Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 7 March 2022 to Question 131081 on Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport: Public Expenditure, if she will specify the funding associated with each programme in each of the next three years.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The programmes provided within the Answer of 7 March 2022 that are managed by DCMS from which some funds are provided to local government and local spending bodies are set out below. Profiles are liable to change during the Main Estimates and Supplementary Estimates processes.
5G Testbeds and Trials Programme “Urban Connected Communities Project”
Trials new 5G services and applications to individuals and businesses. This project has now finished.
5G Testbeds and Trials Programme “5G Create” scheme
Aims to explore and develop new use-cases and 5G technical capabilities. The total funding provided for the 5GTT programme is £6m in 2022-23 only.
Building Digital UK Superfast
Aims to ensure that delivery of superfast broadband can reach a number of under-served local areas. The total funding provided for this programme is £7m in 2022-23, £5m in 2023-24 and £7m in 2024-25.
Cultural Investment Fund
Invests in cultural infrastructure, local museums and neighbourhood libraries to benefit communities across the country. The total funding provided for this programme is up to £150m over 2022-23 - 2024-25.
Life Chances Fund
Provides top-up funding contributions to Social Impact Bond projects through outcomes-based contracts. These contracts involve social investors and are locally commissioned. The total fund is £70m and will be paid as outcomes are achieved over the Spending Review period.
Local Digital Skills Partnerships Catalyst Fund
Brings government together with national and local businesses and charities to address the digital skills gap in a collaborative way. The total fund over the lifespan of Local Digital Skills Partnerships programme (Catalyst Fund) is £1.3m.
Local Full Fibre Networks
Aims to stimulate investment, create UK digital leadership, and drive productivity and growth in UK digital products and services. This programme is now finished and no funding is provided in this Spending Review period.
Rural Connected Communities competition
Funds 5G research and development projects. The total funding provided for the 5GTT programme is £6m in 2022-23 only.
UK City of Culture
The UK City of Culture competition is a key part of DCMS’s broader offer to level up opportunity across the UK. It invites places across the UK to set out their vision for culture-led regeneration and takes place every four years. Funding of £1.615m in 2022-23 and £1m in 2023-24 will be provided to the Coventry City of Culture Trust (the organising body for the current titleholder).
Youth Investment Fund
Aims to create, expand and improve local youth facilities and their services, in order to drive positive outcomes for young people. The £368m investment over 22/23 - 24/25 will be targeted at those localities with most need in accordance with levelling up principles. Local authorities will be able to bid into this fund as will civil society youth service providers.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (Green Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to improve the (1) reliability, and (2) coverage, of air quality monitoring in the UK.
Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
Defra’s national air quality monitoring networks are made up of 300 sites across the UK and are managed by the Environment Agency. The reliability of the networks is ensured through a process of quality assurance and quality control prescribed in agreements with the monitoring network contractors to continuously improve air quality monitoring reliability and performance. The national air quality monitoring network is subject to continuous review to ensure that it remains fit for purpose and delivers on public expenditure at good value.
The geographical coverage of air quality monitoring is determined by the Air Quality Standards Regulations (2010) that require a set number of monitoring locations within administrative areas dependent on whether the environment is urban, rural or by a roadside and dependent also on population size.
Several adjustments were made in a recent review including increases in monitoring for particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide. Also, as part of the development of new targets for PM2.5 in the Environmental Act, Government is expanding the number of PM2.5 monitoring sites to ensure that compliance with the new targets can be appropriately monitored. A consultation on the new targets and the proposed monitoring arrangements will be issued early in the New Year.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answers by Lord Agnew of Oulton on 7 October (HL8550) and (HL8549), what plans they have to provide copies of the official-level guidance and templates setting out their priorities for the Comprehensive Spending Review; and how they will ensure that funding assessments are ‘rural proofed’ and do not unreasonably disadvantage rural communities.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
Official-level guidance is a technical document internal to government.
At the Comprehensive Spending Review this autumn, the government will set out further details on our plan to level up economic opportunity across all nations and regions of the country by investing in infrastructure, innovation and people.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what requirements have been placed on departments by Her Manesty's Treasury to ‘rural proof’ their submissions to the 2020 Comprehensive Spending Review; and how each of those departments have fulfilled these requirements.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
As the Chancellor announced in July, a priority of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) will be levelling up economic opportunity across all nations and regions of the country by investing in infrastructure, innovation and people.
At launch, the Treasury sent official-level guidance and templates setting out its priorities for the CSR and the information required from departments to make assessments of funding needs.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the report by the Select Committee on the Rural Economy, Time for a Strategy for the rural economy, published on 26 March 2019 (HL Paper 330), what plans they have to ensure that each department’s Comprehensive Spending Review settlement will be conditional on ensuring that nobody living in a rural area is unreasonably disadvantaged by where they live.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
As the Chancellor announced in July, a priority of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) will be levelling up economic opportunity across all nations and regions of the country by investing in infrastructure, innovation and people.
At launch, the Treasury sent official-level guidance and templates setting out its priorities for the CSR and the information required from departments to make assessments of funding needs.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding the Environment Agency has been allocated for flood risk mitigation projects in each year since 2010.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra provides the majority of its funding for flood and coastal erosion risk management to the Environment Agency (EA) as Grant-in-Aid, which is the mechanism for financing Non-Departmental Public Bodies, such as the EA. The EA spends this funding directly on manging flood risk, but it also passes some of this funding on as capital grants for flood or coastal erosion defence improvements to local authorities or Internal Drainage Boards – local public authorities established in areas of special drainage need which manage water levels within their respective drainage districts.
The capital funding allocated to the EA for flood and coastal erosion risk management in present and future financial years 2019/20 to 2021/22 can be found in table 1 (page 4) of the document available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/funding-for-flood-and-coastal-erosion-risk-management-in-england.
Expenditure on flood and coastal erosion risk management by the EA, Defra and Lead Local Flood Authorities for 2010/11 – 2018/19 can be found in table 2 (page 5) of the same document. Figures for 2019/20 spend are still in the process of being audited and will be available in an updated document on GOV.UK soon.
Asked by: Jo Stevens (Labour - Cardiff Central)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the availability of solicitors qualified to conduct Criminal Legal Aid work in rural Wales.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The Lord Chancellor (via the Legal Aid Agency) has a duty to ensure that qualifying individuals who require assistance at the police station or the magistrates’ courts and who do not have their own solicitor have access to a Duty Solicitor. The LAA monitors capacity in each duty scheme area based on the number of solicitor organisations in that area, as well as the proportion of duty solicitors each of those organisations engages. There are currently 126 offices contracted to deliver criminal legal aid services in the Wales area. Additionally, across the 16 areas which make up the Duty Solicitor scheme in Wales, there are 260 solicitors listed on the rota who are available to provide advice and assistance. We are confident we have solicitors to fulfil criminal cases and will make sure we continue to do so.
The Legal Aid Agency monitors access to public funding according to the location of the solicitor providing the service. Client location is not reliably captured for the majority of the criminal legal aid scheme and therefore accurate data based on a defendant’s residence is not available. Information on expenditure under criminal legal aid by solicitor offices located in Wales is proactively published, and is available to view at https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/720217/legal-aid-statistics-crime-provider-area-data-to-mar-2018.ods.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what information they are collecting and publishing on the rates of coastal erosion in different regions, especially in rural areas; and what level of expenditure, if any, they plan to commit to reducing the current rates.
Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Management of coastal erosion is a devolved matter. Coastal erosion is a natural process that always has and always will shape our coastline.
The National Coastal Erosion Risk Maps provide a consistent assessment of coastal erosion risk around England and Wales, and contain predictions for the future. They have been available to the public on the Environment Agency’s (EA) website since 2012, but were temporarily unavailable in April 2018. The EA expects them to be live again in June 2018.
We defend the coastline where it is sustainable and affordable to do so, and let the coast function naturally in areas where it is not. Coastal protection authorities (district councils) lead on management of coastal erosion risk in England. The EA provides a strategic overview to ensure that decisions on the English coast are made in a joined up manner. There are 22 shoreline management plans covering the 6,000 mile coast of England and Wales. The plans are based on scientific, social, economic and environmental data. The plans provide a high level, long term policy framework to manage the risk of coastal change over three time horizons: 20, 50 and 100 years. The plans recommend four approaches to manage the coastline. These scale from building and maintaining new defences (hold the line), to allowing the coast line to evolve naturally (no active intervention). These plans were developed by coastal groups in each area, the members of which were drawn from individual coastal protection authorities, executive agencies and other local interests.
Between April 2015 and March 2021, the Government plans to invest £165 million in coastal erosion projects and £690 million on schemes to better protect communities against flooding from the sea around England. The Scottish Government provides local authorities with £42 million each year to help them invest in flood protection measures.
Asked by: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the (a) environmental effect and (b) cost to the public purse of littering and fly tipping on (i) beaches, (ii) marine life, (iii) farms and (iv) urban areas.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
We have made no specific assessment of the environmental effects of litter and fly-tipping, nor of the costs of clearing litter and fly-tipped waste in these areas. Data on local government spending, including on street cleansing (which includes tackling litter and fly-tipping) can be found at:
www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing .
The cost of litter clearance is not recorded separately: the figures reported for spending on street cleansing also include spending on clearing fly-tipped waste, and on activities which would be required even if all litter was disposed of appropriately (such as sweeping up fallen leaves, or emptying public bins). We estimate the annual cost to local government of clearing litter in England runs to hundreds of millions of pounds.
The UK Marine Strategy Part One, published in 2012, presented an initial assessment of the state of UK seas. An updated assessment of the state of our seas is currently being prepared. Defra conducts monitoring of litter on beaches, in the water column and on the seafloor. We consider that the best way to address both the environmental and economic impact is to prevent litter entering the marine environment in the first place. The UK Marine Strategy Part Three, published in 2015, sets out a comprehensive set of actions we are taking to address litter in the marine environment.
Data on fly-tipping for England is published at:
www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fly-tipping-in-england.
This includes information on the cost to local authorities of clearing fly-tipped waste and of taking enforcement actions against fly-tipping.
Asked by: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate she has made of the total cost of clearing litter in (a) St Albans, (b) Hertfordshire, (c) the east of England and (d) England since 2010.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
We have made no specific assessment of the costs of clearing litter in these areas. Data on local government spending, including on street cleansing, which includes tackling litter, can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing.
The cost of litter clearance is not recorded separately; the figures reported for spending on street cleansing also include spending on clearing fly-tipped waste and on activities which would be required even if all litter was disposed of appropriately, such as sweeping up fallen leaves or emptying public bins.
We estimate the annual cost to local government of clearing litter in England runs to hundreds of millions of pounds.