Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment his Department has made of whether the recently reported £494,000 Big Lottery Fund grant to Stonewall (a) constitutes funding political lobbying and (b) broke the rules on political funding.

Big Lottery Fund is an arms-length body that has its own independent decision making processes. It does not fund projects to undertake political lobbying. The £494,818 awarded to Stonewall is to develop trans leaders, to work with them to establish best practice and to develop their skills to deliver training and information for key public sector institutions. Big Lottery Fund is confident that the activity supported by this grant does not constitute political lobbying and does not break any rules on political funding.