The Government is committed to ensuring that public procurement supports British businesses and helps to build a fairer economy, delivering jobs, skills and opportunities in every postcode.

The new Social Value Model will ensure that contracts valued at £1m and above, but less than £5m, apply a minimum 10% weighting (or equivalent measurement), and contracts valued at £5m or above, apply a minimum 20% weighting (or equivalent measurement), of the total score given to tenders. These will support apprenticeships and other forms of training in construction and other sectors.

Full details of the policy can be found here PPN 026: The Social Value Model (HTML) - GOV.UK.

For Training Year 2026/27, the Defence School of Transport is tasked to deliver 30,092 training and licence acquisition places.

This figure represents the School's planned annual training capacity across its delivered and assured outputs for Training Year 2026/27.

Owners of subsea telecoms cables manage repair and maintenance through membership of commercial cable maintenance agreements. There are currently six cable repair vessels servicing the maintenance agreements in the Atlantic and Northern Europe, one of which is based in the UK (information collected via DSIT Request for Information April 2026). Government does not routinely hold information on the crewing of cable vessels, which varies by vessel and commercial operator. There is a privately owned UK-based facility that trains subsea cable repair technicians.

The Government recognises the importance of a UK-based and UK-flagged subsea telecoms cable repair vessel. DCMS is exploring options for securing this capability in the long term.

The UK and Canada share a common objective of strengthening Allied defence industrial capacity through closer international cooperation. The Multilateral Defence Mechanism (MDM) and Canada's proposed Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB) are intended to address related challenges within the defence industrial ecosystem.

Following the joint-PM statement at the NATO Ankara summit in July, we committed to working closely with our Canadian allies on how the MDM and DSRB can work together, and we continue to do this.

The Government is taking forward the commitments set out in the Strategic Defence Review and the Defence Investment Plan to strengthen the United Kingdom's sovereign munitions and energetics manufacturing capability. This includes investment of £6 billion in munitions during this Parliament, including £1.5 billion to support an "always on" munitions production pipeline and the commitment to build at least six new energetics and munitions factories in the UK. The SDR munitions investment programme is intended to increase domestic production capacity, improve supply chain resilience and support the replenishment of munitions stockpiles. Delivery will be phased, with construction of the new facilities expected to be underway by 2030, with capability coming into service as individual projects mature.

We are prevented from requiring that grant funding should be used to procure ‘British Built’ buses This prohibition is founded in long-standing World Trade Organization (WTO) law and also implements our commitments in the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).

However, while the Government cannot mandate the purchase of British-built buses, at the final UK Bus Manufacturing Expert Panel, Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) agreed to commit that a 10% minimum of social value criteria would apply in all future bus procurement exercises.  This means that when procuring buses, MCAs will consider the positive impact a manufacturer has on our society, the environment, and on the local community as part of their decision-making process.

UK-based bus manufacturers have benefited the most from the Department’s funding programmes, such as ZEBRA. It is estimated that over 60% of ZEBRA-supported buses will be procured from UK-based manufacturers.

As set out in the SDR, DIS and DIP, we are developing the Defence Finance and Investment Strategy (DFIS), which is due to be published in Autumn 2026. The DFIS will address barriers to financing and investment in the sector – including supporting businesses access finance, in partnership with public financial institutions and private capital. To inform the DFIS, we have held working sessions on debanking and on Environmental, Social, and Governance considerations, working with regulators, industry, the financial sector and other Government departments.

Genetic technologies offer huge potential for British farmers, enabling development of crops that are more nutritious, resistant to pests and disease, resilient to climate change and more environmentally beneficial.

The department is supporting innovation through Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, funding a £12.5 million competition specifically for precision breeding, including drought resistant crops. Defra’s Genetic Improvement Networks Platform also supports £15m crop breeding R&D for priority climate resilience traits, including drought and heat.

Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE-N) is continuing to drive forward the UK’s flagship small modular reactor (SMR) programme.

GBE-N and Rolls-Royce SMR (RR SMR) entered into a Technology Partner contract earlier this year and are now jointly undertaking design work to progress the Gwyndod SMR project on Anglesey in North Wales.

GBE-N is also focused on reindustrialisation opportunities and delivering on its ambition that 70% of supply chain products are British built across the SMR fleet. To date, it has awarded nearly £900m in supply chain contracts, with over 70% going to UK-registered companies.

GBE-N is working closely with RR SMR on its supply chain plan; it was recently announced that Siemens Energy will support UK jobs by manufacturing RR SMR steam turbine components in Newcastle.

As of 30 June 2026, the Undercover Policing Inquiry had incurred a total expenditure of £144,597,900.

The Chair’s remuneration forms part of the £28,931,400 published under “Inquiry staffing, including secretariat”.

The Inquiry publishes a quarterly breakdown of its costs on its website: https://www.ucpi.org.uk/about-the-inquiry/#costs.

Based on the aggregated figures from all Steel demand returns from 2022/23 to 2024/25 inclusive, 62% of total steel used across the project was UK sourced, increasing to 78% for reinforcement (rebar). Data including 2025/26 will be available in due course.

In line with the government’s new Steel Trade Measure and Strategy, which seeks to sustain and strengthen domestic steel production, HS2 will continue to be proactive in sourcing UK steel to meet future programme demand.

The Government recognises the importance of conversion for our nuclear industry and has a stated ambition to re-establish conversion services in the UK. In 2023, through the Nuclear Fuel Fund, we invested £13m, match-funded by Westinghouse, into their conversion project at the Springfield’s site in Preston.

The UK continues to be supportive of this ambition, and the role UK based conversion can play in delivering secure and reliable fuel supply chains.

Between 31 August 2025 and 1 September 2026, 646 Category C+E licences were awarded following training at the Defence School of Transport in Leconfield. The award of a Category C+E licence marks successful completion of the training and has therefore been used as the measure for the number of drivers trained.

An ONS study in 2021 (Productivity in the construction industry, UK - Office for National Statistics) concluded that both the level of productivity, and the rate of productivity improvement in the construction sector, have historically been below that of the wider economy, and have not changed much in decades.

The Government is addressing this challenge through investing £625m in the Construction Skills Challenge, £85m in the Industrialising and Digitalising Construction Challenge, and has also worked with the industry to develop a Publicly Available Specification, PAS 4010, which will create a consistent approach to managing productivity improvement in the sector.

While the Government cannot mandate the purchase of British-built buses, at the final UK Bus Manufacturing Expert Panel, Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) agreed to commit that a 10% minimum of social value criteria would apply in all future bus procurement exercises.

This means that when procuring buses, MCAs will consider the positive impact a manufacturer has on our society, the environment, and on the local community as part of their decision-making process.

My Lords, my noble friend rightly reminds us that cyber attacks affect companies of all sizes, and this is a stark reminder that JLR is not only the manufacturer but also the anchor of the supply chain. We are working with JLR, lenders, local partners and suppliers to safeguard viable businesses, improve access to finance and strengthen cyber resilience. On procurement, we will use government purchasing power strategically to ensure that British manufacturers can compete fairly and that social value, resilient supply chains and UK capability are recognised in purchasing decisions.

My Lords, we understand the anxiety that this announcement causes among workers, families and communities in the area where JLR is based. We are determined that Britain will remain a world-leading automotive nation. Our industrial strategy reduces electricity costs, commits £4 billion to DRIVE35 to advance manufacturing and research, and allocates £2 billion to boost electric vehicle demand. We are strengthening supplies through the DRIVE35 transformation programme and securing better access to markets in the EU and the United States, thereby protecting investment and jobs.

I thank the noble Lord for that. In my first few days in my job, I had many discussions with my counterparts across countries talking about British leadership in SMRs—small modular reactors. I agree that it is an exciting area for the future. We support responsible expansion of civil nuclear power and work closely with the Saudis in nuclear co-operation and dialogue on this issue. There are opportunities for British companies, not just in Saudi but elsewhere, in particular in the areas that the noble Lord discussed.

National Highways routinely reviews the management of major incidents to identify lessons learned and opportunities for improvement. In relation to the closure of the M25 on 16 July 2026, National Highways will undertake both an internal debrief and contribute to multi-agency review processes involving the emergency services and other partners.

Major incidents on the Strategic Road Network (SRN) are managed through a multi-agency response led by the police. National Highways works in accordance with the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles (JESIP) and the Collision, Lead, Evaluate, Act, Reopen (CLEAR) process and supports partners in delivering a coordinated response.

As part of the review process, National Highways will consider the tactical options available and deployed during the incident, including arrangements for traffic management, the release of trapped traffic where appropriate, and support for driver welfare. The review will identify what worked well and any areas where improvements can be made.

National Highways will share relevant lessons learned with operational partners and incorporate any agreed actions into future incident management arrangements. The Government is also supporting work to review local arrangements for driver welfare during major incidents.

There are no current plans to review either the CLEAR or JESIP processes which National Highway works in accordance with to clear incidents on the SRN.

As I mentioned earlier, the report carried out by Dan Corry looked specifically at all the arm’s-length bodies in Defra—and there are a lot of them—to see whether the work they are doing was efficient and necessary and whether we could work more effectively and efficiently by reviewing the way they operate.