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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent progress her Department has made in implementing the civil society covenant.

The Civil Society Covenant was launched by the Prime Minister in July at a major civil society summit. Its ambition is to strengthen relationships and encourage partnership between civil society and all levels of UK government. Achieving this will require the collective commitment of organisations across the full breadth of both civil society and government.

At the launch we also announced the initial steps that DCMS is taking to implement the Covenant. This includes establishing a cross-sector Joint Civil Society Covenant Council to drive implementation and provide strategic oversight, and a Local Covenant Partnerships Programme to support collaborative working at the local level between civil society and public sector organisations. We are making progress and plan to share details and engage civil society in due course.