A new programme supporting Pakistan tackle child labour, has been launched by the UK government. The AAWAZ II programme, which has been launched by the UK’s Department for International Development, will enable communities and support stronger government institutions in Pakistan so that they can better protect vulnerable groups.

Only 34% of children under the age of five years have birth certificates in Pakistan. Without this critical document, children go unprotected, they are invisible to many services and people are locked out of opportunities.

In partnership with UNICEF, DFID is funding a pioneering digital birth registration programme in Pakistan to tackle the challenge. DFID is also funding a pioneering child labour survey which will be used to identify the children most at risk and support the government to strengthen protection.

The Aawaz programme is part of the UK’s work to lead the global fight against modern slavery, including at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) being held this week. The aim is to galvanise international action to eradicate modern slavery, and launching a range of projects to tackle child slavery across Africa and Asia.

The Secretary of State for International Development Penny Mordaunt announced new protections for vulnerable children at risk of falling prey to traffickers. The UK-backed project with UNICEF will provide up to 400,000 girls and boys in Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan at risk of slavery with birth registration documents and other measures to shelter them from forced labour and underage marriage. Similarly, the UK will launch a £26 million package to tackle the worst forms of child labour through a major new programme across six Asian countries, including the AAWAZ II programme in Pakistan.

Speaking ahead of the meeting in New York, Ms Mordaunt said:

From the clothes we wear to the food we eat, the insidious virus of modern slavery is infiltrating all aspects of our daily life without us even realising. Not only does it have a huge cost to the global and the UK’s economy, it is a shameful stain on our global conscience that must be eradicated for good.

No one nation can banish this borderless crime alone. The international community must collaborate to dismantle predatory trafficking networks, support victims, strengthen justice systems and create sustainable alternative livelihoods.

AAWAZ II will work with government and local communities and has a particular focus on the issue of modern slavery, to which marginalised groups are extremely vulnerable. The programme aims to reach poor communities and vulnerable people across the provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Punjab. It will build on the success of its predecessor, AAWAZ I: Voice and Accountability Programme.

Notes to the editors

• A year ago, the British Prime Minister launched a global Call to Action to eliminate the borderless scourge of forced labour, modern slavery and human trafficking, while doubling the UK’s aid spending on modern slavery to £150 million. Just one year on, 77 states have endorsed this Call to Action and the UK has gone above and beyond its original commitment, increasing UK aid support by over a third to £200 million, to tackle the root causes of slavery in key source and transit countries across Africa and Asia.

• The economic and social costs of modern slavery report estimates that it costs the UK up to £4.3 billion a year. Each instance of the crime is estimated to cost around £330,000, including the cost of support, lost earnings and law enforcement but most significantly the physical and emotional harms suffered by individuals, who are often exploited over months and sometimes years.

• As part of its spending increase, the UK will launch several programmes to tackle child slavery across Africa and Asia. This includes:

  • £10 million UK aid package to protect up to 400,000 boys and girls at risk of slavery in the Horn of Africa and along dangerous migratory routes in Sudan and Ethiopia. Partnering with UNICEF, UK support will provide birth registration services so children can legally prove their identity and be sheltered from forced labour, military service and underage marriage. Our support will also educate children against the perils of trafficking, assist social workers and help reintegrate victims back into society.

  • £12 million package to equip up to 400,000 vulnerable people in conflict ravaged parts of Africa with skills training and alternative livelihood opportunities. Our support will educate children on the disguised risks of trafficking, improve law enforcement and support conflict-affected families in countries such as the DRC.

  • £26 million aid package to tackle the worst forms of child labour through a major new programme across six Asian countries. Working in partnership with UNICEF, the International Labour Organisation and the IDS, UK support will reduce the vulnerability of children to bonded labour in hazardous industries like agriculture and clamp down on children being trafficked into commercial sex work. Evidence-based interventions that tackle the drivers of child labour will be rolled out, such as social protection and cash transfer support for families affected.

  • £5 million programme to scale up our work with the Government of Bangladesh to eliminate the worst forms of child labour in the country. Our support will help build an evidence base of what works and pilot innovative approaches to protect the most vulnerable, initially focusing on tea estates, domestic work and hazardous industrial work in Sylhet.

• The United Kingdom and the United States of America along with Canada, New Zealand and Australia will today announce they have agreed four new international principles which will provide a practical framework for governments to tackle human trafficking and modern slavery in global supply chains. This group of five countries will meet annually to coordinate their efforts.

More Information

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The Queen has approved that His Grace Sir Richard Walter John Montagu Douglas Scott, The Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, KT KBE, DL, FSA, FRSE, be re-appointed as Her Majesty’s Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 2019.

The Lord High Commissioner is the Sovereign’s personal representative to the Annual General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He attends the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland on behalf of the Sovereign. He makes the opening and closing addresses to the Assembly and carries out a number of official functions as the Lord High Commissioner.

Published 3 October 2018
Last updated 3 October 2018

It is a pleasure to be back in Siena and back at another Pontignano Conference.

It is great to see such strong support from both UK and Italian business sponsors.

Meeting at this moment of major, political, geostrategic and technological change, affecting both Europe and the world, we need to bring together leaders and influencers to consider the right approach to the challenges we all face, in a world where:

• economic and military power is shifting away from Atlantic dominance
• we are confronting the threat of climate change, leading to the risk of civil disorder in Africa and elsewhere
• increasing migration is putting strain on state services and social cohesion in recipient countries
• international norms are being challenged, and what appeared to be the inevitable consensus about the advantages of democracy and globalisation has been faltering

So I believe that this is a critical time for our international rules-based system.

It is a system that we in Europe played a leading role in building.

And it is a system I believe we in Europe must endeavour to protect.

If we look back at those classic Italian films such as Rossellini’s ‘Rome, Open City’ and De Sica’s ‘Bicycle Thieves’, these remind us of the state to which Europe was reduced in the middle of the 20th century.

We cannot underestimate the importance of the international agreements that underpinned our recovery from that painful period.

We in Europe must work together to protect the international rules-based system, and to strengthen and reinvigorate the institutions which underpin it.

As the world’s fifth largest economy, and a major economic power in its own right, the United Kingdom stands ready to play its part. As we have always done.

In March 2019, we are leaving the institutions of the European Union. But we are not leaving Europe; our geography, our history, our shared cultural traditions do not change.

The UK will always remain a European nation committed to European security, European trade and European values.

In our exit negotiations, we are seeking a deal that keeps us as close as possible to our European partners.

The trade agreement and security cooperation that we have proposed in our White Paper are ambitious and unprecedented. They challenge established habits of thought in the Commission and in certain Member States. The deal we are seeking was always going to be tough and complex.

Let us be clear, what we are not proposing is a single market for goods, cherry picking or dividing up the four freedoms.

We are leaving the Single Market. We will no longer have the rights of a member state, nor the same market access or influence.

What we have, instead, put forward is a proposal for a new and fair balance of rights and obligations.

They include what President Juncker described, last week, as a free-trade area for goods, consisting of a common rulebook for goods, including agri-food, for those rules necessary to provide frictionless trade at the border.

And we are proposing new customs arrangements to remove the need for customs checks and controls between the UK and the EU, with those underpinned by new provisions to ensure that competition between us is open and fair, through level-playing-field commitments on environmental standards, social and employment protections, and state aid which go well beyond commitments in traditional FTAs.

Alongside this, we are proposing new joint-institutional arrangements to provide for regulatory co-operation and dispute resolution, which includes a role for the CJEU as the interpreter of EU law.

We believe that this is the only credible response currently on the table to the guiding principles put forward by both sides.

It meets, critically, the commitments in the Joint Report on Northern Ireland agreed last December. These proposals are also in both sides’ economic interests.

We value our close economic and historic relationship with Italy and want to preserve these as part of our EU exit negotiations.

An agreement is in all of our economic interests.

Italy is the world’s eighth largest economy and the UK’s sixth biggest trading partner; bilateral trade in goods and services was estimated to be over £50 billion in 2016.

There are around 1,000 Italian companies active in the UK. Among the largest, including tyre company Pirelli and defence contractor Leonardo, formerly Finmeccanica, frictionless trade is crucial for them and their cross-border supply chains.

Our proposals are pragmatic.

The EU’s relationship with the UK is not the same as that of any other third country.

We are already aligned with the acquis. We already have frictionless trade. We already cooperate on security issues.

Nowhere is this truer than in Northern Ireland.

Our Prime Minister has said, repeatedly, that she feels a ‘special responsibility’ to the people of Northern Ireland, and that there should never be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

So we agree that any deal we reach with the EU will have to provide for the frictionless movement of goods across the Northern Ireland border, and we believe our proposals do this.

We remain absolutely committed to including a legally operative backstop in the withdrawal agreement. The problem with the Commission’s proposed ‘backstop’ text is that it will breach the Joint Report agreed last December and thus, the Good Friday Agreement.

As a United Kingdom government, we could never accept that the way to prevent a hard border with Ireland is to create a new border within the United Kingdom.

The proposals in our White Paper provide the clearest, realistic solution to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland. They avoid the need for customs and regulatory checks at the border and mean that products only need to undergo one set of approvals and authorisations in either market, before being sold in both.

They also, critically, reduce risks to peace and security to a very fragile environment in Northern Ireland, which a hard border, either on land or on sea, would bring.

Our close cooperation is just as crucial when it comes to security, and my country remains unconditional in its commitment to the security of Europe and our desire for the closest possible future security partnership.

Terrorism and serious organised crime do not respect national frontiers. Our current excellent cooperation at expert level is facilitated by access to EU databases and agencies.

For example:

• The UK, along with Italy and Germany, is one of the most active users of the Schengen Information System II. Between 2016 and 2018, there were 644 occasions where the UK used that system and information to alert European partners that their counter-terrorism suspects had travelled to the UK.

• Europol has allowed the UK to identify human trafficking operations, where migrants have been smuggled into and through Italy.

• And when Hussain Osman fled to Italy after the failed London bombings in 2005, we could issue a European Arrest Warrant and he was extradited to the UK to face justice, just 56 days later, leading to his imprisonment.

We are working closely with Italy, too, on seizing the assets of criminals.

As of November 2017, the UK had restrained assets worth just over £25.5 million following requests from the Italian authorities for asset recovery assistance.

This kind of cooperation has saved many lives.

An unambitious deal that led to our loss of access to these EU tools and measures, and the EU’s access to ours, would have serious implications for the safety of both UK and EU citizens.

The need for international solidarity was demonstrated clearly by the attack in Salisbury in July.

Russia’s deplorable use of a nerve agent on British soil to carry out an assassination that tragically resulted in the death of a British citizen.

The solidarity that Italy and other allies showed by expelling Russian diplomats was the best response to attempts to challenge the rules of the international order.

Italy remains a key partner for us. Since the Cold War, Italy has been on more operations with the UK than any other nation.

Today, our armed forces are still working “fianco a fianco” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Somalia and in other parts of Africa.

They have a high degree of interoperability and our defence planners see eye to eye – including on the importance of NATO reform and the framework for the south.

In July, Italian Minister for Defence, Trenta, and our Defence Secretary, Williamson, signed a Joint Statement of Intent to work more closely together to both reinforce our strategic partnership and to tackle, together, capability gaps in facing future threats.

Together, along with Germany and Spain, we developed the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Sustaining 100,000 highly-skilled jobs across Europe and has generated £15 billion in exports.

So why are we doing all this? Wouldn’t it be easier for the UK just to stay in the EU?

The answer to that is clear. The British people have made a democratic choice in a referendum. And in a democracy, a democratic choice has to be respected, even if you disagree. Otherwise, what is pretty fragile public confidence in the political process would be damaged still further.

With the end of the Article 50 process rapidly approaching, there are decisions to be made. We need to inject all our energy, creativity and determination into agreeing a deal.

Because with only around 190 days to go until our departure, we have a choice between a deal based on the pragmatic proposals that we are discussing now with the European Commission, or leaving without a deal.

A deal is in both the UK and EU’s interest. So as we enter this final phase, we ask our European partners to respond with ambition, pragmatism and urgency to our proposals, and get into the detail of discussion where there are real problems to overcome.

For if we forget our common interests and accidentally slide into a no-deal separation and an acrimonious divorce, I am afraid that we risk losing our sense of common destiny, undermine our ability to cooperate, and will have to face the challenges of the 21st Century divided. So I believe that it is in all our interests that we concentrate on the task ahead and complete this task in the interests of all our citizens – and of future generations.

On Wednesday 19 September 2018, a road-rail ballast distributor collided with a road-rail personnel carrier near Cholmondeston, on the line between Crewe and Chester.

The ballast distributor included a hopper fed conveyor system that is used to distribute ballast onto the track. It was equipped with both rubber wheels for road running and steel rail wheels for operation on the railway. That night, it was intended to be used to distribute fresh ballast onto a section of track which was under possession (temporarily closed to normal train services).

The personnel carrier vehicle was an off-road utility vehicle that had been converted for use on and off the railway. It was fitted with tip-up seats at the back to allow the transport of personnel and/or materials. That night, it was transporting personnel involved in track repairs within the possession.

The ballast distributor vehicle had on-tracked at Calveley road-rail access point, which provides a flat surface allowing road-rail vehicles to be manoeuvred on to the track. It then started travelling, with the conveyor belt end leading, towards the location where ballast was required, approximately 3.5 miles (5.6 km) away.

Just before 02:35 hrs the conveyor belt end of the ballast regulator collided with the rear of the personnel carrier, which had been stationary prior to the collision.

Two trackworkers who were on the personnel carrier were injured, one of them sustaining serious leg and back injuries. The other staff on the personnel carrier and the ballast regulator were uninjured.

The RAIB’s investigation will identify the sequence of events that led to the collision and consider:

• the factors influencing the actions of those involved in the operation of the vehicles on the night
• the condition and maintenance history of the vehicles
• the standards and design approval processes that were applied to the vehicles
• any relevant underlying management factors

Our investigation is independent of any investigation by the railway industry or by the industry’s regulator, the Office of Rail and Road.

We will publish our findings, including any safety recommendations, at the conclusion of our investigation; these will be available on our RAIB website.

You can subscribe to automated emails notifying you when we publish our reports.

The new rising star category showcases apprentices who have made impressive progress in their career to date, demonstrating the potential, through their apprenticeship, to take a career path to the very top of their chosen profession.

During September the awards judging panels chose nine regional winners, who are now going head to head to be crowned the national winner. All finalists were nominated by their employer and some of their achievements include these individuals having a positive impact on many tangible business measures including profit, guest satisfaction and running campaigns. Other reasons for being nominated include apprentices exceeding employer’s expectations and adding value by acquiring new skills and qualifications and also volunteering to upskill new apprentices by sharing their own experiences, to give them the best possible start to their apprenticeship.

The nine national rising star finalists are:

West Midlands

Sam Brown, Hidden Economy Compliance officer from HM Revenues and Customs

North West

Joseph Buck, Duty Manager from Mitchells and Butlers

East of England

Aleksandra Burzec, Support Coordinator from Home Group

South West

Henry Crosby, Plumbing & Heating Engineer from S W & L

North East

Jenny Jones, Software Developer Apprentice from HM Revenues and Customs

London

Thomas Mynott, Associate Developer from Transport for London

East Midlands

Shivram Radia, Senior Surveyor from Edward Cooper Young Chartered Surveyors

Yorkshire and the Humber

Hannah Turner, Internship and Junior Development Programme Lead from Home Office Digital, Data and Technology

South East

Aimee Wilkinson, Assistant Project Manager from BAE Systems

Keith Smith, Director, Apprenticeships, ESFA said:

The National Apprenticeship Awards recognise excellence in businesses that grow their own talent with apprenticeships, and apprentices who have made, and keep making, a significant contribution to their workplaces. All of the rising star national finalists are testament to the brilliance of apprentices and the opportunity apprenticeships bring to the lives of individuals.

These nine national finalists represent success across our regions and are all outstanding individuals. I am sure that for each of them, their futures are bright and further success in their career beckons.

Please do vote; we need the apprenticeship community to get behind these 9 outstanding apprentices to ensure they get the recognition they deserve.

Find out more about each of the apprentices by watching this short film.

Rising star finalists

Voting couldn’t be easier. Opening today, 3 October at 10am and closing at 5pm on 17 October, vote for your rising star of 2018.