More than £300 million worth of extra funding has been pumped into the service since July 2019.

The funding is helping to more than double the recruitment of probation officers, from the usual annual intake of 600 trainee probation officers to 1,000 last year with plans to recruit a record 1,500 this financial year. This will mean staff can keep a closer eye on the most dangerous offenders and ensure many more take up the opportunity to reform their criminal ways.

Unifying the service will ensure there is better and more consistent supervision of offenders and closer working with the police, NHS and local authorities. The service will work in 12 regions across England and Wales and a new, specialist National Security Division will be specifically tasked with the enhanced monitoring of terrorists, serious organised criminals and very high-risk offenders.

A refresh of the national standards for probation will ensure staff meet face-to-face with all the offenders they supervise at least once a month, with more frequent meetings for higher-risk offenders. For the first time, the standards also set an expectation that probation staff will visit offenders’ homes to protect children, partners and other family members from domestic and sexual abuse. In some cases, such safeguarding visits will be joint with police and social services.

Combined with its increasing use of electronic monitoring, including GPS and sobriety tags, the Probation Service will be even more focused on keeping people safe.

Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, Robert Buckland MP QC, said:

The work probation does to protect the public from harm and rehabilitate offenders is too often overlooked but it is vitally important given 80% of crime is reoffending.

The government is backing the new Probation Service with more money and more staff so that the public is better protected, crime is cut and fewer people become victims.

The Probation Service will continue its important work in helping victims to explain the impact of crime on them at parole hearings and to ask for licence conditions to prevent offenders from contacting or going near them. Eligible victims will now be automatically referred to the Victim Contact Scheme under recent changes to the Victims’ Code, and there are plans to extend the Scheme to victims of stalkers and harassers serving less than 12 months in prison.

There will also be extra investment in tackling the drivers of crime and getting offenders to ditch it for good. Charities and companies have been awarded nearly £200 million to provide and signpost vital support services that help reduce reoffending, such as employment, mental healthcare and housing advice. With reoffending accounting for 80% of all recorded crime, these services will help to prevent thousands of people becoming victims each year and save some of the £18 billion annual cost of repeat offending.

It comes on top of the £220 million package announced earlier this year to tackle crime, including the largest extra investment in drug treatment in 15 years. Every prisoner will be able to continue drug recovery on release and the funding will expand the availability of treatment for those serving community sentences. With offenders around 50 per cent more likely to break the law again if released without somewhere to stay, the funding will also be used to temporarily house around 3,000 otherwise homeless prison leavers in basic hostels this year.

The changes to probation will also give the government greater levers over community sentences, including the delivery of unpaid work which Ministers want to make more visible to the public and used more frequently to clean up the country’s streets, parks and waterways.

Notes to editors

• The supervision of low- and medium-risk offenders and delivery of unpaid work and behavioural change programmes will now be carried out by the public sector Probation Service, alongside the supervision of high-risk offenders which was already the responsibility of the public sector.
• More than 7,000 staff from private sector Community Rehabilitation Companies will come together with 3,500 probation officers already in the public sector in the new Probation Service.

The UK and Singapore will today (28 June) launch negotiations on a new ambitious digital trade agreement that could remove barriers to digital trade and enable UK exporters to expand into high-tech markets.

International Trade Secretary Liz Truss and the Singaporean Minister in charge of Trade Relations Mr S. Iswaran will meet by video call to kick start negotiations.

The UK is the first European country to start negotiations on a Digital Economy Agreement (DEA). Singapore and the UK are both global leaders in the digital economy and 70% of UK services exports, from financial and legal services to music streaming and e-books, were digitally delivered to Singapore in 2019, worth £3.2 billion.

The DEA would open further opportunities for British businesses to deliver their services through digital trade. It would help cut red tape and ensure companies can trade more efficiently through digital technology such as electronic transactions, e-signatures and e-contracts.

Today’s announcement is part of the government’s strategy to place the UK at the centre of a network of modern free trade agreements with dynamic countries, and to enhance our status as a global hub for services and digital trade.

Negotiations will focus on:

• Securing open digital markets for exporters, allowing them to expand into new markets and sell traditional products in new ways.
• Ensuring free and trusted cross-border data flows, while upholding high standards of personal data protection.
• Cutting red tape for UK businesses by promoting digital trading systems such as digital customs and border procedures that will save time and money when exporting.
• Upholding consumer rights and protecting businesses’ valuable intellectual property like source code and cryptography.
• Deepening our cooperation on future growth sectors like fintech and lawtech, while working with Singapore to strengthen our collective cybersecurity capabilities and keep our countries safe.

International Trade Secretary, Liz Truss said:

A cutting-edge deal with Singapore will keep us at the forefront of the technological revolution, ensuring we lead the way in digitally delivered trade and industries like fintech and cybersecurity. We are already the second largest services exporter in the world, with a huge comparative advantage in this area that we intend to capitalise on.

The UK will be the first European country to ever negotiate a Digital Economy Agreement, which shows what we can do as a sovereign trading nation. We are becoming more flexible, more nimble and less defensive in our approach to trade. Our ambition is to make the UK a global hub for services and digital trade, by striking a series of advanced, high-standards agreements with leading nations across the world that drive productivity, jobs, and growth across the UK.

Sally Jones, Trade Strategy Leader at EY UK and Ireland, said:

Digital transformation can unlock human potential and accelerate new, better ways of working. For the UK’s service sector, it’s now impossible to distinguish between digital and non-digital trade. Digital is at the core of everything we do. For too long, trade deals haven’t taken into account the realities of how businesses trade today.

The UK-Singapore [Digital Economy Agreement] is an important opportunity for the UK to step to the forefront in developing new trade rules that enable the growth of digital trade and promote trust. It will also serve as a strategic platform to help UK companies looking to expand their presence into the dynamic Asia-Pacific region.

Miles Celic, Chief Executive Officer at TheCityUK, said:

As leading international financial centres and data hubs, there are tremendous opportunities to be gained from the UK and Singapore working together on digital trade issues that support and supercharge innovation. Working with like-minded countries like Singapore presents a real opportunity to develop a best-in-class digital agreement.

Digital restrictions are among the fastest-growing trade barriers. Over 50% of trade in services is facilitated by digital exchange, but restrictions on digital trade doubled in the decade leading up to 2019. To ensure the future of open global services trade, it’s essential that new agreements support the flow of data across borders. The UK should strive to set clear ground rules for digital trade and build an open and robust framework for future digital trade and technological cooperation. Such a framework can then become a template for other key markets, aiding the free flow of data and preventing unnecessary market fragmentation.

Julian David, techUK CEO said:

We are delighted to see the start of the first UK digital-specific trade negotiation with Singapore, a like-minded country with whom we share longstanding business ties. Digital trade is the fastest growing arm of international trade and getting the rules right will be crucial for our economic recovery. A UK-Singapore Digital Economy Agreement will put the UK firmly in the frontrunners club for digital trade policy and facilitation and techUK stands ready to support an ambitious deal.

The UK is already one of the world’s biggest exporters of services, with remotely delivered services exports worth £207 billion in 2019 alone.

• Dominic Raab will highlight the growing threat of Daesh-linked groups in Africa

• New UK funds will support efforts to combat terror in the Lake Chad Basin region

• Foreign Secretary will also voice concern at recent violence in north-east Syria

The Foreign Secretary will announce today (Monday) new UK funding to fight the growing threat of terrorism in West Africa.

At a meeting of the Global Coalition against Daesh in Rome this afternoon, Dominic Raab will commit £12.6m to support efforts to counter the group in the Lake Chad Basin, which covers north-east Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

The funds will be used to support both the regionally-led military fight against Daesh, and projects encouraging its fighters to leave the terrorist group.

Foreign ministers from more than 45 countries are meeting today to discuss deepening cooperation to combat Daesh and its affiliate terrorist groups, including emerging threats across the African continent.

The UK will highlight concern over the fragile security situation in Iraq and violence in displacement camps and detention centres in north-east Syria.

Dominic Raab will urge Coalition partners to come together to tackle this pressing threat and target the longer-term drivers of terrorism, both in the Middle East and in areas of Africa where attacks from Daesh-linked groups have been growing.

The UK is funding a new Conflict, Stability and Security Fund programme for the Lake Chad Basin region of West Africa, where Daesh’s affiliate, known as Islamic State West Africa (ISWA), is responsible for significant violence.

This will support regional military efforts to counter Daesh and other groups, as well as efforts to safely demobilise suspected low-level members of terrorist groups.

Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, said:

“Two years since Daesh’s territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria, the threat of Daesh and its hateful ideology has not gone away. Worryingly it continues to grow in Africa which is why we must work with our Coalition partners to fight its poisonous propaganda on all fronts.

“We stand shoulder to shoulder with our African partners to tackle the growing threat from Daesh-linked groups across Africa, particularly in the Lake Chad Basin.”

Daesh recently released a new speech by its spokesman, the first since October 2020.

The spokesman congratulated affiliates for their attacks, including in West Africa. Islamic State West Africa (ISWA) in Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin regularly issues propaganda boasting horrific violence against both civilian and military targets. The funding announced today will help counter such propaganda.

As set out in the Government’s Integrated Review, the UK is committed to burden-sharing with its security allies, and to serving as a “force for good in the world”.

Monday’s meeting in Rome will mark the first time Global Coalition foreign ministers have met in person since November 2019, and will be co-hosted by Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

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• Genomic sequencing has made a crucial contribution to the fight against the virus by rapidly identifying variants of concern, understanding transmission and slowing their spread.

• Sequencing provides invaluable data that will support decisions to relax social distancing in the future and help monitor for future variants and infectious disease threats.

The UK has today (Sunday 27 June) surpassed over half a million genomically sequenced positive coronavirus (COVID-19) tests, as the UK’s testing programme continues to ramp up.

The strength of the UK’s genomics science base and diagnostics sequencing industry has allowed the UK to rapidly identify COVID-19 variants and capture critical data that has helped to track and stay ahead of mutations in the genome of the virus. It is estimated that the UK contributes around 50% of all sequencing that is shared for comparison across the world.

Genomic sequencing is laboratory analysis that identifies a virus’s genetic make-up, allowing new variants or mutations in existing variants to be detected. Reaching this milestone is testament to the extraordinary expertise the UK has in genomics and the efforts of researchers, laboratory scientists and analysts, clinicians and policymakers.

Thanks to the UK’s world-leading genomic sequencing capability, cases of the Delta (B1.617.2) variant have been quickly detected, as well as other variants of concern. This has allowed the government to rapidly deploy additional support to areas where variants of concern have been prevalent, such as surge testing and enhanced contact tracing, to help slow the spread of variants by breaking chains of transmission.

Innovation Minister Lord Bethell said:

From Fred Sanger to the modern day, the UK has a proud tradition of developing genetic and genomic technologies which improve the lives of patients across the country and globally.

This milestone is testament to the hard work, dedication and brilliance of researchers and scientists in laboratories across the country, as well as those on the frontline of our battle against this wretched virus.

It is vital that we not only maintain, but develop our global leadership in genomics and do our utmost to unlock its enormous potential.

The British public has played their part at every stage of this pandemic and I am urging everyone to do their bit by getting tested when asked to do so, so we can continue to detect new variants of concern and protect ourselves and our communities as restrictions ease.

Surge testing has been rolled out to specific areas across the country to monitor and suppress the spread of COVID-19 and to better understand new variants. Genomic sequencing is a key part of surge testing as it enables scientists to continue to identify variants of concern, as well as any changes to known variants or to identify new emerging variants that need to be followed. All positive tests with high enough viral load in surge testing postcodes and from identified test sites will be sent for sequencing.

In addition to surge testing, the government is providing additional support packages to stop the spread of the Delta variant which includes support for those self-isolating and activity to maximise vaccine uptake in the area. This has been rapidly deployed across areas including Bedford, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and Birmingham.

To increase our preparedness and heighten our defences against new variants, we have backed new technology for detecting known variants, known as ‘genotype assay testing’, which detects mutations that indicate known variants of concern in as little as 48 hours after a positive COVID-19 PCR test result. Genotype assay testing needs to be used after PCR, and in order to detect the maximum number of cases with variants, the government uses confirmatory PCR testing for positive LFD test results in England during lower prevalence periods. Confirmatory tests are used to validate the result of the initial LFD rapid test.

The virus will continue to naturally evolve as it spreads globally, but the UK will continue to use its excellent genomics, epidemiology and virology capacity to monitor all variants to ensure that public health interventions are effective and proportionate.

UKHSA chief executive Jenny Harries said:

Sequencing genomes has been one of most versatile tools in our armoury in the battle against COVID-19, and as we progress down the roadmap its role only increases in importance – helping us track mutations in the virus and act decisively to stop cases becoming outbreaks.

The UK has shared its exceptional genomics capabilities with the world during this global pandemic and our expertise in this field will be at the heart of our mission at the UK Health Security Agency.

Every genome sequenced helps us to outmanoeuvre viruses by arming the government and our scientists with reliable data and I am hugely grateful for all those who have worked so hard to enable us to reach this fantastic milestone.

Process of genome sequencing

Genomic sequencing has been vital in detecting and responding to emerging COVID-19 strains and variants of concern. Public Health England (PHE) has closely monitored how COVID-19 has changed over time with new variants, increasing understanding of how these changes affect the characteristics of the virus and using this insight to evaluate the increased transmissibility of new strains.

In the early stages of the pandemic the COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium was created to deliver large-scale and rapid whole-genome virus sequencing to local NHS centres and the government. Data collected by the consortium has helped public health agencies to better manage the outbreak in the UK and inform vaccine development efforts. Sequencing is now being delivered through a programme within UKHSA building upon the work of COG-UK.

After sequencing, virus genome data are combined with clinical and epidemiological datasets in order to help to guide UK public health interventions and policies. In the future, this information will enable the evaluation of novel treatments and non-pharmacological interventions and provide information on community transmission and outbreaks. These data will also allow researchers to identify and evaluate emerging genetic changes in known variants and scrutinise how they affect the ability of the virus to transmit from person to person.

A critical part of our genomic surveillance is to support global safety through testing people travelling overseas. Scientists in PHE upload variant sequence information to GISAID alerting other countries to the presence of variants in different global regions.

The UK’s New Variant Assessment Programme is already supporting countries who make use of the UK’s genomic sequencing technology to spot new variants, providing them with technical support as well as upskilling their scientists with training.

UK leadership in genomics

UK research has led to paradigm-shifting discoveries in genetics – from the original discovery of the structure of DNA to our involvement in the Human Genome Project.

The UK has also led the way in translating seminal research into clinical practice and improved patient outcomes. It is also the home of extensive genomics and health research infrastructure, from the UK Biobank, established in 2006 to Genomics England, the NHS England and Improvement Genomic Medicine Service (GMS).

Genomics is just one example of this government’s commitment to driving forwards healthcare innovation in the UK, which will play a central role in its future health resilience, the growth of its life sciences sector and measures to improve patient care.

Background information

An up-to-date list of areas where surge testing is currently being deployed is available.