Mark Logan

Equality Ministers work closely with colleagues across Government to tackle violence against women and girls.

The Minister for Women sits on the Ministerial Steering Group overseeing the delivery of the Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy and the Domestic Abuse Action Plan. This group met most recently on 18 October 2023 to assess progress, which includes;

• Adding the issue of violence against women and girls to the revised Strategic Policing Requirement (SPR), meaning it is now set out as a national threat for forces to respond to alongside other threats such as terrorism, serious and organised crime, and child sexual abuse;

• Investing £168 million through the Safer Streets and Safety of Women at Night funds to make our streets safer;

• Launching a fund for VAWG ‘by and for’ services over two years to a total of up to £6 million, from 2023/24 – 2024/25. The fund is for services across England and Wales, supporting LGBT people, people with a disability, or ethnic minorities affected by VAWG;

• Launching the ‘Enough’ behaviour change campaign in March 2022, which has reached millions of individuals across England and Wales.

As part of that cross government work the Equality Hub is supporting the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Bill. Parliament agreed the final version of the Bill on Friday 20 October and it will now receive Royal Assent, strengthing protections for employees against workplace sexual harassment.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin has opened more than 100,000 files into alleged crimes which he intends to take through the Ukrainian courts.

I remain in regular contact with Prosecutor General Kostin. Alongside UK legal experts from inside and outside government, I am supporting the work of the Office of the Prosecutor General and the International Criminal Court to ensure allegations of war crimes are fully and fairly investigated, by independent, effective and robust legal mechanisms.

The UK is also a founding member of the Atrocity Crimes Advisory Group, alongside the US and the EU, which works in the region with Ukraine to coordinate and provide additional support to Ukraine’s domestic prosecutions. We have also ensured to provide training and advisory support to Ukrainian judges and prosecutors across the region.

The UK is committed to ensuring that those responsible for atrocities are held to account for their actions.

The Government is committed to delivering justice for victims of hate crimes committed in our communities and online, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) considers all cases referred by the police.

Considering the events unfolding in the Middle East, a package of measures has been put in place to provide ongoing support to the police. This includes updating existing guidance on protests and offering the use of prosecutors in command centres to advise in real time.

In the rolling year to March 2023, the CPS has prosecuted 380 religiously aggravated and 9,1234 racially aggravated hate crime offences, with a charge rate of 85% and 87% respectively. These include aggravated malicious communication offences.

The UK has a comprehensive zero-tariff, zero-quota Free Trade Agreement with the European Union that eliminates tariffs on UK imports from and exports to the European Union, subject to goods meeting the relevant rules of origin.

This Government is committed to the ensuring the smooth running of the agreement to the benefit of UK business and consumers, such as via the annual framework of Trade Specialised Committees. For example, on 21st December 2023 HMG announced an agreement with the EU to extend trade rules on electric vehicles saving manufacturers and consumers up to £4.3 billion in additional tariffs.

Supported by the Strategic Economic Policy and Trade Dialogue, there is significant work underway across a number of departments and agencies in the UK and Japan to connect our respective innovation ecosystems. This includes organising pitch events, business matching sessions, information exchanges and supporting delegations of innovative start-ups to visit our respective markets. We are also working with external partners. In June, my department announced a new contract awarded to Oxfordshire-based Intralink to run the new UK-Asia Pacific Tech Growth Programme as part of the UK’s Digital Trade Network (DTN). This will help UK tech companies and entrepreneurs to trade across Asia Pacific, with Japan a key market.

Japan is one of the UK's closest trade and strategic partners. In 2021, we concluded the UK-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), the first major trade deal that the UK struck as an independent trading nation. We continue to work closely with businesses so they can fully utilise the benefits of this agreement.

We agreed The Hiroshima Accord in May 2023 with Japanese Prime Minister (PM) Kishida, setting the direction of our partnership for the next decade and beyond. During the PM's visit to Japan, leading Japanese businesses committed to invest almost £18 billion into the UK.

This summer, the UK also completed accession negotiations to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Transpacific Partnership (CPTPP), which will strengthen our trading relationship with Japan.

In September 2023, the Secretary of State held the first UK-Japan Economic, Business and Trade Dialogue in which UK Export Finance signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Nippon Export and Investment Insurance, which will support UK and Japanese exporters, including Small to Medium Enterprises (SME's).

We are putting the UK at the centre of a network of modern relationships in the Indo-Pacific, including through the negotiation and implementation of Free Trade Agreements (such as the UK’s recent accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership). In addition to joining CPTPP, we are breaking down market access barriers for UK businesses which will help to increase exports from UK companies into the Indo-Pacific, and encouraging investment from the Indo-Pacific into the UK that will boost science and technology, clean energy and levelling up objectives. We also introduced the Developing Countries Trading Scheme to provide lower tariffs and simpler rules of origin requirements for exporting to the UK.

The Department for Business and Trade doesn’t assess the impact international trade on individual member constituencies. Nationwide export support services are in place which can be adapted to meet local needs.

Across all constituencies, we support businesses to gain the confidence and expertise to export. The Export Support Service helps businesses to navigate all export services offered by the Department to open opportunities to succeed through global trade. The Export Academy is a major initiative to build market knowledge and export capability to boost businesses’ global trading capability, supporting the millions of jobs that rely on exporting. In addition, the International Trade Advisory service gives businesses one to one support to take advantage of new global opportunities.

Catalysing a market for green finance, which can help meet the costs of retrofit, is a Departmental priority. The Green Home Finance Accelerator is making £20m available to support the testing of innovative solutions. Twenty-six projects were awarded grants for initial development work. One, led by Leeds City Council, explored options for property linked finance. Twenty-three of these projects, including Leeds, recently applied to progress to pilot. Successful applicants will be announced shortly. Assessments of potential will be made once the pilots conclude.

Additionally, the Government has raised grants under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to £7,500 to support households to replace fossil fuel boilers with low-carbon air-source heat pumps.

The Net Zero Strategy sets out the UK's ambition to reduce emissions from Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs sectors as part of an overall reduction across the economy of 77% by Carbon Budget 6. Nature-based solutions, like restoring peat and planting trees, are key to tackling climate change and averting its impacts. They deliver multiple benefits for climate, biodiversity and people, and can therefore play an important role in reaching net zero.

The Government supports new licensing rounds in the North Sea to slow the decline in production from what is a mature basin while supporting industry to reduce production emissions. As reaffirmed in the Powering Up Britain Energy Security Plan, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) launched the 33rd oil and gas exploration licensing round in October last year and is expected to award the first licences from this round later this year. The Government and the NSTA have announced a joint commitment to undertake future licensing rounds, subject to a climate compatibility test.

His Majesty’s Government is deeply committed to supporting theatres across the whole country, including through public funding to organisations made via Arts Council England.

The arts are for everyone, and the Government has made it a priority to ensure that funding for the arts is fairly distributed across the country. Through Arts Council England’s 2023–26 National Portfolio, increased funding of £444.6 million per annum will fund a record 985 organisations in more parts of the country than ever before. This is an increase from £410 million per annum and 828 organisations under the previous portfolio. Of the 275 new organisations joining the funding portfolio, 214 are outside London.

Overall investment in theatre has also increased through this round of the Arts Council’s investment programme – both in terms of the number of organisations supported, and the volume of funding, which is now more than £110 million per annum, encompassing 194 organisations. The Octagon Theatre in Bolton receives annual funding of £625,359. In the last three years, theatres and theatre-focused projects in the Bolton North East constituency have received over £2.5 million of funding via Arts Council England.

We must protect the right to peaceful protest, but that does not give licence to a vocal minority to spoil events that millions of us enjoy.

The Home Secretary and the Culture Secretary have chaired productive discussions, with sports, police and government united against preventing further disruption of this kind. The Government has taken action to support the police in their efforts to prevent disruption at major sporting events, including giving them more powers through the Public Order Act 2023. This criminalised actions like ‘locking on’, allowing police to stop and search protesters for items like padlocks and superglue if they suspect they are setting out to cause disruption. We will continue to support sports organisations in their planning as necessary.

Channel 4’s strengths in the regions and nations are to be celebrated and maintained into its future, and that is not at odds with private investment - Channel 4’s access to networks out of London is likely to be an attractive asset to nurture and develop for any potential buyer.

We have consulted on the best ownership model to support Channel 4 for years to come. Our public consultation ran for 10 weeks before closing on 14 September. We are carefully considering the views and evidence we have received to inform the government’s policy-making and final decision.

Our priority will always be to ensure the safety of pupils and staff, which is why we have taken a precautionary approach and asked schools to vacate spaces known to contain RAAC until mitigations are put in place.

To give a sense of the scale, there are around 22,000 schools and colleges in England, of which around 15,000 have at least one block constructed during the period in which RAAC may have been used. Due to the action we have taken to issue questionnaires, we now have responses from all schools and colleges with buildings from the era when RAAC was commonly used. All schools and colleges that advised us they suspected they may have RAAC have had a first survey to confirm if it is present.

The vast majority of schools and colleges surveyed to date have been found to have no RAAC. Where it is present, it may be limited to a single classroom. So far, these surveys have confirmed a very small proportion of schools and colleges – 231, or around 1% – have RAAC present.

In December 2023, we published an updated list of affected schools and colleges. Thanks to the hard work of school and college leaders the vast majority – 228, or 99% - were delivering full time face-to-face education for all pupils. At the time of publication, 3 schools had hybrid arrangements in place, all 3 are now in full-time face-to-face education for all pupils.

Each school and college has a dedicated caseworker to help implement individual mitigation plans and we have dedicated contracts to enable delivery of alternative accommodation including temporary classrooms, and structural supports where appropriate.

We will spend what it takes to resolve this problem as quickly as possible. All reasonable requests for additional help with revenue costs are being approved and we are funding further longer-term refurbishment or rebuilding projects to address the presence of RAAC in schools. Schools and colleagues will either be offered capital grants, or rebuilding projects where these are needed, including through School Rebuilding Programme.

The Department wants to ensure that teaching is an attractive career choice for people from all backgrounds. This includes men looking to work in primary schools.

Alongside monitoring overall numbers of male teachers in the profession, our in-house teacher recruitment services, such as the Apply for Teaching Training service, generate real time data and insights into recruitment of male primary initial teacher training (ITT) candidates, along with the recruitment practices of schools and universities that offer ITT.

Whilst men make up a smaller proportion of the teaching workforce than women, since 2010 there has been an increase of over 6,500 male teachers in state funded nursery and primary schools, rising from 28,180 in 2010/11 to 34,818 in 2022/23. ​

​​Recruitment campaigns are targeted at audiences of students, recent graduates, and potential career changers, regardless of gender. The Department takes every effort to ensure that our advertising is fully reflective of this across the full range of marketing materials used. The Department is also working with our Teacher Vacancy Service to ensure online case studies encourage more male primary teachers into the profession, through sharing positive and encouraging stories from teachers.

The Department wants teaching to be an attractive and competitive profession. From September 2023, starting salaries will raise to at least £30,000 in all areas of the country. In fulfilling this manifesto commitment, the Department is ensuring that all teachers launch their career on a competitive starting salary.

Closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils has been the focus of our education reforms since 2010. The attainment gap narrowed by 9% at secondary school level and by 13% at primary school level between 2011 and 2019.

For over a decade, the Department has consistently taken a range of steps to give priority support and deliver programmes that help disadvantaged pupils, including improving the quality of teaching and curriculum resources, strengthening the school system, and providing targeted support where needed. The Department knows that disadvantaged children have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, which has widened the gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils. The Department will continue to work to reduce this gap, as it previously has.

At a national level, the Department delivers several core policies to support disadvantaged pupils. This includes free school meals, which support around 2 million children, as well as the Holiday Activities and Food programme (HAF), which is receiving £200 million in funding a year for the next two years, The Department also supports 2,700 breakfast clubs and family hubs.

The National Funding Formula (NFF) continues to distribute funding fairly based on schools’ and pupils’ needs and characteristics. In 2023/24, the Department has targeted a greater proportion of schools NFF funding towards deprived pupils than ever before. Over £4 billion (9.8%) of the formula has been allocated according to deprivation, while over £7 billion (17.4%), has been allocated to additional needs overall. As a result, schools with the highest levels of deprivation, on average, attract the largest per pupil funding increases. On top of this core funding, Pupil Premium funding rates have increased by 5% in the 2023/24 financial year to a total of almost £2.9 billion. This increase in funding is on top of £1 billion of recovery premium funding in the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years, which was allocated to deliver evidence based approaches to support educational recovery for disadvantaged pupils, and over £300 million delivered in 2021/22.

The National Tutoring Programme (NTP) funds schools based on rates of disadvantage. Since the launch of the NTP in November 2020, more than £1 billion has been made available to support tutoring. From November 2020 to the 2023/24 academic year, nearly 4 million tutoring courses have been started (up to July 2023).

At a regional level, the Department has identified 55 Education Investment Areas (EIAs) with the lowest attainment outcomes. In these areas, the Department is providing £86 million for Trust Capacity funding, up to £150 million for Connect the Classroom, and extra funding for Levelling Up Premium retention payments to support schools with two or more Requires Improvement inspection reports.

24 EIAs have been identified as Priority EIAs. These areas face low attainment at Key Stage 2 and high levels of disadvantage. They therefore receive additional funding, including £42 million of Local Needs Funding, £86 million for Connect the Classroom and over £2 million for attendance mentoring pilots.

This Government understands how important school attendance is for pupils’ education, wellbeing, and life chances. The Department’s approach to tackling attendance is a support-first strategy.

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​The Department published stronger expectations of schools, trusts, governing bodies and Local Authorities in the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance. Schools are now expected to publish an attendance policy, appoint an attendance champion, and use data to identify and then support pupils at risk of becoming persistently absent. The Department deployed 10 expert attendance advisers to work with 155 Local Authorities and trusts to review practices, develop plans to improve and meet expectations set out in the guidance. To help identify children at risk of persistent absence and to enable early intervention, the Department established a timelier flow of pupil level attendance data through the daily attendance data collection. The ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-improve-school-attendance.

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​The launch of the £2.32 million attendance mentor pilot aims to deliver intensive one-to-one support to a group of persistently and severely absent pupils from year 6 through to year 11. The findings from this pilot should enable schools, trusts, and Local Authorities to address persistent and severe absence more effectively. The Department recently launched new attendance hubs with ten lead schools sharing their effective practice on attendance with up to 600 partner schools, reaching hundreds of thousands of pupils. This is alongside intensive support to children in need through Virtual Schools Heads.

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​The Secretary of State and I co-chair the ‘Attendance Action Alliance’ of national system leaders to work to remove barriers to attendance and reduce absence through pledges. This is in addition to the £5 billion that has been made available for education recovery, helping pupils to recover from the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. This funding includes up to £1.5 billion on tutoring and nearly £2 billion of direct funding to schools so they can deliver evidence-based interventions based on pupil needs.

The UK and Ukraine are both signatories to the Lisbon Recognition Convention. The UK is also a signatory to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation Global Recognition Convention, which will soon come into force. The terms of these Conventions oblige the UK to recognise higher education qualifications and qualifications giving access to higher education unless they are substantially different from the UK equivalents.

The UK European Network for Information (ENIC) service provides advice on the comparability of international qualifications at all levels of education with those of the UK, on behalf of Government. The service maintains an extensive database of international qualifications and education systems, including for Ukraine, and are fully prepared to deal with Ukrainian and other refugees’ qualifications.

Organisations and individuals can apply for Statements of Comparability through the standard UK ENIC portal. Within the portal, there is provision for individuals to be able to identify as refugees, meaning more flexibility is given for document submissions. Many organisations, including education institutions and employers, also subscribe to the UK ENIC service and use its database when assessing applications.