Prime Minister, Mr Chairman, distinguished members,

I am honoured to have been given the opportunity to address you this evening.

Most of us will have seen the front pages of the main national newspapers last Friday. “Enterprise Sri Lanka: embracing our true birthright” read the bold headline. The campaign message ends: “The spirit of enterprise flows in our veins. If each of us embraces our legacy of entrepreneurial potential, Sri Lanka will flourish again”. All of us here will share this ambition to see Sri Lanka and its businesses thriving.

With this ambition in mind I thought I could best use the time I have to share a few reflections on six themes, the first letters of which conveniently spell the word “ACCESS”. “Access” seems appropriate, since so much of what successful business is about involves access, for products and services to markets, for companies to investment.

A is for Holding to Account.

I was comparing your website with the UK Institute of Directors’ website at the weekend. The UK IOD has as one of its four key objectives: “Lobbying: To represent the interests of IoD members and the business community, to government and all opinion formers. To encourage and foster a climate favourable to entrepreneurial activity and wealth creation.” I was struck that your Institute has no equivalent objective. Perhaps it’s something you might consider. Holding government to account and representing the interests of the business community are critical functions of business leaders in any country. Your voices as captains of industry matter: the government will listen to you.

My first C is for Corporate Governance.

Among your objectives is to promote professionalism and enhance the level of integrity and ethical business conduct among directors. Whatever the field, it requires a lot more determination and firmer principles to stay straight and play by honest rules when people around you aren’t doing the same and when corruption is a serious problem. Your Institute has 500 members including blue chips, public quoted companies, and private and family businesses. Acting together you have the power to be a formidable force for good practice. You can and should be setting an example – for other companies, Sri Lankan and foreign, for the government and public and private bodies. I am confident that your staff, your shareholders, your investors and your customers will all respect you for it when you do so.

My second C is for Competition.

“The spirit of enterprise flows in our veins”, to quote from the advert. If I may say so, in my three years here I’ve also seen an apparent dislike of competition flowing in the veins of rather a lot of industries and entrepreneurs. Freer trade, lower barriers, fewer state-owned businesses and less protectionism are keys, I believe, to making Sri Lanka prosperous and to having its companies thrive, not just in domestic markets but around the world. Competition stimulates innovation and efficiencies, it feeds ideas, it encourages product innovation and higher customer service standards. In short it helps push benchmarks up to international levels.

One of the advantages of membership your Institute website sets out is that you will get “opportunities to be exposed to the cutting edge of the best practices in the world”. International competition and openness will bring the exposure you are right to be seeking for you members.

E is for English.

I’m proud of all that my colleagues in the British Council and the British government are doing to help build up standards of English. At the weekend I spoke at the annual British Council International School Awards Ceremony here in Colombo. An amazing 173 schools from all over Sri Lanka took part. As I commented on Twitter, the occasion was a celebration of their success and of the benefits that flow to our schools and our children from Connecting Classrooms around the world. Why does it work? It works because in South America and in Africa, in China and in Russia, and here in Sri Lanka, the tens of thousands of children who take part are able to communicate with each other in English.

I believe passionately that through equipping our children with good English we give them, and we give our countries, keys to future success. If you’re in almost any of the service industries that now make up a large part of the Sri Lanka’s GDP, how successful your companies are in the future will depend on this. English is the medium through which you need to be able to explain your competitive advantage in international markets.
Lots of good work has been and is being done; much more still needs to be done. My question for you this evening is what more can the business community do to lead, to fund and to encourage.

Letter number five: my first S is for Standards.

Linking across to my point on competition, I’d like to suggest that many Sri Lankan companies would help themselves by using global standard benchmarks. Whatever the field, in business as in sport, a lack of competition pulls standards down.

Tell your teams, “We can and going to be the best in the world” – they’ll like you for it. And set and hold them to global standards. Instil this, and you won’t need to fear the competition.

Lots of you will be looking for opportunities for business collaboration, in the region and more widely, through joint ventures and strategic alliances. Ask yourselves where the potential is for intellectual property transfer. Think about how you can use international business, scientific and technical research.

And my second S is for Support.

I began with A, A for holding the government and others to Account. Hand in hand with this responsibility goes a responsibility for supporting the government, for sharing the good advice that you as a group are able to give that will inform wise decision-making, for standing with the government when it wants to take sensible steps but is meeting opposition. Your website states you are committed to restoring investor confidence in Sri Lanka’s private and public sectors. Many different actors will need to play their parts in this success.

Moving Sri Lanka up the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, for example, needs to involve partnership. It needs business and government encouraging, helping and supporting each other. It needs them to be open with and critical of each other. I don’t always get the feeling that the business community is doing as much as it can and needs to be doing to help. History seems to have made its mark – the business community in Sri Lanka is interestingly reluctant to get involved in issues that might be considered political. “Better to keep one’s head down because governments change”, I’m told. “It’s safer to be non-aligned.” I disagree.

Of course as business leaders you won’t want to wade into public debate with opinions on everything. But my sense is that there are appropriate opportunities for you to speak up as a group more often than you do. I’d encourage you, for instance, to use your public authority and your influence with the government to help press down on permit mentalities, to simplify the setting up of businesses, to liberalise labour laws that hold development back. The voice of business and your collective voice as business leaders matter.

So ACCESS: Holding to Account, Corporate governance, Competition, English, Standards and Support.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am honoured to have had this opportunity to speak to you this evening.

Thank you.

The appointment follows the competitive recruitment process for the post after Simon Hall, the former Veterinary Director, moved to the position of APHA Director for EU Exit and Trade earlier this year (2018).

Speaking about his appointment, Andrew said:

I’m delighted and honoured to be asked to take up the role of Veterinary Director. I look forward to the joys and challenges that this will bring and to working with many across the agency to help ensure we provide excellent veterinary and technical expertise to our customers and stakeholders.

Chris Hadkiss, Chief Executive for APHA, said:

Andrew brings with him a wealth of corporate knowledge about the agency and Defra, and a variety of experience from his roles leading the agency’s commercial services (APHA Scientific), and in previous years, laboratory services. He also led the project for the launch of APHA when our plant and bee health teams moved from Fera to join the former Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency back in 2014.

Andrew first joined the agency in February 1999. His previous roles in the agency include: Head of APHA Scientific; Head of Laboratory Testing and International Trade Programme Manager.

Before this, Andrew worked as a Veterinary Investigation Officer in the former Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and as a private veterinary surgeon in Devon and York. He also worked for the former Overseas Development Administration as a Veterinary Officer in Malawi for 5 years.

A new opportunity is now open to tender for 2018 civil face to face contract work.

Who can tender?

The tender process is open to both existing contract holders and new entrants.

This includes:

1. organisations that have already tendered for a 2018 Standard Civil contract and wish to deliver additional services to those already notified

2. organisations which have not previously tendered

How will the tender work?

It is a single-stage process that will assess an organisation’s:

Contracts will be procured using a non-competitive process. Any organisation assessed as being suitable and meeting the minimum service requirements will be awarded a contract.

Which categories of law are open to bids?

Tenders are invited in the following categories of law:

1. family, including private law family and public law child care work

2. housing, debt and welfare benefits

3. immigration and asylum

4. mental health

5. community care

6. claims against public authorities, formerly known as ‘actions against the police etc’

7. clinical negligence

8. public law

9. family mediation

How can I tender?

Tenders must be submitted using the LAA’s e-Tendering system – see below. A link is also available on the tender pages of the LAA website.

If you wish to tender then you must submit a response to both the:

Deadline for tender submissions

All bids must be made through LAA’s e-Tendering system by 5pm on 10 August 2018.

Further information

Civil 2018 contracts tender – to find out more and download the IFA document

e-Tendering system – to submit your tender

Universities will be called on to dramatically improve their mental health offering for students, and will be awarded with a new recognition for meeting new mental health standards.

The Universities Minister Sam Gyimah will announce a new charter that will be developed in partnership with leading charities and Higher Education bodies, outlining the criteria that universities need to meet to gain the recognition, and will call on them to sign up to ‘avoid failing a generation of students’.

It comes on the day that he will host a student mental health summit at the University of the West of England. As part of a new package of measures announced by Sam Gyimah on student mental health:

1. The announcement of a University Mental Health Charter will see the development of new standards to promote student and staff mental health and wellbeing.
2. The set-up of a Department for Education-led working group into the transition students face when going to university, to ensure they have the right support, particularly in the critical in their first year transition.
3. Exploring whether an opt-in requirement for universities could be considered, so they could have permission to share information on student mental health with parents or a trusted person.

Universities Minister Sam Gyimah said:

We want mental health support for students to be a top priority for the leadership of all our universities. Progress can only be achieved with their support – I expect them to get behind this important agenda as we otherwise risk failing an entire generation of students.

Universities should see themselves as ‘in loco parentis’ – not infantilising students, but making sure support is available where required. It is not good enough to suggest that university is about the training of the mind and nothing else, as it is too easy for students to fall between the cracks and to feel overwhelmed and unknown in their new surroundings.

This is not a problem that can be solved overnight, but we need to do a better job of supporting students than is happening at the moment.

Student Minds, the UK’s student mental health charity, will lead a partnership of organisations in the development of the charter. Partners will include the UPP Foundation, Office for Students (OfS), National Union of Students (NUS) and Universities UK.

The Charter’s development, which is supported by a £100,000 grant to Student Minds from the UPP Foundation, the registered charity founded by University Partnerships Programme (UPP), will recognise and reward those institutions that demonstrate making student and staff mental health a university-wide priority and deliver improved student mental health and wellbeing outcomes.

Rosie Tressler, CEO of Student Minds, said:

As the Minister has recognised today, there is much work to be done to ensure that institutions make mental health a strategic priority, supporting the 1 in 4 students and staff experiencing mental ill health and the 4 in 4 with mental health, at universities across the UK.

Student Minds are delighted to have the support of the UPP Foundation and our partners to co-create the University Mental Health Charter with students, and university and health communities. This programme will stretch and reward universities that commit to the improvement required, providing tools and support to help them get there.

Together we will transform the futures of the 2.3 million students that are in Higher Education, whilst equipping the doctors, teachers and business leaders of the future to continue the positive change in wider society.”

Izzy Lenga, Vice President Welfare at NUS:

I am so pleased to support to the launch of this Charter, and specifically the commitment to reach out to underrepresented groups within the student population, to reinforce the importance of having culturally competent support services. Student mental health must be a priority for all institutions and this Charter presents a welcome opportunity for students to co-produce the definition of excellence in the field.

The working group looking at transitions will be based within the Department for Education and the work undertaken will be in tandem with the sector.

They will look at the role universities can play in the often difficult transition from school to university and becoming independent students. It will form a number of recommendations for schools, colleges and universities to adopt.

Sam Gyimah will also outline plans to explore opt-in requirements for universities could be considered, so they could have permission to share information on student mental health with parents or a trusted person.