Neil Hudson

The Government recognises that cinemas are a hugely important part of the UK’s fantastic film industry and has been supporting them throughout the uncertainties of the past several years with the pandemic and rising energy costs.

We supported more than 200 independent cinemas through the pandemic, who received £34.4 million from the Culture Recovery Fund as well as benefiting from other pan-economy measures. The Government has also delivered an £18 billion package of support through the Energy Bill Relief Scheme supporting businesses - including cinemas, arts venues, and charities - through the winter.

The Government’s £500m Film and TV Production Restart Scheme also helped keep the cameras rolling at the other end of the screen supply chain. The scheme supported over 100,000 jobs and productions worth more than £3 billion. To build on this, and support the industry to not only survive but thrive, further actions have been taken. This includes the Government’s current £1.6 million annual funding of the British Film Commission, the £28 million UK Global Screen Fund, and the continued success of our screen sector tax reliefs. This has been further bolstered at Spring Budget 2024 with the new UK Independent Film Tax Credit, with films with budgets up to £15 million being eligible for an increased benefit of 53% - which is estimated to increase spending on independent films by 70% before 2032.

The British Film Institute (BFI), a DCMS Arms Length Body, is also conscious of the pressures faced by the cinema sector. The BFI’s Film Audience Network (BFI FAN) is a collaboration of 8 film hubs, managed by leading film organisations and venues around the UK. Film hubs are centres of expertise and support that connect cinemas, festivals and creative practitioners. You can also read more about the National Lottery funding the BFI makes available to bring film to a wider UK audience, including through BFI FAN, at: https://www.bfi.org.uk/get-funding-support/bring-film-wider-uk-audience.

Freeview currently reaches nearly 99% of UK households. However, good terrestrial television signals may not be available to all households in rural areas due to a number of factors including local topography and spectrum availability. In these cases, Everyone TV – the organisation responsible for the day-to-day running of Freeview – advises that viewers consider other options to access free-to-air television such as the satellite service Freesat, which provides near total coverage in the UK.

Details of local radio coverage provided have been published by Ofcom in May 2022 and are available here.

More detailed data on the usage of free-to-air radio and TV is available from a variety of sources. For example, Ofcom produces its Media Nations report which reviews key trends in the media sector and sets out how audiences are served across the UK. The most recent report was published in August 2023 and can be found here. Ofcom also publishes the results of a number of annual surveys addressing these issues, as well as an interactive data set in the form of its annual Communications Market Report. Many of these publications include relevant analysis broken down by geographic area.

The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone, regardless of their age or background, is able to enjoy the physical and mental health benefits that sport and physical activity provide.

We know that active people are fitter, happier and healthier - which is why in our new Sport Strategy - 'Get Active’ - we set out an ambitious strategy to boost our national health by getting 3.5 million extra active people by 2030. To help achieve this, Government is investing over £300 million between 2021 and 2025 to make essential facility improvements at grassroots sports clubs.

In 2021/22, 177 grassroots facilities projects across the UK were supported through the Football Foundation in England and the Football Associations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This includes the creation or resurfacing of over 80 artificial grass pitches, over 20 grass pitch improvements, and other projects such as changing rooms, floodlights and goalposts. Over 1,600 sites benefitted from funding in 2022/23 across a similar range of projects, improving both provision and quality of pitches.

We provide the majority of support for grassroots sport through our Arms Length Body, Sport England. Every year, Sport England invests over £250 million of National Lottery and public money to help people engage in sport and physical activity. Funding pots like the Small Grants and the Active Together programme offer over £18 million of funding for grassroots clubs across England to help get local communities active and to support clubs through specific issues such as adverse weather.

The Government remains committed to digital terrestrial television (DTT), the technology which underpins Freeview. Millions of households across the UK rely on DTT, particularly rural communities and older people.

While Freeview currently reaches nearly 99% of UK households, good terrestrial television signals may not be available to all households due to a number of factors such as local topography and spectrum availability. In these cases, Everyone TV – the organisation responsible for the day-to-day running of Freeview – advises that viewers consider other options to access free-to-air television such as the satellite service Freesat, which has total coverage in the UK.

The Government recognises the crucial role that DTT services such as Freeview play in the wider UK broadcasting system, in particular in helping ensure that public service content continues to be widely available and free-to-air to all audiences. For these reasons, we have legislated to secure the continuity of DTT until at least 2034.

We have also recently launched a major research and engagement programme looking at how UK audiences will get their TV in the decades to come, including digital terrestrial television (DTT), satellite, cable, and online.

Before any decisions about the future of terrestrial television are made, close consideration will be given to how any changes would impact audiences, and especially those who rely on DTT as their primary means of watching television.

We know that active people are fitter, happier and healthier - which is why in our new Sport Strategy - 'Get Active’ - we set out an ambitious strategy to boost our national health by getting 3.5 million extra active people by 2030. This includes bold targets to reach communities with the lowest levels of physical activity.

The Government provides the majority of support for grassroots sport through our Arms Length Body, Sport England. Since 2019, we have invested over £773,000 in the Penrith and Borders area supporting projects such as the refurbishment of the Hunsonby Community Centre, the Wigton Baths Trust and the Castle Park tennis project. A further £50,000 has been invested in the area as part of the Multi-Sports Grassroots Facilities Investment programme, providing funding for new goalposts, floodlights and improving grass pitch surfaces.

Building on their 12 local delivery pilot areas in areas such as Withernsea, Sport England is expanding their place-based work so that at least 75% of their investment is committed to areas with the lowest levels of physical activity and social outcomes.

Sport England are using a range of data sources to inform this approach, including physical activity data from the Active Lives Surveys as well as wider social data including IMD, community need and health inequalities data. These datasets help to identify a range of communities, including rural communities, across England that need support to become more active.

Land-based colleges play a central role in meeting local and national skills needs, including supporting the department's commitments on Net Zero. These colleges are significant assets to their local communities, enabling people of all backgrounds to gain sought-after skills, get good jobs and climb the ladder of opportunity.

Departmental officials are working closely with Landex and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to develop a strategy for land-based colleges which recognises their central role in supporting the delivery of key national priorities. This strategy will position land-based colleges within the Green Jobs Plan as hubs of skills training and technical innovation, boosting take-up in rural areas of high-quality skills training and ensuring high-quality, updated technical qualifications are available in each local area.

In addition to receiving capital funding, land-based colleges have benefitted from the £300 million the department has invested in the 21 employer led Institutes of Technology, which are leading the development of technical qualifications in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics related areas.

In the 2023/24 academic year, land-based colleges also benefitted from a significant uplift in the specialist programme cost weighting from 1.75 to 1.975. This means where young people are taking specialist land-based courses at these institutions, they now attract a 97.5% uplift on the core funding rate.

In July 2023, the Department published an update to the School Sport and Activity Action Plan, which will support teachers and schools to deliver two hours of high quality physical education (PE) and to provide competitive and extracurricular opportunities to pupils in all areas of England.

The Department has announced over £600 million of funding across the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years for the Primary PE and Sport Premium, along with £22 million of funding for the School Games Organiser network.

The Department is funding up to £57 million to deliver phase three of the Opening School Facilities programme, which allows schools to open their sports facilities outside of the core school day to provide more extracurricular opportunities for pupils and communities to play sport and be physically active. The programme targets groups who have lower participation levels in sport, where funding will have the most positive impact. 1,419 schools across England have already signed up to deliver the programme, including 16 schools in Cumbria.

The department has given local authorities the flexibility to decide what transport arrangements to put in place to help young people aged 16 to 19 and those aged up to 25 with a special educational needs to access education or training, based on the needs of their population, local transport infrastructure and the resources they have available.

The department recognises that the cost and availability of transport can be difficult for some pupils. Many local authorities do offer some form of subsidised transport to young people over the age of 16. In addition, our 16 to 19 bursary provides financial support to pupils from low income households and this can be used to support travel costs. For example, Westmoreland and Furness Council offer concessionary fares and free transport for young people from low income families, and that local schools and colleges offer the 16 to 19 bursary fund.

In academic year 2023/24 the department allocated over £160 million of bursary funding to institutions to help disadvantaged 16 to 19 year olds with costs including travel. The department has also made available £20 million each year specifically to support pupils in defined vulnerable groups, such as those in care, care leavers and those supporting themselves in receipt of certain social security funds.

The Department for Transport is responsible for maintaining high standards of safety and security in transport.

The Department for Education is responsible for home to school travel. The Department requires Local Authorities to arrange free home to school travel for eligible pupils of compulsory school age. They decide what travel arrangements to make, provided they are suitable. They might provide a pass for free travel on public transport.

Local Authorities are also required to publish an annual transport policy statement specifying the arrangements they consider necessary to facilitate attendance at education or training by young people of sixth form age. The Department expects them to take account of local transport infrastructure in doing so.

The Department also publishes statutory guidance which highlights that everyone who works with children has a responsibility for keeping them safe and sets out what professionals and organisations need to do to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people. A link to the statutory guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children--2.

The Department has not assessed the number of vaping sensors in schools. Schools are required by law to have a behaviour policy that sets out what is expected of all pupils, including which items are banned from school premises.

My right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister, recently announced that the Government will be ensuring pupils are made aware of the health risks of vaping. The Department will be including this important topic in relationships, sex and health education lessons (RSHE), as part of the review of the RSHE statutory guidance, to further discourage pupils from taking up vaping.

i. The UK has a highly resilient food and animal feed supply chain which has coped well in responding to challenges in the past few years.

Cereals and oilseeds make up a significant proportion of animal feed, most of which are internationally traded commodities. Subsequently, their supply chains are dynamic and responsive to global market developments in price and availability. These developments may be influenced by the war in Ukraine or additional factors unrelated to the conflict, such as weather conditions and currency fluctuations.Our high degree of food security is built on strong domestic production and imports from diverse sources. We recognise the essential role that domestic production plays in providing food security and resilience, which is why the government is committed to broadly maintaining the current level of food we produce domestically.

We continue to keep the market situation under review through the UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group, which monitors UK agricultural markets including price, supply, inputs, trade and recent developments.

ii. In 2022, nitrogen fertiliser prices increased to two to three times their recent nominal historic levels (imported ammonium nitrate prices were £870/t), due to increased global gas prices and conflicts around the world (including but not limited to the conflict in the Ukraine) as well as strong demand driven by high crop prices.

The AHDB publishes a GB fertiliser price time-series for the most commonly used fertiliser products to increase transparency of market prices and show trends to growers. This shows a plateauing of fertiliser prices in GB from June 2023 until now. While this is a GB price series the same situation applies to the UK as a whole. This plateau in prices is partly due to global price factors, but also regional demand has been affected by poor weather and shifts in crop choices by farmers.

Defra is continuing to monitor fertiliser prices and supply chains through regular engagement with key manufacturers and wider stakeholders. We are also working with other government departments to coordinate intelligence, and understand supply and pricing issues.

a) Animal feed: The UK has a highly resilient food and animal feed supply chain which has coped well in responding to challenges in the past few years. Cereals and oilseeds make up a significant proportion of animal feed, most of which are internationally traded commodities. Subsequently, their supply chains are dynamic and responsive to global market developments in price and availability. These developments may be influenced by the war in Ukraine or additional factors unrelated to the conflict, such as weather conditions and currency fluctuations. Our high degree of food security is built on strong domestic production and imports from diverse sources. We recognise the essential role that domestic production plays in providing food security and resilience, which is why the government is committed to broadly maintaining the current level of food we produce domestically.

We continue to keep the market situation under review through the UK Agriculture Market Monitoring Group, which monitors UK agricultural markets including price, supply, inputs, trade and recent developments.

b) Fertiliser: In 2022, nitrogen fertiliser prices increased to two to three times their recent nominal historic levels (imported ammonium nitrate prices were £870/t), due to increased global gas prices and conflicts around the world (including but not limited to the conflict in the Ukraine) as well as strong demand driven by high crop prices.

Defra is continuing to monitor fertiliser prices and supply chains through regular engagement with key manufacturers and wider stakeholders. We are also working with other government departments to coordinate intelligence and understand supply and pricing issues.

CO2: Defra works closely with stakeholders across the food industry, to encourage CO2 contingency planning and resilience. The tightness in supply of CO2 has eased and shown more stability recently and the industry has taken steps to make efficiencies and use alternative CO2 sources where possible. The stable supply of CO2 is vital to several CNI sectors including food and water. We recognise the importance of CO2 supply for our key sectors.

Over the past few years we have completed extensive work to build resilience into the sector including: monitoring and encouraging further diversification of production and supply in the UK; providing clarity on various regulatory questions, including through the Environment Agency’s publication of a Regulatory Position Statement on the capture, treatment, storage and use of carbon dioxide (CO2) from anaerobic digestion (AD) of waste; and working with industry on this supply chain through various forums. The diversification of this supply chain is being demonstrated through a series of recent industry announcements, such as British Sugar’s recent reopening of the CO2 capture plant at their Wissington site.

The use of catapults against animals, and the sharing of disturbing imagery associated with such use on social media, is an issue that has been relayed to my officials by certain local police forces and the National Wildlife Crime Unit. I am informed a new national group has recently been created to address the catapulting of wildlife, focusing on education, prevention, detection and justice. Officers from Essex Police and the Metropolitan Police are leading the group, named Operation Lakeshot, and they are working in partnership with the RSPCA and Nature Watch.

The government takes wildlife crime seriously and it is a matter of concern. Under provisions in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996 and the Animal Welfare Act 2006, there are a range of offences around deliberate attempts to kill, injure, or inflict harm on wildlife. Furthermore, the Online Safety Act 2023 will also require social media firms to take action to tackle content that results in the unnecessary suffering of animals, or that encourages activity that causes the unnecessary suffering of an animal. This includes removing such content.

Defra is aware of the challenges facing the veterinary sector, including retention of qualified veterinary surgeons. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, as the regulator for the veterinary profession, published its Workforce Action Plan in 2022 to progress issues of recruitment, retention and return. Defra works closely with the RCVS on issues concerning the veterinary profession and continues to keep reform of the Veterinary Surgeons Act, where amendments might support increases in recruitment and retention, under review.

Defra and the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) officials took robust action following findings of cases of Bluetongue virus, following our well-established processes for managing cases of disease. We are planning for a possible resurgence of the disease over the coming months as the weather warms, and the risk of infected midges blowing over from northern Europe increases. We recently held a Ministerial roundtable with key industry stakeholders to discuss the options and understand their priorities over the coming months. Surveillance of susceptible animals and epidemiological assessments continue, and we are actively engaging with vaccine manufacturers on the development of BTV-3 vaccines for use in the UK. We are modelling the risk of incursion and proactively raising awareness with animal keepers in higher-risk areas, and are monitoring vector activity.