The signing ceremony of the Economic Partnership Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Madagascar, represented by Mr. Patrick Rajoelina, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Government of the United Kingdom, represented by H.E. Mr. David William Ashley, Ambassador of Great Britain to Madagascar, took place on November 04, 2021, in the presence of the Rt Hon Penny Mordaunt, Minister of State for Trade Policy of the United Kingdom, in a virtual manner.

This agreement falls within the framework of the Economic Partnership Agreement between the United Kingdom and the countries of the Eastern and Southern Africa Group (ESAG), of which the Republic of Madagascar is a member.

The agreement covers three main areas, including market access, maritime and inland fisheries, aquaculture development, and development cooperation including the private sector, infrastructure, natural resources and the environment. These areas are, in many ways, in line with the Malagasy Government’s priorities in terms of economic diplomacy and, to a larger extent, with the objectives of an accelerated growth economy promoted by the vision of H.E. Andry Rajoelina, President of the Republic of Madagascar, through the Initiative for the Emergence of Madagascar.

This agreement also reflects the excellent relations that exist between Madagascar and the United Kingdom and the bond of friendship between the two nations whose official relations were sealed on 14 January 1817 with the signing of the first Anglo-Malagasy Treaty.

It is worth noting that by withdrawing from the European Union, the UK has committed itself to ensuring the continuity of partnerships with countries where trade agreements have been signed with the EU. For example, negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement between the UK and a group of countries in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA); including Madagascar, Seychelles, Mauritius, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Comoros, were initiated in 2017.

• Liz Truss on week long mission to strengthen economic links and boost security cooperation in key region.
• Foreign Secretary will visit Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia – the world’s fourth largest country by population
• Government has committed to deepen ties with the Indo-Pacific in the Integrated Review

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss will arrive in Malaysia today (Sunday 7th November) as part of a week-long visit to Southeast Asia to deepen economic and security links with fast-growing and increasingly influential countries.

Truss will visit Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia in order to strengthen the UK’s relationship with each country, reflecting their growing economic and diplomatic heft. The Foreign Secretary believes UK ties with key Southeast Asian nations are “underpowered” and that deepening them will deliver jobs and opportunities to the UK while boosting security and prosperity in the region.

As COP26 continues in Glasgow, with a week of negotiations ahead, the Foreign Secretary will build closer ties on infrastructure investment into the region and step-up work through the Clean Green Initiative to co-invest in reliable, sustainable infrastructure with friends and partners.

Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss said:

I want to position Britain where the future growth is and to think about who our major partners will be in 2050 and beyond.

Southeast Asia will be the engine of the global economy and I want Britain to be part of that, upgrading our economic and security relations with the region to reflect its growing importance.

Deeper ties are a win-win, delivering jobs and opportunities for British people while ensuring an open, secure and prosperous Indo-Pacific. Working with key Southeast Asia partners will help us promote freedom and democracy across the world.

The visit follows the agreement of a new partnership between the UK and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The ‘Dialogue Partnership’ formalises UK relations with the group, including attendance at annual Foreign and Economic Ministers meetings along with other Ministerial engagements. It will also help advance discussions on closer economic and tech relationships.

ASEAN is a market of 650 million people, predicted to be fourth largest ‘single market’ by 2030 and trade between the UK and ASEAN nations was worth almost £34 billion in 2020.

All three economies on the visit are projected to grow at a faster rate than the world’s largest economy, the US, out to 2050*. Indonesian is forecast to more than quintuple its GDP (PPP$) by 532% between 2020 and 2050 – with increases in Malaysia and Thailand of 393% and 258% respectively.

In Malaysia, the Foreign Secretary will meet Prime Minister Ismail Sabri to discuss defence cooperation, as well as trade. She will also meet her Malaysian counterpart, Saifuddin Abdullah, to forge stronger ties on maritime security and champion free trade.

The Foreign Secretary will then travel to Thailand where she will meet Prime Minister Chan-o-cha and Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai to discuss deeper digital and tech investment and security collaboration. As part of the visit, Truss will formally open the new British Embassy in Bangkok and visit the Triumph Motorcycle factory to promote British businesses in the region.

Finally in Indonesia, the Foreign Secretary will meet Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi for talks on economic diplomacy, trade and foreign policy issues including the Myanmar crisis and Afghanistan. She will also meet the ASEAN Secretary General to discuss deepening ties and working together to help the region build back better. During the visit, Liz Truss will also forge closer ties with the Indonesians on counterterrorism and cyber security.

*The Economist Intelligence Unit (2021) forecast

• Sajid Javid calls on families and friends to support their loved ones to get vaccinated

• It comes as almost 10 million people in the UK have received their top-up vaccines, with three million extra invites being sent next week

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid has called for the UK to come together to help vaccinate those most vulnerable to COVID-19 with booster jabs.

He called on families and friends to support elderly loved ones and those most at risk of the virus to get their vaccines urgently to ensure they are protected over the winter months – which will save lives, reduce the pressure on the NHS and ensure the UK can continue to live with COVID-19 without restrictions.

It comes as almost 10 million people in the UK have received their top-up jabs, with seven in 10 over 80s and three in five over-50s in England already boosted.

NHS England will be inviting another three million people who will become eligible for their booster next week. More than 13 million invites, including texts, letters and emails, have already been sent to eligible people in England so far asking them to book their booster online through the National Booking Service. The additional letters due to land next week will mean around 16 million invites have been sent in England since the NHS booster programme began.

COVID-19 booster vaccines have been delivered or booked in at every older adult care home in England where safe to do so, with almost nine in 10 care homes already visited.

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said:

Almost 10 million people in the UK have received their COVID-19 booster and third jabs – a phenomenal achievement in under two months. As we approach this milestone, I want to thank those who have come forward and urge everybody across the nation to get vaccinated, get protected and get boosted.

We know immunity begins to wane after six months, especially for the elderly and the vulnerable, and booster vaccines will top-up their protection to keep people safe over the winter.

I strongly urge everybody who is eligible for a COVID-19 booster or flu vaccine to take up the offer as soon as you can. For those not yet eligible, please help your parents, grandparents or vulnerable loved ones get their jabs – it could save their life.

And if you haven’t yet had your first and second vaccines, it is not too late – the NHS will always be there to welcome you with open arms.

This truly is a national mission. If we all come together and play our part, we can get through this challenging winter, avoid a return to restrictions and enjoy Christmas.

The National Booking Service will be updated tomorrow (Monday 8 November) to allow those eligible for a booster vaccine – people over 50 and those most at risk of COVID-19 – to pre-book their jab five months after their second dose.

People will still receive their vaccine six months after their second dose, but the change will speed up the vaccination programme by allowing people to receive a jab the day they become eligible, rather than waiting for a convenient appointment.

People will also be able to book by calling 119 and can get vaccinated at hundreds of walk-in sites across the country six months after their second dose without an appointment. Those eligible can use the NHS online walk-in finder to locate the most convenient site.

The latest evidence from SAGE shows that protection against symptomatic disease falls from 65%, up to three months after the second dose, to 45% six months after the second dose for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, and from 90% to 65% for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Protection against hospitalisation falls from 95% to 75% for Oxford/AstraZeneca and 99% to 90% for Pfizer/BioNTech.

Watch the Deputy Prime Minister’s speech below:

Justice Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab speech

I’m really pleased to be here for this milestone for the project, which has been more than five years in the making. I know my friend Alberto Costa MP and Blaby Council were instrumental in getting it off the ground and continue to be huge supporters.

I want to thank everyone involved for keeping the project on track, despite the huge challenges with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The development here at Glen Parva is part of the most ambitious building programme in more than a century. The government has earmarked £3.8 billion to build six state of the art prisons and expand other sites across the country, so that we can protect the public from dangerous criminals and cut crime.

The huge investment will create up to 18,000 additional prison places and up to 2,000 temporary ones, which will give us more flexibility as our tougher sentencing rules come into force and we make progress working through the court backlogs.

1,700 of those places will be right here at Glen Parva.

And the work being done here is helping us to learn lessons, so that we can design better prisons right across the country.

You will have seen the coverage this week of COP26, the UN climate change conference, which the UK is hosting. The industry-leading methods being used to construct the site here at Glen Parva mean the build will have far less impact on the environment than previous prison builds.

In fact, many of the materials being used to bring this project to life come from sustainable, recycled sources.

This isn’t just making the site more eco-friendly, it also makes the project more cost-effective, so it’s better for taxpayers.

The design builds on efficiencies we’ve made at other prisons like HMP Berwyn in North Wales, which had a 23 percent reduction in carbon emissions compared to the older parts of the prison estate.

And we’ll take what we learn here to make sure that the next four prisons we build, starting at Full Sutton near York, will emit around 90 percent less CO2. And eventually, those sites could be net zero carbon emissions.

What will be on offer at the prison

But while the prisons will have less impact on the environment, they’ll have more impact on cutting crime – by putting purpose at the forefront of everything they do.

Because prisons shouldn’t just be holding cells for offenders to while away their days, waiting for their sentences to finish so that they can get back to lives of crime.

That would be a waste of their time and taxpayer’s money.

Prisoners should spend their sentences working to get their lives back on track, getting clean from any dependencies on drugs or alcohol, and into purposeful activity that will help them to make a success of their release and turn their lives around.

That’s what the prison here at Glen Parva will do.

In fact, we’ve engaged with offenders, prison officers, and charities and used data and academic research to design a state-of-the-art environment that will support offenders every step of the way.

First with education.

The new prison will be the most technologically advanced in the estate, with digital in-cell technology, so that offenders can take full advantage of education and training opportunities.

This would allow them to work on basic skills like maths and English but also to participate in vocational courses, for example, in IT and engineering.

Prisoners will be able to hold these qualifications and achievements in ‘digital backpacks’ – as they will at HMP Five Wells – so that what they study on the inside can be put to use outside prison.

Second, with huge training workshops, the prison will ensure that offenders have every opportunity to gain and hone new skills in things like carpentry, plumbing, and bricklaying.

Taken together, this education and training is crucial.

Because it makes offenders more employable.

If they have jobs within the twelve months after release, they are up to nine percentage points less likely to reoffend. What’s more, we’ve got around a million job vacancies right now, so making sure offenders can get jobs means we can help address labour shortages in the economy.

I hosted a summit with employers a couple of weeks ago to talk about how we can build better links between prisons and local businesses.

I want us to learn lessons from the schemes doing that so brilliantly in the prison estate already. Like at HMP High Down, where the prison governor is doing everything possible to ensure offenders can work in a call centre run by Census Life.

Those prisoners aren’t just gaining new skills

They’re experiencing what it’s like to have responsibility and to earn a wage – some of them for the first time.
As soon as the gates are bolted on, I want to see the prison here at Glen Parva building similar links with local businesses.

So that it can look at where the skills gaps exist in Leicestershire and start training offenders accordingly.
Third, the prison will be able to help offenders address any mental health problems or addictions that could be holding them back from getting their lives back on track.

In fact, we’ve recently started trialling technology in prisons that means offenders can get help from medical professionals via virtual appointments – making it swifter, easier, and quicker to access diagnosis and treatment. And finally, the prison will make sure that offenders have the support in place to make a success of their release.

That will include maintaining links with their family and making sure they’ve got stable accommodation to go to.

The in-cell technology will enable prisoners to keep in touch with a small number of important contacts, So that they can try to maintain some level of family or social support throughout their time inside, which will be there for them when they leave.

So, the prison being built here will bring together all of the key strands of rehabilitation we need for reform of offenders.

They won’t waste their time inside.

Every moment will be spent on purposeful activity, geared towards equipping and enabling them to take the second chance to go straight, make a better life for themselves and their family, and make a positive contribution to their community.

That’s the most sustainable way to bring down crime in our country and it’s what we are designing and building at the state-of-the-art facility here at Glen Parva.

Benefits for the local community

To demonstrate what is possible here, forty-seven local ex-offenders and prisoners on day release have been involved with the building project – learning new skills and getting work experience.

And the project is bringing a range of other benefits locally.

£68 million has been invested into the local economy as part of the build.

Almost a third of that money – £18 million – has gone to local small and medium sized businesses, and there will be plenty more local investment before the project comes to fruition.

When it is operational, there will be more than 600 jobs available for local people at the prison. The bulk of them will be prison officer roles but there will also be opportunities in healthcare, education, training, maintenance and administration.

So, it has the potential to have a positive impact on the local area.

Close and naming the prison

So, in closing, let me just say a huge thank you to everyone involved in this project.

We’re looking forward to working with local councils, Lendlease, our suppliers, the local community and others to get it operating by the spring of 2023.

We’re launching the appeal today for a new name for the prison – one that best reflects the local area.

This new prison build is an important part of our mission as a government, and a country, to build back better – beating crime and turning offenders’ lives around, so that we can make our streets safer and local communities stronger.

Thank you.