The Sports Concussion Research Forum’s terms of reference are to develop a prioritised list of translatable research aims relating to concussion in sport, to be drawn from both the sports and academic communities, including consideration of such research that may extend beyond sport-specific areas, where appropriate.

The further aim of the Forum is to encourage academic institutions, foundations and other organisations to make concussion in sport one of their priorities and to focus their work in this area around the Forum’s prioritised list of research aims, which is expected to be published in 2024.

The members of the Sports Concussion Research Forum are:

• Dr Robin Buckle (Chair), Chief Scientific Officer, Medical Research Council/UKRI
• Prof Damian Bailey, University of South Wales
• Prof Alan Carson, University of Edinburgh
• Prof Peter Hutchinson, University of Cambridge and National Institute of Health Research
• Prof Elizabeth Jeffries, University of York
• Prof Fiona Lecky, University of Sheffield and Research Director of the Trauma Audit and Research Network
• Prof Niklas Marklund, University of Lund, Sweden
• Prof James Rowe, University of Cambridge
• Prof David Sharp, Imperial College London and UK Dementia Research Institute

Over 800,000 young people participated in an NCS programme between 2010/11 and 2022/23. The NCS programme is due to deliver 261,000 experiences between 2023/24 and 2024/25, as per the 2023/24 Annual Business Plan. The number of experiences delivered in the year 2023/24 will be published in the Annual Report later this year.

The Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities Programme is investing over £325 million between 2021 and 2025 to level up facilities across the whole of the UK. The programme provides funding to make essential facility improvements, so that communities have a high-quality pitch to play on, and is a clear demonstration of the government’s commitment to levelling up all corners of the United Kingdom.

Since 2021, over £200 million has been invested in over 2,400 sites across the UK, improving the natural and artificial grass pitches on offer to communities and upgrading floodlights, goalposts, changing rooms and toilet facilities. All funded projects are listed on gov.uk at this link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/multi-sport-grassroots-facilities-programme-projects-2021-to-2025

Grants that were awarded in England prior to 2021 were delivered by the Football Foundation, funded through Sport England. Sport England’s funding to the Football Foundation is available on their website, along with all awards made by Sport England to football clubs since 2009: https://www.sportengland.org/

Sport is devolved - grants made in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland prior to the Multi-Sports Grassroots Facilities Programme are a matter for the Devolved Administrations.

a) An evaluation of the creative industry tax reliefs covering Film Tax Relief, High-end Television Tax Relief, Animation Tax Relief and Children’s Television Tax Relief was published in 2022: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/creative-industry-tax-reliefs-evaluation

An evaluation of the video games tax relief was published in 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/video-game-tax-relief-evaluation

A qualitative evaluation capturing the wider impacts of the Museums and Galleries relief was conducted in 2020: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tax-relief-for-museums-and-galleries-qualitative-research

The government keeps the tax system under review.

b) The number of recipients of the creative industry tax reliefs is published in HMRC’s Creative Industries Statistics: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/creative-industries-statistics-august-2023

The Government-funded High Streets Heritage Action Zones programme ran from 2019-2024, operating in England only. It was administered by Historic England. Since 2019, there have been £90,948,829 in grants awarded through the fund.

The programme has funded the transformation and restoration of over 60 high streets, creating economic growth and improving quality of life in these areas.

Two grants were awarded in Kent, in Ramsgate and Chatham. In total, the two schemes were awarded £2,241,797 over the course of the programme.

The High Streets Heritage Action Zone programme came to an end in March 2024.

Whilst digital infrastructure is a mostly devolved matter, the UK provides significant support to the four Official Development Assistance (ODA) eligible Territories. The FCDO-funded capital investment programme in Montserrat recently delivered a sub-sea fibre cable and in St Helena we are supporting improvements in the local telecommunications infrastructure.

The UK has not provided support for digital infrastructure in the Caribbean through our bilateral ODA. However, we continue to support the development of digital infrastructure through our shareholding in multilateral agencies including the World Bank, Inter-American and Caribbean Development Banks.

Evidence-based sports research is an important component in ensuring that sport is made as safe as possible for all participants. To that end, DCMS established a Sports Concussion Research Forum in July 2022, chaired by the Medical Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. This brings together key academic experts with experience of traumatic brain injury, neurology and concussion to identify the priority research questions for the sporting sector.

The Research Forum has met five times since its inception and is now formulating a report to identify those priority research questions, with the report expected to be completed in 2024.

The Government remains committed to working with sports stakeholders to build on the positive work that is already taking place to mitigate the causes and effects of concussion in sport.

The Home Office collects and publishes data on the size of the police workforce in England and Wales, broken down by Police Force Area (PFA), on a bi-annual basis in the ‘Police Workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales.

These data are collected by PFA level only, and information at lower levels of geography, such as districts are not collected. Data on the number of police officers in Kent as at 31 March each year, from 2007 to 2023, on a full-time equivalent and headcount basis, can be found in the ‘Police Workforce Open Data Table’ here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1172892/open-data-table-police-workforce-260723.ods.

We do not hold the requested information centrally.

The ‘Financial assistance under section 40 of the National Health Service Act 2006’ reports set out all funding that was provided to NHS trusts for each financial year and are published with the Department of Health and Social Care Annual Report and Accounts. However, this does not itemise the funding at the individual hospital and site level. The reports are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-financing-available-to-nhs-trusts-and-foundation-trusts

The department has allocated over £15 billion since 2015 to keep schools safe and operational, including £1.8 billion in 2023/24.

Between 2015/16, when the current condition funding system was introduced, and 2023/24, Kent local authority has been allocated a total of £170,514,468 in school condition allocations (SCA), devolved formula capital (DFC) and one-off funding allocations to improve the condition of its maintained schools, including those in Folkestone and Hythe. Larger multi-academy trusts and voluntary aided school bodies (which cross local authority and parliamentary constituency boundaries) will also have been allocated condition funding in respect of the schools for which they are responsible. Funding allocations prior to 2015 are visible on the National Archives website available at: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/*/https:/www.gov.uk/government/publications/capital-allocations. It is for local authorities, academy trusts and voluntary-aided school bodies to prioritise School Condition Allocations across their schools based on local knowledge of need.

In addition, 32 projects at 11 schools within the constituency have received funding through the Condition Improvement Fund and two schools were included in the Priority School Building Programme.

Funding allocations for 2023/24 are available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-capital-funding.

Since 2022, the Government has taken significant action to support struggling families with the high cost of living in all constituencies. This includes the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG), the £400 Energy Bills Support Scheme (EBSS), the £150 Council Tax rebate, fuel and alcohol duty cuts and successive extensions of the Household Support fund, Cost of Living Payments and benefit uprating to millions of the most vulnerable. Taken together, total support over 2022-2025 to help households with the high cost of living is worth £104 billion – an average of £3,700 per UK household.

The table below provides a summary of the investments made by Sport England and Arts Council England (“ACE”) in the Folkestone and Hythe Constituency since 2010.

For a breakdown of the projects funded across this period, Sport England publishes an updated register of grant awards on a quarterly basis, with awards dating back to 2009 listed in full.

Due to a change in Arts Council England's (ACE) grant management system in 2016, data from before that date is not as high quality and not reliably comparable with more recent data. Noting this caveat we have provided the figures nonetheless for completeness.

Grants awarded from ACE's main funding streams within the last 5 financial years (2023/2024 inclusive) are published online and provide details of all organisations that receive funding.They are available in the following locations:

National Lottery Project Grants

Developing Your Creative Practice

Investment Programme (2018-2022 NPO)

Investment Programme (2023-2026 NPO)

Cultural Recovery Fund

Emergency Response Fund

Library facilities are very important, and I was pleased to visit a library facility recently. We have put more funding into libraries and into communities across the country.

My hon. Friend has cut to the nub of the question. We cannot build ourselves out of this issue by creating more hotels or large sites. The only sustainable answer is to break the people smugglers’ model, and that is what the Illegal Migration Bill sets out to do. We on this side of the House are on the side of the British people, while those who vote against the Bill are on the side of the people smugglers. It is only by stopping people crossing the channel, by creating a genuine deterrent—for instance, sending people to a safe third country such as Rwanda—that we will achieve that.

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the Russell family for their tireless and dignified campaigning on behalf of all families who have been bereaved in such tragic circumstances. Coroners already have statutory powers to require evidence to be given or produced for the purposes of their investigation, but the Government are listening carefully to the concerns of parliamentary colleagues and to bereaved families. The Ministry of Justice and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology are leading those discussions to ensure that we have the right set of procedures in place.

As always, my hon. Friend talks a great deal of sense, and I completely agree with him. That is why this Government will be acting and standing up in the interests of clubs and fans to ensure that the regulator is in place to do just that, but of course the rules of the game could be enforced now.

I thank my hon. Friend for his work in raising awareness of this particular issue. He is absolutely right. I am pleased to give him the reassurance that the Online Safety Bill will require platforms to remove and limit the spread of illegal content and activity online. Assisting illegal immigration is listed as a priority offence in the Bill, which we look forward to bringing back to the House in due course.

The Home Office responded to the correspondence on 6 July 2022