The UK has been clear in our engagement with the Government of Israel that journalists must be able to operate safely and in line with international humanitarian law, which provides explicit protections for civilians, including media workers. Through the Media Freedom Coalition, the UK, alongside our partners, has called on the Government of Israel to allow independent foreign media access to Gaza and the West Bank and afford protection to journalists operating there.

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 provides a legislative framework for emergency preparedness and civil protection in the UK. The Government keeps this legislation under review. The Cabinet Office has a legal obligation to review the CCA every five years and is currently undertaking a Post-Implementation Review of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which will be presented to Parliament by March 2027.

The Act already places a legal duty on Category 1 local responders to maintain plans to warn and inform the public during emergencies. This locally-based approach is supported, as necessary, by any national messaging from the central government using a range of channels, including social and broadcast media, to support increased preparedness for emergencies.

Funding for high-cost subjects through the Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG) is allocated on a formulaic basis, not through a competitive application process. Media, journalism and publishing courses do not attract high-cost subject funding through the SPG in the 2026/27 academic year.

Previous funding for media, journalism and publishing courses until 2024/25 inclusive, and other creative and performing arts subjects until 2025/26 inclusive, represented just over 1% of total funding once tuition fees are taken into account. Funding rates for these subjects were lower than for subjects in price groups A and B, which had previously been evaluated to have higher costs. These courses, like others, continue to benefit from increases to tuition fee limits.

The department is working with the Office for Students to review and reform the SPG. The reform will ensure that high-cost subject funding is more effectively targeted towards priority provision that supports future skills needs and the Industrial Strategy, as well as ensuring funding is targeted towards the most disadvantaged students in accessing and participating in higher education.

Scrutiny of government decision-making is an important part of the democratic process. The media hold the Office of the Prime Minister to account through regular Ministerial broadcast engagements and press conferences, and lobby briefings.

No such spending has been made.

Ministers and officials from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport regularly engage with stakeholders on a range of policy matters. Details of ministerial meetings are published on a quarterly basis on Gov.uk.

DCMS also engages with a range of civil society organisations in developing online harms policy, including where it relates to public safety. As part of this, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate has participated in official-level roundtables with the department in 2024 and 2026.

The department has not received representations from Amnesty International on either regulation of the press or legislative action to impose limitations but is aware of the published statement from its networks.

The central government spend under and number of contracts agreed under Lot 1 are as follows:

(a) The actual spend recorded in GCA records since go-live is £14,784,206.00.

Call-off contracts under RM6364 are typically established on a zero-commitment basis, meaning contracts may be in place without committed spend, and individual campaign spend is subject to Advertising, Marketing and Communications (AMC) spend control approval for planned spend of £100,000 or more within a financial year.

(b) The number of call-off contracts agreed with the Lot 1 supplier, WPP650 is 33.

The College of Policing published interim guidance on the disclosure of suspects ethnicity and/or nationality on 23 February 2026. The guidance aims to support transparent and consistent recording practices across policing, helping to improve the quality of data available and public understanding of how such information is collected and used. You can find a link to the guidance here: Arrests, charges and judicial outcomes | College of Policing.

The College of Policing advises that forces should monitor implementation of decisions to disclose ethnicity and nationality information, including assessing community impacts and public confidence.

Decisions on the application of the guidance are an operational matter for policing.

The department does not hold data on the subjects offered by schools and colleges.

School and college data on the number of entries in each subject is published in the ‘Qualification and subject data’ found on the Compare school and college performance website, available on GOV.UK.

This includes schools and colleges which had entries in GCSE, A level and Level 3 film and media qualifications, their institution type and local authority.

The number of schools and colleges with entries in film and media subjects by region and institution type are provided in the tables below.

Number of schools and colleges with entries in GCSE film and media subjects:

Number of schools and colleges with entries in A level film and media subjects:

Number of schools and colleges with entries in all Level 3 qualifications in film and media subjects:

GCSE figures relate to entries in ‘Film Studies’ and ‘Media/Film/TV Studies’ GCSEs by pupils at the end of key stage 4. A level figures relate to entries in ‘Film Studies’ and ‘Media/Film/TV Studies’ A levels by students at the end of 16 to 19 study.

Level 3 qualifications include entries in ‘Film Studies’ and ‘Media/Film/TV Studies’ A levels, AS levels, and other Level 3 academic qualifications, and ‘Multimedia’ and “Film/Video/Television Production” Applied General and Tech Level qualifications by students at the end of 16 to 19 study. Each school and college are counted once only, regardless of whether they offer multiple courses.

Teaching began on the ‘Media, Broadcast and Production’ T Level pathway in September 2024. Provider level data will be published for the first time in spring 2027.

We recognise the cultural and economic value of media, journalism and publishing courses. However, given the fiscal constraints, our approach is to continue to prioritise funding for subjects with the highest delivery costs (and hence Strategic Priorities Grant (SPG) funding) and where there is stronger evidence of current and future skills shortages.

Media, journalism and publishing were subjects that previously attracted lower rates of funding than the science and technology subjects in price groups A & B, with SPG funding representing only a relatively small proportion of their overall funding when fees are taken into account. For 2024/25, the SPG funding rate for these courses was £130.54 per student full time equivalent. This was just over 1% of the total funding for these courses including tuition fees (that are supported by subsidised student loans).

Media, journalism and publishing courses will, like other subjects, benefit from future inflationary increases to tuition fees.

There are occasions where the Government will trail and/or announce policy ahead of a Budget to provide context and help the public understand major fiscal events.

Consistent with the Macpherson Principles, the Civil Service Code, The Ministerial Code and the Special Advisers’ Code, any such communications are tightly controlled, respect Parliament, and protect market sensitive information.

We recognise the impact on public interest news publishers of generative AI platforms and services, including AI assistants and answer engines, which risk diverting audiences and advertising revenue by presenting news summaries which limit the need to click through to news websites.

As set out in our Local Media Action Plan, published in March, these summaries can also be inaccurate or misleading, with one recent study finding that 81% of news-related responses from AI assistants contained issues relating to accuracy, editorialisation, sourcing errors or limited contextualisation. These summaries also risk distorting the market by drawing on a narrow range of prominent newsbrands. Over the long term, this risks further commercial harm to local media and other news providers, to public trust in news as a whole, and to the quality of news accessed by citizens.

The Action Plan committed to helping news providers adapt to the emerging challenges of AI-generated news summaries, and supporting a healthy licensing ecosystem while also working with industry to ensure proportionate transparency. We want to support all rights holders, including news publishers, to be able to license their work in the digital age, while allowing AI developers to benefit from access to creative material in the UK. Our taskforce on AI labelling will put forward proposals for Government on best practice to ensure consumers understand whether content has been made using AI. Alongside this, we will also publish a review of the mechanisms available for creators to control their works online. This will include standards, technical solutions and best practice on input transparency. This review will inform where there are gaps and whether there is an appropriate role for government in addressing them.

This builds on other work already underway in this area. The CMA recently imposed the first Conduct Requirement under the Digital Markets regime on publisher controls in Google Search and search advertising, aiming to ensure transparency, attribution and choice for publishers in how their content is used in Google’s AI services. We also welcome the news industry’s proactive efforts to address concerns in this area, including through the Standards for Publisher Usage Rights (SPUR) coalition, which is focused on bridging the gap between news publishers and AI developers and developing shared industry standards. SPUR has recently published a draft of a Content Telemetry standard, an open standard which enables publishers and content owners to directly understand how AI systems are using their content.

I am very proud that we delivered the Hillsborough law yesterday. It is important to recognise that there has always been an initial injustice and then a further injustice when the state does not acknowledge and get to the truth. We are putting that right with the Hillsborough law.

I congratulate the Prime Minister on being the recipient yesterday of a Légion d’honneur medal, and on the passing of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, which will mean that these scandals—I include those relating to Grenfell and Windrush—will never happen again. Does he agree that the media have sometimes twisted the knife a bit and made the pain worse for the victims’ families in those scandals, so can he revisit some of the same principles of accountability and justice for the gutter press?