General Reports and Other Publications
IEA: James Croft, Education Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, has commented on Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s statements re running schools for profit. Looking at the effect of for-profit schools in Sweden, it found that competition that drove improvements in the Swedish system was only possible because of the high number of for-profit schools that were established.
FSA: The Food Standards Agency has published an updated assessment of the impact of its proposals to increase charges for official controls on meat. The Agency is proposing to increase the charges paid by industry for the work carried out by vets & meat inspectors in slaughterhouses, meat cutting plants and game handling establishments.
PC&PE: The Commons Liaison Committee has published a report recommending a range of changes to the system for scrutinising public appointments. The Committee proposes a shorter, but more coherent, list of posts, which should be subject to enhanced pre-appointment scrutiny.
PX: Police forces across England & Wales have wasted over £500m in the last 4 years by failing to ‘civilianise’ thousands of back office posts – instead filling them with fully-trained police officers. A new report by think tank Policy Exchange shows roles in departments like forensics & control rooms are occupied by ‘sworn officers’ instead of much-cheaper civilian staff.
FSA: Nearly 17m people suffer from stomach upsets in the UK every year, leading to about 11m lost working days, new research published by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has found. The findings will help the FSA and other government departments with their work to reduce levels of IID in the UK. T hey will also be used to monitor the patterns of IID in the population, identify the micro organisms of greatest significance to public health, and target interventions for reducing these germs in the food chain.
NO: There were faults in the way Worcestershire County Council handled the care needs of a young man with cerebral palsy over several years, finds Local Government Ombudsman, Dr Jane Martin. In her report she recommends the Council to pay £9,000 to the young man’s mother to reflect the lost opportunity for her to receive more support in caring for her son. The Ombudsman considers that the faults she identified have caused significant injustice to the family.
ScotGov: The business case for High Speed Rail is stronger when it includes Scotland, Transport Minister, Keith Brown, said last week in evidence to House of Commons' Transport Select Committee.
ESRC: In these tough economic times, universities are under pressure to use their knowledge & discoveries to drive economic growth, but an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) study reveals that not all universities are equal. Universities in the greater south-east of England seem to be better than those in less competitive regions at commercialising their research & innovation.
A study led by Professor Robert Huggins from the University of Wales Institute Cardiff, has made a regional comparison of how knowledge flows out of universities and into the business community both in the local area and beyond the region where particular universities are based.
IISS: The latest Strategic Comment from the International Institute for Strategic Studies highlights that even as Libya's revolutionaries battle to secure control over the final pro-Gadhafi strongholds within the country, steps have begun to try to ensure a peaceful transition to democracy.
WWF: A new report published by Oxfam & WWF argues that a proposed deal to apply a carbon price to international shipping should be at the heart of the agreement at the UN climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, later this year. The report shows how the EU could broker a deal to tackle the huge & growing greenhouse gas emissions from ships and raise billions of dollars to help developing countries tackle climate change, without unfairly hitting their economies.
The report, Out of the Bunker – Time for a fair deal on shipping emissions, was published the first day of a key ministerial meeting ahead of the Durban climate conference. Bunker fuel is the name of fuel oil used in ships. Shipping emissions or bunkers doubled between 1990 & 2007, and are projected to more than double again by 2050.
