Martin Wrigley

We will follow the Cabinet Office principles for consultations and consider all responses received, from both individuals and organisations.

The cyber security of the UK is a key priority for this government – crucial to protecting the public and our way of life, and a successful, growing economy. We are introducing the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill to improve UK cyber defences - protecting our economy, safeguarding essential public services and strengthening UK national security.

The bill will deliver a fundamental step change in the UK’s national security – making essential and digital services more secure in the face of cyber criminals and state actors who want to disrupt our way of life.

This framework will be applied to the new digital ID, which will have robust cyber security and personal data protections in place. These will also feature in the upcoming consultation on the scheme.

To design and deliver digital ID, this government will undertake the biggest digital inclusion drive in our country's history. This will ensure everyone eligible can access and use this new digital ID, including those more likely to be digitally excluded.

We are considering options like a digitally enabled physical alternative for those without access to technology, help for those who are partially sighted, in-person support for those who struggle to engage digitally, and a dedicated team of case workers to support those who may struggle to initially prove their identity and access the system.

We will launch a public consultation in the coming months and have already started to engage with a range of expert organisations and community groups, including the Digital Inclusion Action Committee.

The Digital ID scheme will build on existing programmes and infrastructure. We will follow best practice on privacy and security, from both within the UK and internationally. The National Cyber Security Centre Security (NCSC) is advising how this is done to the highest standard. We will adhere to all existing UK law and governance structures, including close working with the ICO during the development of the scheme.

We will examine options for appropriate oversight of the digital ID system through the upcoming consultation, which will begin in the new year.

Data associated with the Digital ID system will be held and kept safe in secure cloud environments hosted in the United Kingdom.

The Government will work closely with expert stakeholders to make the programme effective, secure and inclusive, including taking insights from previous IT projects where appropriate.

Employers will be required to conduct digital right to work checks using the new digital credential by the end of this Parliament.

We will be consulting on the detail of the programme in due course, including how to help employers onboard onto the system and how they will validate the credential to prove an employee's right to work.

There are no plans to pool data in a single location. The Government has been clear that privacy and security will be hard-wired into the system from the start, and user control will be central to plans. It will operate to best practice standards for security and privacy.

The Government will conduct a full public consultation on the new digital ID to inform our approach. We are currently exploring best practice from other countries with digital identity schemes and other private sector companies who have digitised their services in order to develop the set of proposals to take to public consultation.

The Government has been clear that privacy and security will be hard-wired into the system from the start, and user control will be central to plans. It will operate to best practice standards for security and privacy.

This includes established standards for cyber security, counter-fraud and data storage, and following all existing UK legislation.

The Government will conduct a full public consultation on the new digital ID to inform our approach. We are currently exploring best practice from other countries with digital identity schemes and other private sector companies who have digitised their services in order to develop the set of proposals to take to public consultation.

The Government has been clear that privacy and security will be hard-wired into the system from the start, and user control will be central to plans. It will operate to best practice standards for security and privacy.

This includes established standards for cyber security, counter-fraud and data storage, and following all existing UK legislation.

The Government will conduct a full public consultation on the new digital ID to inform our approach. We are currently exploring best practice from other countries with digital identity schemes and other private sector companies who have digitised their services in order to develop the set of proposals to take to public consultation.

The Government has been clear that privacy and security will be hard-wired into the system from the start, and user control will be central to plans. It will operate to best practice standards for security and privacy.

This includes established standards for cyber security, counter-fraud and data storage, and following all existing UK legislation.

The Government will conduct a full public consultation on the new digital ID to inform our approach. We are currently exploring best practice from other countries with digital identity schemes and other private sector companies who have digitised their services in order to develop the set of proposals to take to public consultation.

The Government has been clear that privacy and security will be hard-wired into the system from the start, and user control will be central to plans. It will operate to best practice standards for security and privacy.

This includes established standards for cyber security, counter-fraud and data storage, and following all existing UK legislation.

The Government will conduct a full public consultation on the new digital ID to inform our approach. We are currently exploring best practice from other countries with digital identity schemes and other private sector companies who have digitised their services in order to develop the set of proposals to take to public consultation.

The Government has been clear that privacy and security will be hard-wired into the system from the start, and user control will be central to plans. It will operate to best practice standards for security and privacy.

This includes established standards for cyber security, counter-fraud and data storage, and following all existing UK legislation.

The Government will conduct a full public consultation on the new digital ID to inform our approach. We are currently exploring best practice from other countries with digital identity schemes and other private sector companies who have digitised their services in order to develop the set of proposals to take to public consultation.

The Government has been clear that privacy and security will be hard-wired into the system from the start, and user control will be central to plans. It will operate to best practice standards for security and privacy.

This includes established standards for cyber security, counter-fraud and data storage, and following all existing UK legislation.

The Prime Minister plans to attend COP30.

Details of official meetings held in a ministerial capacity with external organisations or individuals are declared quarterly on GOV.UK. This includes the meetings of the former Prime Minister.

Guidance for the Management of Private Office Information and Records is published on www.gov.uk. The guidance was last updated in December 2023. Previous versions are available on the website of The National Archives.

Crown Commercial Service (CCS) does not maintain a centralised list of all call-off contracts, values, or delivery milestones awarded to Palantir Technologies.

Details of individual call-off contracts, including contract values and delivery milestones, are publicly available on the Contracts Finder website: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk. Contracts Finder lists information on government contracts worth over £12,000 (including VAT), including those awarded by departments and agencies across the public sector.

It is the responsibility of the contracting authority to upload contract information to Contracts Finder.

The transparency obligations prior to 2021 would have been managed directly by the awarding department or contracting authority. Details of Government contracts awarded prior to 2021 above £10,000 in Central Government, and £25,000 in the wider public sector, should be published on Contracts Finder: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Search

The Procurement Act 2023 requires contracting authorities to act, and to be seen to act, with integrity, and has introduced new requirements to identify and review any potential conflicts of interest in relation to a procurement.

Contracting Authorities must now prepare a conflict of interest assessment at key points in the procurement, including details of any actual or potential conflicts of interest and any steps they have taken to mitigate them.

Details of central government contracts above £12,000 for procurements commenced before 24 February 2025 are published on Contracts Finder. Contracts procured under the Procurement Act 2023, which came into force on 24 February 2025, are published on the Central Digital Platform Find a Tender service.

It is long-standing policy that the Government does not disclose the specifics of its security arrangements, including with suppliers.

The UK takes national security extremely seriously and has taken robust action to ensure the security of sensitive government data. As set out in the recent National Procurement Policy Statement, the Government mitigates supply chain and national security risks by ensuring appropriate data and security controls are in place. All contracting authorities are encouraged to follow the Government Security Group’s guidance on Tackling Security Risk in Government Supply Chains, which details best practices for procurement, commercial, and security practitioners when selecting and onboarding suppliers.

We also encourage organisations to adhere to the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Protective Security Authority’s supply chain security guidance when selecting technology suppliers, which outlines the required security standards and procurement considerations.

The National Security Unit for Procurement (NSUP) has been established to support Ministers in assessing suppliers on national security grounds in line with the Procurement Act 2023. NSUP works closely with government departments to oversee implementation of these measures and enhance supplier security assessments across the procurement process.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon gentleman’s Parliamentary Question of 11th June is attached.

As part of the second phase of the spending review Departments have been set a stretching 5% productivity, efficiency and savings target. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has also asked each department to carry out a line-by-line review of existing day-to-day budgets to identify where spending is no longer aligned with this government’s priorities or is poor value for money.

The Government has undertaken several specific measures to drive efficiency and reduce waste and bureaucracy across Whitehall, as part of the Prime Minister’s Plan for Change. The Cabinet Office has instructed departments to:

• freeze Government Procurement Cards, with a tough new application process to cut the numbers in circulation;

• justify every Arm’s Length Body, otherwise they are to be closed, merged, or delivered by departments to reduce duplication, drive efficiency, and ensure democratic accountability for policy decisions that affect the British public; and

• Officials are required to hold training and team-building exercises and ‘away days’ in government buildings that are available for free, instead of hiring external venues. All departments have been asked to review their policies on procuring corporate-branded and non-essential merchandise, with a view to restricting future purchases.

The Government recognises that every victim of infected blood will have their own unique circumstances, and experienced devastating losses. Carers of an eligible infected person who, without reward or remuneration, provided personal care or support greater than would otherwise reasonably have been expected are eligible for compensation under the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme in their own right.

Additionally, an infected person can choose for some or all of their Care award to be paid directly to eligible affected people who provided the care. They can choose exactly how much of the overall award they want to give, and to how many people. An executor of a deceased infected person's estate will be responsible for administering the estate as per the wishes of the infected person.

As the Minister responsible, I stand ready to provide all the support I can to speed up payments. I am restless for that speed to increase, while also respecting the Infected Blood Compensation Authority’s (IBCA) operational independence going forward. In terms of the speed of processing and paying claimants, each case is different and some progress quicker than others, but so far IBCA have invited 275 people to start a claim, with 69 people having accepted their offer and received payment.

Yes. The supplementary route for financial loss will be open to all infected people, including those who have very sadly passed away.

The Government recognises that every victim of infected blood will have their own unique circumstances, and experienced devastating losses. To avoid a lengthy, complex and burdensome evidence gathering process, the Government has accepted the Inquiry’s recommendations to take a tariff-based approach to compensation. The principles of a tariff based scheme seek to minimise the amount of information that people applying to the scheme are required to provide and help to ensure that compensation can be awarded more quickly than would otherwise be possible if all applications had to be individually assessed.

For people co-infected with HIV and Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C, compensation will be calculated from the date of the first infection. If it is not possible to establish when someone was first infected, the Infected Blood Compensation Authority will use the earliest year the infection could have been contracted unless there is evidence that it must have occurred later.

Given the historic nature of the infected blood scandal, the Government recognises that not all medical records will still be available. The Scheme has been designed to minimise as far as possible the burden on those applying, and as set out in the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme Regulations 2024, eligibility for the Scheme will be determined based on the balance of probabilities. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority will provide assistance to those who believe their medical records have been lost or destroyed. If it is not possible to establish the year in which the infection was contracted, the year in which the first blood product was received will be taken as the infection year unless there is evidence an infection must have occurred later. The regulations set out that, in such cases, the earliest possible year an infection could have been contracted will be accepted.

Given the long-running nature of the infected blood scandal, not all medical records will still be available and, as set out in the regulations, eligibility for compensation will be determined based on the balance of probabilities. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA) has said that when an individual is invited to make their claim, it will aim to gather some of the information, including medical records and information about an applicant’s condition and severity, from organisations who already have it. This should mean those claiming will be asked for the least amount of information possible. Additionally, IBCA will make a caseworker available for each of these cases, and when I visited IBCA I saw the sympathetic, enabling approach that staff are taking when asking what types of evidence might be helpful and where it could be obtained from.

The Infected Blood Compensation Scheme has been designed so that the process to make a claim is as easy as possible, without the advice of a solicitor. However, the Government recognises that people may wish to seek legal advice. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority’s approach is that everyone claiming compensation should be able to access free legal and financial support, up to an agreed amount, to help with certain parts of their claim. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority is providing independent legal support to the people making the first claims, with around half of those who have submitted a claim so far having taken up the offer of legal support.

The scope of the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme’s supplementary route is in line with the recommendations Sir Robert Francis KC made to the Government in August 2024.

In his report, Sir Robert discussed the merits of expanding the supplementary route to heads of loss beyond care and financial loss. Sir Robert concluded it would likely be disproportionate for applicants and the scheme to do so and the supplementary route should instead focus on recognising the substantive additional care needs and financial loss of applicants.

The Government accepted Sir Robert’s recommendation that, with the exception of autonomy awards to victims of unethical research, supplementary route awards should only be available for care and financial loss.

Dedicated claim managers are supporting individuals through the claim process and, depending on the data available to the Infected Blood Compensation Authority (IBCA), there may be some instances in which more information is asked for to complete a claim. In those instances, IBCA may be able to help source that information to relieve the burden on the person making the claim. I visited the IBCA team led by Sir Robert Francis earlier this year. I saw how determined they are for compensation to be paid out to victims as soon as possible. Additionally, all claims managers employed since October 2024 have received three weeks of trauma-informed training for the role.

Any payments received from the Infected Blood Compensation Scheme are disregarded from means tested benefit assessments. This means that compensation payments made through the Scheme will not adversely impact on the means tested benefits received by either infected or affected people.

Those currently on the Infected Blood Support Schemes will continue to receive their discretionary payments until they receive a compensation offer from IBCA. The compensation will take into account any discretionary payments received under the support schemes when calculating a compensation award.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon gentleman’s Parliamentary Question of 24th February is attached.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon gentleman’s Parliamentary Question of 5th February is attached.