Josh Babarinde

The Government published its Digital Inclusion Action Plan, which outlines the first five actions we are taking over the next year to boost digital inclusion in every corner of the UK.

These will be targeted at local initiatives for boosting digital skills and confidence, widening access to devices and connectivity, and getting support to people in their own communities. This includes improving digital literacy, increasing digital upskilling, and enhancing support for the Essential Digital Skills framework, which helps businesses and individuals to get the digital skills they need.

The Online Safety Act gives social media companies new duties to protect all UK users on their services, including users based in Eastbourne and the South East. Under the regulation, platforms need to take steps to reduce the risk their services are used to facilitate illegal activity. They need to remove illegal content when it does appear. They need to offer UK users reporting routes so that they can report illegal content, and they need to take effective action in response. Ofcom oversees these duties and has strong powers to enforce compliance.

The Online Safety Act requires all platforms to proactively tackle the most harmful illegal content, including illegal incitement to violence and sexual offences, including where these are targeted at men and boys.

Services must employ age-appropriate measures to protect all children from legal abusive and hateful content, including misandry.

Category 1 services will have extra duties where abuse is not illegal, requiring them to offer user empowerment tools, enabling all adult users greater control over their online experience. Category 1 services will also need to remove legal misandry content, when prohibited in their terms of service.

Public libraries are funded by local authorities and each local authority is responsible for assessing the needs of their local communities and designing a library service to meet those needs within available resources.

The Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 requires the Secretary of State to “superintend and promote the improvement of the public library service provided by local authorities in England”. To assist this function the department regularly monitors local authority library service provision.

I understand that as at 31 December 2023 the statutory library provision delivered by East Sussex County Council was 17 local authority-run static libraries. Two of these static libraries are located in the Eastbourne constituency: Eastbourne and Hampden Park.

We are committed to ensuring that funding is targeted effectively at the places and services that need it most and allocated in a way that empowers local leaders to deliver against local priorities. Recent decisions taken at the Spending Review result in an average real terms increase in local authority core spending power of 2.6% per year between 2026-27 to 2028-29.

The Government is determined to ensure that everyone has access to quality sport and physical activity opportunities. That is why we have committed another £400 million to transform facilities across the whole of the UK over the next four years. This funding builds upon the additional £100 million that was announced for the Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities Programme in March. Details regarding funded projects can be found via the recently updated 2024/25 project lists, which are publicly available here - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/multi-sport-grassroots-facilities-programme-projects-2024-to-2025 - and is also available in the Library of the House.

The Government provides the majority of funding for grassroots sports and health club facilities in England, through our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England, which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding in areas of greatest need to tackle inactivity levels through community-led solutions.

We will now work closely with sporting bodies and local leaders to establish what communities need, and then set out further plans on how future funding will be allocated across the UK.

Sustainability of local journalism across the country is an area of particular concern for this Government, including in Eastbourne and East Sussex. Government understands the important work that local news does across the UK, including outlets such as the Argus, the Eastbourne Reporter and the Eastbourne Herald. We are developing a Local Media Strategy, in recognition of the importance of this vital sector. Our vision is a thriving local media that can continue to play an invaluable role as a key channel of trustworthy information at local level, reporting on the issues that matter to communities, reflecting their contributions and perspectives, and helping to foster a self-confident nation in which everyone feels that their contribution is part of an inclusive national story.

We are working across Government and with other stakeholders as the Strategy develops, and we recently held a roundtable discussion with local news editors to discuss our planned approach and collaboration with industry on the Strategy. An industry working group has now been set up to consider the issues in more detail and we will announce more in the coming months.

Museums and galleries enrich communities, creating thriving places for people to live and visit.

We’re working with Arts Council England and others to understand the sector’s priorities and needs, looking at the sector as a whole: from our commitment to restoring stability to Local Government, to our forthcoming review of Arts Council England.

Regional art galleries are a major beneficiary of DCMS’s £86 million Museum Estate and Development Fund, with Round 4 currently underway.

To ensure quality and nutrition in meals for the future, the department is acting quickly with experts across the sector to revise the school food standards, so every school is supported with the latest nutrition guidance.

School governors and trustees have a statutory duty to ensure compliance with these school food standards. To improve understanding of the school food standards and give governing boards confidence to hold their school leaders to account, the department, along with National Governance Association, developed an online training course on school food for governors and trustees.

Additionally, the department has announced that we are extending free school meals to all children from households in receipt of Universal Credit from September 2026. Giving half a million more children access to a nutritious meal during the school day will lift 100,000 out of poverty and lead to higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes, meaning they get the best possible education and chance to succeed in work and life.

This government is transforming the apprenticeships offer into a new growth and skills offer, which will provide greater flexibility to employers and learners across the country, including in Eastbourne and East Sussex, and support the industrial strategy.

From August, the department will be introducing seven new foundation apprenticeships for young people in targeted sectors, including construction and the built environment, digital, and health and social care. We are also reducing the apprenticeship minimum duration to eight months so that shorter apprenticeships are possible from August. These flexibilities will help more people learn new high-quality skills at work and fuel innovation in businesses across the country.

To support employers to access apprenticeships, the government pays £1,000 to employers when they take on apprentices aged 16 to 18 years old, and for apprentices aged 19 to 24 years old who have an education, health and care plan or have been in local authority care. We will also provide £2,000 payments to employers for every foundation apprentice they take on and retain. Employers also benefit from not being required to pay anything towards employees’ National Insurance for all apprentices aged up to 25 when they earn less than £50,270 a year.

The government’s Plan for Change sets out a commitment to give children the best start in life, breaking the link between background and opportunity.

From the start of September 2024, eligible working parents have been entitled to 15 hours a week of early education and care from the term after their child turns nine months. From September 2025 this will extend to 30 hours, matching the three and four-year-old offer to support children right up until starting school.

In 2025/26 alone, we plan to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements. This represents a more than 30% increase compared to 2024/25 as we roll out the expansion of the entitlements, so eligible working parents of children aged from nine months can access 30 hours of funded childcare.

As announced at Spending Review 2025, the government will provide an additional £1.6 billion per year by 2028/29, compared to 2025/26, to continue the expansion of government-funded childcare for working parents.

Additionally, the Universal Credit childcare offer supports claimants with the costs of childcare, no matter how many hours they work.

Tax-Free Childcare remains available for working parents of children aged 0-11, or up to 17 for eligible disabled children.

As announced in the Spending Review, the government is making over £1 billion of additional investment per year in skills by 2028/29.

This will support and grow the wide range of technical routes and work-based training available for people of all ages across the country including in Eastbourne. This includes:

• Widening the apprenticeships offer into a growth and skills offer, including new foundation apprenticeships, which will give more young people a foot in the door at the start of their working life.

• T levels, a high-quality technical education option for young people, including a valuable workplace industry placement which prepares them for work.

• Higher Technical Qualifications, occupation-focussed level 4 to 5 qualifications, approved and quality marked as providing the skills demanded in the workplace by employers.

• Skills Bootcamps giving learners the chance to build sector-specific skills with a job interview on completion and ‘Free Courses for Jobs’ giving learners the chance to access high value level 3 qualifications.

We have also strengthened legislation to ensure all secondary pupils have multiple opportunities for meaningful encounters with providers of technical education and apprenticeships.

As part of our Opportunity Mission, this government wants to widen access to the arts.

Music Hubs continue to play a vital role across England with grant funding of £76 million for the 2025/26 academic year. This includes nearly £2 million for the Sussex Music Hub partnership led by Create Music, to support schools in East Sussex, including Eastbourne.

On 18 March 2025, the department announced a National Centre for Arts and Music Education to support schools across England to teach all arts subjects. Our intention is to launch in September 2026, with further details in the autumn.

The government also established the Curriculum and Assessment Review. This seeks to deliver a rich, broad, inclusive and innovative curriculum, including music, art and drama. The final report and government response will be published this autumn.

We are legislating so that, following the Review and implementation, academies will be required to teach the reformed national curriculum, alongside maintained schools. This will ensure arts education is an entitlement for pupils in every state-funded school.

The Government is backing British farming. We are prioritising investment that supports the Government’s Plan for Change and building on the Secretary of State’s work to reform Defra to drive growth while maintaining a steadfast commitment to farming, food security, and nature’s recovery.

We are investing more than £2.7 billion a year in farming and nature recovery. Funding for the Environmental Land Management Schemes paid to farmers will increase by 150% from £800 million in 2023/24 to £2 billion by 2028/29.

Overall farmers and land managers will benefit from an average of £2.3 billion a year through the Farming and Countryside Programme, and up to £400 million from additional nature schemes, including those for tree planting and peatland restoration.

We do not hold that information at a constituency level.

We are committed to supporting coastal communities and ensuring flood risk management is fit for the challenges we face now and in the future.

Delivering on the Government’s Plan for Change, this Government is investing a record £2.65 billion over 2024/25 and 2025/26 for the construction of new flood schemes, and the maintenance and repair of existing ones.

With this funding, 1,000 flood schemes have been or will continue to be supported, better protecting 52,000 properties by March 2026.

The Government launched a consultation 3 June on proposals to reform the way we fund flood and coastal defences. We want to ensure funding for flood defences is distributed more effectively across the country – to protect properties across all communities including in rural, coastal, and poorer areas. The 8-week consultation is open to everyone and all stakeholders, including organisations that play a role in flood resilience, community groups and members of the public, are invited to be part of the consultation.

The Environment Agency (EA) is responsible for monitoring the water quality of designated bathing water sites, reporting bathing water quality, informing the public of pollution which could affect bathing waters and investigating and identifying actions to improve bathing water quality. Throughout the bathing season (May to September), the EA takes up to 20 water samples at each of England's designated bathing waters and tests them for two bacteria, E. coli and intestinal enterococci, which can indicate pollution that can pose a risk to bathers' health.

There is one designated bathing water in the Eastbourne constituency – Eastbourne bathing water, which is currently classified as ‘Good’. The EA SWIMFO website, shows the latest water quality sample results for all the bathing waters in England. So far this season, all results have been within the excellent threshold for Eastbourne bathing water.

Local authorities review and assess air quality in their areas and publish an annual report on their actions to improve local air quality including local monitoring data which is assessed by Defra. In their most recent report, Eastbourne Borough Council indicated they were monitoring NO2 levels at 21 sites with additional monitoring of particulate matter at 2 sites. No exceedances of the Air Quality Objectives set by Defra for nitrogen dioxide or particulate matter were recorded at any monitoring location. Decrease in NO2 concentrations were seen at all 21 monitoring locations.

This Government has committed to empower all Protected Landscapes, including the South Downs National Park, to be greener, wilder and more accessible.

In the 25-26 financial year, we are providing £9.6 million of core resource funding to South Downs National Park Authority, alongside £2 million capital investment. We have also extended programmes such as Farming in Protected Landscapes, providing £30 million to support projects in our National Landscapes and National Parks, until March 2026. In 25-26, the overall Farming in Protected Landscapes allocation to the South Downs National Park is £756,488.

On the 16 December we committed to strengthen their underpinning legislation and governance. We will co-design the new legislation with partners but intend to strengthen the statutory purposes of National Landscapes and National Parks to give them a clear mandate to recover nature. Through this recovery, Protected Landscapes will fight climate change, foster a thriving green economy, and support the mental and physical health of the nation.

The legislation will also update their governance to ensure it creates the conditions for success, innovation and collaboration. This will include providing National Park Authorities with a general power of competence – which will clarify their legal framework and remove barriers to integrated delivery.

We have also published guidance for relevant authorities to make expectations clear in relation to their duty to seek to further the purposes of Protected Landscapes.

Operators must make the best use of train paths when planning their timetables to meet current and future demand, while ensuring value for the taxpayer. Govia Thameslink Railway is currently engaging with stakeholders and actively developing proposals for a direct service between Eastbourne and London Bridge and will ensure that stakeholders are kept updated on any progress in this area as soon as possible.

On 12 February, the Department and Active Travel England announced local authority allocations of the Consolidated Active Travel Fund. Of this funding, East Sussex County Council has been awarded £1,110,557 in revenue funding for 2024/25 and capital funding for 2025/26. It will be for East Sussex County Council to allocate this funding in line with local investment priorities, including to support schemes in the Eastbourne constituency.

The Spending Review announced £616 million for active travel infrastructure from 2026-27 to 2029-30, Active Travel England will set out future allocations from this funding in due course.

The Government also announced a further £2.3 billion to local authorities through the Local Transport Grant (LTG). This funding will support local authorities to invest in their local transport priorities, including schemes to support walking and cycling. East Sussex County Council has been awarded over £22 million up to 2029/30 through the LTG.

The English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS) provides free off-peak bus travel to those with eligible disabilities and those of state pension age, currently sixty-six. The ENCTS costs around £700 million annually and any changes to the statutory obligations, would therefore need to be carefully considered for its impact on the scheme’s financial sustainability.

However, local authorities in England have the power to offer concessions in addition to their statutory obligations, such as lowering the age of eligibility. Additional local concessions are provided and funded by local authorities from local resources.

The government has confirmed £955 million for the 2025 to 2026 financial year to support and improve bus services in England outside London. This includes £243 million for bus operators and £712 million allocated to local authorities across the country. East Sussex County Council have been allocated £10.3 million of this funding. Funding allocated to local authorities to improve services for passengers can be used in whichever way they wish. This could include extending the discretionary concessions available.

We are overhauling the fares and ticketing system to make it easier for passengers to trust that they are buying the right ticket and getting the best fare. With the move to Great British Railways, passengers will be able to receive a more consistent offer across the network. We need to balance affordability for both passengers and taxpayers as we reform fares and deliver Great British Railways, ensuring everyone gets a fair deal.

I recognise the continued disappointment felt by communities and businesses in Kent about the continued cessation of Eurostar services. I too am keen to see the reinstatement of these services, recognising this is a commercial decision for Eurostar.

The Government is engaging with Kent stakeholders, including MPs, councillors and representative organisations to discuss this issue and is committed to continue to explore potential solutions including with potential new operators.

The Get Britain Working White Paper published in November set out plans to deliver fundamental reform of our health, employment and skills system, that will help support economically inactive people in all areas in England get back into work.

We committed to:

• Delivering a new jobs and careers service to support people to get into and on at work, available to everyone regardless of whether they are in receipt of benefits.
• Asking local areas across England, including the Greater London Authority, to develop local Get Britain Working plans which are intended to join up new support and enable local areas to develop a system wide approach to tackling economic inactivity.
• Funding Trailblazers to help accelerate a more locally led and joined up approach to tackling economic inactivity and the rising number of young people who are not participating in education, employment or training.
• Delivering a Youth Guarantee for 18-21 year olds in England so that young people benefit from support to access education, training opportunities or help to find work.
• Launching Connect to Work, a forthcoming voluntary, locally led, Supported Employment programme that will help, primarily economically inactive, disabled people, people with health conditions and other complex barriers to employment to get into and stay in work.

The Greater London area will host several Trailblazers, covering both inactivity and youth. This will involve working closely with a range of local partners, including those based in West London. Additional funding will also be given to the Greater London Authority to support the development of their local Get Britain Working plan, to cover the four sub-regional London partnership areas delivering Connect to Work.

Employers are crucial in enhancing employment opportunities and supporting disabled people and those with health conditions to thrive in the workforce.

The Disability Confident Scheme encourages employers to create disability inclusive workplaces and to support disabled people to get work and get on in work. The scheme covers all disabilities, including hidden disabilities.

In addition, DWP has a digital information service for employers, (www.support-with-employee-health-and-disability.dwp.gov.uk), which provides tailored guidance to businesses to support employees to remain in work. This includes guidance on health disclosures and having conversations about health, plus guidance on legal obligations, including statutory sick pay and making reasonable adjustments.

In January this year, we launched an expert academic panel to advise us on boosting neurodiversity awareness and inclusion at work. The panel will consider the reasons why neurodivergent people have poor experiences in the workplace, and a low overall employment rate, making their recommendations to employers and government in the summer.

The Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions and Business and Trade have asked Sir Charlie Mayfield to lead an independent review, considering how best to support and enable employers to recruit and retain more people with health conditions and disabilities, promote healthy workplaces, and support more people to stay in or return to work from periods of sickness absence. Sir Charlie Mayfield will deliver his final report in the autumn.