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 tackle loneliness among young people.

Jointly with the Co-op Foundation, the Government has invested £3.5m in projects tackling youth loneliness in 2018-19 and 2019-20.

In addition a number of new policies related to loneliness amongst young people were announced in last year’s strategy, ‘A connected society - A strategy for tackling loneliness’, including DCMS allocating £100,000 for research to improve understanding of how to address youth loneliness through uniformed youth groups’ work and the Department for Education’s new relationships education guidance featuring loneliness and social connections.