Today (20 March) the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) delivered an appeals judgment on the case of Radovan Karadžić, a former Bosnian Serb politician and President of the Republika Srpska, who was convicted in 2016 of genocide in Srebrenica, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In today’s appeal judgement the IRMCT increased Radovan Karadžić’s sentence from 40 years, to life imprisonment given the gravity of the crimes he committed.

Following the verdict, Foreign Secretary said:

This judgment is an important result for international justice, confirming Karadžić’s convictions for genocide in Srebrenica and increasing his sentence to life in prison. It sends a powerful message that those who carry out atrocities will be held accountable for their actions and will be sentenced accordingly.

The thousands of victims and their relatives are foremost in our thoughts. Although this outcome will not erase their pain and suffering, we hope that it will provide some comfort to them.

We remain committed to achieving justice for victims. We will continue to support the work of the tribunal and other organisations seeking justice, supporting survivors, and aiming to find and identify those still missing as a result of conflict in the region.

The UK’s commitments to continue to seek justice are in line with the Joint Declarations on War Crimes and Missing Persons led by the UK and signed by Prime Ministers at the London Western Balkans Summit 2018.

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals was established by the UN Security Council to continue the legacy work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (“ICTY”), including trying alleged war crimes from the conflicts in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

Further information

There are images and videos of UK aid arriving in Maputo yesterday (20 March) available here. We only released this footage this afternoon. Please credit “Department for International Development” if used. For bids or interview requests, please call the DFID Press Office on 0207 023 0600.

The UK is to provide an extra £12 million of support, including food, water and shelter, to the survivors of Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt announced the new funding today (Wednesday) – taking the UK’s additional support for victims of the cyclone to £18 million.

Yesterday, over 7,500 emergency shelter kits and 100 family tents, all funded by UK aid, arrived in Mozambique for onward distribution to families who have had to flee their homes.

International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said:

I’ve been extremely moved by the images I’ve seen of this devastating cyclone which has caused misery for millions of people across Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe. This is, undoubtedly, one of the biggest natural disasters to ever hit the region, and our thoughts remain firmly with the victims of this cyclone.

Today’s UK aid package is a sign of the UK’s commitment to do all we can to make sure those in desperate need of humanitarian relief have access to life-saving essentials, including food, water and shelter.

The UK was one of the first countries to respond to this disaster. We are keeping the situation under close review.

UK aid will be used to help meet immediate needs on the ground across the countries affected, including:

• making sure families have access to clean water to drink and wash, which will also help to stop the spread of deadly diseases
• providing food and food vouchers to those affected
• ensuring that those that have been left homeless are able to access safe shelter.

Speaking from Maputo, Head of DFID Mozambique Cate Turton said:

This is one of the biggest humanitarian disasters that this region has ever faced, and we’re doing all that we can to get aid to those desperately in need.

Our absolutely priority at the moment is to get food, water and other critical supplies to affected communities, many of which are cut off because of damage to roads and infrastructure.

Notes to editors

• Today’s announcement of £12 million of UK aid in addition to Monday’s (18 March) announcement of £6 million, taking the UK’s total support to the crisis to £18 million.
• In addition to this week’s new support, DFID already provides core funding to international aid organisations on the ground, including UN agencies and the Red Cross movement, which are providing emergency humanitarian relief as part of the international response in the region.
• In Zimbabwe, UK aid has ensured health, medical and nutrition supplies were in place before the cyclone struck and have reached affected communities in Chimanimani.
• The UK also prepositioned vital relief items in Mozambique to support the response to a humanitarian emergency, including: hygiene kits, hardware items to help repair homes, water purifiers and solar lamps.
• DFID is also the biggest donor to the START Fund, which has allocated £400,000, to enable NGOs Trocaire and HelpAge International to meet immediate needs such as clean water and shelter in Malawi.
• UK aid is also supporting the World Food Programme (WFP) to feed 130,000 people for two weeks in Mozambique by distributing emergency food and food vouchers for people to use at local markets. In Malawi, existing UK support will help the WFP provide cash transfers so that 140,000 people can feed themselves until the end of March.

Every day, we send more than 3,000 requests for information (requisitions), when customers omit or supply inaccurate information. These delay the conveyancing process and cost us all time and money. We want to help achieve faster turnaround times for registration applications, by removing unnecessary delays.

Later this month, we will publish a dataset which will show the number of enquiries raised for our top 500 customers, by volume of applications lodged. Data for the period April 2018 to December 2018 will be published in comma separated value (CSV) and Google Sheets formats, and will contain:

• customer names arranged alphabetically

• the number of applications received from each customer and completed by us, broken down by application types (register updates, first registrations, new leases and transfers of part)

• the number of requests for information raised by us for those application types

We plan to publish the data from January 2019 to March 2019 in April. Further datasets will be published quarterly.

The release of this data supports our ambition to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data, and fulfils our Business Strategy target. It also supports the government’s Industrial Strategy, enabling closer alignment with the Competition and Markets Authority’s recommendation for greater transparency in the legal sector.

We will continue to work with our customers to improve application quality, making the whole registration process faster and cheaper.

Thousands of children across England will benefit from mental health and special needs support, as funding worth £31.6 million is announced to train more Educational Psychologists.

The Department for Education has today (20 March) outlined plans to support more young people with additional educational needs by launching a procurement exercise for experts to come forward and kickstart specialist training for more Educational Psychologists. The multi-million pound fund will see over 600 Educational Psychologist trainees receive free tuition and grants.

It follows the Education Secretary’s announcement in December last year to expand funding to increase the cohort of Education Psychologists from 160 to 206 each year. At the same time he announced an additional £350 million for high needs.

Research published today shows that over two-thirds of councils surveyed in 2018 faced difficulties recruiting to fill vacant Educational Psychologist posts. In response to pressures faced by schools and councils, increasing the number of free places to train as an Educational Psychologist will ensure a steady flow of new entrants to the workforce and vary the geographical spread of training availability.

Children and Families Minister Nadhim Zahawi said:

Every child deserves to be happy, healthy and have the best chance of fulfilling their potential. Educational Psychologists play an important role in making sure that this is no different for children with additional needs, by providing tailored support and helping families and teachers when there are challenges to overcome.

We said that we would train more Educational Psychologists to help meet increasing demand for their services – and today we are confirming funding over £30 million to make this happen. We are launching three new training rounds from 2020 which will see over 600 psychologists trained.

New research published today tells us that too many local authorities have struggled to fill vacancies for Educational Psychologists. This new funding for additional psychologists will mean many more children, their schools and their parents feel well supported to tackle what can often be complex difficulties.

To make sure every child is able to learn in the most effective way, Educational Psychologists are critical in identifying special educational needs and are required to contribute to a young person’s Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). They also provide tailored support and outreach to teachers and families, through new support strategies when the complex needs of a child are not being met.

Schools and teachers are supported by the specialist advice and practical interventions Educational Psychologists bring to create a conducive learning environment for children who are otherwise likely to fall behind. Aside from the operation costs for the training provider, the funding will contribute towards university tuition for Education Psychologist trainees with an additional bursary grant for their first year of study.

Kate Fallon, General Secretary of the AEP said:

It is great to see this funding come forward to train more Educational Psychologists, which will have a big impact on our profession. The new research backs up what we’ve been hearing from our members. We know that there is an ever-growing demand for our services, including contributing to an increasing number of Education, Health and Care Plans as well as providing specialist support for a wide range of children and young people with SEND and advice on mental health and wellbeing. A recent survey of our members indicated that over 85% of respondents had seen their workload increase significantly over the past 5 years.

As a profession, our capacity to meet this demand is limited, especially taking into account our pivotal role in the new mental health support teams. We were delighted when the Education Secretary announced last year that the number of training places would be increased, something we have campaigned for over a number of years. This announcement will make a significant difference to our ability as a profession to meet the needs of children and their families in the future.

Increasing recruitment forms part of wider efforts to promote children’s mental wellbeing, as Educational Psychologists play a pivotal role in mental health provision in schools and will play a key role in supporting the new mental health support teams being introduced in 25 trailblazer areas.

Claire Murdoch, NHS England’s National Director for Mental Health said:

This is a welcome step in the right direction – building on the enormous amount of work already under way to support children and young people’s health and wellbeing from an early age.

We know that people will need additional support from time to time and so rightly the NHS Long Term plan is investing in earlier support, through the introduction of mental health support teams, school nurses and now with this announcement more educational psychologists ensuring people get the everyday support needed to really thrive.

4 x 5ml vials of Depo-medrol 40mg/ml suspension for injection.

Depo-medrol is an anti-inflammatory human medicine which had been imported from the Netherlands with no valid import certificate.

This is an offence under regulation 25 (Importation of an unauthorised veterinary medicinal product) of the Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013.