The alliance made up of 3 delivery partners – Sellafield Ltd, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure and Arup – marks reaching 5 million accident free operation hours by donating to West Cumbria Carers and the PPE fund which Sellafield Ltd’s unions (GMB, Unite and Prospect) set up to help protect local NHS staff and nursing teams.

In order to mark the milestone achieved in January this year, each of the 3 organisations decided to donate £5,000 to charity; the Infrastructure Strategic Alliance (ISA) workforce voting for the charity they felt should benefit.

West Cumbria Carers provides support to carers who look after a family member, relative, friend or neighbour who could not manage without their help.

Their work carries on through the Covid-19 pandemic; they continue to support young carers by distributing craft kits to help pass the time in these challenging circumstances.

Sellafield Ltd’s unions (GMB, Unite and Prospect) have joined forces to provide vital PPE, to help protect the local NHS staff for the ongoing battle against Covid-19 in West Cumbria at the West Cumberland Hospital and within the Copeland and Workington community nursing teams.

Mark Jones, Head of ISA, said:

I am extremely proud of everyone who works and supports ISA for their continued commitment to the safe delivery of our projects, driving risk and hazard reduction across the Sellafield site.

Achieving 5 million hours RIDDOR (reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations) free over the last three and a half years is not easy and requires continuous focus, particularly in the complex and challenging environment in which we work.

West Cumbria Carers were delighted with the donation and added:

Many thanks to the ISA staff for their donation. The feedback from young carers shows just how much the craft packs have been appreciated.

Nick Jeffery, UNITE convenor, said:

On behalf of our campaign group, I’d like to thank the ISA teams for this fantastic donation to the PPE fund which is helping us support doctors, nurses and carers in our communities and making a real difference at this very difficult time.

• Prime Minister Boris Johnson today hosted the Global Vaccine Summit
• More than 50 countries and organisations will come together to secure funding for GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance
• The Summit aims to raise at least $7.4bn (approx. £6bn) to immunise a further 300 million children in world’s poorest countries by 2025

Prime Minister Boris Johnson today (Thursday 4 June) opened the UK-hosted Global Vaccine Summit and urged nations to pledge funding for vaccinations to save millions of lives and protect the world from future outbreaks of infectious diseases.

Representatives of over 50 countries, including President Mohammed Farmajo and at least 35 other Heads of State or Government, as well as leaders of private sector organisations and civil society, are coming together at the Summit to raise funds for GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance.

Addressing attendees at the Summit, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said:

I hope this Summit will be the moment when the world comes together to unite humanity in the fight against disease. Just as the UK is the single biggest donor to the international effort to find a coronavirus vaccine, we will remain the world’s leading donor to GAVI, contributing £1.65 billion over the next five years.

The recent Somali Health & Demographic Survey found that only 11% of Somali children aged 12-23 months had been vaccinated against the most common preventable diseases. GAVI spent around $10-12m in Somalia in each of the last two years, with a focus on strengthening health systems, supporting cold chains and immunising against measles and other disease.

The British Ambassador to Somalia, Ben Fender, said:

I’m delighted that President Farmajo has joined other world leaders including Prime Minister Boris Johnson in contributing to this Summit. The Global Vaccine Summit is held once every five years. In the last 20 years, GAVI has helped vaccinate half the world’s children, 760 million in all. Today’s Summit will help pay for the next five years of GAVI’s work.

In recent years, we have made progress in increasing vaccine coverage across Somalia, but there is further to go. We must work together to protect children across Somalia from deadly but preventable diseases like polio, diphtheria and measles.

The UK is the largest donor to Somalia’s health sector. In 2019, our Somali Health & Nutrition (SHINE) programme, helped deliver life-saving vaccines to over 90,000 Somali children, protecting them against five common childhood illnesses. At the moment, we are working hard to ensure that routine immunisation continues across the country, despite COVID-19.

In a recorded video, Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo said:

It is great honour to participate in this virtual summit hosted by the UK government under the leadership of PM Johnson. GAVI is an inspirational partnership between coalition of governments, international agencies to vaccinate against diseases and death, Somalia is proud to be part of this vaccines alliance for healthier, safer and equitable society.

Prevention is always better than cure and vaccinating against preventable diseases and strengthening the health of citizens everywhere including here at home is a basic human rights.

Coronavirus has truly tested the world in every way possible; it has taught us the importance of preparation, collaboration and timely action to protect our citizen’s future. I welcome and strongly support GAVI’s focus on accelerating a vaccine for COVID-19 and I urge for this to be made available to the most vulnerable.

The UK government is the leading donor to GAVI, and has already pledged an equivalent funding of £1.65 billion over the next five years to GAVI to help fund immunisation of close to 75 million children in the world’s poorest countries.

As the world focuses on tackling coronavirus, the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and GAVI have warned that the pandemic is disrupting routine immunisation, affecting approximately 80 million children under the age of 12 months across 68 countries.

In attendance at the summit was also International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who said:

The world is quite rightly focusing on responding to the invisible killer that is coronavirus. But we cannot allow this pandemic to disrupt routine immunisation in some of the world’s poorest countries and cause other deadly diseases to spread across the globe.

We know vaccines work, which is why at today’s summit we need others to step up and pledge funds to GAVI, so it can continue to save the lives of millions of children and protect everyone from infectious diseases.

GAVI, with UK support, is addressing the immediate needs triggered by coronavirus, including providing essential medical supplies and helping to increase testing and surveillance of the disease.

As part of the global effort to find a coronavirus vaccine, the UK is also the single largest donor of any country to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations’ (CEPI) urgent appeal.

Notes to editors:

The UK’s Vaccine Taskforce will build on the UK’s research and development expertise to support international efforts to find a coronavirus vaccine.

International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan announced the UK’s £1.65bn pledge to Gavi – the equivalent of £300m a year over the next 5 years – on the 29th April.

Amit Patel has signed undertakings that ban him from holding a director role at any UK company for the next 5 years, in connection with his involvement in illegal arrangements during his time at Auden McKenzie (Pharma Division) Ltd and Amilco Ltd.

Auden McKenzie

From September 2014 to May 2015, Mr Patel was a director at the pharmaceutical company Auden McKenzie. A Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into agreements affecting the supply of nortriptyline, an NHS prescribed drug used by thousands of patients to relieve the symptoms of depression, found that Auden McKenzie and King Pharmaceuticals Ltd had shared out between them the supply of the drug to a large pharmaceutical wholesaler. The 2 companies agreed that King would supply only 25mg tablets and Auden Mckenzie only 10mg tablets. They also agreed to fix quantities and prices to the wholesaler.

The object of this agreement was to limit competition, meaning the NHS – and ultimately the taxpayer – could have been paying higher prices than if competition hadn’t been restricted by the agreement.

Amilco

Mr Patel is currently the sole director at Amilco and has held this directorship since 2013. Mr Patel admitted that, from 1 March 2016 to 19 Oct 2016, Amilco and another pharmaceutical company, Tiofarma, stayed out of the UK fludrocortisone market enabling the market-leader Aspen to maintain its position as the sole supplier for the UK. Fludrocortisone is a prescription-only medicine that patients rely on to treat primary or secondary adrenal insufficiency, commonly known as Addison’s Disease, and the CMA has alleged that this illegal agreement protected Aspen’s monopoly, giving it an opportunity to increase prices charged to the NHS by up to 1800%.

Mr Patel has now admitted that, in exchange for staying out of the market, Amilco received a 30% share of the increased prices that Aspen was able to charge.

Amit Patel will now be disqualified from taking up any director role or being involved in the management of any company based in England, Scotland or Wales for 5 years.

Consistent with his admission, Mr Patel has also withdrawn his appeal against the CMA’s nortriptyline decision.

Michael Grenfell, the CMA’s Executive Director of Enforcement, said:

Company directors have a responsibility to make sure their companies comply with competition law. And the CMA is determined to protect the public from directors who fail to do so. 

Today’s action should act as a warning to those in management positions – the CMA will not stand by when your firms break the law and take advantage of customers.

The disqualification announced today brings the total number of disqualifications secured by the CMA to 16, after it began actively using its power in December 2016. As part of the Company Directors Disqualification Act, the CMA can seek the disqualification of any director where their company has broken competition law. It is one of a number of tools the CMA can use to protect consumers from anti-competitive behaviour.

Notes to editors

1. Amit Patel has received 2 director disqualifications – 1 in relation to his time at Auden McKenzie and 1 for his time at Amilco. These will be served concurrently. 

2. The disqualification covers both Auden McKenzie (Pharma Division) Ltd and Auden McKenzie Holdings Ltd.

3. Under the Company Directors Disqualification Act, the CMA has the power to apply to the court to disqualify a director from holding company directorships or performing certain roles in relation to a company for a specified period, if a company which he or she is a director of has breached competition law. The Act also allows the CMA to accept a disqualification undertaking from a director instead of bringing proceedings, which has the same legal effect as a disqualification order. A disqualification can also come before a company is found to have broken competition law.

4. References in this press release to fludrocortisone acetate tablets and to fludrocortisone are to fludrocortisone acetate 0.1mg tablets.

5. The disqualification undertakings each relate to serious breaches of competition law. In the CMA’s view, those breaches would have merited a disqualification of at least 6 years. The CMA has agreed to reduce this to 5 years, given the public interest benefit of securing an immediate disqualification, without the time and cost of court proceedings. 

6. On 3 June 2020, the Competition Appeal Tribunal gave Mr Patel permission to withdraw his appeal against the CMA’s decision relating to agreements affecting the supply of nortriptyline.

The Ministry of Defence has launched 13th Signal Regiment, the UK Armed Forces’ first dedicated Cyber Regiment, which will protect vital defence networks at home and on operations overseas.

The unit was formally stood up on Monday, June 1, at a ceremony at Blandford, home of the Royal Signals.

As the character of warfare evolves, and the weapons used to fight those wars shift from the industrial to the information age, digital and cyber capabilities are increasingly relied upon to ensure the nation’s security and the safety of our personnel overseas.

Our adversaries and hostile actors are operating in cyberspace right now, creating a new cyber frontline – alongside the traditional domains of Land, Sea and Air – without physical borders but also needing to be defended,

Secure communications are the foundation for any successful operation and 13th Signal Regiment will provide ‘digital armour’ around personnel operating overseas, giving commanders and their soldiers the ability to operate with confidence in their communications systems, often while working in challenging conditions.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said:

This is a step-change in the modernisation of the UK Armed Forces for information warfare. Cyber-attacks are every bit as deadly as those faced on the physical battlefield, so we must prepare to defend ourselves from all those who would do us harm and 13th Signal Regiment is a vital addition to that defence.

The 13th Signal Regiment is a regiment of the British Army within 1st (UK) Signal Brigade, under the command of 6th (UK) Division, responsible for conducting information manoeuvre and unconventional warfare, in support of the whole Armed Forces.

The specialist unit will provide the basis of the new Army Cyber Information Security Operations Centre, focusing on the protection of Defence’s cyber domain, and it will work with the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force to provide secure networks for all military communications.

And ensuring that UK defensive cyber capabilities remain ahead of adversaries and aggressors, 13th Signal Regiment will also provide specialist technical support for a hub to test and implement next generation information capabilities.

Based at multiple key locations around a Headquarters in Blandford, Dorset, 13th Signal Regiment will be built around a core of 250 specialist servicemen and women who possess relevant high-end technical skills.

A number of existing cyber functions are being brought together from across the Army to establish the regiment, with personnel from 15 different cap badges represented in the first intake, plus specialist Royal Navy and RAF personnel.

The regiment will consist of several Cyber Protection Teams as well as technical staff who will secure the cyber domain for troops deployed on military operations.

Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith said:

13th Signal Regiment is the British Army’s brand new cyber regiment – matching cutting edge technology with cyber-fit soldiers to compete and win in the Information Age.

13th Signal Regiment previously existed during WW2 as 1st Special Wireless Group, and helped to pioneer the use of wireless technology and high frequency wireless radios.

Renamed 13th (Radio) Signal Regiment in 1959, it had operators stationed in Berlin throughout the Cold War. The unit was disbanded in 1994, when its role in Germany was no longer required.

The new Cyber Regiment will take on the 13th Signal Regiment name and build on its predecessor’s proud legacy of innovation and operational excellence.

Brigadier John Collyer, Commander 1st (UK) Signal Brigade, said:

The re-formation of 13th Signal Regiment is an exciting step forward as the Royal Signals, Army and wider Defence rapidly drives up their potency and resilience in the information environment and cyber domain.

The stakes are high and our success is increasingly and critically reliant on focusing our brightest men and women onto the opportunities and risks that underpin our operations – both home and away.