The Government recognises that engagement with pensions is low, particularly as many savers engage only intermittently with their pension arrangements and may find pensions and retirement decisions complex. And while auto-enrolment has successfully increased pension participation, too many future retirees face incomes that are too low, risks that are too high and a system that is too unequal.

That is why we are transforming the workplace pensions market, with reforms including measures to drive scale provision, Value for Money and default pensions as well as the introduction of pensions dashboards. Taken together with the Pensions Commission’s work on the long-term future of the system, our reforms are focussed on enabling mass market often disengaged pension savers secure decent retirement incomes, while improving opportunity for engaged savers to access information and support to inform choices.

The government recognises the essential role that local places play in accelerating progress towards net zero and is committed to working in partnership with Local Authorities and Mayoral Strategic Authorities to deliver the Warm Homes Plan through an area-based approach. This includes looking at examples of best practice of localised and community models delivering homes decarbonisation at the scale needed to make more comfortable homes and bring down bills for more people.

On 10 February 2026, we announced the Local Power Plan (LPP): a joint DESNZ‑Great British Energy (GBE) publication setting out the UK’s largest ever public investment in community energy, up to £1 billion. GBE will aim to support at least 1000 local and community energy projects by 2030.

Buckinghamshire Council and Milton Keynes Council may wish to engage with GBE through its Expression of Interest process, now open on the GBE website. This non‑binding process allows communities, local government and businesses to share proposals so that support can be targeted effectively as funding tools and advisory services are rolled out.

The Department recognises that increasing the number of women angel investors is key to improving access to finance for female-led businesses. Evidence from the DBT-backed Investing in Women Code report shows that more diverse angel groups make a larger proportion of their investments into women founders.

Through the British Business Bank, the Government is supporting more diverse angel investment. This Diverse Angels Syndicate programme will support angel syndicates to recruit, train, and invest inclusively. The Regional Angels Programme addresses regional funding gaps and attracts co-investments; its pilot engaged 185 new angel investors, of whom 176 were women.

The Ministry of Defence is working closely with HM Treasury and like-minded NATO allies on the establishment of a Multilateral Defence Mechanism.

This independent international financial institution will help member countries improve capability, interoperability and value for money, while giving industry greater demand certainty.

The Government also expects the UK defence sector, including SMEs, to be well placed to benefit, including through support for supply chains, capacity expansion, and firms with less access to finance, strengthening UK and allied industrial capability while supporting growth, resilience, and readiness across the defence sector.

While the Department has not made an estimate of the economic contribution of female-led businesses to UK gross value added (GVA), independent research demonstrates the significant contribution that women-led businesses make to the UK economy.

The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship (2019) estimated that up to £250 billion of new value could be added to the UK economy if women started and scaled businesses at the same rate as men. Frontier Economics has since estimated that achieving gender parity in entrepreneurship could increase cumulative UK GVA by €825 billion (£718 billion) by 2040.

The Department does not plan to publish annual monitoring reports on the economic impact of the British Growth Partnership (BGP). Instead, the British Business Bank will report the value of its stake in BGP through its public annual reporting and has commissioned an independent evaluation of BGP. An initial assessment, focusing on process and early delivery outcomes, is expected in 2027. An interim economic evaluation is expected to begin in late 2028, once sufficient time has passed for BGP’s outcomes and impacts to emerge.

Joining Forces Credit Union Services (JFCU) is a Ministry of Defence (MOD) backed initiative that provides the Armed Forces community with ethical, not-for-profit financial services. The Credit Unions that form the JFCU run financial resilience sessions online which are promoted by Service welfare teams.

Information on the JFCU is contained on the Discover My Benefits portal (https://discovermybenefits-dev.mod.gov.uk/army/service-benefits/joining-forces-credit-unions/) and is also published on Gov.uk (https://www.gov.uk/veteran-support-organisations/joining-forces-credit-union-services). In addition, Defence Communications run promotional articles on the MOD’s intranet highlighting the benefits provided by the JFCU.

The Ministry of Defence recognises the potential role that community energy projects can play in supporting estate decarbonisation and energy resilience. We are exploring opportunities for Defence to engage with such schemes as part of our wider work on energy generation and supply across the Defence estate.

The Department also works closely with other Government Departments and public sector partners, including through cross-Government forums on public estate decarbonisation and local energy planning, to understand opportunities and address barriers to future collaboration with community energy projects.

As set out in the Department for Work and Pensions’ November 2024 publication “Pension fund investment and the UK economy” the largest 5 and 10 defined contribution funds (either a Master Trust or GPP) in the UK held 55% and 74% of total DC assets respectively. The report can be found here: Pension fund investment and the UK economy.

The Pension Schemes Act scale provisions require defined contribution multi-employer schemes used for automatic enrolment to have scale of at least £25 billion of assets under management in one main scale default arrangement (MSDA) by 2030 or £10bn if approved for transition pathway relief with a credible plan to achieve scale of £25 billion by 2035. As shown in our Impact Assessment it is anticipated there will be approximately 15-20 multi-employer schemes after the scale reforms have taken place. We will continue to monitor the assets that will be managed by schemes as set out in our recently published Evaluation Strategy.

DWP’s Pension Fund Investment and the UK Economy Report, and the Impact Assessment that supports The Pension Schemes Act 2026, evidence the benefits of how consolidation and scale may be expected to increase investment in UK private markets. These reports evidence how larger pension schemes with over £25bn in assets are best placed to access private markets and that these assets naturally tend to be more UK-focussed, with over a 40% home bias, so have the potential to directly impact the UK economy. The evidence report can be found here: Pension fund investment and the UK economy - GOV.UK and the Impact Assessment here: Impact Assessment.

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.

DWP has explored international evidence, in particular undertaking comparisons with the Australian value for money (VFM) regime. The Pension Schemes Act 2026 Impact Assessment included evidence about annual performance tests in Australia’s superannuation system which are credited with increasing the net returns and decreasing the fees paid by millions of members.

Additionally, the UK VFM framework has, for example, been deliberately designed to avoid the investment herding behaviours that have emerged in Australia’s system, using learnings from the Department’s engagement with Australian officials to understand the challenges they faced. We continue to learn from the Australian experience of VFM in designing the UK VFM framework.

Evidence suggests there are a range of benefits from schemes achieving a greater level of scale through consolidation. This includes better governance, economies of scale, increased diversification of assets and improved bargaining power.

This evidence suggests a greater number of benefits can arise at £25 billion to £50 billion (or greater) of assets under management, as set out in the Department for Work and Pensions’ November 2024 publication “Pension fund investment and the UK economy”. The report can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pension-fund-investment-and-the-uk-economy/pension-fund-investment-and-the-uk-economy. Increased net returns via lower charges for members and higher net investment returns through diversification, both supported through scale, can drive improved member outcomes. This evidence is set out in the Pension Schemes Act Impact Assessment published in December 2025. The Impact Assessment can be found here: https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/63860/documents/7447.

The Department will continue to monitor the impact of consolidation on charges, as set out in our recently published Evaluation Strategy which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pension-schemes-act-2026-evaluation-strategy/pension-schemes-act-2026-evaluation-strategy.

The Ministry of Defence is working closely with HM Treasury and with Finland, Netherlands, Poland and other like-minded NATO allies on the establishment of a Multilateral Defence Mechanism (MDM). The Defence Investment Plan includes £400 million towards the UK’s contribution to the MDM.

This independent international financial institution will address our collective challenges in defence procurement by aggregating demand through procurement to achieve better value for money. It will lend to members for joint procurement, stockpiling on members' behalf, and supply chain finance. This mechanism will help member countries improve capability, interoperability and value for money, while giving industry greater demand certainty.

Work is underway to further progress the MDM which would include building on technical development and move to the next phase of mechanism design and development.

Women founders make a critical contribution to the UK’s innovation economy. Ministers engage regularly with universities and sector representatives on entrepreneurship, commercialisation and university spin-outs.

The Women in Research Charter, published on 1 July and backed by more than 60 organisations, including over 40 universities promotes family leave, flexible working and inclusive research culture. The Charter will enable women academics to thrive across their careers, including turning their research into commercial ideas.

DSIT also established the Women in Tech Taskforce to address barriers facing women in the tech sector. Following the recent publication of its Call for Evidence findings and an independent report on the economic benefits of removing barriers to participation in the digital economy, the Taskforce is developing interventions to tackle toxic culture and support women-led businesses, to be announced later this year.

Cyber security is a top priority for the Government, and HM Treasury works with the financial regulators, industry and with international partners to strengthen the financial sector’s resilience to threats and hazards of all origins.

The financial authorities deploy a range of tools to test and ensure financial sector firms are resilient to the wide range of risks that they could face, and we also maintain robust exercising and incident response frameworks to ensure readiness for disruption and coordination across government and industry. The UK financial regulators have implemented an operational resilience framework for the UK financial sector, which sets out rules and supervisory expectations on operational resilience and risk management for financial services firms, including relating to third-party risk management. Technical advice on security and resilience is also provided by the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Protective Security Authority.

The Critical Third Party (CTP) regime complements but does not replace financial sector firms’ obligations in this area. Designated third parties will be subject to oversight by the UK financial regulators, helping to ensure they have robust arrangements in place to identify, manage and recover from operational disruption affecting critical services used across the financial sector. Through the new regime, the regulators will be able to gather information, assess resilience, and work with third parties to address risks to the continuity of critical services, including through making and enforcing CTP-specific rules where necessary. The regulators’ rules and guidance for CTPs include requirements on incident management.

Cyber security is a top priority for the Government, and HM Treasury works with the financial regulators, industry and with international partners to strengthen the financial sector’s resilience to threats and hazards of all origins.

The financial authorities deploy a range of tools to test and ensure financial sector firms are resilient to the wide range of risks that they could face, and we also maintain robust exercising and incident response frameworks to ensure readiness for disruption and coordination across government and industry. The UK financial regulators have implemented an operational resilience framework for the UK financial sector, which sets out rules and supervisory expectations on operational resilience and risk management for financial services firms, including relating to third-party risk management. Technical advice on security and resilience is also provided by the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Protective Security Authority.

The Critical Third Party (CTP) regime complements but does not replace financial sector firms’ obligations in this area. Designated third parties will be subject to oversight by the UK financial regulators, helping to ensure they have robust arrangements in place to identify, manage and recover from operational disruption affecting critical services used across the financial sector. Through the new regime, the regulators will be able to gather information, assess resilience, and work with third parties to address risks to the continuity of critical services, including through making and enforcing CTP-specific rules where necessary. The regulators’ rules and guidance for CTPs include requirements on incident management.

On 10 July 2026, the Government announced it had designated four major global cloud services and technology providers as Critical Third Parties (CTPs). These designations came into force on 13 July 2026.

As part of a rolling regime, further providers may be designated over time where this is necessary to protect UK resilience. To maintain the integrity of the regime, it is not appropriate to comment on how many designations may be made in future.

The new Green Book ensures that investment decisions are no longer based solely on single metrics, such as benefit-cost ratios, and that decisions instead take into account the full range of impacts on people and places.

This new approach will shape important decisions, such as on Northern Powerhouse Rail, and ensure that government investment brings about higher living standards in every part of the country. This includes urban, rural and coastal communities.

HM Treasury has published a report on its progress in implementing the conclusions of the Green Book Review in 2025. The report can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/green-book-review-2025-one-year-on

HM Treasury regularly publishes data on spending in the nations and regions. The latest edition, published in November 2025, can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/country-and-regional-analysis-2025/country-and-regional-analysis-november-2025

The Government is delivering on its commitment to publish business cases for government projects. The first set of published business cases can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/business-case-publications-collection