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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much funding his Department has allocated to (a) digital skills and (b) cyber skills; and to whom that funding has been allocated.

Since 2018 the government, through DCMS, has provided £9.1 million of funding for digital skills. This has been allocated to:

• Degree conversion course programmes (£3.3 million) in data science and artificial intelligence with the office for students. Further funding is due in subsequent years for up to 1,000 scholarships to open up opportunities for people from diverse backgrounds.

• The Fast Track Digital Workforce Fund (£3 million), a digital skills pilot programme covering the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Lancashire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) areas to boost digital skills training (including cyber security, software development and digital marketing).

• The Digital Skills Innovation Fund (£1.1 million) for LEPs and Combined Authorities for initiatives that aim to help women, disabled people, and residents in poorer wards get into digital roles or further training and The Digital Inclusion Innovation Fund (£400,000) to help older and disabled people acquire digital skills.

• Six Local Digital Skills Partnerships (£900,000) that bring together cross-sector regional and national partners to upskill the current workforce.

• The Grenfell Digital Skills programme (£300,000), which has been made available to the survivors and bereaved to learn digital skills.

• Code4000’s Coding in Prisons programme (£100,000), supporting their expansion from HMP Humber and HMP Holme House, to other prison sites across the UK and funding support for graduates upon release in finding employment.

In addition to this DCMS has also funded research into digital skills.

Through the £1.9bn National Cyber Security Strategy, government has funded a range of initiatives to support the development of home-grown cyber security talent. This includes funding for the Cyber Discovery Schools Programme to inspire the next generation of cyber security talent and through the Cyber Skills Immediate Impact Fund to increase opportunities for individuals to retrain and upskill for a career in cyber security.

For national security reasons we are unable to detail individual funding by department or initiative.