Commenting on the publication of Scottish July GDP figures, Scottish Secretary Alister Jack said:

As the Prime Minister said last night, the struggle against covid is the single biggest crisis the world has faced in our lifetimes.

The UK Government is focussed on stopping the spread of coronavirus and keeping people safe, while doing everything we can to protect the economy.

Through the furlough and self-employed schemes, we directly supported more than 930,000 jobs in Scotland, a third of the workforce. Now, the Chancellor’s comprehensive Plan for Jobs is bringing in the Job Retention Bonus, creating new jobs for young people through the kick start scheme, doubling the number of work coaches, and are supporting jobs in the tourism and hospitality sectors through a VAT cut

Background points:

• The UK Government has directly supported more than 930,000 jobs in Scotland, a third of the workforce through the furlough and self-employed schemes.
• Over 1.8 million jobs in the hospitality sector have been supported through the Eat Out to Help Out scheme with more than 6.3 million meals eaten in Scotland.
• The UK Government has loaned more than £2.3 billion to 65,000 Scottish businesses.
• An additional £6.5 billion in Barnett Consequentials has been provided by the UK Government to the Scottish Government since March 2020.

The outstanding health and safety performance of LLW Repository Ltd (LLWR) over the past 15 years has been recognised with a prestigious award from RoSPA.

LLWR has been awarded an Order of Distinction at the UK’s longest running health and safety awards, where almost 2,000 organisations were vying for recognition.

Elaine Burrage, LLWR’s Health & Safety Manager, said: “It’s a major honour to have our safety record recognised in this way by RoSPA. Praise must go to our workforce who meet the organisation’s stringent health and safety standards year after year.

“We cannot afford to let our standards slip for a moment, which is why safety remains our number one priority. That policy has served us well over the years and continues to do so.”

LLWR personnel attend the awards ceremony every year, though this year it was held virtually due to COVID-16 restrictions.

RoSPA’s Julia Small, said: “RoSPA wants every employee, wherever they are, to work safe in the knowledge that they will be going home unharmed and healthy at the end of every day.

“The RoSPA Award winners are vital to help achieve this goal, as by entering they are driving up standards and setting new benchmarks for organisations everywhere.”

During a two week exercise at Copehill Down Village, soldiers and aircrew combined their core platforms with uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) and autonomous ground vehicles (UGVs) developed by industry partners to look at the challenges and opportunities provided by technology that could help the Army improve military advantage. Helicopter pilots controlled UAVs from the cockpit, providing ground troops and vehicles with improved situational awareness. Tank commanders and dismounted troops used UGVs and UAVs to enhance their ability to find targets in complex urban environments.

Cpl Liam Fisher, 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment said:

Technically it’s a big game of hide and seek. We can get ‘hands on’ with the drones, get ‘hands on’ with the ground vehicles and find the people you need to find. It will absolutely make a difference, there are parts where you can’t go, especially for your dismounts. So instead of using ground troops, you can push the UGVs out or other vehicles out and get them to do your job for you instead.

The MOD is investigating how to reduce the collective burden of war fighting tasks on soldiers by exploiting software and autonomous vehicles to carry out tasks such as combat support and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions.

The trial falls under the Army Warfighting Experiment, a project that has been running for the last 10 years and gives personnel the opportunity to test a whole range of futuristic technology. Dstl’s scientific expertise identifies and carries out initial testing on viable industry proposals to deliver technology that shows the greatest potential to the end user and deliver clear military and strategic advantage to the UK.

Dstl’s Project Manager Jamie M said:

These types of experiments are really important for the future, if we’re going to keep pushing forward and understanding autonomous technologies and behaviours, we need to have these experiments where we can be right at the beginning of the science and get soldiers’ inputs straight away into the development of the systems.

This has been a hugely demanding activity to pull together, particular during the Covid-19 pandemic with significant hurdles to overcome to deliver a trial of this complexity. It has been a privilege to work alongside Army colleagues to understand their challenges and help shape the development of industry delivered solutions that could address those challenges.

The industry partners were selected through a competition enabled by the Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) to look for innovative solutions to crewed and uncrewed teaming. Industry was asked to demonstrate some or all of the following:

• a semi-autonomous uncrewed system which can be demonstrated in the field by the end of the project (at AWE 2019)
• a control interface for the semi-autonomous system which can be operated by a single user who will not be required to maintain constant operation
• a control interface suitable for operation within an armoured ground or air platform but that can be removed from that platform and operate with its own power supply
• a system which seeks to consider and minimise cognitive load on the operator in relation to the crewed and uncrewed systems whilst not being fully autonomous

Industry teams were given 12 months to develop and deliver novel semi-autonomous uncrewed systems capable of being operated on the move in current Army platforms in a representative military environment.

We wish to make veterinary surgeons aware that Norbrook Laboratories Ltd has issued a recall for the product Carprieve 50 mg/ml Solution for Injection for Cattle as a precautionary measure.

During stability monitoring analysis of the product an impurity was detected which exceeded the specification for an individual impurity. The impurity was isolated and the best estimate of identity indicated that the impurity is carprofen related.

The problem affects a limited number of batches and is identifiable through quality control testing. The concentration of the process impurity does not increase over time. This recall is for the following batches only:

Norbrook Laboratories Ltd is contacting wholesale dealers and veterinary surgeons to examine inventory immediately and quarantine products subject to this recall.

For further information regarding the recall, please contact Mr Gary Mckee on 0044 2830 264435 or alternatively by email to gary.mckee@norbrook.co.uk