International Trade Secretary Dr Liam Fox led a 50-strong business delegation on his visit to China with the Prime Minister.

International Trade Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, said:

I am delighted to have joined the Prime Minister on this crucial and incredibly fruitful visit.

The agreements signed this week, valued at more than £9 billion, demonstrate a clear demand for British goods and services.

As an international economic department, we will continue to develop this valuable trading relationship, which is now worth more than £59 billion, with UK exports to China increasing by over 25% last year.

During the visit deals worth over £9.8 billion have been agreed, representing commercial signings, market access agreements and future contract commitments within a variety of sectors, creating more than 2,600 jobs across the UK.

Further information:

Deals valued at £9.89 billion have been agreed, creating 2,666 UK jobs.

Within advanced manufacturing, deals valued at £3.25 billion have been agreed, creating 500 new jobs. Some of these deals include:

• a new £50 million R&D centre in Birmingham by Times Electric, which will develop new technology in the area of electric vehicles and create 150 high-skilled jobs in the UK over the next 5 years
• a £20 million dealer investment and expansion programme by Aston Martin Lagonda, taking its total footprint in the Chinese market to more than 20 locations
• investment in a new design studio for all-electric London cabs in Coventry by Geely. Owners of the London Electric Vehicle Company (LEVC), the studio will create 100 new jobs
• a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by Ultra MTS with the China Railway Eryuan Engineering Group Co. Ltd (CREEC) to supply its award-winning driverless pods, as used in Heathrow Terminal 5, to the Chinese market
• Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has agreed a contract worth £22 million with the Chinese company 21-AT for the provision of Earth Orbital data
• Graphene Lighting is to form a joint venture with Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone (NETDZ) that will enable them to export environmentally-friendly graphene lightbulbs to the EU worth £65 million in exports

During the visit, £1.27 billion of deals and market access were secured for the UK financial services industry, creating around 890 jobs:

• Shanghai Clearing House has agreed to connect London FinTech company R5FX’s R5 automated currency trading platform onto their systems, providing Chinese Institutional Investors direct access to currency exchanges without needing to go through brokers
• Shanghai International Group has signed a deal to invest £340 million in South Molton Street Capital’s European m&a fund – South Molton Street Capital will set up an office in Shanghai in support of this deal
• UK FinTech company Currency Cloud has signed a deal with Chinese company X-Transfer to undertake foreign currency exchange for its cross-border payments business
• the People’s Bank of China has welcomed applications by Experian to undertake corporate credit rating business and World First to undertake cross border payments business
• Standard Chartered Bank (China) has received its lead underwriting licence for non-financial enterprise Panda bonds
• Shanghai Pudong Development Bank has secured a licence to open its first European branch in London – the £74 million investment will create an additional 20 UK jobs
•  Innovate Finance and the National Internet Finance Association of China (NIFA) have signed an MoU to cooperate on supporting and promoting the UK and China’s leading FinTech hubs and member firms

Consumer sector deals worth over £2 billion have been agreed:

• JD.com, one of China’s largest B2C online retailers, has signed an agreement with DIT committing to sales of £2 billion of British retail goods and food and drink over the next 2 to 3 years – up to 50 jobs are expected to be created as a result
• JD.com has also announced a promotional ‘Super Brand Day’ dedicated to British products which is expected to be worth up to £25 million – this will run across JD.com’s platforms including retail, FMCG and food and drink

Announcements valued at £1.36 billion within the energy and infrastructure sectors have been secured, including:

• BP has agreed a deal with the Shandong Dongming Petrochemical Group. The agreement will see over 500 petrol stations in China open over a 10 year period – this investment milestone demonstrates BP’s continued commitment to growth in China’s oil and gas sector through outward direct investment
• Zaha Hadid Architects has won an architectural design contract for a new iconic building in Wuhan – the project will host the headquarters of the Taikang Insurance company, alongside residential and retail areas
• an agreement by Savills Property Services with Wuhan’s Jian’an District to set up Savills in Wuhan – this office will be responsible for Savills’ central China business and will allow Savills to develop its wider presence in China
• China Resources to take a 30% stake in Dudgeon offshore wind farm worth up to £600 million has now received competition clearance from the Chinese authorities
• a Belt and Road website for London has been created by London & Partners and the City of London Corporation, and is a step to help create awareness about the Initiative and how UK firms can play a role

Agreements valued at over £550 million have been agreed within the education sector, creating more than 800 jobs, including:

• Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) – a joint venture university of the University of Liverpool – is to build a new campus in Taicang – the new campus will develop strong links with industry to develop leading graduates in science and technology

Announcements valued at over £500 million have been secured within the life sciences and healthcare sectors. For example:

• Cambridge Science Park to receive a £200 million investment from world-leading science facility Tsinghua University Holdings to build a state-of-the-art biohub, providing labs and offices for UK and Chinese biotech and med-tech companies
• digital health company Medopad has signed a £36 million deal with China Resources to develop health care apps – Medopad will also collaborate with Internet retail giant Tencent to advance digital health solutions in the UK and China
• AstraZeneca and Ali Health (Alibaba) have signed an MoU to partner on Internet of Things-enabled smart healthcare provision across China, and also with Tencent to tackle medicine counterfeiting and enhance the protection of intellectual property rights in China – both MoUs support AstraZeneca’s ambition to partner with the Chinese government in achieving its Healthy China 2030 plan
• Future Planet Capital and Eight Great Technologies have signed MoU’s with Shenzhen Gian Hai Sunflower Financial Service and Jian Xin Tian Ran Investment Management Ltd., to invest RMB 3 billion (around £310 million) into healthcare innovation and bio-technology between the UK and China
• Eight Great Technologies and Tsinghua University’s venture capital business Leaguer International Co. signed an MoU to form a joint venture called the Eight Great Technologies Sino-UK Fund -this is a RMB 5 billion (£560 million) venture capital fund to invest in UK technology companies first in the UK before scaling to China
• Eight Great Technologies and Jiangsu Industrial Technology and Research Institute (JITRI) have signed an MoU to establish the Eight Great Technologies JITRI Fund – this is a RMB 1 billion (£110 million) venture capital fund which will invest in the development and up-scaling of emerging UK technologies in China

Creative sector announcements valued at £287 million have been secured leading to the creation of 376 new jobs. Amongst others, these include:

• Silvergate Media and CCTV Animation will jointly produce the fifth season of the award-winning British children’s animation Octonauts – the new British-Chinese co-production will be broadcast globally, including by the BBC in the UK and by CCTV in China, with a further 2 seasons planned
• UK technology company Improbable and leading Chinese internet technology company NetEase have signed an agreement to begin a broad partnership to make and publish games built on SpatialOS, Improbable’s cloud-based platform for game development
• leading UK design company PriestmanGoode has signed an MoU with Hainan Airlines to deliver design services covering aircraft, cabins, airport and ground services on an ongoing basis

Food and drink, and agri-food announcements worth £137 million have been secured, creating 30 new jobs. These include:

• Bulkpowders, a leading UK producer of sports nutrition products, has secured an exclusive import and distribution agreement with Shanghai Happydo International for its range of nutrition powder and snack products
• Freshways (Dairy) UHT Division, the UK’s largest independent processing dairy company, has signed a variety of import and partnership agreements with companies including Youle Trading Shanghai, Appy Foods and Yeo Valley for the production and sale of various dairy products in China
• Moma Cereal, made with wholegrain British jumbo oats, has signed several distribution agreements with numerous high profile national China retailers including OLE Stores, City Super Stores, City Shop and online platforms JD.Com and VIP.com through their China partners Sticksology

In addition, market access deals have been secured with the potential to open up markets upwards of £530 million:

• a commitment of lifting BSE restrictions by summer 2018, supporting our beef market access negotiations, valued at £250 million in the first 5 years

• approval of market entry for dairy products, valued at £280 million in first 5 years

For further information:

• contact the DIT Media Team on 020 7008 3333 or 020 7215 2000 (out of hours)
• follow us: @tradegovuk, gov.uk/dit

Both companies rent, lease and sell equipment that tests and measures the performance of electronic devices used in certain industries such as telecommunications, defence, utilities and information technology.

The completed merger of the rival businesses was referred to a group of independent panel members at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for an in-depth investigation, after an initial investigation identified competition concerns.

The group has found that Electro Rent, though significantly smaller than Microlease in the UK, was the only other rental company operating in the country to have the resources and stock to compete effectively with Microlease.

It also determined that, while there is a limited number of alternatives, the merged business is now the only suitable UK supplier for a large number of customers.

It is unlikely that the merged business would be prevented from using its position to increase prices or reduce its quality of service to customers by new entrants or expansion of established companies.

The group has therefore provisionally concluded that it is likely the merger will lead to a substantial lessening of competition in the sector, and a worse deal for UK customers.

The CMA is now inviting comments on both its provisional findings and its possible remedies, which include selling part or all of one of the merged companies. See the case page for more information.

The CMA’s final report will be published by the statutory deadline of 4 April 2018.

The government has confirmed that it will introduce a nationwide HPV vaccination programme for men aged 45 or younger who have sex with other men.

NHS England and Public Health England (PHE) will work to start the programme from April 2018, for those attending sexual health (GUM) clinics and HIV clinics in England.

Since 2008 girls aged 11 to 13 have been vaccinated against the HPV virus, and this provides indirect protection to boys. HPV is a virus transmitted through sexual contact, with over 100 different types of HPV. It is most commonly associated with causing cervical cancer in women.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) have recognised increasing evidence of the association between HPV infection and non-cervical cancers on men who have sex with men (MSM). MSM do not benefit from indirect protection from the vaccination programme for girls.

As a result, a vaccination pilot started in 42 specialist sexual health services clinics from June 2016. The pilot assessed the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of a national HPV vaccination programme for MSM.

The vaccination pilot was a success.

A phased nationwide rollout to protect men who have sex with men from some cancers caused by HPV as well as genital warts, will now go ahead.

Given the phased approach to the rollout, patients should not contact their clinics to request the vaccine. If the vaccine is available patients will be offered it as part of their routine sexual health check-up.

Dr Michael Edelstein, Consultant Epidemiologist at PHE, said:

Our evidence shows that men who have sex with men are welcoming an HPV vaccination programme, and it can be delivered successfully through sexual health services.

MSM are a group who receive little indirect protection from the adolescent girls’ vaccination programme. We expect the new programme to reduce the number of cancers that are directly caused by HPV.

Rarely did anyone attempt to grasp the wider implications of a particular incident for the future, or spot trends or patterns or read across issues to other aircraft. There was a corresponding lack of corporate memory as to related incidents which had occurred in the past…

The Nimrod Review: An independent review into the broader issues surrounding the loss of the RAF Nimrod MR2 Aircraft XV230 in Afghanistan in 2006, Charles Haddon-Cave QC, October 2009, P149

I make recommendations for a new safety culture…

Ibid, P569

A reporting culture is one of the cornerstones of an engaged safety culture. As such, the Military Aviation Authority (MAA) requires that all air safety occurrences are reported and managed, with appropriate action taken, see RA 1410: Occurrence reporting. As such, the MAA provides the Air Safety Information Management System (ASIMS) as both a ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ system: ASIMS is designed to help the defence aviation community report air safety occurrences in order that Aviation Duty Holders (ADH), see RA 1020: roles and responsibilities: ADH and ADH facing organisations, may actively manage air safety, monitoring and mitigating associated Risks to Life (RtL) within their defined areas of responsibility (AOR) to As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP) and Tolerable. In addition, ASIMS is used by the MAA in the monitoring and oversight of the Defence Aviation Environment (DAE) as a whole and is one of the main tools used to establish the ‘risk picture’ across the DAE, enabling the MAA to practice risk based assurance.

As with any system of this kind, there are 2 components that make it a success, or failure. The design of the system itself, and the willingness and ability of personnel to fully engage with it, with the former often influencing the latter. Following the analysis of ASIMS report data-quality in 2013, it was recognised that, whilst there was a healthy reporting culture (with reporting increasing year-on-year), codification of why incidents occurred was inconsistent, hindering the MAA’s ability to gain a true picture of aviation safety risk held by Defence.

Whilst personnel understood the need for and were willing to report incidents, they either could not, or would not, complete the process. One major issue was the outcome-focussed taxonomy, which led reports to focus in on the outcome of an occurrence, not what led to that outcome. Another issue was allowing reports to be closed-down without mandating that investigation findings were declared.

Consequently, in April 2016 the MAA introduced a major ASIMS upgrade. From improved codification and taxonomy, to the introduction of hashtags, the upgrade has provided a step change in the ability to positively influence aviation safety through improved recording, trending and analysis of safety occurrences. The most significant changes are discussed below. However, the system remains reliant on the willingness of personnel to fully engage.

The stats

Currently, every location in which military aviation is conducted, and every unit which conducts military aviation, has access to ASIMS through DII. There are over 19,400 user accounts* belonging to 1,063 units registered at 212 stations** (including every aviation-capable ship). An average of 13,000 individual reports are raised each year, and there are over 225,000 unique reports stored on ASIMS (the vast majority of which pre-date the system).

*It should be noted that a user account is not required to raise an occurrence report within ASIMS.

**ASIMS statistics page dated 15 January 2018.

Investigations

The ASIMS v3 upgrade added the requirement to record the level of investigation being undertaken: Local Investigation (LI), Occurrence Safety Investigation (OSI) or Service Inquiry (SI). Investigators could devote as much or as little time to the investigation as required to satisfy the Aviation Duty Holder/Accountable Manager (ADH/AM) Review Group that the details of the occurrence have been accurately identified and recorded. If appropriate for the occurrence, an LI could be as simple as performing a desk-level investigation.

Findings

The introduction of a mandatory requirement to complete the Findings section and the associated recommendation details for the Cause and each Causal Factor was the single biggest element of the upgrade. The understanding of why an incident occurred was further enhanced by allowing multiple findings, which improved our overall analysis of occurrences.

This mandatory requirement to report findings, and the ability to report multiple findings has caused some additional work for the report investigators, but has added far greater value to each report submitted and thus the insight possible from analysis of ASIMS.

From 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2016, only 27% of reports recorded why an occurrence had happened. Following the upgrade, from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 that figure had risen to 93%, however, there is still some way to go. Recent analysis (December 2017) has shown that 25% of Causal Factors are recorded as ‘Cause Undetermined’.

Further understanding of why this is the case is ongoing: defence aviation cannot claim to have good corporate memory, or an effective learning culture, if a quarter of occurrences are not codified in such a way as can be readily exploited.

Why record multiple findings?

A technical fault in flight may have resulted in a report-worthy safety incident. However, the subsequent investigation may establish that an associated maintenance activity had been both incorrectly completed and not properly supervised. The conclusion is that 3 elements led to the incident occurrence and each element requires investigation:

• why was the maintenance activity being carried out incorrectly?
• why was supervision inadequate?
• why did the technical fault in flight lead to an air safety incident?

Previously, only the top level would be recorded, i.e. the technical fault. However, by having the ability to add a separate finding for each phase of the occurrence, allowing each element to have their own outcome, cause and causal factors, it is possible to easily see which causal factor initiated which cause and subsequently led to the outcome.

In addition, this function enables improved analysis of the data; allowing deeper interrogation to establish not only multiple findings for a main outcome, but also multiple outcomes from a single finding.

Recommendations

Recommendations are formal and require ADH/AM approval. The upgrade introduced the requirement for the Investigator to make a recommendation against the cause and each causal factor for every finding. There are occasions when it is appropriate that no recommendations are made. These occasions must be positively acknowledged and recorded and as such, an associated free text field has been made available for this purpose.

Acceptable reasons for recording ‘No Recommendations’ are:

• the risk remains ALARP and tolerable, therefore no mitigation or action is required
• one recommendation mitigates multiple entries. Thus the mitigation is managed on one entry only and ‘Mitigated by Recommendation xxxx/xxx/Rx’ is entered in the ‘No recommendation’ field for the others
• the intention is to implement local mitigation/prevention action however, it does not change the current level of associated risk and so does not required ADH/AM approval. These actions can be implemented and manged outside of ASIMS

Hashtags

The hashtag functionality enables the tracking and management of local issues as well as analysis of global trends. Hashtags are created via the MAA ASIMS helpdesk. However, Occurrence Managers (OMs) are responsible for reviewing every report within their AOR for completeness and accuracy and it is their responsibility to add appropriate hashtags to a report once created. This action is vital for ensuring the reliability of hashtags when interrogating ASIMS at either a local, or a global level. An example of adding hashtags can be seen at Figure 1.

Figure 1: Adding Hashtags

ASIMS has proven that full, open, timely and accurate reporting of aviation occurrences is essential to the maintenance of aviation safety. The changes discussed here: the clarification of investigative levels, the mandatory reporting of findings and recommendations and the addition of hashtags to enable easier monitoring and analysis, all contribute to vastly improved data fidelity within the system.

Accurate reports, which include details of resulting investigations, allow important lessons to be identified and so play a major part in future accident prevention. ASIMS provides the mechanism for all reports to be passed to higher and other associated formations to form part of the wider situational awareness of the aviation safety risk picture, and for details of remedial or preventative actions to be recorded and promulgated through the appropriate specialist channels.

The success of all ASIMS activity is dependent upon User input and engagement, in a positive reporting culture. Continual upgrading of ASIMS to make it easier to use therefore directly influences the generation, maintenance and promotion of a positive reporting culture, which in turn influences aviation safety. For us to successfully interrogate ASIMS regarding both trends and culture, it is essential that the key fields are completed accurately. Fostering this behaviour is a key step on the path to a fully engaged Aviation safety culture, and we all need to play our part.

Further help and feedback

ASIMS continues to be developed and enhanced through the ASIMS Working Group and by suggestions from users. The Working Group is open to station flight safety teams and local occurrence managers and meets every 6 months, if you would like to get involved please contact the ASIMS helpdesk. If you have any suggestions or feedback on ASIMS please complete the online form, accessible from the ASIMS logon page, or contact the helpdesk via email dsa-maa-asims@mod.gov.uk or by phone 030 679 84188.

Tim Eyles is Managing Partner UK and International Board member of leading international law firm Taylor Wessing, Chair of The Jerwood Charitable Foundation, one of the UK’s leading arts charities, and a Director of the Jerwood Space.

Taylor Wessing has strong cultural connections with the arts which include a relationship with the National Portrait Gallery and a 10 year sponsorship of the NPG’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.

In his early career Tim Eyles was a lawyer, then partner, with the law firm Goodman Derrick, where the senior partner was Lord Goodman CH the founding Chairman of The Theatres Trust.

The role is not remunerated. This appointment has been made in accordance with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on Public Appointments. The appointments process is regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. Under the Code, any significant political activity undertaken by an appointee in the last five years must be declared. This is defined as including holding office, public speaking, making a recordable donation, or candidature for election. Tim has declared no such political activity.