It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Dissolution.

As part of the government’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak, we are investing over £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care services, including securing 1.3 million laptops and tablets for disadvantaged children and young people. To date, over 1.29 million laptops and tablets have been delivered to schools, trusts, local authorities and further education providers.

The department has also partnered with the UK’s leading mobile operators to provide free data to help disadvantaged children to have online access as well as delivering 4G wireless routers for pupils without connection at home.

We are building on the foundations of the department’s significant investment in technology and exploring future options, which we will set out in due course.

My Department has had no such discussions with Neuroflex.

The safety, wellbeing and welfare of everyone taking part in sport is absolutely paramount. National Governing Bodies are responsible for the regulation of their sports and for ensuring that appropriate measures are in place to protect participants from harm, including serious injuries. With that in mind, we expect sports to do all they can to protect their players as a fundamental part of their duty of care.

To that end, the Secretary of State and I hosted two roundtables on concussion in sport recently to understand the issues from the perspectives of players and to push the sports on what more they can be doing. The Government remains committed to working with sports to build on the positive work that is already taking place, including the use of technology.

The United Kingdom’s trade relationship with Israel is already strong, totalling £4.9 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2020. The United Kingdom-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement entered into force on 1^st January 2021. As the Foreign Secretary noted, the United Kingdom is now able to start scoping for greater ambition in our trade relationship with Israel. Science and innovation are key elements of this relationship and we are currently building a framework for a new Britain-Israel Science Partnership. Moreover, the ‘TechHub’, based in British Embassy Tel Aviv, continues to partner Israeli expertise with British companies, delivering significant benefits to the British economy.

To tackle the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on disabled people DCMS launched the £2.5m digital inclusion Digital Lifeline fund on 25 February. The fund will provide 5000 devices, data and support for disabled people to use the devices safely and confidently.

The government is working on the project with leading digital inclusion charities Good Things Foundation and AbilityNet, both highly experienced in helping disabled people boost their mental health and achieve their goals through digital technology.

The Government has worked closely with industry throughout the pandemic and has agreed a set of commitments with the UK’s major broadband and mobile operators to support vulnerable consumers during the Covid-19 period. Providers committed to working with customers who are finding it difficult to pay their bill as a result of Covid-19 to ensure that they are treated fairly and appropriately supported. Supplementary to this work, Ofcom published a Vulnerability Guide for providers, setting out its expectations and good practice on how vulnerable telecoms consumers should be supported.

The challenging financial situation we face due to the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a temporary reduction in the UK’s aid spending target from 0.7% of GNI to 0.5%. This means making difficult decisions when it comes to prioritising how we spend aid money to deliver the most impactful outcomes.

The Government recognises the importance of supporting international research partnerships, and supporting the UK research sector. Our commitment to research and innovation has been clearly demonstrated by my Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Budget announcement of increasing investment in R&D across government to £14.6bn in 2021/22; and as has been set out in our Integrated Review ambitions, international collaboration is central to a healthy and productive R&D sector.

We are currently working with UKRI, and all our Global Challenges Research Fund and Newton Fund Delivery Partners, to manage the financial year 2021/22 ODA allocations. UKRI have written to many award holders setting out the next stage of the review of ODA funding next year, and to explore options for individual programmes. (Full details have been published on the UKRI website).

Our commitment to research and development has been clearly demonstrated through the Spending Review announcement to increase investment in R&D across government to £14.6bn in 2021/22. This increase in investment will help deliver our ambition to increase total UK R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027.

The increased investment will put research and development at the heart of economic and social recovery from the impacts of COVID-19, enabling us to build back better for a greener, healthier and more resilient UK.

As the custodian of the R&D system, BEIS was allocated £11.1 billion for R&D in 2021/22. Funding for each individual programme is subject to our Departmental allocations process, which is under way. We will provide an update in due course.

The Home Office is supporting policing to build its digital capability and maximise the use of technologies to ensure it can respond effectively to crime and protect the public, including women.

The Single Online Home (SOH) is a national platform that provides a digital front counter and online services for the public. SOH launched a pilot domestic abuse reporting service in October 2020 across five forces following heightened risks of hidden harms during the pandemic. Designed in consultation with forces, the NPCC Domestic Abuse Lead, and external charities, the service is very much victim focused and provides victims with a discrete reporting mechanism to access the support they need. The service has received a total of 1168 reports and is being used to inform a national roll out.

In light of the recent and tragic death of Sarah Everard, we have more than doubled the size of the Safer Streets Fund, which will bring funding for these local projects to £45 million in the 2021/22 financial year. Through the Safer Streets Fund, we will work with Police and Crime Commissioners and Local Authorities to deploy measures such as CCTV and improved street lighting that improve the safety of public spaces, with a focus on increasing the safety of women and girls.

Through our landmark Domestic Abuse Bill we will also strengthen our response to perpetrators and improve our support to victims. The Bill will introduce mandatory polygraph examinations of high-risk domestic abuse offenders on licence.

We intend to publish two strategies this year focussed on tackling Violence Against Women and Girls and Domestic Abuse, which will ensure a cross-government response to ensuring and increasing the safety of women and girls.

We have published the Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper, which includes specific measures to work with private companies and ensure that they are held to account for tackling illegal activity and content, such as hate crime, harassment, and cyber-stalking, as well as activity and content which may not be illegal but is nonetheless highly damaging to individuals (legal but harmful). The Full Government Response will be followed by legislation, which we are working on at pace, and will be ready this year.

The UK was the first country in the world to require businesses to report on the steps they have taken to tackle modern slavery. The landmark provision in section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires businesses, in all sectors, including the textiles industry, with a turnover of £36m or more to report annually on the steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery in their operations and supply chains. To improve the quality and detail of reporting and accelerate action to prevent modern slavery, the Government has committed to strengthen the reporting requirements on businesses and to introduce financial penalties for those that fail to meet their obligations under section 54.

The Government expects businesses to determine the most appropriate methods to assess and tackle modern slavery based on the nature of their operations and supply chains. We encourage businesses to be transparent about the instances or indicators of modern slavery and prioritise action based on risk, and where they can have most impact. Our guidance suggests that they should include the risk assessment and due diligence they undertook to prevent and tackle modern slavery in their modern slavery statements and demonstrate their progress by setting and reporting against clear targets.

The Government regularly engages with businesses, civil society and industry experts in the sector to understand emerging best practice, evidence and innovations which might support businesses in their efforts to tackle modern slavery

The Government recognises the importance of the technical support and production services industry to the entertainment sector, and its contribution to the UK economy. We appreciate that the Covid-19 pandemic presents a significant challenge to this industry.

The Government undertakes a monthly assessment of the GVA of the cultural sector as a whole. It is estimated that GVA in the cultural sector shrank by 28% in March to December 2020, compared to the same period in 2019. In comparison, DCMS sectors (excluding Civil Society) shrank by 18% and the UK economy as a whole shrank by 11%. These monthly GVA estimates are based on incomplete information and should only be used to illustrate general trends, rather than be taken as definitive measures.

The Government recognises that there are many individuals and freelancers working across these industries. This is why the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) and the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) were extended to September 2021 at Budget. Also announced at Budget were changes to the SEISS scheme, meaning that 600,000 more people are now able to claim for the first time.

Through the CJRS, the Government is currently supporting 315,000 employees in the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation sectors.

The Department has remained in close contact with the technical support industry and production services sector throughout the pandemic and continues to hold regular meetings with a wide range of companies and representative organisations to understand the challenges they are facing and provide Government support targeted to their needs.

The hon. Lady raises a very interesting question, and this is something the Government are aware of and are looking into. Yesterday, I spoke to Dr Tony Sewell, who is chairing the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities; I am aware that it has researched this extensively and I look forward to seeing what its report says on it.

In lockdown, we have all become much more dependent on technology, yet that technology is not designed to treat us equally, with video-conferencing and photo-sharing apps that do not recognise black faces, recruitment algorithms that discriminate on ethnicity, and the Home Office’s own visa application algorithm withdrawn because of bias. In this week of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, what is the Minister doing to prevent structural racism from being further entrenched by new technologies?