Asked by: Paul Masterton (Conservative - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the equity of the distribution of National Lottery funding throughout the UK.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
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.
Asked by: Paul Masterton (Conservative - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will make an assessment of the potential economic benefits for (a) East Renfrewshire constituency and (b) Scotland of the BBC’s proposals to launch a new Scottish television channel.
Answered by Margot James
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.
Asked by: Paul Masterton (Conservative - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, when his Department plans to respond to the report published by the Independent Commission on Dormant Assets.
Answered by Tracey Crouch
The Government published its response to the Commission on Dormant Assets’ report on 16 February 2018.
Asked by: Paul Masterton (Conservative - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to protect charities and charitable trusts from fraud.
Answered by Tracey Crouch
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.
Asked by: Paul Masterton (Conservative - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Department of Digital, Media and Culture what steps the Government is taking to tacke low levels of broadband connectivity in (a) Uplawmoor and (b) Eaglesham in East Renfrewshire.
Answered by Matt Hancock
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.