The government is committed to helping small businesses across the UK adopt AI safely and productively.

The industry-led SME Digital Adoption Taskforce set an ambition for the UK’s small and medium-sized businesses to be the most digitally capable and AI confident in the G7 by 2035. We are working to deliver their recommendations, including pilots with small businesses in the West of England and West Yorkshire, collaboration with industry on support, and new offers through the Business Growth Service. An update was published in June 2026.

The AI Skills Boost programme is also helping workers with AI skills, including cyber security.

• The information requested is not held centrally, the number of employees in each grade for ALB is published in the DBT: workforce management information. The latest information is May 2026. This publication provides headcount by grade and not by salary band as requested. Headcount and payroll data structure is recorded following the Cabinet Office guidance for all the Civil Service.
• The Principal Civil Service Pension Scheme (PCSPS) and the Civil Servants and Others Pension Scheme (CSOPS) – known as “alpha” – are unfunded multi-employer defined benefit schemes but the Department is unable to identify its share of the underlying assets and liabilities. The Government Actuary’s Department’s report is contained within Civil Superannuation annual account 2024 to 2025 - GOV.UK”

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 prohibits unfair commercial practices, including misleading actions that are likely to impact the average consumer’s transactional decision. The DMCCA also requires traders to display prices inclusive of all taxes and unavoidable charges before payment is made. Prices must be accurate and not misleading. Failure to do this may be taken as an unfair trading practice and constitute an offence.

The department has not made any assessment on this matter, but we continue to closely monitor consumer protection issues.

• The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) is a statutory obligation that applies across the public sector. As a procedural duty to have "due regard" to equality considerations, compliance is an on-going responsibility rather than a one-off task. It is integrated into the day-to-day development and delivery of all policies and services; as such, it is a core responsibility of all civil servants across government, rather than being restricted to dedicated personnel.
• Because it is a continuous, procedural duty applicable to all civil servants, it is impossible to disaggregate the specific fraction of time or cost dedicated solely to Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) compliance versus general policy and operational work. Attempting to calculate an FTE or cost figure would incur disproportionate cost and still be highly inaccurate.

The licences support flexibility in UK supply and global markets. Regulation 76 of the Russia Regulations (2019) requires businesses to notify Government within 30 days of use, due to low volumes, figures notified to Government on diesel and jet fuel imported into the UK are suppressed to prevent the identification of individuals or businesses. Notification of Russian crude in UK supply chains is a new requirement under the general licence. We do not have comparative data to show trends of imports before this.

The Government has committed to reviewing the licence every two weeks. This involves continually assessing its impact on energy supply, market conditions and other relevant considerations, against our objective to lift the licence as soon as is practicable. As part of this process, we have set an end date of 1 January 2027.

The licences support flexibility in UK supply and global markets. Regulation 76 of the Russia Regulations (2019) requires businesses to notify Government within 30 days of use, due to low volumes, figures notified to Government on diesel and jet fuel imported into the UK are suppressed to prevent the identification of individuals or businesses. Notification of Russian crude in UK supply chains is a new requirement under the general licence. We do not have comparative data to show trends of imports before this.

The Government has committed to reviewing the licence every two weeks. This involves continually assessing its impact on energy supply, market conditions and other relevant considerations, against our objective to lift the licence as soon as is practicable. As part of this process, we have set an end date of 1 January 2027.

The licences support flexibility in UK supply and global markets. Regulation 76 of the Russia Regulations (2019) requires businesses to notify Government within 30 days of use, due to low volumes, figures notified to Government on diesel and jet fuel imported into the UK are suppressed to prevent the identification of individuals or businesses. Notification of Russian crude in UK supply chains is a new requirement under the general licence. We do not have comparative data to show trends of imports before this.

The Government has committed to reviewing the licence every two weeks. This involves continually assessing its impact on energy supply, market conditions and other relevant considerations, against our objective to lift the licence as soon as is practicable. As part of this process, we have set an end date of 1 January 2027.

The Department has not done a specific assessment of investment secured from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The Life Sciences Sector Plan does however support SMEs through a suite of targeted interventions. The Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund remains open and its pipeline includes companies of varying sizes. The Scale-Up Support Service directly supports 10-20 high-potential companies and is open to companies of all sizes. We also offer dedicated export assistance to SMEs. UKRI and NIHR are set to substantially enhance their offerings for BioTech and MedTech SMEs and the British Business Bank continues to invest in life sciences SMEs.

The Secretary of State and Ministers regularly engage with institutional investors about opportunities for investment in the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor and the Corridor’s strengths in the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy sectors, including Life Sciences, Advanced Manufacturing, Digital and Tech, Clean Energy and Defence. These discussions support wider efforts to promote the Corridor as a globally competitive location for innovation, growth and high-value business investment. The Office for Investment supports this by securing strategically significant investment projects that drive growth, create high-value jobs and strengthen the UK’s long-term competitiveness.

Some cement businesses currently receive support under the British Industry Supercharger, which provides relief to eligible energy-intensive industries for some electricity policy and network costs. These cement businesses also benefitted from the uplift of the Network Charging Compensation Scheme, an element of the British Industry Supercharger, and now receive 90% compensation for their electricity network charges. The Government understands the pressure of high energy costs and regularly engages with the cement sector’s main trade association, the Mineral Products Association, to understand the sector’s challenges and explore how best to support it.

Government is providing a range of support to decarbonise heavy industry while keeping competitiveness.

In May, government announced a new £470m funding package for chemicals and ceramics to back decarbonisation and resilience in these sectors.

Government also offers a range of support to enable hydrogen use in industrial sectors, including business models for production and transport and storage; and in September 2025, government also signed a contract with Padeswood, the UK’ first carbon capture-enabled cement plant.

The Industrial Energy Transformation Fund also made around £500m available to support UK industry to decarbonise.

Government continues to keep its approach under review.

The Government recognises the important role that onsite low carbon technologies can play in reducing emissions, improving energy resilience and supporting industrial competitiveness.

Through programmes such as the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF), which made around £500 million available to support UK industry to decarbonise, and wider support for industrial decarbonisation, we are helping businesses invest in technologies including electrification, energy efficiency and onsite generation.

Data centres can be significant sources of employment, both during construction and to operate and maintain the data centres once completed. These include highly specialised jobs across IT, engineering, cybersecurity, and support services. Data centres also indirectly support employment in other industries, particularly in tech and AI.

My Department has not made a specific estimate of the number of jobs that will be created due to the substantial potential investment in the UK by data centre developers but is actively monitoring the sector.

TechUK have estimated that by 2035 there could be 40,200 additional jobs directly employed in data centre operational roles and 18,200 additional jobs directly employed in data centre construction roles over the period 2025–35.

Due to uncertainty surrounding both future emissions and carbon prices, the Government has not produced an estimate of the potential impact of the UK ETS on the cost of domestic flights between 2026 and 2050. The costs faced by aircraft operators will depend on the level of emissions covered by the UK ETS and the future price of UK ETS allowances. DESNZ publishes traded carbon values for modelling purposes, which provide scenario-based projections of future carbon prices rather than forecasts. As uncertainty increases over longer time horizons, any estimates of future UK ETS costs should be treated with caution.

Tata Steel UK has contracted Tenova to supply the electric arc furnace (EAF) and associated equipment for Port Talbot.

Procurement decisions are a commercial matter for Tata Steel, and the Department does not hold information on bidding processes. Government support for the project is intended to secure the long-term future of UK steelmaking. The EAF is expected to use significant volumes of UK-sourced scrap steel, supporting domestic supply chains and the wider Steel Strategy.

The Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre (CMIC) updated the UK Criticality Assessment in November 2024, identifying critical minerals based on global supply risk and the UK’s economic vulnerability. This informed the 2025 UK Critical Minerals Strategy, which introduced a new, complementary list of growth minerals, which will be increasingly important to future industries and economic growth. CMIC will update the criticality assessment in due course; in the interim, Government continues to monitor developments. Further, to help anticipate future risks, DBT’s Supply Chain Centre published its list of growth-driving inputs, including chemicals and raw materials, vital for the Industrial Strategy manufacturing sectors.

Generally, any financial assistance to public owned steel assets would, among other things, be time-limited, targeted and proportionate to the Government's objectives, and meet our responsibilities under subsidy control rules. The finances of Forgemasters, which is publicly owned, are a matter of public record through its annual report. The Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill is completing its passage through Parliament and so no transfers to public ownership have been made under the powers proposed in that bill.

The Government cannot provide exact figures for eligible businesses by specific location. Eligibility for BICS will be determined through an application process that will open on 1 October 2027. The Government’s response to the British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme consultation on eligibility sets out the parameters to by which decisions on eligibility will be made.

The Department for Business and Trade will also be publishing an online eligibility checker later this summer to enable businesses to self‑assess whether they are likely to be eligible for the scheme.

If the powers contained in the SIN bill to transfer ownership of a steel undertaking were used, a full assessment of the costs of doing so and the relevance to the public interest would be undertaken. This would include any costs arising from environmental policies pursued by the Government.

Furthermore, if a steel undertaking is nationalised, the Department has committed to publish a quarterly written ministerial statement, which may consider the impact of decarbonisation policies, where appropriate.

The Government knows it is important to communities across the country that we use UK-made steel. We are ambitious about increasing the use of UK made steel in UK energy and infrastructure projects where possible.

Net Zero Teesside is not a public procurement (so public procurement guidelines do not apply) but we have spoken to the project developer to understand more about the use of UK and non-UK steel, as well as the wider use of UK local content, in the project. They confirmed their voluntary commitment to achieve more than 50% UK content across the value chain, with around £1billion UK-based sub-contracts already awarded.

We want to champion UK steelmaking and our steel communities now and for generations to come and my colleagues at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero are looking at how greater UK content will be used in future projects.