Consultations
MPA: The Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA) is asking Londoners to have their say and help identify the capital's policing priorities for 2010/11. By completing a short online questionnaire (by 1 December 2008) Londoners can tell the MPA if the police are focusing on the areas that are important to them.
The questionnaire focuses on:
* what are your top three priorities for policing in London?
* why do you choose these priorities?
* what should the MPS be doing to tackle these priorities?
DfT: Transport Minister Andrew Adonis has set out plans to take a more cautious approach to biofuels, as part of the Government's response to concerns about the indirect environmental and social impacts of producing them.
He published a consultation (closes on 17 December 2008) taking forward key findings from the Gallagher Review, including the proposal that the rate of increase of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) be slowed to reach 5% in 2013-14 rather than in 2010-11.
At the same time he dedicated a further £6m to research being conducted by the Carbon Trust to accelerate the development of the development of two advanced sustainable biofuel technologies:
* algae as a sustainable feedstock
* pyrolysis-based conversion (a means of recovering the energy from various forms of waste, a potential source of low-cost fuels with low system greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions)
Press release ~ Professor Gallagher's report ~ Renewable Fuels Agency ~ Consultation on Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (Amendment) Order 2009 ~ Carbon Trust - ‘Advanced Bioenergy Directed Research Accelerator’ ~ Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) ~ Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership ~ Environment Agency - Biofuels for transport ~ Defra: Other related reports (scroll down to ‘Biofuels’) ~ UN report, Sustainable Bioenergy: A Framework for Decision Makers ~ biofuelwatch
ScotGov: A consultation (closes 3 December 2008) has been launched seeking views from the Scottish public and professionals as the European Union aims to clarify rules on so-called 'health tourism'. The EU's proposed Patient Mobility Directive seeks to bring together existing European case law to make clear the rules that will apply when EU nationals want to receive treatment in a Member State which is not their home country.
Press release ~ Consultation on the European Commission's Proposals for cross-border healthcare ~ Patient Mobility EU Directive ~ Questions and Answers on the draft Directive on the application of patients' rights in cross-border healthcare ~ European Insurance Card (EHIC)
DH: Care Services Minister Phil Hope has launched a consultation (closes on 31 January 2009) on how to improve the safeguarding policy - the protection of vulnerable adults - and address abuse in all its forms in the care system. The 'No Secrets' guidance for local authorities, the police and the NHS to work together to protect adults is already in place. The Government now wants to make sure it keeps up with changes in the social care system, with the new emphasis on choice & control and changing forms of abuse.
Key issues on which Government is seeking views are:
* Whether there is now a need for legislation
* The feasibility of a national database of recommendations from serious case reviews where abuse has occurred
* What new measures are needed in the face of increased 'personalisation' of care with more people now being in charge of their own care instead of local authorities
* What new measures are needed in the face of increased 'personalisation' of care with more people now being in charge of their own care instead of local authorities
* What new measures are needed in the face of changing forms of abuse, such as financial abuse
Press release ~ Safeguarding Adults: a consultation on the review of the ‘No Secrets’ guidance ~ No secrets guidance ~ Disruptions in family and work life: Implications for support in later life ~ All Our Futures: Planning for a Scotland with an Ageing Population – Summary and Action Plan ~ Future Forum: 'Growing Older and Wiser Together: A Futures View on Positive Ageing' ~ The National Care Forum ~
