The Prime Minister welcomed this year’s Pride of Britain winners and their families to a Downing Street reception last week to celebrate their incredible stories of bravery and determination.

Now in its twentieth year, the Pride of Britain Awards recognise the achievements of individuals from across the UK who have demonstrated kindness, courage and perseverance.

This year’s inspirational winners include the British divers who were instrumental in saving the lives of a group of young boys in Thailand after they were trapped in flooded caves, Emma Picton-Jones, recognised for her work to support those with mental health difficulties in rural communities and Eddie O’Gorman whose foundation Children with Cancer UK has raised more than £230 million to fight the disease.

Prime Minister Theresa May said:

From incredible acts of bravery to decades of community service, this year’s winners have all made a life-changing impact in their local communities and beyond through their compassion and determination.

It’s humbling to hear the stories of all the awards winners, all of them doing extraordinary things and showing such generosity of spirt. I feel privileged to be able to offer them my congratulations.

Thank you for your inspirational courage and selflessness – you set an example to us all.

The Prime Minister also presented ten year old Max Johnson with the Child of Courage award. After being diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy – a disease which affects the heart muscle – Max campaigned to bring in an opt-out organ donation system in England.

In recognition of his story, the legislation to change organ donation rules will become known as ‘Max’s Law’, a tribute to his pivotal efforts. Max’s visit comes the week after this law made a crucial step forward as it passed through the House of Commons.

Prime Minister Theresa May added:

It is truly astounding to see a young boy like Max, who when faced his own health struggles and spending 10 months in hospital waiting for a new heart, only became more determined to help others. I would like to thank him for all of his hard work in raising awareness for this issue and as we make these important changes to our organ donation system, potentially saving up to 700 lives a year, it only seems right to name the new legislation after him.

The Pride of Britain Awards are hosted by the Daily Mirror and ITV each year, where winners are drawn from over tens of thousands of public nominations.

As part of the visit, the Minister met with the US Navy Under Secretary Thomas Modly and US Army Under Secretary Ryan McCarthy to discuss bilateral capability priorities and future areas of collaboration between the two armed forces.

This came as the Minister addressed the Heritage Foundation think-tank, where he highlighted the threats that both nations face and emphasised the vital role of Nato and the need for long-term planning and the depth of UK-US collaboration.

Addressing the Heritage Foundation, Defence Minister Stuart Andrew said:

Over the years, the deep UK-US alliance has endured through two World conflicts, the chill of the Cold War, and the continuing struggle against extremist terror. Today our forces work highly effectively together across the globe – on land and sea, in the air, space and cyberspace. We are stronger together.

Just as our Armed Forces’ capabilities are effectively inter-twined, so too are our industries. We are now moving even nearer the goal of full interoperability, leveraging the talent, strength and innovation of both our Defence industries to meet the challenges of the future.

In a move to reinforce stronger industrial partnerships, the Minister also met with the headliners in the American defence industry, meeting with likes of Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Boeing and General Dynamics.

The UK and US are the biggest overseas suppliers to each other’s militaries and have worked closely on numerous key projects.

The most prominent of these is the F-35 fighter jet programme, with the aircraft now embarked for flight trials on HMS Queen Elizabeth as she sailed into New York just last month. Other recent examples of collaboration are the Unmanned Air Systems programme and a Common Missile Compartment for UK-US Ballistic Missile Submarines.

Both nations also play leading roles in Nato, which is vital to the transatlantic partnership and have been calling for other nations to invest more in security and to increase the readiness of their forces. By the end of 2018, eight members will be meeting the commitment of spending 2% of their GDP on defence compared with just three in 2014.

In further display of solidarity, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson recently announced that the Red Arrows are set to carry out their largest ever tour of North America in 2019 as the UK looks to strengthen ties and sign trade deals outside of Europe.

We hosted our second public event today (6 November 2018), inviting those who represent public court users to see first-hand the progress public user organisations have helped us to make over the last year.

The event itinerary was influenced by what attendees told us last year, offering longer activity sessions for guests to immerse themselves in our latest project developments. With both market stalls and hands on activity sessions available, over 160 participants were given the opportunity to engage with 27 project teams, attending across all jurisdictions.

Justice Minister Lucy Frazer said:

I was delighted to welcome so many stakeholders today and thank them for their invaluable contribution to our reform programme so far.

Their expertise and insight is vital as we continue to build a modern, world class justice system fit for the 21st century, and this was an opportunity for them to see the difference their time and commitment has made – even interacting with some of the products they have helped design.

Some of the attendee quotes included:

It’s amazing how HMCTS projects have progressed compared to last year.

There was lots of good discussion around vulnerable defendants. I’ve gained a wider understanding of their access to services and how they access online plea.

Everyone that came to the Crime room really embraced the challenge questions that the projects were posing. There were some really great suggestions which the projects will take back and feed into their services.

So many active discussions going on – people were so engrossed that they were forgetting to move round to see other projects!

Home Secretary Sajid Javid will travel to Silicon Valley this week to assess the progress tech giants are making in eradicating online child sexual exploitation (CSE).

During a series of meetings with some of the world’s biggest technology companies, the Home Secretary will be updated on what has been done to tackle this abhorrent crime and urge companies to do all they can to respond to the evolving threat.

As part of the visit the Home Secretary will also be travelling to Microsoft’s HQ in Redmond to convene a ‘hackathon’, which will see industry experts work together to come up with tools to detect online child grooming.

The Home Secretary has made it his mission to tackle online CSE, which includes looking at all aspects of this crime. In September, he set out a commitment to drive an improved response to the horrifying scale of child sexual abuse online in a speech to the NSPCC.

Today the Home Secretary announced that he has commissioned the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to look at how advertising is funding CSE activity.

Advertisements for legitimate products, including from well-known brands, are appearing on sites hosting child abuse. The work by the Internet Watch Foundation will help outline the scale of the problem and how government and industry should respond.

The Home Secretary will also chair a new taskforce to bring together representatives from advertising agencies, trade bodies and brands to discuss next steps to ensure criminals don’t have access to this funding stream.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid said:

Keeping our children safe is my mission as Home Secretary and it is vital tech companies take their responsibility seriously.

I have demanded action and will be discussing the progress industry has made during my visit to the US – as well as seeing the latest tools being developed to detect online child grooming.

This government is leading the response against these sickening crimes. Today, I’ve commissioned new research to look at how advertising is fuelling the sexual exploitation of children online and I am providing further funding for schemes to tackle the live-streaming of abuse.

Commenting on the commission, Susie Hargreaves OBE, CEO of the Internet Watch Foundation said:

We are delighted that the Home Office has asked us to provide data to explore how legitimate advertisers are being exploited by offenders, intent on sharing horrific imagery of child sexual abuse online. Using a variety of sophisticated techniques to avoid detection, offenders are exploiting online advertising networks to monetise their distribution of child sexual abuse material.

At the heart of all our work, are the child victims of this hideous crime. They range from babies to teens. The abuse itself is horrific, but by sharing the images and videos of these crimes against innocent children, offenders are forcing the victims to suffer the torment of knowing their abuse continues.

It is our mission to identify the methods offenders are employing to share this disturbing material, enabling us to most effectively disrupt its distribution. We hope this research will help us in this battle.

On Wednesday the Home Secretary will give a speech at Microsoft’s headquarters before the tech hack takes place on the same day. This will see engineers come together to try and come up with solutions for tackling online grooming. Any products will then be given out as a free tool for others to use.

The National Crime Agency estimates that around 80,000 people in the UK present some kind of sexual threat to children online while there has been a 700% increase since 2013 in the number of referrals to the National Crime Agency for child sexual abuse images.

In a further attempt to improve the response, work is being done to develop new tools to improve the capabilities of the Child Abuse Image Database (CAID) – the database used by the NCA and UK police forces to search for indecent images of children and increase the ability to identify victims.

Following a call to industry 3 new tools using CAID are being developed:

• a fast-forensic algorithm to rapidly analyse seized devices and categorise against CAID
• a capability to automatically identify and categorise illegal imagery based on UK legislation of classification of A, B, C against the CAID trusted images
• a capability to detect images with matching scenes to help identify locations in common of indecent images of children

Trials to test this newly developed capability with some police forces will begin later this year. Further to this, a £250,000 innovation call has now opened for organisations to bid for funding to assist them in developing innovative solutions to disrupt live streaming of abuse.

Through the competition, led by the Joint Security and Resilience Centre in partnership with Innovate UK, groups are being urged to come up with technical solutions that could be applied by platforms of all sizes, including those with less resource to commit to research.