Paul Masterton

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

The Government absolutely recognises the importance of post offices in East Renfrewshire, Blaydon and other communities across the UK and is committed to the Post Office network’s future.

Government has provided a further £370 million from 2018 to 2021 to safeguard the network and invest in its future. Following this, and the new Banking Framework, postmaster pay is increasing. This has led to the most stable network in generations, with over 11,600 branches across the UK, the largest retail network in the country.

Contracts for Difference (CfDs) are funded through a levy on GB electricity suppliers, and ultimately by consumers through their energy bills. £636.4m has been spent on renewable electricity generation through the CfD since the first project started generating in 2016/17. The latest forecasts published by the Office for Budget Responsibility estimate an annual scheme cost of £3bn by 2022/23, the year by which all current CfD projects are expected to have commissioned. In the Clean Growth Strategy, published in October 2017, Government confirmed it would be making up to £557m (in 2011/12 prices) of annual support available for further CfDs.

On 5 January 2018 we set out that coal-fired power stations will need to close by 1 October 2025 unless they invest to reduce their emissions to 450g CO₂ per kWh. The government is exploring the appropriate legislative vehicle for introducing this emissions intensity limit and intend that it is introduced before the 2021 Capacity Market auction round. This auction round will be the first that secures capacity beyond 1 October 2025 at which point unabated coal will no longer be able to participate.

To date, contracts have been signed to bring forward nearly 10 gigawatts of renewable generation capacity, with the first of these recently beginning to generate. Government support for these projects is expected to rise to around £2.5 billion a year by 2024/25 (in 2011/12 prices).

Our sustained support has helped deliver dramatic falls in the costs of renewable technologies such as offshore wind.

The Government is committed to delivering clean, smart, and flexible power, which is why in our ambitious Clean Growth Strategy we committed up to £557 million of annual support for further Contracts for Difference, with the next one planned for spring 2019 (in 2011/12 prices).

BEIS Ministers regularly engage with retailers based throughout the UK to understand their priorities and work with colleagues across Government to optimise the conditions for the sector. Specific initiatives which have benefited retailers include: the reduction in the corporation tax rate to 19%, with further plans to cut it further to 17% in 2020 and the introduction of the Employment Allowance, giving employers up to £3000 off their National Insurance contributions (NICs) bill, benefitting 1m employers. The Government has also introduced the Great British High Street Competition, now in its third year, which celebrates the achievements of local areas in creating vibrant and dynamic high streets and is open to applications from any community large or small.

Over the past 25 years, the National Lottery has awarded over 535,000 grants bringing widespread benefits to communities across the United Kingdom.

National Lottery good cause money is allocated by distributing bodies at arm’s length from Government in the proportions set out in the National Lottery etc Act 1993. Four distributors operate across the UK (National Lottery Community Fund, National Lottery Heritage Fund, UK Sport and British Film Institute) and the remainder (Sport England, Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, Sport Scotland, Arts Council Wales, Sport Wales, Arts Council Northern Ireland and Sport Council Northern Ireland) distribute funding in their respective countries.

When making funding decisions geographical balance is considered by all distributors, alongside where funding will have the most impact in terms of outcomes and benefits. 70% of National Lottery funding has been awarded to projects outside of London and the South East.

Funding levels for areas are often determined by how many applications are submitted. Distributors are aware of some areas being more active in applying than others and actively run specific programmes to encourage applications from less funded areas.

As the independent regulator of the BBC, Ofcom is currently conducting a competition assessment on the BBC’s proposal to launch a new television channel for Scotland. The competition assessment will consider whether the public value offered by a new BBC channel would justify any potential adverse effects on fair and effective competition.

The Government published its response to the Commission on Dormant Assets’ report on 16 February 2018.

The Commission is responsible for overseeing a program of counter-fraud activities, aimed at both raising awareness of fraud risks to charities and improving their resilience to fraud. The purpose of this work it to ensure charities have the knowledge and tools to prevent fraud from happening in their organisations in the first place.

In addition to publishing detailed guidance for charities, the Commission facilitates the ‘charities against fraud’ coalition, a cross-sector group of nearly 40 stakeholders. The Commission has jointly run two fraud awareness weeks with the Fraud Advisory Panel in 2016 and 2017, which included a national conference on the issue. In 2017 the Commission helped to deliver the first ever national charity fraud awards to help raise awareness of good practice in this area.

The Government provided £100.8m from Phase 1 of the Superfast Broadband Programme to support superfast broadband coverage in Scotland. This has been delivered through the Highlands & Islands broadband project and the Digital Scotland project which covers the Rest of Scotland. The Government provided £20.99m additional funding in February 2014 to support a Phase 2 project in Scotland to provide further superfast broadband coverage. The Scottish Government has not yet begun the procurement process using this funding and is not expecting to have agreed a contract until December 2018. We are doing all we can to speed this up.

For all premises which do not have superfast broadband coverage, the UK Government will ensure universal broadband of at least 10Mbps.

There were more than 3000 responses to the call for evidence which are still being considered. Many dedicated families are doing a very good job educating their children at home, taking on heavy responsibilities in doing so.

We are concerned, however, that overall numbers of children said to be being educated at home are rising, the reasons for which are complex. We need to help local authorities deal effectively with children who are not in school. We will publish the Government’s response soon.

​Information on the number of children being educated at home, and the reasons for their being so educated, is not held centrally.

​In 2018, the department held a consultation and call for evidence on home education to gain more information about home education in England. The government’s response to this will be published shortly.

The Department for Education does not hold this information, however my department and this government takes all forms of hate crime extremely seriously. There is no place in our society – including within higher education – for hatred or any form of harassment, discrimination or racism.

In September 2015, the government asked Universities UK (UUK) to set up a Harassment Taskforce to consider what more can be done to address harassment and hate crime on campus. The taskforce’s report, ‘Changing the Culture’, published in October 2016, recommended a zero-tolerance approach to harassment and hate crime.

On 27 July 2017 UUK published a directory of case studies detailing the innovative projects universities have developed to address the taskforce’s recommendations. These include Goldsmith’s hate crime reporting centre (case study 11) which is a joint initiative with the local authority in Lewisham and the Metropolitan Police, which provides students and staff with a safe space to report incidents. These are published on UUK’s website: http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Pages/changing-the-culture-case-studies.aspx. In addition, the Higher Education Funding Council for England has provided £1.8 million for projects to improve responses to hate crime and online harassment on campus.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England is currently working with UUK to test the sector’s response to the taskforce’s recommendations and the full results will be published in spring 2018.

The UK’s contribution to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA) Programme Budget is based on the Agency meeting rigorous performance indicators. In the last financial year we assessed that UNRWA performed well against our indicators, as measured through annual review processes. The annual review is publically available on DFID’s Development Tracker. The UK has engaged closely with UNRWA on the development of a Medium Term Strategy for 2016-21 to help UNRWA deliver its mandate. This is supported through our technical assistance to UNRWA’s department of Internal Oversight. We engage with other donors and host countries on value for money at a high level through the UNRWA Advisory Commission and Sub-Committee.

DFID has due diligence assessment processes to provide assurance over the expenditure of our funds, and DFID’s Occupied Palestinian Territories spending is subject to regular auditing by DFID’s Internal Audit Department and the UK National Audit Office. In the last five years, UNRWA has also been reviewed by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact and the UK International Development Committee. The UK is a long-term supporter of UNRWA, which provides basic services, including basic healthcare, to over 800,000 Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and 1.3 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza.

The amount of UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in each calendar year since 2013 is given in the table below. This data is published each year in the Statistics for International Development (SID) publication. Figures for 2017 will be released next year.

The UK remains firmly committed to supporting UNRWA and Palestinian refugees across the Middle East and we have so far provided around £50 million in the 2017/18 financial year.

Source: Statistics for International Development 2013-2016

ODA figures are produced only on a calendar year basis in line with the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation, Development Assistance Committee definitions.

Bilateral ODA through multilateral is funding to multilateral organisations for specific programmes or for specific countries. Core multilateral ODA describes un-earmarked funds from national governments which are pooled with other donors’ funding and disbursed as part of the core budget of the multilateral organisation.

UK financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority is provided through a European Union mechanism. It pays for vetted West Bank health and education public servants. The EU mechanism uses a pre- and post-verification system which validates that the funds transferred into a dedicated sub-account for UKaid and spent on the salaries of eligible beneficiaries on a vetted list. The PA payroll is checked by independent auditors, and payments made to all eligible beneficiaries are traced through the verification process.

The UK provides direct financial aid to the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Finance and Planning to contribute to the salaries of vetted public servants. A breakdown of funding by financial years is below:

The Department for International Development (DFID) is providing assistance to refugees and migrants at risk of trafficking and exploitation in Libya. So far this year, DFID has supported more than 20,000 emergency interventions such as healthcare, psychosocial support, hygiene kits and safe shelter. The UK Government is also assisting vulnerable migrants with voluntary returns from Libya – so far our support has helped more than 1,200 individuals to return home.

The UK government continues to support the Libyan authorities to tackle smuggling and organised immigration crime. We also continue to press for refugees and migrants in Libya to be treated in accordance with international norms and standards.