Category: Speeches

  • Michael Gove – 2014 Speech at BETT Conference

    Michael Gove – 2014 Speech at BETT Conference

    The speech made by Michael Gove, the then Secretary of State for Education, at the ExCel Centre in London on 22 January 2014.

    Thank you very much for that kind introduction – it’s a great pleasure to be here today, kicking off what, I’m sure, will be a brilliant few days at this exhibition.

    I’d also like to congratulate particularly those companies which are exhibiting here this week. From software to hardware, products to services, they represent the cutting edge of educational technology – where British businesses have become world-leaders.

    Like TSL Education – long known in the UK for publishing the ‘teachers’ bible’, the TES – which has over the past decade become one of Europe’s largest ed tech companies. Its online platform, TES Connect, now hosts the largest network of teachers in the world – in fact, the largest single-profession social network in the world – connecting 58 million teachers and students from 197 different countries, and containing over 710,000 teaching resources – with downloads now averaging 10 per second – created by teachers for teachers.

    Or Frog – a UK education solutions provider which is transforming how technology is used in schools in 14 different countries, including the world’s first project to connect an entire nation through a single, cloud-based learning platform, in Malaysia. All 10,000 state schools and 10 million users are being provided with 4G connectivity to Frog’s virtual learning platform – so no matter where students live in the country, they all have access to the same, high-quality resources and content.

    Or Little Bridge, an innovative tech SME that has developed an online resource for young, digital learners of English with users in over 40 countries. As well as working with ministries of education and ‘traditional’ B2B distributors, Little Bridge also sells direct to consumers: over 5 million students are now learning English with Little Bridge, with 1 new young learner joining them every 5 minutes. And as if that weren’t enough to keep them busy, this year Little Bridge is developing an international TV series.

    Of course, what is so remarkable about many ed tech companies is how young they are.

    In our lifetimes, traditional industries, markets and workplaces have been totally transformed; new products, new technologies and new applications – like Instagram, Tumblr, Spotify and Snapchat – develop and become mainstream parts of our lives with breath-taking rapidity.

    Looking back – and looking forward

    Which is why we need an education system which is open, creative and adaptive – which is open to innovation, which can use technology creatively to advance learning and which is structured flexibly to adapt to change.

    The reforms we have introduced in the last 3 years have been designed to achieve just that.

    Our academies programme, the launch of free schools and the removal of a huge amount of existing bureaucracy have helped make our school system more adaptive and flexible.

    We have decentralised power to individual schools, networks of headteachers and collaborative communities of classroom teachers.

    And we have also taken the same approach – of openness, adaptability and flexibility – to curriculum development.

    When I last spoke at BETT in 2012, I announced that the then ICT curriculum – universally acknowledged as unambitious, demotivating and dull – had to go.

    In its place, we would introduce a new computing curriculum, ambitious, stretching and exciting – drawn up by industry experts, allowing teachers and schools more freedom, designed to equip every child with the computing skills they need to succeed in the 21st century.

    As proof of good faith, I promised that – if new computer science GCSEs were sufficiently rigorous in content and assessment – the subject would be included alongside physics, chemistry and biology in our English Baccalaureate – a roster of the most highly valued, highly valuable academic qualifications.

    Two years on – with the help of many people in this room, and their colleagues elsewhere in the tech world – we have made hugely encouraging progress.

    In September 2012, we disapplied the national curriculum ICT programmes of study, attainment targets and statutory assessment arrangements – allowing schools and teachers to start creating and teaching more ambitious content, straight away; or to start using the top-quality content already available online.

    A brand new computing curriculum was published in September 2013 – drawn up not by bureaucrats but by teachers and other sector experts, led by the British Computer Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, with input from industry leaders like Microsoft, Google and leaders in the computer games industry.

    And it will be taught from September this year – much shorter and less prescriptive than the old, discredited ICT curriculum, allowing schools room to innovate, and be much, much more ambitious.

    ICT used to focus purely on computer literacy – teaching pupils, over and over again, how to word process, how to work a spreadsheet, how to use programs already creaking into obsolescence; about as much use as teaching children to send a telex or travel in a zeppelin.

    Now, our new curriculum teaches children computer science, information technology, and digital literacy: teaching them how to code, and how to create their own programs; not just how to work a computer; but how a computer works, and how to make it work for you.

    From 5, children will learn to code and program, with algorithms, sequencing, selection and repetition; from 11, how to use at least 2 programming languages to solve computational problems; to design, use and evaluate computational abstractions that model the state and behaviour of real-world problems and physical systems; and how instructions are stored and executed within a computer system.

    These are precisely the sort of skills which the jobs of the future – and, for that matter, the jobs of the present – demand. From now on, our reforms will ensure that every child gets a solid grounding in these essential skills – giving them the best possible start to their future.

    And, as I promised 2 years ago, the new computer science GCSEs – having been judged to be sufficiently stretching and high-quality – will be included in the English Baccalaureate from this summer, giving schools, teachers, parents and pupils unequivocal proof of how vital this subject truly is.

    With a highly trained workforce

    But as I said back in 2012, nothing has a shorter shelf life than the cutting edge.

    And even as technology advances by leaps and bounds, nothing could be more essential than to make sure that the teachers in our classrooms are properly prepared to make the most of every opportunity.

    So we’ve replaced the old ICT initial teacher training schemes with new computer science ITT courses – more demanding, to match our more demanding curriculum.

    There are now more and bigger bursaries available to those wanting to become computing teachers – commensurate only with the bursaries for maths and physics.

    But this isn’t just about new recruits, but seasoned old hands too. So we have funded Computing At School through the British Computer Society – with generous pro bono support from organisations including Microsoft and Google – to establish a national network of teaching excellence for computer science teachers.

    Forging links between teachers, schools, universities and employers, the network is already working hard to recruit 400 ‘master teachers’ right at the top of their computer science game, who will be able to train up teachers in other schools in their turn; and to develop a comprehensive set of resources across all key stages, ready for any computer science teacher to use in their own classrooms.

    In December last year, we also announced that we would be giving more funding to Computing At School and the British Computer Society to deliver the Barefoot Computing programme of resources and workshops, designed to give primary school teachers with little or no experience of teaching the computer science aspects of the new computing curriculum the subject knowledge and – just as importantly – the confidence to do so when the new curriculum starts.

    Inspiring the next generation

    Teachers will be in the vanguard of this change – not just equipping young people with crucial computing skills and knowledge, but inspiring them with the incredible possibilities opened up by science and technology.

    Like 3D printers. Over the last few years, they have developed from an expensive, experimental toy to a tried and tested technology: embraced by the industrial world for rapid prototypes and bespoke manufactures; used last year to create the first ever fully functional living human kidney.

    Our new design and technology curriculum – backed by world-famous British inventor Sir James Dyson – has been redesigned to enable students to master the skills needed to create new products with 3D printers alongside other advanced technological skills and techniques, including robotics.

    So after a pilot across 21 schools in 2012 to 2013, last October we announced a new scheme inviting teaching schools all over England to apply for a 3D printer and up to £5,000 funding – for use not just in design and technology lessons, but across the sciences, computing, engineering, maths and design; and for the development of top-quality CPD, for use within and beyond their teaching school alliances.

    Schools in the pilot used their 3D printers in a host of imaginative ways – to help teach the properties of plastics, to build models of things like molecules, eyeballs, cells and sine waves, to practice and prove calculations for the volume of 3D shapes like cones, and even to build components for rockets – giving young people from all sorts of backgrounds, in all sorts of schools, the opportunity to explore and experiment with the very latest technology.

    Making the most of MOOCs

    That’s just one inspirational project – and there are many more.

    But just as important are the technologies that are changing the way we think about education itself.

    Innovative, transformative educational technology – like the products and ideas showcased at this exhibition – is already transforming education; has already transformed education; in ways that we could barely predict 2 years ago, and could never have imagined 50 years ago.

    This technological change is – by its very nature – disruptive, endlessly innovative and driven from the bottom up.

    So precisely the wrong way to react to the transformative opportunities offered by educational technology would be for government to try to dictate, from the centre, every last detail of how schools should respond.

    Government regulation cannot keep pace with the scale of change technology brings. When I spoke here 2 years ago Instagram and Snapchat had barely been heard of, now they’re mainstream. How can government departments legislate for and regulate innovations which develop at such speed?

    So, just as we’ve done in the curriculum, we are determined to give schools and teachers the freedom and autonomy to keep their eyes open for the next opportunity, the next development; and to recognise and react to it, when it comes.

    No government, for example, could ever have imagined the impact that Sebastian Thrun is having on 21st century education.

    As many of you will already know, he decided in 2011 to put his entire Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Stanford course online, for anyone, for free – exponentially increasing the number of students he could personally reach and teach.

    Over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled – and at a stroke, learning was liberated from the traditional strongholds of knowledge, to become open source and equal opportunity.

    Just a few years on, MOOCs – massive open online courses like his, and those on Andrew Ng’s Coursera, FutureLearn and iTunes U – are transforming the world of education, opening world-leading courses at highly prestigious universities – previously, only available to a privileged few – to anyone in the world, anywhere in the world, with an internet connection and a thirst to learn.

    Just last week saw the start of what Udacity (Thrun’s post-Stanford project) claims is the world’s first ever MOOC degree programme, jointly developed with AT&T and Georgia Tech university – a course which they say costs less than 20% of the price of an on-campus education, and is attracting students with an average age of 35.

    Obviously in such a fast-changing new field, there are teething problems.

    Some point out that the most motivated students get the most out of MOOCs while many others drop out.

    In response, Thrun has done something very interesting – instead of making his MOOCs more like universities, he is following a different path.

    Udacity is now working very closely with employers such as Cloudera, Salesforce and Google to co-design new courses that deliver the precise skills that the companies want, like Big Data analytics – courses which, in Udacity’s own words, aren’t just cutting edge but “bleeding edge, often way beyond the materials taught by universities”.

    However these experiments play out, they are already changing how universities – and, very soon, schools – operate.

    So when we recently consulted on our new accountability system for 16- to 19-year-olds, we made sure to ask about the possibility of using MOOCs to support learning for 16- to 19-year-olds, and recognising the best online courses in our new accountability system. We’re looking at the responses to that consultation now – and will provide an update as soon as we can.

    Because these changes are already happening.

    OCR recently launched a MOOC to support their new computing GCSE – in collaboration with the brilliant British tech business, Raspberry Pi – designed for students and teachers alike. Young people can register as individuals and study the course in their own time; teachers can use it while teaching the normal syllabus.

    And as part of the Rutherford School Physics Project, we are funding Cambridge University to develop a MOOC to support the transition between A level physics and undergraduate physics, engineering and maths – allowing students to get a head start on their course, long before freshers’ week even begins.

    These courses are an unparalleled opportunity for the brightest and best education institutions to open their classrooms and their content to more people than ever before – democratising education for the 21st century.

    Conclusion

    Even as I stand here talking about MOOCs and 3D printers, somewhere outside this room – or possibly, if any of you are sneakily working on your phone or tablets, somewhere inside this room – the next unimaginable, unpredictable innovation is about to arrive and transform education all over again.

    None of us can know what lies ahead – all we can do is equip ourselves, and more importantly, our children, with essential building blocks of knowledge, whether that’s mathematical principles many millennia in the making or an intricate computer code younger even than our youngest school pupils.

    Today’s conference is a brilliant opportunity to see, try and feel – whether in this, virtual or augmented reality – the sort of technologies, services and products which are already changing classrooms, and might go on to change the world.

    Thank you again to BETT, to all exhibitors, and to every innovator and inventor who has brought us here today – and I wish the conference every possible success.

  • Charles Walker – 2021 Speech on Specialist Care for Young People

    Charles Walker – 2021 Speech on Specialist Care for Young People

    The speech made by Charles Walker, the Conservative MP for Broxbourne, in the House of Commons on 10 December 2021.

    Sadly, some children and young people are not able to live safely with their families. The significant majority of these children have experienced trauma at a point during their developmental years, resulting in a range of behaviours, many of which cause distress to them or others. Those behaviours include self-harm and an increased vulnerability to criminal exploitation.

    If a young person is unable to live safely at home, he or she may come into the care of the local authority or require hospital care. There is currently an insufficient supply of specialist care to meet the needs of such young people. As a result of the challenges posed by covid-19, health and social care professionals describe an unprecedented level of complexity and acuity of need, making an already difficult situation worse.

    When a young person comes into care they will require either a children’s home, with staff skilled and experienced in meeting complex needs, or in some instances a court-directed placement into a secure unit, to keep them safe. Over the past 18 months, Hertfordshire children’s service has made three applications to the national secure bed bank. Despite repeated referrals, a secure placement was achieved for only one child. The most recent referral was made approximately six weeks ago, and on that occasion the local authority was advised that there were 50 referrals for only four available beds. That means that a secure bed was not available for 46 young people who had been assessed as requiring such accommodation to keep them safe. In each of those cases, the relevant authorities, including Hertfordshire, were required to make their own arrangements while the secure referral remained active.

    Increasingly, local authorities turn to the courts for a deprivation of liberty order in the absence of more appropriate secure placements. Such orders are sought as a last resort, even though when granted they can place local authorities in the invidious position of having knowingly to place children in environments that are not best suited or equipped to meet their complex needs. Similarly, young people who require psychiatric hospital care find such care unavailable because of a shortage of appropriate hospital beds. In Hertfordshire, a number of young people have been assessed as detainable under the Mental Health Act 1983 and are waiting for appropriate hospital beds. The number waiting for a placement often rests at around 10 children, which means that in each of their cases their needs are not being met.

    Despite people’s best efforts, the whole system is creaking because it is unable to cope with the demand. Problems with recruitment and the increasing complexity of some children’s needs mean that Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission too often find themselves in the position of having to close providers down, or reduce their bed capacity. It is important to note that there is a difference between physical beds and usable beds. Many beds are not in service because, in meeting the increasingly complex needs of children in care, there is not the staff capacity safely to service all the available beds in a home.

    Not only is the current situation having a detrimental impact on young people, but its impact on the public purse is significant. Delivering bespoke care to a young person, often through a commissioned provider, is very expensive, particularly because these young people, due to the risks they present, will require high staffing levels. Placements are expensive: they can cost from £4,500 a week to upwards of £30,000 a week. Often, a child who has difficulty accessing support further down the needs scale quickly ends up requiring a far most costly set of interventions and specialist care.

    It is of course important to intervene early to work with young people in the community to prevent family breakdown and the escalation of needs, but the current placement situation must be addressed, so in this debate I wish to ask regulators to work with the care sector to reopen closed beds through the development of a specialist taskforce that supports providers—be they mental health providers, social care providers or specialist schools—that struggle to deliver good-quality care. Alongside such efforts, we should make a national intervention to reassure providers that their Ofsted rating will not be negatively impacted if they admit children with the most challenging of needs. Too often, specialist care providers will refuse these children because they are concerned that if a child absconds or creates a high level of service demand, that will negatively affect their Ofsted rating.

    We also need a national campaign both to challenge the stereotypes about children in care and to recruit residential childcare officers. Such schemes are already in place for fostering and adoption, and we have Teach First and Think Ahead. A similar programme now needs to be introduced to attract people into child social care and, in particular, the care of children with high levels of need.

    Backing up this recruitment drive, we need a programme of support to design children’s homes that can accommodate children with the most complex needs but, as I have already said, without extra specialist staff the Government programme to match fund local authorities to develop new children’s homes will face significant challenges. New homes require skilled staff if they are to be viable. Also, in wanting to build new specialist homes, we need to appeal to the better part of people’s human nature, as too many of these specialist homes, when they come up for planning approval, are opposed by local communities.

    When it comes to registering specialist residential care homes and facilities, we need to find a way of expediting the Ofsted registration process, which can take upwards of three months. In an emergency, a local authority will sometimes use one of its bedroomed properties as a care setting for a vulnerable child or adolescent, with a rota of specialist social care staff in attendance. Without Ofsted registration, such facilities will be operating outside the regulatory framework.

    Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)

    I hear my hon. Friend’s point about care in the community, which is essential and something we need to focus on. Children and young people with complex needs too often end up in hospital, which is not the right place for them, as they end up being affected by people in hospital with other issues. Care in the community is essential. How can we give local authorities the onus and the investment to make this happen?

    Sir Charles Walker

    I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I will come on to that. We need to have the right setting delivering the right care—the care that the child needs. The child needs to be at the centre of that care.

    How does a care emergency arise? That question is often put to me. Beyond the national shortage of beds, a provider can notify a local authority, with only a few hours’ notice, that it will be terminating a young person’s placement in its facility. They can say, “In just a few hours, you will have this child back. This child is now your problem again.” This practice needs to be eliminated, but eliminating it will only alleviate the need for the provision of emergency accommodation and care; it will not end it. That will be done only through the provision of more beds, in both the social care sector and the psychiatric care sector. In the psychiatric care sector, it is not just the overall quantum of beds that counts; it is also the type of bed. These will cover general adolescent units, eating disorders, low-secure units and psychiatric intensive care units.

    Almost all the concerns I have highlighted and will highlight this afternoon were identified in Sir Martin Narey’s independent review of residential care and in the Government’s response of 2016. We need to implement the findings of this report and tie them into a review of the Care Standards Act 2000 and the children’s homes regulations.

    If anyone watching or listening to this debate wants to learn more about what is happening in this sector, I refer them to an excellent report by the BBC correspondent Sanchia Berg that can be found on the BBC website, dated 12 November, “The court orders depriving vulnerable children of their ‘liberty’”. The report contains harrowing accounts of what is happening, and they are framed throughout by the concerns of the High Court judge Sir Alistair MacDonald, who is deeply concerned about what he is witnessing in the courts and family courts.

    Let me return to Sir Martin Narey’s independent review. Beyond its implementation, we need better joined-up care between the NHS and local authorities. The continuing healthcare framework has much to recommend it in relation to children and adolescents, but it is still heavily slanted towards their physical health. A robust commitment to parity of esteem would see the framework cover clinically diagnosed mental illness, as well as the challenges caused by trauma, attachment difficulties and, increasingly, autism. Let me say, as an aside, that all Department of Health legislation should make it perfectly clear that health means mental health and physical health; we cannot have one without the other.

    Why is mental health so important? There are still far too many lengthy debates between local authorities and the NHS as to whether a child is suffering from a mental illness or a behavioural difficulty. To many, this seems like dancing on the head of a pin, as the debate does not change the fact that at the heart of the discussion is a child in crisis, as referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Darren Henry). A good solution has to be more joint commissioning between health, education and care providers, thereby removing barriers to joint funding. An example of best practice can be found in my own county of Hertfordshire, where we are opening up a three-bed unit that will be jointly staffed by social care professionals and mental health professionals. Perhaps this initiative could pave the way for a national programme of hybrid mental health children’s homes, with a hybrid model of worker.

    I must conclude by returning to staffing and recruitment. There really is a need for an enhanced programme of training for residential workers that recognises the unique challenges of the role and the high level of skill required to deliver an effective service. Residential work currently requires a lesser qualification than social work, yet those working in residential settings have significantly more direct contact with the most vulnerable children with the most complex needs. Better training would lead to better pay and an enhanced profile, thereby making the role a career of choice and one which is attractive to graduates.

    I have made these recommendations and observations today on behalf of the excellent Hertfordshire County Council, which does a fabulous job across my county, and, of course, on behalf of the children for which it cares. Both Hertfordshire County Council and I want to support the Government’s programme to develop more beds in the secure estate, but we want an estate that is compassionate and able to provide the high levels of care and support that I know, the Minister knows and Madam Deputy Speaker knows, it wants to provide.

  • Liz Truss – 2021 Comments on Hosting G7

    Liz Truss – 2021 Comments on Hosting G7

    The comments made by Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, on 11 December 2021.

    This weekend the world’s most influential democracies will take a stand against aggressors who seek to undermine liberty and send a clear message that we are a united front.

    I want G7 countries to deepen ties in areas like trade, investment, technology and security so we can defend and advance freedom and democracy across the world. I will be pushing that point over the next few days.

  • Christopher Pincher – 2021 Statement on the Delivery Supply Chain

    Christopher Pincher – 2021 Statement on the Delivery Supply Chain

    The statement made by Christopher Pincher, the Minister for Housing, in the House of Commons on 10 December 2021.

    I wish to update the House on the measures the Government are taking to facilitate flexibility within the delivery supply chain and mitigate challenges faced by construction sites.

    Due to the covid pandemic, the logistics sector is facing an exceptional challenge resulting from the acute shortage of HGV drivers across the distribution network. This has resulted in missed deliveries which have the potential to lead to significant shortages and hinder economic growth.

    Through a previous written ministerial statement made by the former Secretary of State, dated 15 July 2021, the Government responded to these pressures proactively by ensuring the industry had the tools available to adapt effectively and minimise any disruption to the public. The statement made it clear that local planning authorities should take a positive approach to their engagement with food retailers and distributors, as well as the freight industry, to ensure planning controls are not a barrier to deliveries of food, sanitary and other essential goods.

    I am now expanding the scope of these measures. The purpose of this written ministerial statement, which comes into effect immediately, is to make it clear that local planning authorities should take a positive approach to their engagement with all supply chain stakeholders to ensure planning controls are not a barrier to the supply of all goods and services.

    Many commercial activities in England are subject to controls which restrict the time and number of deliveries from lorries and other delivery vehicles, particularly during evenings and at night. These restrictions may be imposed by planning conditions, which are necessary to make the development acceptable to local residents who might otherwise suffer from traffic, noise and other local amenity issues. However, this needs to be balanced with the public interest, for all residents, to have access to shops which are well stocked.

    The National Planning Policy Framework already emphasises that planning enforcement is a discretionary activity, and local planning authorities should act proportionately in responding to suspected breaches of planning control.

    Local planning authorities should not seek to undertake planning enforcement action which would result in unnecessarily restricting deliveries, having regard to their legal obligations.

    Construction output has also been inconsistent in recent months and not returned to pre-February 2020 levels. Construction sites in England may also be subject to controls which restrict the hours within which they can operate. Wherever possible, local planning authorities should respond positively to requests for flexibility for operation of construction sites to support the sector’s recovery.

    The Government recognise that it may be necessary for action to be taken in relation to the impacts on neighbours of sustained disturbance due to deliveries and construction outside of conditioned hours, particularly where this affects sleep. In this case a local planning authority should consider any efforts made to manage and mitigate such disturbance, taking into account the degree and longevity of amenity impacts.

    This statement will replace all the previous statements on these matters.

    This written ministerial statement only covers England and will expire on 30 September 2022, giving direction to the industry and local planning authorities over the next 10 months. We will keep the need for this statement under review.

  • Victoria Prentis – 2021 Statement on Fisheries Annual Negotiations

    Victoria Prentis – 2021 Statement on Fisheries Annual Negotiations

    The statement made by Victoria Prentis, the Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food, in the House of Commons on 10 December 2021.

    At the time of writing, annual negotiations on fisheries are ongoing between: the UK, EU and Norway (the Trilateral); the UK and the EU; the UK and Norway; and the UK and the Faroes Islands.

    As regards the Trilateral, which will determine catch limits for six jointly managed stocks in the North Sea (cod, haddock, saithe, whiting, plaice, herring), discussions have been fruitful and we expect agreement between the three parties to be reached later this afternoon (Friday 10 December).

    Bilateral negotiations between the UK and the EU on 2022 fishing opportunities on jointly managed stocks are ongoing. Discussions have been constructive so far and there is opportunity to intensify talks before 20 December if necessary.

    We are continuing to discuss possible exchanges of fishing opportunities with Norway and the Faroes. If there are agreements to be reached, of which we remain optimistic, we hope to conclude them in the next few weeks.

    We have also concluded a number of other negotiations this year, including in Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) and on catch limits for three straddling species (mackerel, Atlanto-scandian herring, and blue whiting) with coastal State partners in the North East Atlantic.

  • Nigel Huddleston – 2021 Statement on Concussion in Sport

    Nigel Huddleston – 2021 Statement on Concussion in Sport

    The statement made by Nigel Huddleston, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in the House of Commons on 10 December 2021.

    I wish to inform the House that the Government have today published their response to the report by the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee into concussion in sport.

    Sport is a central part of our national identity and culture. The welfare and safety of everybody taking part in sport is of paramount importance, and the Government are committed to taking action to reduce the risks involved. The actions set out in this report do not represent the final word on the subject and we recognise there is more work to do to continue to make sport as safe as possible for all those who participate in it.

    The Government are grateful to the DCMS Select Committee for undertaking its extensive inquiry into concussion in sport. The Committee’s report has reinforced the importance of the topic and provided valuable insights that have helped inform the Government’s thinking.

    Our response outlines the Government’s approach to reducing the risks associated with concussion and head injuries in sport. This will involve working with partners from across the sport, health, education, academic and technology sectors.

    A full response to each of the Committee’s recommendations is also provided in a separate annex to the report.

    Within the report, the Government have committed to:

    Commission a set of shared high-level protocols around concussion in sport across the UK.

    Write to UK Sport and Sport England to explore ensuring funded bodies make use of these shared protocols.

    Work across Departments to improve the protocols and pathways for use in treating concussion in sport injuries in NHS A&E settings.

    Direct sports to work with Player Associations on training protocols for players’ long-term welfare.

    Convene a sports concussion research forum of experts to identify the priority research questions and improve the coordination with research funding bodies.

    Write to National Governing Bodies to emphasise the importance of player welfare (including concussion) when formulating their governance procedures.

    A copy of the Government response to the DCMS Select Committee report will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

  • Sajid Javid – 2021 Comments on Social Care

    Sajid Javid – 2021 Comments on Social Care

    The comments made by Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on 10 December 2021.

    Throughout the pandemic we have done everything we can to protect the adult social care sector, and the emergence of the Omicron variant means this is more important than ever.

    This new funding will support our incredible workforce by recruiting new staff and rewarding those who have done so much during this pandemic.

    Boosting the booster rollout in social care and updating the visiting guidance will help keep the most vulnerable people in our society safe from the virus this winter.

  • Ben Wallace – 2021 Statement on UK Troops Assisting Poland

    Ben Wallace – 2021 Statement on UK Troops Assisting Poland

    The statement made by Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State for Defence, in the House of Commons on 9 December 2021.

    I am today informing the House of the deployment of UK military personnel to Poland to provide assistance to the Polish armed forces.

    For a number of months Poland, along with their Baltic neighbours Latvia and Lithuania, have been under significant pressure from irregular migration originating across their border with Belarus, and facilitated by the Lukashenko regime. Poland has every right to protect its borders within international law in the face of an unprecedented and volatile situation. The UK is committed to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with our close allies as part of our commitment to European security.

    For this reason, the UK is deploying a squadron of Royal Engineers, along with associated support elements, to Poland in order to support Polish troops with specific engineering tasks. This follows the deployment on 11 November 2021 of an initial engineer reconnaissance element. This is not a combat deployment.

    This engineer squadron will be in addition to, but separate from, the 150 UK personnel based in Poland since 2017 as part of the US-led multinational battlegroup under NATO’s enhanced forward presence. The engineering personnel will be deploying on a bilateral basis, as UK national activity in support of a close ally. They are not deploying as part of a NATO response or operation and will not be under NATO command or control. The engineers are planned to be deployed until the end of April 2022.

  • Michael Ellis – 2021 Statement on Review of Retained EU Law

    Michael Ellis – 2021 Statement on Review of Retained EU Law

    The statement made by Michael Ellis, the Paymaster General, in the House of Commons on 9 December 2021.

    My noble Friend the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Lord Frost CMG, has today made the following ministerial statement:

    On 16th September 2021 I announced a review of “retained EU law” (REUL). This refers to the very many pieces of EU legislation which have flowed into the UK legal system during our EU membership, through the European Communities Act 1972 as an obligation of membership and without any ability for Parliament to change them. It also covers EU case law and principles. To ensure continuity and certainty immediately after Brexit, REUL was taken onto our own statute book through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act of 2018.

    However, while this was an important short-term bridging measure, it does not represent the right long-term end point for the UK and our statute book. Many laws that were retained are not necessarily right for the UK as an independent country, and there are anomalies and uncertainties which remain over the precise status of REUL as part of the UK’s domestic law. Accordingly, we have now launched two reviews: the first into the substance of REUL, and the second into its status in law. This statement sets out the progress that has been made so far and the next steps.

    Our overall intention remains, in time, to amend, replace, or repeal all the REUL that is not right for the UK.

    On the substance review, I have directed Government departments to establish the content of REUL in policy areas for which they are responsible, and to consult stakeholders as necessary. There is no authoritative assessment by Government of which policy areas are most affected by REUL. This first review will deliver such an assessment, and enable us to establish which sectors of the economy and which departments are most affected by REUL.

    On the second review, into the legal status of REUL, we have identified the following seven areas where EU law concepts, retained by the EU Withdrawal Act, still affect the UK even though we have left the EU:

    Under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, rights under treaties and directives which had direct effect in UK law whilst we were a member state have been incorporated into domestic law. Many of these rights—like respect for human rights and equal pay for men and women—replicate rights that were already part of UK law, separately from our EU membership. We want to ensure, to the extent appropriate, that the UK law-derived rights relied on in our legal system are not confused or overlaid with EU-derived rights. If required, we will also clarify the scope of directly effective rights in directives, saved as REUL under section 4 of the Act, to make it clear that only those rights which have already been recognised by the CJEU or the UK courts are incorporated.

    Even though we have left the EU, the UK courts are still required to interpret REUL in accordance with retained general principles of EU law, such as proportionality and the protection of legitimate expectations, so far as those principles are relevant. These general principles have developed in the EU over the years to apply to the laws as they exist in the EU system. But REUL is now UK law derived from EU sources, so we need to consider whether this new body of UK law should be interpreted under UK principles of interpretation, or under those that apply to the EU treaties and legislation developed for member states.

    Currently, under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, REUL has a special and unusual status in UK law. Whatever its original EU legislative form (for example, a regulation or treaty article), for some purposes REUL is treated as UK primary legislation, and in other cases its status depends on its original form (with a significant number automatically accorded the status of primary legislation). Accordingly, we will be revisiting the legislative framework in the European Union Withdrawal Act and the operation of such REUL, so that it is given a more appropriate status within the UK legal system for the purposes of amendment and repeal. That status should reflect the fact that Parliament had no ability to block or amend such legislation once agreed in Brussels, indeed it often had no meaningful democratic scrutiny in the UK at all. Accordingly, this aspect of the review will consider whether, and if so, how, REUL could be amended or repealed by an accelerated process, with appropriate oversight, given the unsatisfactory nature of its original incorporation.

    The EU concept of the ‘supremacy of EU law’—which forces all other UK legislation to be interpreted so as to give way to EU law where there is a conflict (even if EU law was overridden by subsequent non-EU sourced UK law)—has been preserved by the 2018 Act so far as relevant to the interpretation, disapplication or quashing of domestic law passed or made before the end of the transitional period. This interpretative concept is alien to the UK legislative principles, whereby later parliaments (and their laws) can override earlier parliaments. This concept never sat well with our long established democratic and parliamentary traditions, and now we have left the EU is clearly no longer appropriate. We will consider the issue and it is likely that we will propose removing the concept from the statute book.

    Under the 2018 Act, in interpreting REUL, UK courts remain bound by EU courts and their decisions issued before the transition period ended. Only the Supreme Court or certain appellate courts have the power to depart from such case law. REUL is UK law which is derived from a (now) foreign source. In all other cases, when UK legislation draws on foreign models, its courts are not bound by foreign case law, although it may be persuasive. Accordingly, we need to consider the anomalous status of EU case law, and we will be revisiting the issue of which UK courts should be able to depart from retained EU case law, and on what basis.

    The Court of Justice of the EU may, from time to time, declare an EU instrument invalid under EU law. In addition to the general process for addressing REUL which is no longer right for the UK, we propose to ensure that the retained version can be swiftly removed when the original EU law measure has been declared invalid under EU law.

    The review will also consider any consequential actions, such as updated guidance relating to the courts (for example, on the treatment of EU case law) and the place of EU law in legal education.

    We will continue to develop policy proposals at pace. My officials will be consulting widely with internal and external stakeholders, including from the judiciary, legal practice, academia, and industry to ensure that any proposed legislative and non-legislative solutions are thoroughly tested.

    We will incorporate Parliament’s views, including through targeted engagement with select committees, to ensure the outcomes of the review into REUL status are robust. Our aim will be to issue proposals in the spring, and legislate as soon as parliamentary time allows.

    Any individual or group with relevant expertise that wishes to be involved in this review should contact the Brexit Opportunities Unit in the Cabinet Office.

  • Alex Chalk – 2021 Comments on Sentencing of Alfie Spain and Freddie Hanratty

    Alex Chalk – 2021 Comments on Sentencing of Alfie Spain and Freddie Hanratty

    The comments made by Alex Chalk, the Solicitor General, on 10 December 2021.

    Spain and Hanratty set off from London with the sole intention of committing these violent robberies. They inflicted a terrible ordeal on the occupants of the properties they targeted, and the victims will be suffering the effects for a long time. I hope the Court’s decision to increase these sentences can bring some comfort to all of those affected.