Tag: Press Release

PRESS RELEASE : Russia has chosen a path of depravity over humanity – UK statement to the OSCE [January 2023]

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 25 January 2023.

Ian Stubbs (UK delegation) says Putin’s horrific war of choice has created a legacy for which millions will be forced to bear the cost of for years to come.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Over these past weeks, heavy and attritional fighting has continued, especially around the Donetsk Oblast town of Bakhmut, and in the less reported-on sector of Kremina, in Luhansk. In the south, in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, both sides have massed significant forces, which have conducted artillery exchanges and skirmishes, but have avoided any large-scale offensive effort.

Frustrated by lack of progress, Putin has sought to reconsolidate his military power base. However, we continue to see evidence of tension between the military leadership and Wagner Head, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Despite these clear tensions, the Wagner Group has been increasingly relied upon to fill the void where the Russian military cannot. Wagner has become a key component of the Ukraine campaign. It now almost certainly commands up to 50,000 fighters in Ukraine. At least 40,000 of these appear to be convicts recruited from prisons and penal colonies – this means approximately one quarter of all Russian personnel serving in Ukraine are convicts recruited by Wagner. This is yet more evidence of President Putin and his military leadership scrambling to provide numbers in place of trained fighters and effective leadership.

Mr Chair, in the FSC exactly a year ago we discussed “Compliance with International Humanitarian Law and Protection of Civilians”. During that meeting, my Russian colleague stated that: “Humanity, including on the battlefield, is a hallmark of civilized behaviour by States.” For once, we agree.

However, Russia’s actions over the last year show that it has chosen a path of depravity over humanity. It has demonstrated complete disregard for International Humanitarian Law; it has unleashed horrendous violence, conducting heinous attacks impacting on civilians and civilian infrastructure; and it has demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice its own people in their thousands to try and overcome persistent and institutional poor decision making by the Kremlin. Putin’s horrific war of choice has created a legacy for which millions will be forced to bear the cost of for years to come.

Mr Chair, on 19 January the Defence Ministers of Estonia, the United Kingdom, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania; and the representatives of Denmark, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Slovakia met to reaffirm our continued determination and resolve to supporting Ukraine in their heroic resistance against Russia’s illegal and unprovoked aggression. At this meeting, we recognised that equipping Ukraine to push Russia out of Ukrainian territory is as important as equipping them to defend what they already have. The new level of combat power required by Ukraine is only achieved by combinations of main battle tank squadrons, beneath air and missile defence, operating alongside divisional artillery groups, and further deep precision fires enabling targeting of Russian logistics and command nodes in temporarily Russian controlled territory.

The United Kingdom’s accelerated package consists of a squadron of Challenger 2 tanks with armoured recovery and repair vehicles; AS90 self-propelled 155mm guns; hundreds more armoured and protected vehicles; a manoeuvre support package, including minefield breaching and bridging capabilities; dozens more un-crewed aerial systems to support Ukrainian artillery; another 100,000 artillery rounds; hundreds more sophisticated missiles including GMLRS rockets, Starstreak air defence missiles, and medium range air defence missiles; 600 Brimstone anti-tank munitions; an equipment support package of spares to refurbish up to a hundred Ukrainian tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. The package is further augmented by continuing basic training and junior leadership training for the AFU in the UK with 9 International partners, with the aim of training around a further 20,000 AFU personnel in 2023.

Mr Chair, we do not underestimate the continuing threat posed by the Russian Federation but, in time, there will be cause for Ukraine to celebrate. Ukraine will continue to demonstrate their resolute courage, determination and enduring moral strength as they fight to liberate more of their homeland. Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence will be fully restored. Thank you.

January 26, 2023
PRESS RELEASE : Dangerous driver, Luis Fernando Balcazar Soto, will spend longer in prison [January 2023]

The press release issued by the Attorney General’s office on 25 January 2023.

A dangerous driver who caused the death of 31-year-old Sophie Strickland will serve a longer prison sentence after the Solicitor General Michael Tomlinson KC MP presented the case at the Court of Appeal.

In the early hours of 10 July 2022, Luis Fernando Balcazar Soto, 25, lost control of the vehicle he was driving and collided with a rickshaw which was parked at the side of the road.

The passenger in the rickshaw, Sophie Strickland, suffered catastrophic injuries as a result, and despite the best efforts of the emergency services she was pronounced dead at the scene of the crash.

The driver of the rickshaw, Tanvir Ahmed, survived but was left with life-changing injuries.

At the time of the crash, Balcazar Soto, from South East London, was driving with a passenger he was prohibited from contacting under the terms of a Restraining Order.

He was driving up to nearly twice the speed limit prior to the crash and was found to have alcohol in his system when arrested.

On 1 November 2022, Balcazar Soto was sentenced to 9 years and 9 months’ imprisonment at Southwark Crown Court for causing death by dangerous driving, causing serious injury by dangerous driving, breach of a Restraining Order and breach of a suspended sentence.

His sentence was then referred to the Court of Appeal by the Solicitor General as Unduly Lenient.

On 25 January 2023 Balcazar Soto’s original sentence was quashed and substituted by a total sentence of 12 years and 9 months’ imprisonment.

The Solicitor General Michael Tomlinson KC MP said:

Today all my thoughts are with the family and friends of Sophie Strickland, whose life was so tragically cut short by the criminally dangerous driving of Luis Fernando Balcazar Soto. I want to pay tribute to Sophie’s family, who have shown immense strength and courage during such a desperately difficult time.

I referred this case to the Court of Appeal and chose to personally present it because I believed the original sentence was Unduly Lenient. I’m pleased that the court has ordered Luis Fernando Balcazar Soto serve a prison term which is a more appropriate reflection of the dreadful harm that he has caused.

January 26, 2023
PRESS RELEASE : £4.6 million UK Government funding for North Lanarkshire [January 2023]
The press release issued by the Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland on 25 January 2023.

£30 million going to seven new regional projects across the UK to boost innovation in decarbonising roads.

Future roads could be built using asphalt made from grass cuttings and ‘carbon capturing’ cement, supported by £30 million UK Government funding awarded to seven innovative, net zero projects.

North Lanarkshire is one of the schemes spread across the UK to have been awarded funding today through the Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads competition. The programme supports projects led by Local Highways Authorities focused on tackling the long-term decarbonisation of highways infrastructure, such as streetlights, and transforming local authorities’ approach to decarbonising roads.

Building a decarbonised road network requires materials that can stand up to the requirements and are innovative in combating carbon emissions. North Lanarkshire Council’s project will look to create a centre that will develop a materials testing programme to identify and deploy the latest tech for road construction, in addition to testing and deploying recycled materials from other industries to build roads.

UK Government Minister for Scotland John Lamont said:

It’s great to see Scottish expertise leading the way in developing innovative solutions for our drive to net zero.

Sharing £30 million UK Government investment with six other projects, North Lanarkshire Council – working with partners such as the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland, Clackmannanshire Council, Ayrshire Roads Alliance and Heriot Watt University – will use its £4.6 million allocation to help the UK become a global leader in making road networks green.

The testing they’ll carry out – including investigating how waste destined for landfill can be recycled – will help reduce the carbon footprint from the production, transportation and maintenance of road surfaces, signage, crash barriers and kerbs.

Roads Minister Richard Holden said:

The UK is a world leader in technology and innovation and we must use that strength to drive decarbonisation and the next generation of high-tech jobs that go alongside it. We are supporting this vital agenda to help level-up through £30 million funding for ground-breaking projects and boosting regional connections to support growth. The Government is determined to create good, well-paid jobs – via innovation and investment across the UK – as we accelerate the road to net zero.

Councillor Jim Logue, Leader of North Lanarkshire Council said:

North Lanarkshire Council, Transport for West Midlands and partners are delighted to be collaborating to create the UK Centre of Excellence for Materials Decarbonisation. This is an enormously important and innovative programme with a major focus on decarbonising all road types, changing how our sector works and reducing our impact on the environment, while meeting our collective objective for a net zero future.

We aim to be leaders in the UK in this field and the reference point for the promotion and knowledge share for decarbonisation in highways materials. As we progress, we hope to provide national standards for other public services and a tangible exportable asset for the UK.

Live Labs 2 is designed to ensure innovations are shared across the whole of the UK and bidders were encouraged to create partnerships across the public and private sector, and academia. As such, North Lanarkshire’s winning project successfully showed to be working across the four interconnected themes:
- A green carbon laboratory: Examining the role that non-operational highways ‘green’ assets can play in providing a source of materials and fuels to decarbonise highway operations, for example, using biomass from green waste to create alternative fuels and asphalt additives.
- A future lighting testbed: Researching the future of lighting for local roads to determine what is needed in the future and how they can be further decarbonised.
- A UK centre of excellence for materials: Providing a centralised hub for research and innovation that would help test construction materials and their use.
- Corridor and place-based decarbonisation: Working to create decarbonisation across specific, wider regions and corridors covering both urban and rural areas.
Live Labs 2 is funded by the Department for Transport (DfT) and organised by The Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport (ADEPT), which represents ‘directors of place’ who are responsible for providing day-to-day services, such as local highways, as well as strategic long-term delivery.

Mark Kemp, President of ADEPT, said:

Tackling the carbon impact of our highways’ infrastructure is critical to our path to net zero but hard to address, so I am pleased that bidding was so competitive. Live Labs 2 has a huge ambition – to fundamentally change how we embed decarbonisation into our decision-making and to share our learning with the wider sector to enable behaviour change. Each project will bring local authority led innovation and a collaborative approach to create a long-lasting transformation of business as usual.  I am looking forward to the opportunity to learn from our successful bidders and taking that into my own organisation.

This programme follows the previous and successful Live Labs 1, a £22.9 million innovation programme that focused on adoption of digital technology across local roads.
January 26, 2023
PRESS RELEASE : Statement from the Quad Syria Envoys [January 2023]

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 25 January 2023.

Representatives of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States met in Geneva with UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen on January 24.

We reaffirmed our steadfast support for UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen’s efforts to reach a political solution to the Syrian conflict in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2254.

We expressed our firm commitment to the implementation of all aspects of UNSCR 2254, including a nation-wide ceasefire, the release of any arbitrarily detained persons, free and fair elections, and the need to build conditions for the safe, dignified, and voluntary return of refugees and internally displaced persons, consistent with UN standards.

UNSCR 2254 remains the only viable solution to the conflict, and we look forward to working with partners in the region and opposition to engage fully under this framework, including the reciprocal step-for-step process, through the UN Special Envoy to ensure that a durable political solution remains within reach.

January 26, 2023
PRESS RELEASE : JCVI advises an autumn COVID-19 vaccine booster [January 2023]

The press release issued by the UK Health Security Agency on 25 January 2023.

In its interim advice to government on the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination programme for 2023, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has advised that plans should be made for those at higher risk of severe COVID-19 to be offered a booster vaccination this autumn (2023).

The JCVI also advised that for a smaller group of people, such as those who are older and those who are immunosuppressed, an extra booster vaccine dose in the spring should also be planned for. Advice regarding the spring 2023 COVID-19 programme will be provided shortly.

Emergency surge vaccine responses may be required should a novel variant of concern emerge with clinically significant biological differences compared to the Omicron variant.

Professor Wei Shen Lim, Chair of COVID-19 vaccination on the JCVI, said:

The COVID-19 vaccination programme continues to reduce severe disease across the population, while helping to protect the NHS.

That is why we have advised planning for further booster vaccines for persons at higher risk of serious illness through an autumn booster programme later this year.

We will very shortly also provide final advice on a spring booster programme for those at greatest risk.

The 2022 COVID-19 autumn booster vaccination campaign commenced in early September last year. The most recent coverage data (15 January 2023) of the autumn booster programme in those aged 50 years and over is 64.5% and 82.4% in those aged 75 years and over. By the end of summer 2022, the coverage of the 2022 spring booster programme was 77.3% in those aged 75 years and over.

Following high uptake rates for the initial (third) booster dose of COVID-19 vaccine in December 2021, further uptake has been low at less than 0.1% per week since April 2022 in all eligible people under 50 years of age.

Similarly, uptake of primary course vaccination, which has been widely available since 2021, has plateaued in recent months across all age groups.

As the transition continues away from a pandemic emergency response towards pandemic recovery, the JCVI has advised that the 2021 booster offer (third dose) for persons aged 16 to 49 years who are not in a clinical risk group should close in alignment with the close of the autumn 2022 booster vaccination campaign.

In England, the closure of the autumn booster campaign and the first booster offer will be on 12 February 2023. We strongly encourage everyone who is currently eligible for a first booster and is yet to come forward to do so before the offer closes.

Similarly, the JCVI is advising that the primary course COVID-19 vaccination should move, over the course of 2023, towards a more targeted offer during vaccination campaigns to protect those persons at higher risk of severe COVID-19. We strongly encourage individuals who have not had a primary course to come forward for their primary course before the offer closes.

The JCVI keeps all advice under constant review and will revise it according to the latest data and evidence.

In its 2023 statement, the JCVI also advises that research should be considered to inform the optimal timing of booster vaccinations to protect against severe COVID-19 for groups who are at different levels of clinical risk.

January 26, 2023
PRESS RELEASE : New Defence Export Advocate appointed to drive UK defence exports [January 2023]
The press release issued by the Department for International Trade on 25 January 2023.

Lord Lancaster appointed as the Government’s new Defence Export Advocate by the Trade Secretary, to drive the UK’s defence exports in a brand-new role.
- Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch appoints Army Reservist and former Defence Minister Mark Lancaster into brand-new role
- Lord Lancaster will engage with industry leaders, ministers and other key players both in the UK and overseas to drive UK defence exports
- UK is the world’s second-largest defence exporter, and its defence sector contributed £10.6 billion to the economy in 2020 – supporting 92,000 jobs
Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch has appointed Lord Mark Lancaster as the Government’s new Defence Export Advocate, to drive the UK’s export success across its world-class defence sector in a brand-new role.

Lord Lancaster – who will report directly to the Trade Secretary – will take on a programme of visits both overseas and at home to promote UK defence exports, developing relationships with industry leaders, foreign government ministers and other key industry players to create new export opportunities for UK firms.

He will also help drive defence export success in the UK, visiting key defence shows like Defence Security Equipment International (DSEI), Farnborough International Airshow and others, using his influence and experience to engage with key contacts such as defence company CEOs.

The UK’s defence sector is hugely important to the economy. In 2020, it supported over 92,000 full-time jobs across the country – including over 20,000 each in South West and North West England – areas where the sector makes a significant contribution to local economies, such as Gloucestershire and Cumbria.

In 2020 the sector also had a turnover of £25.3 billion, while the wider aerospace, defence and security sectors supported 415,000 direct jobs in 2022.

Lord Lancaster brings a wealth of specialist defence experience to the role – as an active Brigadier in the Army Reserves, and having served as a Defence Minister between 2015-2019. He was also previously a Major in the Territorial Army, having served as part of NATO peacekeeping forces in Kosovo and Bosnia.

Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch said:

The UK’s defence sector is worth billions in exports and drives growth, investment and jobs in every corner of the country, helping to grow our economy and moving us forward in the Race to a Trillion exports.

Mark knows that more exports and investment are just what this industry needs to boost jobs and help us stay ahead of the competition, and I’m delighted to have him on board to spearhead our efforts.

Defence Export Advocate Lord Lancaster said:

Our defence export sector makes a crucial contribution to the country, bringing advanced jobs, cutting-edge defence capabilities and investment to the UK.

I’m delighted to be taking on this role to boost our exports further, and help to cement the UK’s standing as a global leader in the defence sector.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said:

Our thriving defence industry is a national asset, worth billions of pounds, supporting our Armed Forces and driving growth, innovation and significant investment across the UK.

It’s right that we prioritise supporting British industry with a dedicated champion for UK defence exports, and Mark is the right man for the job.

Lord Lancaster will initially focus on defence export opportunities in Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and Qatar, as well as countries in NATO’s Eastern Flank – markets which DIT’s Defence and Security Exports Directorate, UK DSE, has identified as where Lord Lancaster will be able to make the biggest impact in his role.

The role of Defence Export Advocate is unpaid and similar to that of a Trade Envoy – but with a global remit, rather than focusing on any one geographic region.
January 25, 2023
PRESS RELEASE : £30 million government funding for innovative projects to decarbonise UK highways [January 2023]
The press release issued by the Department for Transport on 25 January 2023.

Funding for 7 local highways authorities to develop and use new technologies to reduce emissions, improve regional connectivity and move to net-zero local roads.
- £30 million going to 7 new regional projects across the UK to boost innovation in decarbonising roads
- winning projects include ‘carbon capturing’ cement and green waste being used to make asphalt
- projects aim to ensure the latest tech and innovations can reduce emissions, improve regional connectivity and accelerate the journey to net-zero local roads
Future roads could be built using asphalt made from grass cuttings and ‘carbon capturing’ cement, supported by £30 million government funding awarded to 7 innovative, net zero projects.

Seven projects spread across the UK, from Lanarkshire to Devon, have been awarded funding today through the Live Labs 2: Decarbonising Local Roads competition. The programme supports projects led by local highways authorities focused on tackling the long-term decarbonisation of highways infrastructure, such as streetlights, and transforming local authorities’ approach to decarbonising roads.

The winning projects include cutting carbon emissions from our streetlights to producing asphalt made from green waste like grass cuttings. Other projects plan to drive changes to the design, construction and maintenance of typical UK highway construction, as well as plans to develop a first-of-its-kind system approach to creating a net carbon negative model for green infrastructure delivery.

Roads Minister Richard Holden said:

The UK is a world leader in technology and innovation and we must use that strength to drive decarbonisation and the next generation of high tech jobs that go alongside it.

We are supporting this vital agenda to help level-up through £30 million funding for ground-breaking projects and boosting regional connections to support growth.

The government is determined to create good, well paid jobs – via innovation and investment across the UK – as we accelerate the road to net zero.

The 7 successful local highways authorities and their partners will be provided funding, subject to due diligence, to develop, test, pilot and roll out new technologies to facilitate decarbonisation, including in supply chain emissions. The 7 successful bids are:
- Highways CO2llaboration Centre for materials decarbonisation, Transport for West Midlands: supporting upskilling and developing a team in the West Midlands to decarbonise highways via 2 initiatives, including a ‘Highways CO2llaboration Centre’, and demonstrator sites showcasing and monitoring innovative decarbonised highway materials
- UK Centre of Excellence for Material Decarbonisation in Local Roads, North Lanarkshire Council: creating a centre that will develop a materials testing programme identifying and deploying the latest tech for road construction, in addition to testing and deploying recycled materials from other industries to build roads
- a net carbon-negative model for green infrastructure management, South Gloucestershire Council and West Sussex County Council: aims to develop a first-of-its-kind approach to creating a net carbon negative model for building and delivering green infrastructure, for example recycling biomass from green waste
- A382 Carbon Negative Project, Devon County Council: aims to drive changes to the design, construction and maintenance in typical aspects of highway construction to reduce carbon emissions, and to build a new link road including walking and cycling options
- Ecosystem of Things, Liverpool City Council: aims to introduce an ‘Ecosystem of Things’, exploring a scalable and transferrable approach to understanding various systems (including design, public spaces, materials/process technology, recycling infrastructure and the legal, contractual and procurement processes) at city level to embed and adopt decarbonisation initiatives
- decarbonising street lighting, East Riding of Yorkshire Council: plans to work on increasing efficiency for low carbon lighting to make sure they can still be clearly seen by drivers and to create a framework for an alternative manual for highway lighting, signing and road marking
- Net Zero Corridors, Wessex Partnership: will pioneer net zero roads that are built without creating more carbon emissions overall in Somerset, Cornwall, and Hampshire in 9 ‘net zero corridors’ linking rural and urban areas
Live Labs 2 is designed to ensure innovations are shared across the whole of the UK and bidders were encouraged to create partnerships across the public and private sector, and academia. As such, the winning projects will be working together across 4 interconnected themes, including:
- a green carbon laboratory: examining the role that non-operational highways ‘green’ assets can play in providing a source of materials and fuels to decarbonise highway operations, for example, using biomass from green waste to create alternative fuels and asphalt additives
- a future lighting testbed: researching the future of lighting for local roads to determine what is needed in the future and how they can be further decarbonised
- a UK centre of excellence for materials: providing a centralised hub for research and innovation that would help test construction materials and their use
- corridor and place-based decarbonisation: working to create decarbonisation across specific, wider regions and corridors covering both urban and rural areas
Live Labs 2 is funded by the Department of Transport (DfT) and organised by The Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport (ADEPT), which represents ‘directors of place’ who are responsible for providing day-to-day services, such as local highways, as well as strategic long-term delivery.

Mark Kemp, President of ADEPT, said:

Tackling the carbon impact of our highways’ infrastructure is critical to our path to net zero but hard to address, so I am pleased that bidding was so competitive. Live Labs 2 has a huge ambition – to fundamentally change how we embed decarbonisation into our decision-making and to share our learning with the wider sector to enable behaviour change. Each project will bring local authority led innovation and a collaborative approach to create a long-lasting transformation of business as usual. I am looking forward to the opportunity to learn from our successful bidders and taking that into my own organisation.

This programme follows the previous and successful Live Labs 1, a £22.9 million innovation programme that focused on adoption of digital technology across the local roads sector in England.
January 25, 2023
PRESS RELEASE : We must work together if we want to get girls’ education back on track – Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Girls’ Education [January 2023]

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 24 January 2023.

Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Girls’ Education Helen Grant delivered at statement at the UN on International Day of Education.

I am delighted to be here with you all on this fifth International Day of Education. I am extremely honoured to be the UK Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Girls’ Education. I must also agree with you, I am absolutely humbled to hear the testimony of those Afghan women. Brave, brave, women. I shall be taking their messages home with me, back to the UK.

My role as the UK Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Girls’ Global Education is to globally champion his message that providing every girl on the planet with 12 years of quality education is one of the best ways of tackling many of the problems facing the world today, such as poverty, climate change and inequality.

Investing in girls’ education is a game changer. If we want to change the world for the better, girls’ education is a great, great place to start. The child of a mother who can read is 50% more likely to live beyond the age of five years, twice as likely to attend school themselves, and 50% more likely to be immunised.

We know too, girls who are educated are more able to choose if, when, and how many children they have. Girls’ education is therefore vital to women and girls, but also in levelling-up society, boosting incomes and developing economies and nations.

Refocusing international education finance to countries where the disparities are largest is more important than ever before. This is because the pandemic has become one of the biggest educational disruptors in our history, affecting 1.6 billion learners at the peak of the pandemic in 2020. It has also created a global education funding gap of $200 billion dollars each year. In poorer countries now over 70% of children can’t read a simple text by the age of ten.

So we must work hard, together, better and differently, if we want to get girls’ global education back on track. I think a large part of the answer with financing is to continue with the work that we started in 2021.

At the G7 summit that we hosted in Cornwall, our then Prime Minister Boris Johnson put girls’ education at the very heart of the summit. This ensured that education received the priority and profile it needs and deserves as well as the financial and political commitments.

At the Global Education Summit in London just a few months later in 2021 we raised, with our international partners, $4 billion dollars for global education. This will help another 175 million more children to learn. And of course, further momentum was created by the excellent Transforming Education Summit that took place here, in America, in September last year. Bit I think we also need to be more innovative in terms of finance.

This is why the UK is supporting the International Finance Facility for Education – and this is an amazing facility for leveraging additional funding for children in Lower Middle-Income

Countries – up to seven times what can be derived from a simple donor grant. We also support the Education Outcomes Fund – which emphasises payment by results and we are pioneering this approach in Sierra Leone and Ghana.

Regarding adjusting our programs to reach the most marginalised girls, this is absolutely critical and there are many examples I can give but in the interest of time I would say that a good example of our work is what we’re doing around climate change.

There are 200 million of the most marginalised women and girls living on the front line of climate change and we are never going to tackle SDG4 unless we tackle climate change.

At COP26 in Glasgow, we made the important connection between girls’ education and climate change. Showing how girls’ education can be very much a part of the solution.

Because girls who are educated are more able to participate in decisions, actions and leadership, on climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation. Our work in this area has led to the recently published climate paper that was launched by Minister Andrew Mitchell. And of course now we are full steam ahead with our preparations for COP28.

Again, in the interest of time I am going to close their but just to say I know the weight of the challenge of girls’ education is considerable. It is significant. But our ability to make change in the world world, if we work together, should never ever be underestimated.

Thank you.

January 25, 2023
PRESS RELEASE : Northern Ireland Secretary meets US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland for Economic Affairs [January 2023]

The press release issued by the Northern Ireland Office on 24 January 2023.

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Rt Hon Chris Heaton-Harris MP met US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland for Economic Affairs, Joe Kennedy III today in Washington DC.

This was their first in person meeting during Heaton-Harris’s first US visit as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. In the 25th year of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement they discussed plans to mark the anniversary in the UK and the US. They also spoke about ways of increasing trade and investment opportunities to continue building on the successful partnership.

Commenting after the meeting, Heaton-Harris said:

It was brilliant to meet Joe Kennedy III for the first time in person and hear about his plans for the Special Envoy role and his vision for Northern Ireland. Joe has been vocal in his commitment to the prosperity of Northern Ireland and I expressed the value of his support and partnership as we work together to continue to strengthen the NI economy.

We shared views on how we can best showcase Northern Ireland as a great place to live, work, do business and how to continue attracting US investment.

We also discussed US engagement to mark the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, an incredible achievement for Northern Ireland of which US support was instrumental.

January 25, 2023
PRESS RELEASE : UK and North Carolina State hold inaugural Working Group meeting [January 2023]

The press release issued by the Department for International Trade on 24 January 2023.

First North Carolina Working Group meeting under the UK-North Carolina trade MoU takes place in Raleigh.

On Tuesday, January 24, 2023, the UK and State of North Carolina held the first government-to-government working group meeting under the UK-North Carolina Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on economic cooperation and trade relations, in Raleigh.

Colin Gray, Deputy Consul General for the United Kingdom in Atlanta, and Machelle Baker Sanders, Secretary of Commerce for the State of North Carolina, co-chaired the meeting, attended by officials from the respective governments.

The group acknowledged the early progress made across a range of economic and cultural areas since the MoU’s signature in July 2022. Activity to date has included:

Cooperation in sectors related to green trade, a key theme of the MOU, such as sharing expertise and methods for the development of offshore wind infrastructure;
The promotion of trade and investment opportunities to SMEs between North Carolina and the UK; and
The advancement of opportunities for women through new commercial partnerships, including within the sports economy.
The working group discussed and identified further opportunities to advance cooperation in the coming months. Key areas of joint working will include:

Continuing the emphasis on offshore wind through a focus on supply chain development;

Exchanging information on procurement processes, including opportunities related to electric vehicles charging, and associated infrastructure;

Exploring how innovation in motorsports can lead to developments in energy efficiency, and examining how these developments can apply to the wider automotive sector;

Exploring how UK companies can best support North Carolina’s EV ambitions of being at the front of the global market transition to zero-emission vans, buses and trucks; and

Furthering the collaboration between world leading academic institutions in the UK and North Carolina.

Both sides agreed to expand the next working group session to involve representatives from industry and academia to be held later this year in the UK.

January 25, 2023