Tag Archives: HM Government

On Tuesday 11 July 2017, the UK hosted a major international summit on family planning, in partnership with UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Summit brought together leaders from around the world to work together to remove barriers to family planning services so that voluntary, modern contraception can be offered to many more millions of women in the world’s poorest countries across Africa and Asia.

International Development Secretary Priti Patel gave a key note speech, alongside Natalia Kanem, acting head of UNFPA, and Melinda Gates.

Ms Patel set out that the UK Government would boost and extend its annual support for family planning around the world until 2022.

In addition, the UK ‎will be focusing its efforts on eliminating the stigma, cost and access issues associated with family planning, by supporting innovative technology, helping fix issues in supply chains so contraceptives make it onto the shelves and reach more women in emergency settings.

The UK will support millions more women with family planning to overcome the following issues:

• There is no choice of contraceptives – the UK is supportive the roll out and scaling of the first new self-injectable contraceptive – Sayana Press – in a decade‎. This new self-injectable is already transforming the lives of women in four pilot countries – Uganda, Senegal, Burkino Faso and Niger. Now with the UK’s support, Sayana Press will be available for more women in the world’s countries.
• Women cannot afford the contraceptives they want‎ – the UK, through the World Bank, will encourage governments in developing countries to fund their own family planning systems which will, for example, allow women in Nigeria to access family planning free of charge for the first time.
• Women living in a emergency setting – the UK will be demanding more from its humanitarian partners and supporting them to improve access to family planning services for refugees‎.
• Contraceptives don’t make it onto the shelves‎ – the UK will support the new Visibility & Analytics Networks – a data monitoring system formed by a coalition of ‎partners – to map what contraceptives are needed and where. This will bolster the efforts of the UNFPA to get contraceptives where they are needed, when they are needed.
• Social taboos – the UK will support the new ‘SRHR Connect’ programme which will address barriers facing women who want family planning, including addressing the stigma that stops women accessing family planning services.

The international development secretary called on governments, civil society and businesses to build on the progress from the summit, to do more to increase the availability and drive down prices of family planning services in developing countries.

The UK, through its Department for International Development today announced its new Family Planning by Choice programme, which will provide £90 million of support for voluntary family planning in Ethiopia over the next four years.

The programme will work with the Federal Ministry of Health to give millions of women access to modern, voluntary family planning services across the country.

The programme aims to:

• Provide 13 million women with direct access to family planning information;

• Support 6 million current family planning users and attract three million more voluntary users;

• Prevent 15 million unwanted pregnancies and 300,000 maternal child deaths.

The programme will:

• Enable over 3,000 health facilities, mostly rural health centres, to provide quality family planning services;

• Establish 100 Quality Assurance Hubs at referral and general hospitals; and,

• Establish 10 family planning Centres of Excellence at teaching hospitals.

By providing family planning choices for everyone who wants it, Ethiopia will be able to: increase women’s voice, choice and control over their reproductive health; slow down population growth; and enhance economic growth.

This programme is part of the UK’s global leadership on family planning, and was announced as part of a package of UK support around the world at the London Family Planning Summit on 11 July 2017.

The Summit, co-hosted by the UK Secretary of State for International Development, Priti Patel, Melinda Gates (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and Natalia Kanem (UN Population Fund – UNFPA), looked at practical measures to reduce costs and increase availability for the millions of women who want contraception, but can’t afford it or get hold of it.

Speaking about the new UK support for family planning world-wide, the Secretary of State for International Development, Priti Patel said:

It’s truly astonishing that in today’s world there are still 214 million women around the world who do not want to get pregnant, but who are not currently using modern methods of family planning.

Britain is leading the world on sexual and reproductive health, helping millions more women in the world’s poorest countries to access and use desperately-needed family planning services.

But this isn’t a job for the UK alone and that’s why at this global Summit governments from around the world have come together to make commitments on family planning to address the long term need and unsustainable population growth.

We are supporting the world’s poorest women to take control of their lives, so they can finish their education, get better jobs and in turn provide for their smaller, planned families rather than being trapped in a cycle of grinding poverty through unplanned pregnancies.

Notes to editors:

• Ethiopia has made significant progress in increasing modern family planning uptake, nearly one-in-three women in Ethiopia are now using modern family planning methods, compared to less than one-in-thirty 25 years ago.

• Despite this progress, Ethiopia’s population has doubled in the last 25 years, from around 50 million in 1991 to 102 million in 2016. If the current fertility trend continues, the country’s population is likely to double again in the next 35 years, which could undermine Ethiopia’s ambition to reach middle income status by 2025.

• Three and half million (one-in-five) married women of reproductive age are currently not using contraception, but wish to postpone their next birth, or stop childbearing altogether. This programme will enable these women to use family planning.

• The public health service delivers four-fifths of family planning services.

The existing Calstock flood embankment was improved in the 1980s following a significant flood in the village. It still plays an important role in reducing flood risk in Calstock, but requires periodic repairs.

In 2012/13 the Environment Agency carried out emergency work on just over 100 metres of the embankment. This work incorporated less than 10% of the total embankment length, but cost in excess of £300,000. Maintaining the current embankment in its existing location on a ‘patch and repair basis’ is not sustainable.

The Environment Agency is now looking at ways to continue to manage flood risk in the village. Likely options will include moving the existing embankment inland away from the river where it will be under less pressure from erosion.

Project manager Dan Boswell said:

It’s our priority to do everything we can to protect people from flooding.

Unfortunately the current embankment is no longer viable so we have to look at other options to maintain the current level of flood protection for Calstock. One of the options involves moving the existing embankment inland.

In addition to flood risk management benefits, moving the embankment would enable the creation of reed-bed habitat attracting additional wildlife. It is important to note that we are looking at all options which may be available to us. We will be talking to the community about these before final decisions are made.

The Environment Agency is looking to work with local partners to ensure that people can still use this area recreationally. Currently the Environment Agency has granted a permissive footpath across the embankment and they are keen that the footpath should continue in some form, but this will require the collaboration of local partners.

Over the next few months the Environment Agency’s consultants will be carrying out ground investigations and topographic surveys to help them develop suitable options. When they have developed these the Environment Agency will arrange a drop-in session in Calstock for the community to come along and view and comment on proposals. This is likely to take place in the autumn.

The Environment Agency is spending more than £2.5 billion to build flood schemes around the country, which will better protect 300,000 homes by 2021.

The Parole Board has today published its Annual Report and Accounts for 2016/17.

“The Parole Board is making good progress after a difficult period but there is still more to do.” said Professor Nick Hardwick, Chair of the Parole Board for England and Wales.

He said: “At the start of our 50th anniversary year I am pleased to report significant improvement in the Board’s performance although I do not underestimate the work there is still to do. Our backlog of cases is down, waiting times are down, the number of prisoners serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) still in custody is down, over 100 new members have been recruited, and we have successfully moved from paper to digital systems.

“None of this progress is yet complete but much has been achieved and I am confident it will continue to be so.”

The 50th anniversary of the Parole Board is in 2017/18 and the report looks back at how the Board has developed over that period as well as providing a detailed look at the Board’s work in 2016/17.

Martin Jones, the Chief Executive of the Parole Board said: “Deciding whether it is necessary to keep someone in prison to protect the public is a vital, but sometimes difficult decision. It is a job that requires good judgement to make decisions based on an assessment of the evidence.

“I am enormously grateful to my members and staff, and all those involved in the system, who help us make these decisions. The Board is committed to making those decisions, as swiftly as possible, with care, humanity and courage, because we know those decisions have a massive impact on victims, prisoners and their families. “

The Board dealt with the highest number of oral hearings in its history in 2016-17:

• In 2016/17 held 7,377 oral hearings and 25,204, cases on the papers, up 6% on 2015/16
• The number of outstanding cases reduced by 17% from 2,445 to 2,033 cases.
• 1,938 IPP cases were concluded at oral hearing. The Board ordered the release of 894 IPPs (including IPP recalls) a 20% increase on the number released in 2015-16 and we released an additional 11 IPPs on the papers. The number of unreleased IPPs fell to 3,528 down 42% on its peak in June 2012.
• 104 new Parole Board members were recruited
• The proportion of oral hearings that were adjourned or deferred in 2016/2017 remained too high at 30% and this is a major priority for 2017/18.

In a central London speech, alongside the Prime Minister and Business Secretary Greg Clark, Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society of Arts, set out his blueprint for a UK economy that truly works for everyone, creating more skilled, well-paid jobs to boost the nation’s earning power and productivity.

Matthew Taylor, who was commissioned last year by the Prime Minister to carry out this review called for a fresh look to be taken at employment laws to make it easier for workers to understand and access their rights.

Matthew Taylor said:

Our national performance on the quantity of work is strong. But quantity alone is not enough for a thriving economy and fair society. We believe now is the time to complement that commitment to creating jobs with the goal of creating better jobs.

The Review calls on the government to adopt the ambition that all work should be fair and decent with scope for fulfilment and development.

Despite the impact of the National Living Wage and tax credits, there will always be people who are in work but finding it hard to make ends meet. Our social contract with those people should include dignity at work and the realistic scope to progress in the labour market.

Bad work – insecure, exploitative, controlling – is bad for health and wellbeing, something that generates cost for vulnerable individuals but also for wider society.

As many business leaders recognise, low quality work and weak management is implicated in our productivity challenge. Improving the quality of work should be an important part of our productivity strategy.

Technology – like robotics and machine learning – is going to have a big impact on jobs and the tasks that make up those jobs. As we seize these technological opportunities – as we must – we should do so with the aim of making working lives better, taking away the drudgery and leaving the human contact and creativity that machines can’t provide.

If we want citizens who are engaged, responsible, active, who – to coin a phrase – ‘take back control’ we should encourage those same virtues in the workplace. Our idea of what it is to be a respected citizen should not stop at the office or factory door.

Prime Minister Theresa May launched the Taylor Review in a speech at the Royal Society of Arts.

The government will now be engaging with stakeholders across the country, including those who represent employers and employees, to understand their views ahead of publishing a full government response later in the year.

Business Secretary Greg Clark said:

We have record numbers of people in work thanks to our flexible labour market.

Being in work is important but people also deserve to be treated fairly by their employers whatever work they are carrying out.

I’d like to thank Matthew Taylor and his expert panel for conducting such a thorough and detailed review. We will be engaging people and organisations across the country to continue this important debate.

Through our Industrial Strategy, we will make sure wherever people are in the country, there are more skilled, well-paid jobs to increase productivity and earning power, benefiting both workers and business.

If you have any questions or comments about the Taylor Review, please contact modernemploymentreview@beis.gov.uk.