Patrick Hurley

Under the Online Safety Act, all services in scope must tackle illegal content and activity which is harmful to children, including activity through fake and anonymous accounts. The illegal harms duties will come into force in Spring 2025, followed by the child safety duties in Summer 2025.

Ofcom’s draft codes include proposed measures to allow children to block accounts, and to reject unwanted invitations to group chats. The Act also requires Category 1 providers to offer user verification options, enabling users to filter out non-verified users and their content. Ofcom expects to consult on these duties in late 2025.

DSIT defines clear policies and procedures for identifying, disclosing, and managing conflicts of interest. This includes a comprehensive disclosure process set out in Terms and Conditions documents and encourages proactive disclosure by employees. Non-Executive Directors are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest upon appointment and as soon as they become aware of them. Civil Servants and appointed board members must also adhere to a code of conduct that outlines the principles and standards expected of them. This includes maintaining integrity and professionalism and ensuring that private interests do not adversely impact their official duties.

As an arm Arms’ Length Body (ALB), BDUK may be subject to ALB review by the Cabinet Office, which involve independent parties to review the organisation in full and oversee conflict of interest situations to ensure impartiality and fairness.

BDUK Non-Executive Directors support business performance and provide strategic guidance to the executive team, Non-Executive Directors are not involved in any commercial contract awarding decisions.

To identify intervention areas for Project Gigabit interventions, the government conducts regular market reviews to collect data on suppliers’ commercial plans to define the premises that are eligible for Project Gigabit subsidy. Using this information, the government then conducts a transparent, fair, and robust procurement process to award contracts to any Project Gigabit suppliers.

We understand concerns about the deployment of telegraph poles. We want operators to share infrastructure and use existing underground ducts, wherever possible.

Where the original infrastructure was buried without ducts, or existing infrastructure is not useable, new infrastructure must be built, and underground ducts are significantly more expensive than poles.

On 16 August, I wrote to broadband operators asking them to share infrastructure wherever possible and expressing support for their work revising the Cabinet and Pole Siting Code of Practice. I will shortly be meeting them to understand their infrastructure sharing plan, to express our concerns and to ensure community views are taken into account.

The Department for Culture, Media, and Sport does not hold this information centrally. The National Piers Society can be contacted for further information on this matter at https://piers.org.uk/

As of 10 July 2024, there were 12 open dentistry practices in the Southport constituency, four of which were showing as ‘accepting new adult patients when availability allows’. This data is sourced from the Find a Dentist website, and is matched to constituencies based on the postcode data shown on the website, which is available at the following link:

https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-Dentist