Prison leavers will be ordered to wear a sobriety tag, which monitors alcohol levels in sweat, if their probation officer thinks they could reoffend when drinking. This will help probation officers keep a closer eye on offenders’ behaviour and support them to turn their backs on crime.

Alcohol is believed to play a part in 39 percent of violent crime in the UK and roughly 20 percent of offenders supervised by the Probation Service are identified as having drinking issues.  The tags also give offenders the incentive to break bad habits as breaching the alcohol restrictions could see them back in prison.

Today’s launch follows the rollout of the scheme in Wales last year. Figures show that offenders on a tag have stuck to their alcohol restrictions on 97 percent of time, helping to cut crime and protecting the public.

Deputy Prime Minister, Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor, Dominic Raab MP said:

We’ve seen that alcohol tags work – with tagged offenders complying 97 percent of the time.

That’s why we’re going to double the number wearing them from 900 to 1,900 over the next two years, focusing on those leaving prison on licence.

This is a big step forward using the latest technology to cut the link between alcohol abuse and the crime – and make our streets safer.

Since offenders were first tagged in 2020, they have been used on over 3,600 criminals in total. The latest statistics showed that 900 offenders were wearing the tag on March 31st, and following today’s rollout, that number is expected to double by 2024.

Arthur, a 37-year-old from Swansea, turned his chaotic life around after being ordered to wear an alcohol tag as part of a community sentence for malicious communication in January 2021.

Arthur said:

Being sober for 6 months helped me keep all my emotions in check. I thought clearly, it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

The tag helped me realise that tomorrow would always be worse if I drank today with emotions running high.

Probation Minister Kit Malthouse said:

When I first brought alcohol tags to the UK over a decade ago, I knew that given the chance, they could have a huge impact on crime. The great results we have seen so far, and now the expansion announced this week, mean that the use of tagging technology is firmly embedded as a critical tool for offender managers, proving a huge incentive for offenders to change.

The move is part of the government’s plan to cut crime, expanding the use of innovative technology like tags to protect the public and drive down reoffending.

In efforts cut reoeffending, last year, the government also launched a world-first, using GPS tags to track robbers, thieves and burglars.

In total, an extra £183 million will be invested in electronic monitoring by 2025 to almost double the number of people tagged at any one time to approximately 25,000.

Notes to editors

• Recently published statistics showed that offenders complied with their alcohol ban on 97 percent of the days monitored. Click to read the latest MOJ’s Electronic Monitoring statistics.
• An offender’s licence will stipulate that the alcohol tag must be worn for a minimum of 30 days up to a maximum of 1 year, with reviews carried out every three months to ensure it is still necessary, reasonable and proportionate to the risk they pose.
• The amount of time an offender is required to wear the tag is flexible in that it can be removed and imposed again if deemed necessary and proportionate to risk.
• Statistics show that around 20 percent of offenders managed in the community by the Probation Service had an identified “alcohol need”. Click to read identified needs of offenders in custody and the community.
• The Crime Survey indicated that 39% of victims of violent offences believed that alcohol played a factor in the incident: https://www.crimesurvey.co.uk.

14 innovative Kiwi tech scaleups have landed in the UK to join London Tech Week, Europe’s largest tech festival running 13-17 of June. Alongside the event the UK Government has created a tailored programme for the Kiwi tech companies. This week they will join events, consultations, and exclusive meetings to fast track their expansion into the UK. This is the first physical programme the UK has run from New Zealand since 2019.

Now in its ninth year, London Tech Week welcomes 20,000 participants and over 300 speakers. This year the focus of the festival revolves around exploring the next generation of tech innovation, impactful innovation at scale and building a thriving tech industry. As a part of their exclusive programme, New Zealand delegates will have intimate sessions on raising capital in the UK, setting up in the UK, and tech growth in the UK. They will hear directly from Tech Nation, Oury Clark, Telstra, Mishchon de Raya and many more.

The UK tech ecosystem remains an ideal investment location for international companies with the industry growing at a faster rate than the UK economy. UK tech captured more than a third of the total £89.5 billion investment into Europe in 2021 with £29.4 billion raised by UK startups and scaleups. Though London remains an epicentre for tech growth, the regions are also becoming a hotbed for investment. With more money than ever flowing into UK tech, almost £9 billion of all venture capital invested went into startups and scaleups outside London and the South East. The regions are now home to nine of the 29 unicorns formed in 2021.

The New Zealand London Tech Week 2022 cohort was selected under one of the following subsectors of tech:

• Future Technology – including artificial intelligence, big data and cyber security.
• Educational Technology
• Digital Health – including medtech and medical devices.
• Financial Technology

This UK Government trade mission is being led in partnership with Kea New Zealand and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.

British Consul General and Deputy Trade Commissioner Asia Pacific (Australia and New Zealand), Louise Cantillon said:

After signing the UK-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement earlier this year, it is fantastic to see an innovative and progressive cohort of New Zealand tech scaleups join our London Tech Week mission. This is our first physical programme to the UK from New Zealand since 2019. I am very excited to see what successes come from this week for our delegates.

The UK tech sector was valued this year at $1trillion (£764 billion). According to new research from Tech Nation, the UK is fourth in the world for tech investment at £32.6 billion, having achieved a record year in 2021. Last year we saw more private capital flow into UK tech than any other European country – £27.4 billion.

This week the UK Government has published a new Digital Strategy. A key focus of this policy demonstrates the UK’s commitment to improving the tech ecosystem to ensure that the UK remains one of the best places in the world to start and run a digital technology business. This includes improving access to finance, another step forward in making the UK the best place to list an ambitious technology business.

CEO of Cemplicity, Blaik Wilson said:

We’re honoured to be attending London Tech Week for the second time. As a company driving improvement in patient experiences and outcomes, we knew much of the thought leadership and new thinking in this area originated out of the NHS. However, while the thinking is well advanced, the practice was still heavily mired in manual processes, inhibiting the NHS’s ability scale. We have already seen our platform make big improvements for the various health operators in which we operate.

As we establish ourselves in market, we have learnt the importance of networking and knowledge gathering to our success. We are ready to scale and London Tech Week in particular, is a great chance to meet with other Australian and New Zealand companies, to learn from their experiences and to access experts in the UK within healthcare and investor networks.

It is going to be an actioned-packed week of events and we’re really looking forward to it.

A representative from CarbonClick said:

CarbonClick is an enviro-tech company whose global mission is to enable a more ‘climate friendly’ approach to how businesses operate and individuals live, work and travel. London Tech Week offers an “important and potentially transformative” platform.

CarbonClick CEO Dave Rouse is part of a small New Zealand delegation and the only New Zealander to speak at the event as part of the ‘Global Leaders Innovation Summit.’

What message will CarbonClick be taking to London Tech Week?

Ignite the conversation around the energy demands and opportunities within the tech sector to help reverse the climate catastrophe our world is facing – right now!

Digital growth, including the domain of Web3, has a significant energy demand and, therefore, carbon footprint. The ultimate challenge for technology leaders lies in sustainable designs that consider the energy requirements as part of the design process and then complement this with carbon offsetting.

Head of Market Development Dotterel Technologies, Rohan Adarkar said:

Dotterel Technologies is an Auckland based company that is showcasing its Konos microphone at London Tech Week. Konos is a breakthrough new audio product that uses the power of 80 microphones in one small package to allow crisp sound in high noise environments. Konos has practical applications in movie production, live broadcast, sport, security and search and rescue.

Dotterel is looking to work with companies in these sectors in the UK, as well as recruit partners to craft new innovative solutions. We see London Tech Week being a great way to find these companies and start investigating the best path of entry to the UK and European markets.

About the UK’s Department for International Trade:

The UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT):

• helps businesses export
• drives inward and outward investment
• negotiates market access and trade deals
• champions free trade

Find out more about DIT.

Over 60 innovative Australian tech scaleups have landed in the UK to join London Tech Week, Europe’s largest tech festival running 13-17 of June. Alongside the event the UK Government has created a tailored programme for the Aussie tech companies. They will join events, consultations, and exclusive meetings to fast track their expansion into the UK. This is the first physical programme the UK has run from Australia since 2019.

Now in its ninth year, London Tech Week welcomes 20,000 participants and over 300 speakers. This year the focus of the festival revolves around exploring the next generation of tech innovation, impactful innovation at scale and building a thriving tech industry. As a part of their exclusive programme, Australian delegates will have intimate sessions on raising capital in the UK, setting up in the UK, and tech growth in the UK. They will hear directly from Tech Nation, Oury Clark, Telstra, Mishchon de Raya and many more.

The UK tech ecosystem is an ideal location for international investment with the industry growing at a faster rate than the UK economy. UK tech captured more than a third of the total £89.5 billion investment into Europe in 2021 with £29.4 billion raised by UK startups and scaleups. Though London remains an epicentre for tech growth, the regions are also becoming a hotbed for investment. With more money than ever flowing into UK tech, almost £9 billion of all venture capital invested went into startups and scaleups outside London and the South East. The regions are now home to nine of the 29 unicorns formed in 2021.

The Australian London Tech Week 2022 cohort was selected under one of the following subsectors of tech:

• Future Technology – including artificial intelligence, big data and cyber security.
• Educational Technology
• Digital Health – including medtech and medical devices.
• Financial Technology

This UK Government trade mission is being led in partnership with Australia’s State Governments:

• Global Victoria
• Investment NSW
• Trade and Investment Queensland
• Government of South Australia

British Consul General and Deputy Trade Commissioner Asia Pacific (Australia and New Zealand), Louise Cantillon said:

After signing the UK-Australia Free Trade Agreement earlier this year it is fantastic to see such a big and dynamic cohort of Australian tech scaleups join our London Tech Week mission. This is our first physical programme to the UK from Australia since 2019. I am very excited to see what successes come from this week.

The UK tech sector was valued this year at $1trillion (£764 billion). According to new research from Tech Nation, the UK is fourth in the world for tech investment at £32.6 billion, having achieved a record year in 2021. Last year we saw more private capital flow into UK tech than any other European country – £27.4 billion.

This week the UK Government has published a new Digital Strategy. A key focus of this policy demonstrates the UK’s commitment to improving the tech ecosystem to ensure that the UK remains one of the best places in the world to start and run a digital technology business. This includes improving access to finance, another step forward in making the UK the best place to list an ambitious technology business.

CEO of Learning Vault, Nicholas Robert said:

As an Australian digital education company that specialises in digital credentialing and certification strategies the UK is a synergistic market for us. The education eco-systems are quite similar across both countries, and as we have been able to make a substantial impact through change management in the Australian education space – it is exciting to take these learnings and adopt similar strategies within the UK to make meaningful impact within the education landscape from a certification viewpoint.

Being able to power life-long-learning by having a digital record of all achievements is something that we, at Learning Vault, believe that all people should have access to – we are excited to be part of London Tech Week to bring this technology to the UK.

CEO & Founder of Cape, Ryan Pritchard said:

Cape is proud to join London Trade Week, at one of the world’s leading Fintech hubs. We have strong UK roots, with their founding team having led product & engineering at London based SME digital challengers: Capital On Tap, Cashplus and Funding Circle.

We’ve been a remote-first team since we were founded during the pandemic and have now transitioned to two hubs (Australia/UK), with 26 full-time employees. Our intention is to become a beacon for talented UK-based engineers, who have experience building similar solutions, and are keen to deploy their learnings to Australia, a country known as early adopters of tech solutions.

Having recently successfully launched, Cape has first-mover advantage in the APAC region as we aim to emulate the success of our European peers in Pleo, Payhawk & Spendesk. Given the current economic backdrop, the timing couldn’t be better to discuss opportunities with UK-based VC’s to geographically diversify their portfolio as we kick off our Seed fundraise.

About the UK’s Department for International Trade:

The UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT):

• helps businesses export
• drives inward and outward investment
• negotiates market access and trade deals
• champions free trade

Find out more about DIT.

Thank you Chair. The UK is committed to implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This is through legislation like the Equality Act 2010 and the new British Sign Language Act 2022, and policies that tackle the barriers faced by disabled people, in order to realise their full participation and inclusion in society.

We want to help people start, stay and succeed in work.  Last month the Government met the commitment made in 2017 to see one million more disabled people in employment – in half the time expected.  We’re aiming to prevent health-related job losses.

Recognising the need for wider societal change, our 18 Disability and Access Ambassadors are using their expertise and influence in business, driving and supporting changes in access for disabled consumers and employees.

We recognise the importance of co-ordinated action across government, reflecting the full range of services and opportunities that deliver participation and inclusion. Our Disability Champions are driving forward work on disability.

We continue to engage with disabled people to ensure their needs are considered, including in the Government’s COVID-19 response and recovery efforts.

As we continue to rebuild from the global impact of COVID, our work on global disability rights is more urgent than ever.

The UK remains steadfast in our commitment and co-hosted the first Global Disability summit in 2018. That pivotal moment has become a movement.

At the second Global Disability Summit this February, we launched the FCDO Disability Inclusion and Rights Strategy. It reaffirms the UK’s commitment to act as a global leader, recognising disabled people – in all their diversity – must have greater voice, choice, and visibility to enjoy their full rights and freedoms.

It sets out our ambitious approach to  work for – and with – disabled people around the world. Across education to health; economic empowerment to humanitarian action; social protection to climate change.

As we speak, Russia continues with its unprovoked, reprehensible attack on Ukraine. The deteriorating humanitarian situation is having a devastating and disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable – and many of the 2.7 million disabled people in Ukraine have been left behind.

That is why we are strengthening our focus on reaching the most vulnerable, as part of which we are entering a new £15m partnership with UNICEF in Ukraine.

Thank you Chair. We are delighted to be with everyone, learning and sharing at this conference.

• Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid to speak at the NHS Confederation providing a look to the year ahead with publication of a Digital Health and Care Plan, Health Disparities White Paper and the NHS’ first-ever 15-year workforce strategy

• He will reiterate plans to ensure the right leadership is in place at all levels of health and social care following landmark review

• Health and Social Care Secretary will also call for stronger partnerships between different health and social care services to help tackle the Covid backlog

The Health and Social Care Secretary, Sajid Javid, will set out his ambition to ensure every pound of taxpayer’s money is well spent in the health and care system when speaking at the NHS Confed Expo today (Wednesday 15 June).

Speaking in Liverpool, he will use his speech to discuss the need for the strongest health and social care leadership and better partnerships between health and care services as he looks to the year ahead.

Over the next three years, the Health and Care Levy will see a record £39 billion of additional funding invested in the health and care sector to help reduce waiting times and ease pressures on the workforce so they can deliver for patients. Progress is already being made with hundreds of thousands of patients receiving vital care more quickly through over 90 new Community Diagnostics Centres (CDCs) to provide easier access to tests closer to home, delivering over 1 million additional checks already, and providing patients with earlier diagnoses.

Good progress is being made on cutting waiting times – the number of people on the longest waits has halved in the past four months. This is a direct result of our plan to tackle the Covid backlogs and the hard work of staff on the frontline.

Speaking to an audience of NHS professionals, the Health and Social Care Secretary will talk about the power of partnerships– taking learnings from the pandemic to strengthen ways of working between different health and care services and drive down waiting times. For example, South London Health and Community Partnership – a unique partnership of three mental health trusts – has been able to bring out of area patients down by a third and re-admissions down by two thirds.

The Health and Social Care Secretary is expected to say:

It’s not about reinventing the wheel. It’s about listening to the innovators already doing incredible things within the system – then giving them a platform to do it.

There are also some 50 acute trust collaboratives and mixed collaborative, bringing together acute, specialist, mental health and community providers.

They’ve already shown that when we partner like this, challenges that appear intractable in one place can be resolved in another.

He will reflect on work already underway to tackle the Covid backlog, improve social care and narrow health inequalities. He will set out what the government will deliver over the next year, including a Digital Health and Care Plan, Health Disparities White Paper, 10-year plans on cancer, dementia, and mental health, a reset of the NHS Long Term Plan and a Health Education England workforce framework followed by the NHS’s first-ever 15-year workforce strategy.

Looking ahead, the Health and Social Care Secretary is expected to say:

I’ve been determined we keep moving forward, because this moment in time we dare not lose.

It’s a moment when we can combine valuable lessons from the pandemic, with incredible new technology and innovative ways of working, which when taken together, help us face the challenges of the future.

It’s a small window of time where we can make a big difference.

On leadership, he will reflect on the findings from General Sir Gordon Messenger and Dame Linda Pollard’s review into health and social care leadership published last week. The review found various examples of exceptional leadership in difficult circumstances. However, it also highlighted reports of poor behaviour, bullying and discrimination in certain parts of the health and social care system. Employing great leadership at the top will help to take burden off NHS staff, allowing staff to focus on providing care for patients and bringing down waiting lists.

Discussing the review, the Health and Social Care Secretary is expected to say:

Just as Gordon and Linda found that bad behaviour was contagious, they found that great leadership was contagious too. It works best when everyone – even those without leader in their job description – feels like a leader.

Other recommendations around training, standards and management will support this effort – helping the workforce at all levels, by creating the conditions for everyone to thrive.

The government is ensuring the NHS has the necessary tools to boost its workforce and is able to use data to tackle the Covid backlog. The NHS resource budget will increase to over £160 billion in 2024 to 2025 on top of £5.9 billion of capital investment to support diagnostics, technology, and elective recovery.

Innovative ways of working have already been adopted – community diagnostic centres have delivered more than a million checks and scans closer to patients’ homes, saving staff and patients time while delivering the highest standard of care. This is backed by record investment from the Health and Care Levy, with over £39 billion invested over the next three years.