Digitally enabled therapies and other technological innovations are already used in the provision of mental health support in England. We are building on the progress made by services in using digital approaches and remote delivery during the pandemic, to give people a greater choice in the way they access care, and to enable services to be more productive. For many people, digitally enabled support through apps or online will mean that they might receive help earlier, or in a way that is easier for them to fit into their lives.

The NHS Long Term Plan included several commitments on the use of technology in mental health, including that: 100% of mental health providers will meet required levels of digitisation; local systems will offer a range of self-management apps, digital consultations, and digitally enabled models of therapy; and that systems utilise digital clinical decision-making tools.

The Government and NHS England work closely together to ensure that staff have access to appropriate equipment, to ensure that cancer patients can receive high quality radiotherapy treatment across England. This includes supporting advances in radiotherapy, using cutting-edge imaging and technology to help target radiation doses at cancer cells more precisely.

The Government has invested in the latest technology in radiotherapy, ensuring that every radiotherapy provider had access to modern, cutting-edge radiotherapy equipment, enabling the rollout of new techniques like stereotactic ablative radiotherapy. The total central investment made between 2016 and 2021 was £162 million, and enabled the replacement or upgrade of approximately 100 radiotherapy treatment machines. Since April 2022, the responsibility for investing in new radiotherapy machines has sat with local systems. This is supported by the 2021 Spending Review, which set aside £12 billion in operational capital for the National Health Service from 2022 to 2025.

The Department does not plan to make specific assessments of the impacts, but advances in clinical technology and equipment are crucial to the work of NHS England. For example, the Government has invested in the latest technology in radiotherapy, ensuring that every radiotherapy provider had access to modern, cutting-edge radiotherapy equipment, enabling the rollout of new techniques like stereotactic ablative radiotherapy. The total central investment made between 2016 and 2021 was £162 million, and enabled the replacement or upgrade of approximately 100 radiotherapy treatment machines.

The Department does not plan to make specific assessments of the number of medical physicists and clinical engineers required in the National Health Service, but is backing the NHS’s Long-Term Workforce Plan with over £2.4 billion of funding over the next five years, to ensure additional education and training places. We are also working with NHS England to reform and modernise the way staff work and harness new technology and innovations to double NHS labour productivity, and to make sure staff can spend more time with patients. Finally, NHS England is also growing the cancer workforce, with 50% more staff in the cancer workforce when compared to 2010.

The Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF) supports industrial sites located in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The IETF is a technology-neutral fund which provides funding for applicants to reduce emissions by bringing down the costs and risks associated with investing in decarbonisation and energy efficiency technologies.

The IETF has funded several projects within Yorkshire. Ardagh Glass Limited received a grant offer of £1.7m towards their Efficient Furnace Project, contributing to the facility’s decarbonisation plans. More information on successful IETF applications can be found here.

Phase 3 of the IETF will open for applicants in January 2024.

The Government encourages the use of innovative new technology to prevent theft and trace stolen items.

In 2020 the Government published Gear Change – a bold vision for cycling and walking. Theme 4 of Gear Change includes various initiatives to reduce cycle theft. The Department for Transport and Active Travel England are working with the police-led National Cycle Crime Group to support regional cycle crime enforcement partnerships and raise awareness of better ways to secure cycles.

Cycle Crime Reduction Partnerships have been set up across the country to coordinate regional enforcement activity to disrupt organised cycle theft.

The Home Office has established an expert Stolen Goods Working Group with the police and academia to tackle the markets for stolen goods. The group is working to identify where and how stolen goods are commonly sold; examining ways to ensure property is secure, identifiable and traceable through property marking, and exploring ways to increase enforcement and share best practice between forces.

Crime survey of England & Wales for year ending June 2023 shows that bicycle theft since March 2010 has reduced by 54%.

There are currently no plans for the Home Office to provide any further funding for technology to tackle cycle theft.

The 2018 Inclusive Transport Strategy set out the ambition for equal access for disabled people using the transport system by 2030, with assistance if physical infrastructure remains a barrier. The Strategy explained how technology can contribute to this.

My Department continues to work towards this ambition. This has included work on:

• Mobility as a Service - technology to simplify and tailor journey planning for users, making travel more integrated, safer, and comfortable.
• Collaborating with the Connected Places Catapult to understand how we can drive accessibility in micro-mobility, looking at emerging modes of transport and asking how we can influence the market to make them as accessible as possible.
• Supporting the Rail Delivery Group to launch the rail passenger assistance app in May 2021, which allows passengers to request assistance and review journeys using a smartphone.
• Technology Research and Innovation Grants, for which the assessment criteria includes assessing their potential to improve accessibility, and includes a specific accessibility grant funding competition to facilitate products and services to improve the ability for disabled people to travel.

Officials from the Department regularly engage with the social care sector, as well as suppliers and technology companies, to understand the opportunities and barriers to adoption of technology in social care settings.

The Government updated the Surveillance Camera Code last year [Amended Surveillance Camera Code of Practice (accessible version) - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)], which advises the police and local authorities to have effective review and audit mechanisms to ensure legal requirements, policies and standards are complied with in practice.

For security reasons, we do not comment on counter-terrorism (CT) capabilities or provide a breakdown of CT funding. Decisions around the deployment of these capabilities is a matter for the police, who are operationally independent.

The Government is taking action to improve the regulation of the private parking industry. My department is currently implementing the Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019, including the development of an independent Code of Practice that sets out straightforward rules that private parking companies must follow.

The Net Zero Strategy committed at least £1.5bn of funding to support net zero innovation between 2022-25. The Department will deliver its share of this through the £1bn Net Zero Innovation Portfolio. Investment in climate science research also remains a priority and the Hadley Centre Climate Programme has received more than £60m of funding in the last spending review for 2022 - 2025.

The potential impact of technology on general practice productivity is assessed by NHS England. Ensuring practices have access to modern systems is a core programme within NHS England and continues to deliver funded infrastructure, technology and systems directly into practices. The associated frameworks to deliver these products are regularly updated as technologies evolve.

We remain seriously concerned about allegations levied against Chinese surveillance firms with regard to Xinjiang, and we take the security of our citizens, systems and establishments very seriously. We have a range of measures in place to scrutinise the integrity of our arrangements. In addition, the Procurement Bill will further strengthen the ability of public sector bodies to disqualify suppliers from bidding for contracts where there is a history of misconduct. We have already

set out a number of measures to help ensure that no British organisations are profiting from or contributing to the violations of rights.

China remains a significant trading partner for the United Kingdom, and there is scope for mutually beneficial trade and investment. In 2021, China was Britain’s third largest trading partner, but our approach to China is, and will remain, rooted in our values. As set out in the integrated review, we want a positive trade and investment relationship with China, but we will make sure that Britain’s national security, and the values of the British people, are protected.

Research, development and innovation in rail is led by the rail industry itself, including steps to increase the uptake of rail technologies across the sector. However, the Government continues to play an active role to support this.

Along with Network Rail’s research and development portfolio, the Department also funds First of a Kind innovation competitions, including the announcement of a further round of funding of £7.6m on 12 April 2022. This aims to overcome barriers to new technologies coming to the rail market, by supporting innovators to demonstrate their products on the railway for potential industry buyers. We have also recently offered tailored support to help innovators effectively pitch to investors. The Department further funds the industry-wide research and development programme delivered by the Rail Safety and Standards Board.

The Department supports and works with the rail industry in identifying the key research, development and innovation that is required to address the current and future challenges for the railway. The Rail Technical Strategy, which has been produced by the rail industry with the support of the Department, sets out five overall priorities:

• Making rail easy to use (including better passenger information, payment methods and accessibility);
• Lowering emissions (including making electrification cheaper and easier, replacing diesel and making the railway more efficient);
• Optimising train operations (including making services more reliable, responsive train planning, and increasing network capacity);
• Making assets more reliable and easier to maintain (so they require less time out of service and cost less over their lifetimes); and
• Making better use of data to underpin all of these.

The Department supports further research into the application of safe autonomous rail systems in the UK, including the work being undertaken at York’s Institute for Safe Autonomy, which will be enhanced by the new research facility due to open in autumn 2022.

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR), which is Britain’s independent safety regulator, has recently consulted industry on the health and safety principles for operation of passenger trains with unattended train operation, which it plans to publish in due course. The industry will need to follow these principles closely as it considers opportunities for the application of safe autonomous rail systems.

The government is committed to providing a net zero rail network by 2050, and to do so we will electrify most of the network and deploy battery and hydrogen trains on some lines, where it makes economic and operational sense. To support this Great British Rail will bring forward costed options to decarbonise the whole network to meet the government’s commitment to a net-zero society as part of the 30-year strategy. The 30-year rail strategy will provide clear, long-term plans to transform the rail, strengthen collaboration with industry and incentivise innovation in new energy technologies.

The government is currently supporting the development of battery and hydrogen technology in rail through innovation funding and research. This includes work on safety and wider issues that will have to be considered to allow battery and hydrogen trains smooth entry onto the network. As such, Great Western Railway has signed a deal that will see the UK’s first battery-only train enter scheduled passenger service this year, trialling Vivarail’s new fast charger. The trial is supported by £2.15m funding from the Department for Transport's Rail Network Enhancement pipeline (RNEP).

The Environment Agency (EA) uses flood modelling to understand the risk of flooding at a local and a national level. Its flood models use a range of information to help make them as reliable as possible. The EA keeps its data and modelling under constant review and examines it rigorously after every flooding incident to ensure it best reflects post incident recovery data.

The EA is also investing in a programme of forecast model improvements which will include exploring using the latest technology and methods such as artificial intelligence, as well as technology to make it easier for users to see the likely areas to be impacted.

The EA advises that members of the public and businesses check if their property is at risk of flooding here https://www.gov.uk/check-flooding and sign up for flood warnings here https://www.gov.uk/sign-up-for-flood-warnings.

The Environment Agency (EA) holds over 40km of temporary barriers, with heights from 1m to 1.8m in height. Temporary barriers are only considered for use in exceptional circumstances and larger temporary barriers are not suitable to use everywhere. The EA regularly reviews the technology available to protect residents and businesses from flooding and will continue to assess what further improvements we can make on an ongoing basis.

The Government supports research in a range of technologies, spanning many sectors, which will improve our resilience to climate change. For example, in Defra we have awarded £5.5 million between 2018 and 2023 towards Genetic Improvement Networks research projects, which aim to enhance the productivity, sustainability and resilience of the main UK crops. We are also supporting the UK Research and Innovation Transforming Food Production Initiative, through which a public investment of £90 million will be made over four years to support the rapid development and deployment of advanced precision agricultural solutions. The UK Climate Resilience Programme also supports adaptive endeavours on both national and regional scales, through action-oriented research and by working directly with local communities. The UK is a world leader in climate science and the Government has developed extensive research and innovation capabilities over the past few decades to ensure policies are built upon a robust, ever-growing evidence base.

Research excellence from world-class UK institutions is complemented by a proven track record of working collaboratively across the globe to build adaptive capacity and enhance resilience, by harnessing the power of research, evidence translation and community engagement. For example, the UK-funded Future Climate for Africa research programme, known as FCFA, has delivered major advances in the scientific understanding of African climate variability and change, improving continent-wide prediction of the impacts of climate change. Crucially, the FCFA also tackles the challenge of how to bring this new science into use to reduce the risks faced by governments, businesses, and communities on the frontline. Supporting novel, collaborative approaches between researchers and decision-makers in country has helped to build the climate resilience of cities across southern Africa, improved flood risk management in West Africa, and improved water security in East Africa.

More broadly, the Government has doubled its international climate finance of £11.6 billion between 2021/22 and 2025/26, with an extra £1 billion in 2025 if the economy grows as forecast, supporting developing nations to access clean technology and build green infrastructure. For example, the Clean Energy Innovation Facility (CEIF) is a £50 million programme which aims to accelerate the commercialisation of clean energy technologies in developing countries, supporting clean growth and a resilient recovery from COVID-19.