterprise.

In addition, See Inside Manufacturing is a partnership between BIS and industry sectors that aims to inspire young people (aged 11-19 years) into manufacturing by dispelling outdated ideas of the industry, providing a more accurate picture of career prospects, and helping young people understand what they need to succeed in manufacturing. It does this by encouraging manufacturing businesses to open their doors and give students the chance to “see behind the scenes” of a modern manufacturing company. Last year 6,300 young people and their teachers attended events up and down the country, taking part in over 175 visits and events throughout the UK.

Furthermore, the Government’s ambitious programme of reform for adult vocational education in England is based on instilling rigour in qualifications, teaching and testing and ensuring that skills provision is more responsive to the needs of employers and learners. As part of our reform of apprenticeships, new apprenticeship standards will be expected to meet professional registration requirements in sectors where these exist (for example, in engineering, science and accountancy). This will support the drive to improve the quality of apprenticeships and ensure that apprentices are trained to the level of professional competence required by employers and the sector they work in.

BEIS works across the UK government and alongside the Devolved Administrations to deliver our carbon budgets and net zero target for 2050. Analysis by the Committee on Climate Change of low-cost pathways to net zero has suggested that an expanded domestic supply of bioenergy feedstocks could be valuable in meeting those targets.

BEIS does not directly fund the promotion of bioenergy crops and their processing. BEIS currently supports the production of low carbon electricity and heat from bioenergy feedstocks through schemes such as the Feed in Tariff and Renewable Heat Incentive, and continues to explore the scope for innovation to address economic and technical issues facing the bioenergy sector.

Land use and agriculture are devolved matters.

On 11 May, the Government published its COVID-19 recovery strategy which sets out a roadmap to a phased recovery. As per my Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s announcement of the five ministerial-led taskforces which form part of this recovery effort, BEIS is responsible for two of the five ministerial-led taskforces: Pubs and restaurants and Non-essential retail (including salons). Phase 2 of the approach will look at re-opening closed businesses in these sectors and the taskforces will be working closely with key stakeholders to begin reopening retail businesses in phases from 1 June.

These taskforces will aim to look at various issues which impact the closed businesses and we will develop plans for how and when closed sectors can reopen safely in due time, guided by the science and experts.

The British Business Bank’s Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme has supported 299 loans to SMEs in Northern Ireland, with a total value of £43.6m.

There are 19 EFG Accredited Lenders for Northern Ireland, which are publicly available to view on the British Business Bank’s website.

The Government works closely with the UK aerospace sector, through the Industrial Strategy and Aerospace Growth Partnership, to support the competitive position of UK companies.

Through this partnership, Government has co-funded, with industry, a £4bn research and development programme from 2013 to 2026; a £250m productivity programme, Sharing in Growth (SiG); and a £40m technology collaboration programme aimed at smaller supply chain businesses, the National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme (NATEP). Government has also co-funded, with industry, the creation of an additional 500 Masters level postgraduate places for the UK aerospace sector. Many of these students are now working in the UK aerospace sector.

These programmes have helped hundreds of UK aerospace companies develop technologies and continue to be competitive in this global industry.

The British Business Bank’s Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) facilitates business loans to smaller businesses that are viable but unable to obtain finance from their lender due to having insufficient security to meet the lender’s normal requirements.

Since the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme commenced in January 2009, it has facilitated 290 loans to SMEs in Northern Ireland, with a total value of over £41m.

The Integrated Review Refresh, which this government published in March 2023, sets out in clear terms the UK’s policy towards China.

The UK is a world-leading destination for foreign students, including from China, where they add to the academic richness of UK universities. However, a key part of the International Education Strategy is diversification. Universities must ensure they have appropriate processes in place to manage the risks associated with dependence on a single source of funding, whether that is from a single organisation or a single country. The Office for Students (OfS), the regulator of higher education in England, monitors the risk of over-reliance on overseas income at a sector level.

The department recognises concerns about overseas interference in the higher education sector and regularly assess the risks facing academia. The department has acted to remove government funding from Confucius Institutes in the UK. The department will continue to take steps to significantly strengthen the UK’s protections from overseas interference in our higher education sector, helping to safeguard intellectual property and sensitive research.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 will introduce increased transparency and the monitoring of certain overseas funding received by higher education providers in England. The protection of individuals’ rights, freedoms, and safety in the UK is taken very seriously. Attempts by foreign powers to intimidate, harass or harm individuals or communities in the UK will not be tolerated.

The department has committed, in the Integrated Review Refresh, to review the full set of legislative and other provisions designed to protect the academic sector, in order to identify what more can be or should be done.

The Integrated Review Refresh, which this government published in March 2023, sets out in clear terms the UK’s policy towards China.

The UK is a world-leading destination for foreign students, including from China, where they add to the academic richness of UK universities. However, a key part of the International Education Strategy is diversification. Universities must ensure they have appropriate processes in place to manage the risks associated with dependence on a single source of funding, whether that is from a single organisation or a single country. The Office for Students (OfS), the regulator of higher education in England, monitors the risk of over-reliance on overseas income at a sector level.

The department recognises concerns about overseas interference in the higher education sector and regularly assess the risks facing academia. The department has acted to remove government funding from Confucius Institutes in the UK. The department will continue to take steps to significantly strengthen the UK’s protections from overseas interference in our higher education sector, helping to safeguard intellectual property and sensitive research.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 will introduce increased transparency and the monitoring of certain overseas funding received by higher education providers in England. The protection of individuals’ rights, freedoms, and safety in the UK is taken very seriously. Attempts by foreign powers to intimidate, harass or harm individuals or communities in the UK will not be tolerated.

The department has committed, in the Integrated Review Refresh, to review the full set of legislative and other provisions designed to protect the academic sector, in order to identify what more can be or should be done.

The Integrated Review Refresh, which this government published in March 2023, sets out in clear terms the UK’s policy towards China.

The UK is a world-leading destination for foreign students, including from China, where they add to the academic richness of UK universities. However, a key part of the International Education Strategy is diversification. Universities must ensure they have appropriate processes in place to manage the risks associated with dependence on a single source of funding, whether that is from a single organisation or a single country. The Office for Students (OfS), the regulator of higher education in England, monitors the risk of over-reliance on overseas income at a sector level.

The department recognises concerns about overseas interference in the higher education sector and regularly assess the risks facing academia. The department has acted to remove government funding from Confucius Institutes in the UK. The department will continue to take steps to significantly strengthen the UK’s protections from overseas interference in our higher education sector, helping to safeguard intellectual property and sensitive research.

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 will introduce increased transparency and the monitoring of certain overseas funding received by higher education providers in England. The protection of individuals’ rights, freedoms, and safety in the UK is taken very seriously. Attempts by foreign powers to intimidate, harass or harm individuals or communities in the UK will not be tolerated.

The department has committed, in the Integrated Review Refresh, to review the full set of legislative and other provisions designed to protect the academic sector, in order to identify what more can be or should be done.

I refer the hon. Members to the answer I gave on 23 June 2020 to Question 54195.

As both my right hon. Friends, the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer have made clear, the government will do whatever it takes to support people affected by COVID-19.

The government encourages universities and private hall providers to be fair in their decisions about rent charges for this period. A number of universities and large companies have waived rents for the summer term or released students early from their contracts.

Students will continue to receive scheduled payments of loans towards their living costs for the remainder of the current, 2019/20, academic year. Students who are tenants with individual private landlords are entitled to support if they are impacted by COVID-19, such as repayable rent reductions or postponements.

Accommodation providers should not instruct students to return home. If any accommodation provider did formally instruct a student to leave the property then it would be unacceptable to continue to charge student rents.

If a student thinks their accommodation provider is treating them unfairly, they can raise a complaint under the accommodation codes of practice as long as their provider is a code member. The codes can be found at: https://www.thesac.org.uk/; https://www.unipol.org.uk/the-code/how-to-complain and: https://www.rla.org.uk/about/nrla-code-of-practice.shtml.

The legal duty aims to ensure key organisations in a local area collaborate in a multi-agency approach to tackle serious violence. The Department for Education is working with the Home Office to ensure that the education sector is a key part of the multi-agency partnership. We will be engaging with schools and colleges, including alternative provision institutions, and aim to publish guidance to help support education providers to understand the level of commitment the duty may place on them.

The Government is taking forward an ambitious programme of action on behaviour, exclusion and alternative provision (AP) which will respect head teachers’ powers to use exclusion when they need to, enable schools to support children at risk of exclusion, and ensure that excluded children continue to receive a good education. We will expand AP and improve the quality of the sector so that pupils in AP receive an education on a par with that received by their mainstream peers and receive the support they need in other areas. Further information on the timeframes for this work will be provided in due course.

The Department for Education is working closely with over 1600 schools across the country who are acting, on a voluntary basis, as early adopters of relationships education; relationships and sex education (RSE); and health education. As early adopters, these schools have indicated their intention to start teaching the new requirements: relationships education (for primary aged pupils), RSE (for secondary aged pupils) and health education (all pupils in state-funded schools), during the academic year 2019/20, ahead of the subjects being compulsory from September 2020.

The Department is working closely with these early adopter schools to develop a programme of support. Recently four national conferences took place, to help early adopters plan for delivery of the new subjects, and to enable the Department to learn about their current practices and assess support needs. Following feedback from the conferences, consideration is being given to what further regional support may be required.

This engagement with early adopter schools is helping the Department develop its programme of support for the new subjects, which will be available to all teachers from spring 2020. The programme will focus on tools that improve schools’ practice and will offer opportunities for teachers to improve subject knowledge, build confidence and share best practice. This support will be accessed through a new online service and will include an implementation guide, which will accompany the statutory guidance, case studies from early adopter schools, and innovative materials to support staff training. We will continue to test this package with early adopter schools.

The first 25 Mental Health Support Team (MHST) trailblazer sites, delivering 59 MHSTs were announced in December 2018. These MHSTs are all expected to have completed their training by the end of 2019/early 2020 and will be fully operational following this. As a result, it is too early to assess their effectiveness in schools and colleges.

The national, early evaluation of the trailblazer programme formally commenced on 1 October 2019. The protocol for the first phase of the evaluation is available at https://fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk/award/16/138/31, and findings are expected to be published in Spring/Summer 2021.

Healthcare and social care are devolved matters.

The Department jointly commissioned with Department for Health and Social Care an Expert Working Group to look at how the mental health needs of looked-after children, previously looked-after children and care leavers in England could be better met. In November 2017, the group made a set of recommendations including on improving assessment of the mental health needs of looked-after children.

The Department is taking forward a number of these recommendations through our £1 million mental health assessment pilot programme, which is testing improved approaches to the mental health and wellbeing element of the health assessment on entry to care.

The Department has appointed SQW Limited to carry out an evaluation of the pilot and fieldwork is currently underway. This will help inform our assessment of the changes needed to the mental health assessments of looked-after children.

The Department is committed to reforming alternative provision (AP) including expanding and attracting high quality AP as an integral part of the free schools programme. We will announce the successful applicants of the current wave of AP and special Free Schools in early 2020.

As of December 2019, 81% of pupil referral units, AP academies and AP free schools were rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. The Department’s reforms will continue to improve the quality of the sector, building on the good practice being tested in our £4 million AP Innovation Fund projects and learning from the effective approaches my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education has seen in a number of his visits to AP institutions.

Delivering good quality school places is a top priority for this Government. The Department has committed £7 billion between 2015 and 2021 to deliver new school places, which is on top of investment in the free schools programme. The Department is on track to create one million places this decade, the largest increase in school capacity in at least two generations.

As of March 2019, there are 1.9 million more children in ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ schools compared to 2010. This represents 85% of children compared to just 66% in 2010 - and that is in part down to the Department’s reforms.

As of 14 June 2019, there are 446 open free schools, 50 University Technical Colleges and 27 studio schools. These will provide over 290,000 places when at capacity. The Department has approved a further 286 applications (including one UTC) from groups it is now working with to establish schools. In addition, in March 2019, the Department announced that it will run competitions in successful local authority areas to open and run 37 new special and two new alternative provision free schools.

The Department welcomes the National Literacy Trust’s research on reading in both print and digital forms.

The Department encourages children to develop the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information, whatever the format. Research suggests that reading for pleasure is more important for children’s educational development than their parents’ level of education.

There is sound evidence that systematic synthetic phonics is a highly effective method of teaching reading to children. Phonics performance is improving: in 2018, there were 163,000 more 6 year olds on track to become fluent readers compared to 2012. This represented 82% of pupils meeting the expected standard in the phonics screening check, compared to just 58% when the check was introduced in 2012.

Building on the success of our phonics partnerships and phonics roadshows programmes, in 2018 we launched a £26.3 million English Hubs Programme. Hub schools are taking a leading role in improving the teaching of early reading through systematic synthetic phonics, early language development, and reading for pleasure. We have appointed 34 primary schools across England as English Hubs.

This government takes anti-Semitism extremely seriously. There is no place in our society - including within higher education – for hatred or any form of harassment, discrimination or racism, including anti-Semitism.

Higher education providers are autonomous organisations, independent from government. They have a clear responsibility to provide a safe and inclusive environment.

In September 2015, the government asked Universities UK (UUK) to set up a Harassment Taskforce to consider what more can be done to address harassment and hate crime on campus, including antisemitism. The taskforce’s report, ‘Changing the Culture’, published in October 2016, recommended a zero-tolerance approach to harassment and hate crime.

On 27 July 2017, UUK published a directory of case studies detailing the innovative projects universities have developed to address the taskforce’s recommendations. These include Goldsmith’s hate crime reporting centre (case study 11) which is a joint initiative with the local authority in Lewisham and the Metropolitan Police, which provides students and staff with a safe space to report incidents. These are published on UUK’s website: http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Pages/changing-the-culture-case-studies.aspx. In addition, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has provided £1.8 million for projects to improve responses to hate crime and online harassment on campus.

HEFCE is currently working with UUK to test the sector’s response to the Taskforce’s recommendations and the results of this will be published early this year.

On the 16 January, the government announced a partnership between the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government and the Department for Education. These departments are providing £144,261 of joint funding for a new programme to support universities in tackling antisemitism on campus. The programme will be delivered by the Holocaust Educational Trust and will involve 200 students and university leaders from across the country visiting the former Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon their return, they will take part in a seminar, which will deal explicitly with campus issues and how to identify and tackle antisemitism.