Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the title is of the Senior Responsible Owner leading on the (a) Home Defence Programme and (b) Resilience Action Plan.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Resilience Action Plan and Home Defence Programme are led by the COBR Director and COBR Directorate, with oversight by the Deputy National Security Advisor (DNSA) for Intelligence, Defence and Security. Ministerial oversight is provided by the Security Minister.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what part of his Department is leading on the Home Defence programme.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Resilience Action Plan and Home Defence Programme are led by the COBR Director and COBR Directorate, with oversight by the Deputy National Security Advisor (DNSA) for Intelligence, Defence and Security. Ministerial oversight is provided by the Security Minister.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, following the decision to disband the Resilience directorate in the Cabinet Office, who is responsible for implementing the Resilience Action Plan.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The COBR Directorate in the Cabinet Office is responsible for the coordination of resilience, civil contingencies planning, and crisis management across the system.
This brings together the former Resilience Directorate and the former COBR Unit, which will ensure that all phases of the crisis management cycle report to a single Director and is in line with the Cabinet Office vision for a specialist, smaller and more strategic centre.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many civil servants FTE work on the Home Defence Programme within the Cabinet Office.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Home Defence Programme (HDP) is led by the COBR Directorate in the Cabinet Office. COBR is responsible for coordinating preparedness and response to a range of risks facing the UK, including potential hostilities affecting the UK. For national security reasons, the government does not routinely comment publicly on the size of such teams.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether applicants for Civil Service jobs have to declare any previous dismissals from the Civil Service as a result of misconduct or performance on their application.
Answered by Anna Turley - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The Civil Service expects all applicants to maintain the highest standards of honesty and integrity throughout the recruitment process.
Successful applicants are required to provide a complete and accurate employment history. Departments are responsible for ensuring pre-employment checks are undertaken to verify this information, which include previous employment in the Civil Service and the reasons for its cessation, including dismissals due to misconduct or performance.
Failure to provide a truthful and complete account of employment history, or the deliberate omission of material facts, may result in the withdrawal of a job offer or subsequent disciplinary action if discovered after appointment.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department is taking to improve public preparedness for emergencies.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
Advice for the general public on how to prepare for emergencies is published at GOV.UK/Prepare, which provides simple and effective steps that individuals, households and communities can take to be more prepared for a range of emergencies.
The Prepare website was included in the message sent to tens of millions of mobile devices across the country in September as part of the successful test of the Emergency Alerts systems.
The Government is currently considering what further public communications activities might support improvements to public preparedness for emergencies. We published the first annual UK Public Survey of Risk Perception, Resilience and Preparedness in July 2025. The results are being used to inform the development of future public preparedness communications and to monitor trends.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to reduce fraud in the public sector.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Tackling public sector fraud is a priority for this government.
That’s why the government introduced the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill in January as part of the biggest fraud crackdown in a generation. The measures in the Bill will give us more tools to combat fraud, recover public money and allow the government to investigate fraud.
The Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA) is also developing artificial intelligence tools to tackle fraud - and is expected to surpass the PSFA’s £250m 2024-25 audited benefits target from these services.
Furthermore, at the request of the Secretary of State for Education to address fraud in student loans, the PSFA is working to coordinate the government's response to fraud within student loans by providing direct expertise understand the scale of the threat posed by fraudsters, identify the most effective immediate disruption activities and how to prevent this kind of fraud in the future.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the median age is of computers issued to officials in their Department.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The median age for currently deployed computers is 4.5 years for MacBook and 5 years for Windows devices.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to prevent the unauthorised disclosure of Cabinet discussions to the media.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
As set out at chapter 5 of the ministerial code, the principle of collective responsibility requires that the privacy of ministerial discussions at Cabinet and its committees should be maintained. It is therefore a long established precedent that information relating to the proceedings of Cabinet and its committees is not normally shared publicly.
It is the longstanding policy of successive governments not to comment on specific leak investigations.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the oral statement by the Prime Minister of 25 February 2025 on Defence and Security, Official Report, column 634, if he will initiate a review of maritime security to inform the new national security strategy.
Answered by Abena Oppong-Asare
There are no current plans to publish a separate national maritime security strategy. As announced by the Prime Minister, a new national security strategy will be published this summer.