Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much Government funding has been released to the West Midlands Combined Authority to support the roll out of 5G.
Answered by Margot James
The Urban Connected Communities (UCC) Project, part of the Government’s 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme, is a research and innovation project to trial new 5G technology, services and applications for the public sector, industry and citizens.
The Department will make £25 million of funding available over three years, subject to business case approval, for projects within UCC matched with investment from the local public sector and private sector. There is potential for the Department to make available up to an additional £25m over the same time period.
The project is in a mobilisation stage of work, which the Department is co-funding with the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). To date, the Department has approved grants of £500K to WMCA, of which £168,600 has been drawn down, WMCA has matched this.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, when he expects to release money to the West Midlands Combined Authority to begin the roll out of 5G.
Answered by Margot James
The Urban Connected Communities (UCC) Project, part of the Government’s 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme, is a research and innovation project to trial new 5G technology, services and applications for the public sector, industry and citizens.
The Department will make £25 million of funding available over three years, subject to business case approval, for projects within UCC matched with investment from the local public sector and private sector. There is potential for the Department to make available up to an additional £25m over the same time period.
The project is in a mobilisation stage of work, which the Department is co-funding with the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA). To date, the Department has approved grants of £500K to WMCA, of which £168,600 has been drawn down, WMCA has matched this.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent discussions he has had with Facebook about when that company became aware of misuse of personal data.
Answered by Margot James
Ministers and officials have regular meetings and discussions with companies on a range of issues including on data protection. Details of ministerial meetings are published quarterly on the Gov.uk website.
We take both the protection of personal data and the right to privacy extremely seriously. The Data Protection Act 2018 makes our data protection laws fit for the digital age in which an ever increasing amount of data is being processed and empowers people to take control of their data. As the independent regulator for data protection in the UK, the ICO were aware of the issue concerning Facebook and carried out inquiries as part of an in-depth investigation into data analytics for political purposes. Information about and the outcome of that investigation and all related actions taken, can be found on the ICO website here:
https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/investigation-into-data-analytics-for-political-purposes/
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the potential effect on the UK’s digital sector of the UK leaving the EU without an adequacy agreement to ensure uninterrupted UK-EU data transfers.
Answered by Margot James
The impact of exiting the EU has been modelled for the UK economy as a whole. Several potential exit scenarios were explored in the government's EU Exit: Long-term Economic Analysis which was published in November 2018. No specific assessment has been made about the potential disruption to the UK’s digital sector. However, the Government has consistently made clear that many EU and UK businesses and public sector organisations rely on the free flow of personal data to fulfil their obligations and therefore maintaining the free flow of personal data is a priority for the Government.
The Data Protection Act 2018 updated the UK’s rules in accordance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and transposed the Law Enforcement Directive, ensuring our data protection laws will be aligned with those of the EU at our point of exit. We are confident that we will strike a positive relationship on data. The UK and the EU start from a position of trust in each other’s standards and regulatory alignment on data protection. As set out in the Political Declaration, the EU will begin its assessment of the UK as soon as possible after the United Kingdom's withdrawal, endeavouring to adopt decisions by the end of the implementation period. The UK is ready to begin those assessments.
In addition to prioritising an early adequacy decision, it is the job of a responsible Government to prepare for the possibility that we leave the EU without an adequacy agreement in place. On 13 December the Government and the Information Commissioner's Office published detailed information and guidance on data protection in the event that this were to happen. DCMS is engaging with businesses across all sectors of the economy, including the digital sector, to mitigate risks to disruption of international data transfers. In recognition of the unprecedented degree of alignment between the UK and EU’s data protection regimes, the UK would at the point of exit continue to allow the free flow of personal data from the UK to the EU.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate he has made of the contribution of the video games industry to the economy.
Answered by Margot James
We are incredibly proud of our world-beating Creative Industries. In 2017, the creative industries made a record contribution of £101.5 billion to the UK economy - accounting for 5.5% of UK GVA - as shown by the latest DCMS Economic Estimates, which were released last month and can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/759707/DCMS_Sectors_Economic_Estimates_2017__provisional__GVA.pdf
Within this, the video games industry contributed £1.1bn, accounting for 0.1% of UK GVA. The sector has increased from £430 million in 2010.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate he has made of the contribution to the economy of the creative sector.
Answered by Margot James
We are incredibly proud of our world-beating Creative Industries. In 2017, the creative industries made a record contribution of £101.5 billion to the UK economy - accounting for 5.5% of UK GVA - as shown by the latest DCMS Economic Estimates, which were released last month and can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/759707/DCMS_Sectors_Economic_Estimates_2017__provisional__GVA.pdf
Within this, the video games industry contributed £1.1bn, accounting for 0.1% of UK GVA. The sector has increased from £430 million in 2010.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the effect on the UK economy of the O2 data failure of 6 December 2018.
Answered by Margot James
We work closely with the telecoms sector on matters of resilience and security through the industry led Electronic Communications Resilience and Response Group. Furthermore, the Communication Act 2003 (section 105A) requires telecoms operators to have appropriate measures in place to manage risks to the security (covering confidentiality, integrity and availability) of networks and services. Telecoms operators are also required to notify Ofcom of security and resilience issues (including service outages) which have a ‘significant impact on the operation of a network or service’ (section 105B Communications Act 2003).
Ofcom reports annually on the number and scale of security incidents, including impacts (ie numbers of customers affected) through their Connected Nations report.
Compensation arrangements linked to a service incident are a matter for the company but Ofcom will be discussing the company’s plans with them.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether the public services affected by the data outage experienced by O2 customers on 6 December 2018 are planned to receive compensation for the disruption to service.
Answered by Margot James
We work closely with the telecoms sector on matters of resilience and security through the industry led Electronic Communications Resilience and Response Group. Furthermore, the Communication Act 2003 (section 105A) requires telecoms operators to have appropriate measures in place to manage risks to the security (covering confidentiality, integrity and availability) of networks and services. Telecoms operators are also required to notify Ofcom of security and resilience issues (including service outages) which have a ‘significant impact on the operation of a network or service’ (section 105B Communications Act 2003).
Ofcom reports annually on the number and scale of security incidents, including impacts (ie numbers of customers affected) through their Connected Nations report.
Compensation arrangements linked to a service incident are a matter for the company but Ofcom will be discussing the company’s plans with them.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate he has made of the economic effect of mobile data outages on the UK economy in each of the last three years.
Answered by Margot James
We work closely with the telecoms sector on matters of resilience and security through the industry led Electronic Communications Resilience and Response Group. Furthermore, the Communication Act 2003 (section 105A) requires telecoms operators to have appropriate measures in place to manage risks to the security (covering confidentiality, integrity and availability) of networks and services. Telecoms operators are also required to notify Ofcom of security and resilience issues (including service outages) which have a ‘significant impact on the operation of a network or service’ (section 105B Communications Act 2003).
Ofcom reports annually on the number and scale of security incidents, including impacts (ie numbers of customers affected) through their Connected Nations report.
Compensation arrangements linked to a service incident are a matter for the company but Ofcom will be discussing the company’s plans with them.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to reduce incidences of data outages by mobile phone companies.
Answered by Margot James
We work closely with the telecoms sector on matters of resilience and security through the industry led Electronic Communications Resilience and Response Group. Furthermore, the Communication Act 2003 (section 105A) requires telecoms operators to have appropriate measures in place to manage risks to the security (covering confidentiality, integrity and availability) of networks and services. Telecoms operators are also required to notify Ofcom of security and resilience issues (including service outages) which have a ‘significant impact on the operation of a network or service’ (section 105B Communications Act 2003).
Ofcom reports annually on the number and scale of security incidents, including impacts (ie numbers of customers affected) through their Connected Nations report.
Compensation arrangements linked to a service incident are a matter for the company but Ofcom will be discussing the company’s plans with them.