Asked by: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether (a) charities and (b) other bodies were involved in the organisation of the Prime Minister's visit to Haughton Academy in Darlington on 29 January 2024.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
As has been the practice under successive administrations, official visits by the Prime Minister are organised by his or her office - in this case, liaising directly with the Academy.
Asked by: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much was spent on the NHS frontline digitisation programme in the 2022-23 financial year; and what assessment she has made of the impact of that expenditure.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
In 2022/23, the Frontline Digitisation programme provided £393 million of capital funding and £45.29 million of revenue funding directly to 159 NHS secondary care provider trusts.
The funding is closely monitored throughout the year by the Frontline Digitisation programme’s finance team. The programme’s engagement and assurance teams also monitor progress and delivery throughout the year.
Asked by: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to his Department’s transparency data Spending over £500 with an electronic purchasing card solution for September 2023, updated on 20 December 2023, what the purpose was of spending £630 with See Tickets on Other Miscellaneous Expenses.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The expenditure of £630 relates to the purchase of 30 tickets to a UK Parliament Multimedia Tour on 9 August 2023. This formed part of a summer internship induction day. The tour gave interns knowledge on the history, heritage and work of UK Parliament today as they begin working for Defra.
Asked by: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much has been spent on improving cyber security of the health and care system in each year since 2016; and how much and what proportion of that expenditure was (a) internal and (b) on contracted suppliers.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The information requested on cyber spending covers sensitive details about cyber security investment for the National Health Service. Releasing this information at the level of any annual breakdown may assist in determining the effectiveness of detecting cyber-attacks on the NHS, and could compromise measures to protect NHS IT systems, leaving them vulnerable to future cyber-attacks.
However, in total, £338 million has been invested nationally to improve the cyber security of the health and care system between 2016 and 2023. This is core spend and excludes investment by local organisations, and wider national or local IT investment which supports better security, such as Microsoft licensing for NHS organisations.
Cyber improvement programmes will always seek to use internal resource where skillsets are available. External subject matter expertise support is brought in to support delivery where these are not available within the Department.
Asked by: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 329 of his Departmental Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23, how much and what proportion of the £432 million allocated for NHS technology programmes was used for (a) improvements for managing and sharing digital patient records between health care providers across the country, (b) transforming remote monitoring of patients and (c) raising digital maturity; what the outcomes of that expenditure was; and whether external suppliers were contracted for the purposes of delivering that work.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
In 2022/23, the Frontline Digitisation programme provided £393 million of capital funding and £45.29 million of revenue funding directly to 159 National Health Service secondary care provider trusts. The figures referred to by the Department are a contribution to the overall Transformation Portfolio, which funds a wide array of work, including the deployment of the Electronic Patient Record Systems and Shared Care Records. The intended outcome of this expenditure is to support the implementation of digital capabilities and enable infrastructure to meet our core digitisation standards and improve digital maturity.
As part of digitising adult social care, £2.3 million supported approximately 13,000 people with vital signs remote monitoring technology over 2022/23. The intended outcome of this expenditure is to reduce avoidable hospital admissions and improve quality of care. Funding allocations were agreed directly with integrated care boards and NHS trusts. However, external suppliers may have been contracted at a local level.
Asked by: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the implementation plan for a cyber resilient health and adult social care system in England has been published.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The purpose of the implementation plan is to provide details on how we are going to be delivering our strategy over the current spending period. The plan will be published in spring 2024, but we are already delivering on the strategy through an ambitious Cyber Improvement Programme, aiming to invest up to £147.6 million by April 2025.
This programme is looking to further strengthen existing national cyber security controls for health and care, which already includes cyber monitoring 24 hours a day, seven days a week, through NHS England’s Cyber Security Operations Centre, national-scale defences from cyberattack, such as Secure Boundary, and nationally provided cyber incident response contracts in the event of a cyber incident.
Asked by: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether a supplier working group to better facilitate ongoing communication and dialogue with industry relating to health and social care data and cyber security has been established.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
We have multiple mechanisms for engaging and working closely with suppliers, including supplier summits, direct relationships and through local organisations. In addition, we will shortly be launching the Cyber Suppliers Network to facilitate dialogue and visibility of ongoing efforts to more effectively secure data and manage cybersecurity.
Asked by: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of Multi-Sports Grassroots Facilities programme projects 2023-24 on the (a) engagement and (b) participation of women and girls in sport.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Opposition Chief Whip (Commons)
Sport and physical activity are incredibly important for our physical and mental health and this government is committed to ensuring that everyone is able to play sport and be active, including women and girls.
As part of our more than £300 million investment in multi-sport grassroots facilities, our delivery partners assess all potential projects against their ability to deliver increased participation of under-represented groups - including women and girls, ethnic minority communities and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Any project receiving over £25,000 in England must also have an equal access women and girls plan in place.
The Government also recently announced £25 million for the Lionesses Futures Fund - topped up with £5 million additional investment from the FA - specifically to deliver up to 30 state of the art 3G artificial pitches across the country with gold-standard provision for women and girls. Reserved peak-time slots, women and girls only evenings and priority booking for women and girls’ teams will be used to drive up opportunities to get into sport. There will also be dedicated women’s changing rooms and shower facilities and accessible toilets.
We are conducting a programme wide impact evaluation. This will measure the extent to which the programme has delivered increases in participation among women and girls so that these interventions can be applied more widely if successful.
Asked by: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the (a) budget and (b) spending was on remediation of legacy IT systems across central Government in each of the last three years; and what proportion of the overall digital and technology budget for central Government does this spending represent.
Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Individual departmental spending on the remediation of legacy IT systems is the responsibility of each department.
Asked by: Julie Elliott (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Fifty-first Report of the Committee of Public Accounts of Session 2022-23 on Tackling Defra’s ageing digital services, HC 737, published on 10 May 2023, what steps his Department has taken to replace legacy computer systems since the publication of that report.
Answered by Mark Spencer
We continue to invest in replacing legacy IT systems, both through the dedicated upgrade programmes and through major programme deliveries.
For example, our Legacy Application Programme is addressing technical debt which includes exiting from old data centres, removing obsolescence, bringing applications into mainstream support, and improving their security posture. Over 180 applications have had their most critical legacy technology addressed through this programme. We are addressing legacy technology in other applications through digital transformation and policy programmes where this provides a better coordinated approach. This approach has enabled us to remediate the most critical legacy technology and continue to remediate priority applications to April 2025.