Our next public board meeting will take place at 200 Lichfield Lane, Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, NG18 4RG, starting at 12:45 on Thursday 14 June 2018.

The board continues to conduct its business in public, as part of its ongoing commitment to giving stakeholders greater access to information on the activities undertaken by the Coal Authority.

View the board meeting agenda for 14 June 2018

Exceptional items of a commercially confidential nature will continue to be dealt with by the board in closed session.

I have today (11 June 2018) laid before Parliament a departmental minute describing 3 contingent liabilities relating to a tripartite deal between Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL), First Greater Western Limited (FGW) and the Department for Transport.

Unfortunately, due to the urgent need to finalise the deal and the confidential commercial nature of the negotiations it was not possible to notify Parliament of the particulars of the liability and allow the required 14 days’ notice prior to the liabilities going live. A delay would have resulted in higher HS2 costs and an increased scheduling risk impacting on the December 2026 opening date for Phase One.

The main element of the deal is a service agreement between FGW, HAL and Heathrow Airport Operating Company (HEOC) for the continuation of non-stop rail services between Paddington and Heathrow Airport. Under this agreement FGW will assume operation of Heathrow Express services. Although this is an agreement between private sector companies, there are significant benefits to the department, in particular, savings generated from not building a replacement depot for Heathrow Express rolling stock at Langley (the land on which the current depot is situated at Old Oak Common is needed by HS2 for the construction of the high speed railway).

In order to conclude the deal, and secure departmental/HS2 benefits, the department needed to offer indemnities in relation to 3 risks that the parties were unwilling or unable to assume or manage. The financial exposure is not high – a conservative estimate is c£12 million. But they are unusual and outside the department’s normal course of business.

The 3 contingent liabilities are:

First, indemnifying FGW against the cost of any delay to delivery of new rolling stock required to operate Heathrow Express services. The department’s exposure is estimated to be £2.25 million.

Second, indemnifying FGW against the cost of any redundancies following the transfer of staff, mainly drivers, from HAL to FGW. The cost is estimated to be c£3.2 million.

Third, an indemnity against contagion from a wider industrial relations dispute – nationwide or franchise wide. The exposure is estimated to be £6.8 million.

The Treasury approved these liabilities before they were activated. However, if any Member of Parliament has concerns, he/she may write to me within the next 14 parliamentary sitting days. I will be happy to examine their concerns and provide a response.

• Departmental minute: Hexagon agreement contingent liabilities (DOC, 15KB)

Police will be able to boost the number of detectives by up to 1,000 in the next 5 years following new government funding to develop a national training programme.

The Home Office will work with Police Now, an award-winning police graduate recruitment programme, to develop the scheme.

The Home Office is providing £2.8 million to support Police Now in 2018 to 2019 and will provide an additional £350,000 seed funding for the detective entry programme.

The programme will include digital training to ensure that recruits are equipped to deal with the changing nature of modern crime. It will also focus on problem solving, crime prevention and safeguarding so that detectives on the scheme meet the needs of forces and communities.

Minister for Policing and the Fire Service Nick Hurd said:

Detectives are the fact-finders of our police service. They play an important role in bringing criminals to justice and getting to the bottom of complex crimes.

I’m keen to get more new detectives trained up, so I’m delighted to support this innovative Police Now programme, which will bring in new talent, train detectives in a matter of months and complement other measures that the government and police are taking to keep the public safe.

The programme will include an expanded version of the innovative summer academy model which Police Now uses to offer accelerated neighbourhood officer training.

Together these steps will help to ensure forces are matching the capacity and capability of their workforce to the demands they face, while also recruiting more people directly into specialist roles via accelerated training programmes.

David Spencer, co-founder and chief executive of Police Now, said:

As a former detective myself, I understand the positive impact that detectives can have on reducing crime, increasing confidence in communities and protecting the most vulnerable in society.

Working with forces and the Home Office, we hope this new scheme will encourage a new group of diverse and brilliant individuals to enter the police service and contribute to the outstanding work being done by existing detectives up and down the country.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing are also leading work on providing a national assessment of detectives and developing sustainable solutions to ensure that forces have adequate investigative capacity.

Chief Constable Matt Jukes, the NPCC’s National Lead for Detectives, said:

Detectives do a vital job investigating crimes, apprehending offenders and protecting people from harm. The complex nature of investigations and our work to protect vulnerable people has made the role of detectives more challenging than ever.

In order to mirror the changing nature of crime, we need to recruit and develop a diverse group of individuals, who will contribute to this vital area of policing and its future, underlining the critical nature of effective investigations to public confidence and trust.

Police Now is a national police recruitment programme which started in the Metropolitan Police. The former Home Secretary granted more than £5 million to the scheme in 2016, which enabled Police Now to expand and become an independent charity supporting multiple police forces across the country.

Police Now currently operates across 25 forces in England and Wales, and was recognised as offering the best learning and development initiative in the public and third sector by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in September 2017.

The AAIB has sent a team of inspectors to investigate a light aircraft accident that occurred near Raglan, Monmouthshire, South Wales.

Learn more about how the AAIB investigates aircraft accidents.

• For the first time ever, listed companies will legally be required to annually publish and justify pay difference between chief executives and their staff
• the directors of all large companies will also have to set out how they are acting in the interests of employees and shareholders
• reporting is part of the government’s modern Industrial Strategy which is helping ensure the UK remains a world-leading place to invest and do business.

Big firms will have to justify their chief executives’ salaries and reveal the gap to their average UK worker, under new laws to be laid in Parliament tomorrow (Monday 11 June).

It means that for the first time, UK listed companies with more than 250 UK employees will have to disclose and explain this difference – known as ‘pay ratios’ – every year.

This follows concerns that some chief executives have been receiving salaries that are out-of-step with company performance.

These new regulations are part of a package of reforms which will hold big businesses to account for the salaries they pay, while giving employees a greater voice in the boardroom.

Business Secretary Greg Clark said:

One of Britain’s biggest assets in competing in the global economy is our deserved reputation for being a dependable and confident place in which to do business.

Most of the UK’s largest companies get their business practices right but we understand the anger of workers and shareholders when bosses’ pay is out of step with company performance.

Requiring large companies to publish their pay gaps will build on that reputation by improving transparency and boosting accountability at the highest levels, while helping build a fairer economy that works for everyone.

The new regulations form a core part of the government’s modern Industrial Strategy which aims to build on the UK’s strong reputation and make sure our largest companies are more transparent and accountable to their employees and shareholders.

In addition to the reporting of pay ratios, the news laws will also:

• require all large companies to report on how their directors take employee and other stakeholder interests into account
• require large private companies to report on their responsible business arrangements
• require listed companies to show what effect an increase in share prices will have on executive pay to inform shareholders when voting on long-term incentive plans

Responding to the government’s new corporate governance laws, the chief executive of the Investment Association (IA) Chris Cummings said:

The UK has a global reputation as a leader in corporate governance and we welcome today’s package of reforms as they focus on the long-term interest of all company stakeholders, including shareholders and employees.

Investors are demanding greater director accountability and transparency on executive remuneration. Pay ratios will shine a spotlight on what executives are being paid compared with their workforce, and investors will expect Boards to articulate why the ratio is right for the company and how directors are fulfilling their duties.

Through the IA’s Public Register we are seeing investors hold business to account. The IA wants to ensure UK listed companies are run in a way that delivers long-term returns for savers and pensioners.

Director of the High Pay Centre Luke Hildyard said:

Pay ratios provide an insight into the culture and employment practices of major companies that is useful to investors, workers and wider society alike.

This is a welcome move that will greatly improve public understanding of the pay gap between those at the top and low and middle-income earners.

We hope that it will initiate a more informed debate about what represents fair, proportionate pay for workers at all levels.

Chief UK Policy Director of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) Matthew Fell said:

The CBI is clear that high pay is only ever justified by outstanding performance. High pay for mediocre or poor performance is unacceptable.

This legislation can help to develop a better dialogue between boards and employees about the goals and aspirations of their business, and how pay is determined to achieve this shared vision.

Ratio comparisons between sectors and firms will be as meaningless as comparing apples and oranges. What’s most important is that all businesses make progress towards fair and proportionate pay outcomes.

UK Government Minister Lord Duncan said:

It only takes poor behaviour from a small number of companies to damage the public’s trust in big business. These new laws will ensure that differences in salary within large companies across Scotland and the whole of the UK – and the reasons for the variations – will be there for all to see.

Improving transparency and accountability in this way, plus other initiatives such as giving employees a voice in the boardroom, will help create a more equal and fair society while ensuring that the UK remains a world-leading place to invest and do business.

The new laws follow last year’s corporate governance reforms which sought to increase boardroom accountability.

Subject to Parliamentary approval, the regulations will come into effect from 1 January 2019 meaning that companies will start reporting their pay ratios in 2020.

The government has already:

• supported the Investment Association’s world-first public register of FTSE-listed companies where more than one fifth of shareholders have opposed resolutions on executive pay packages, directors’ re-appointments and other issues
• appointed James Wates to lead a coalition of industry and wider society bodies in drawing up the UK’s first-ever set of corporate governance principles for large private companies
• launched research into the use of share buyback schemes to see if they are being used to artificially inflate executive pay
• asked the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) to revise its Corporate Governance Code to strengthen the voice of employees and other stakeholders in the boardroom
• proposed new reforms to ensure that directors dissolving companies to dodge debts and avoid facing accusations of misconduct will face investigation for the first time.