Legislation / Legal
DfE: The Government has set out new measures to protect children from the ‘creeping tide of commercialisation & sexualisation in society’. Ministers welcomed progress to date in implementing the recommendations of the independent Let Children Be Children report by Reg Bailey, Chief Executive of Mothers’ Union – but said that industry still have plenty of work to do.
DfE: Across local authorities there has been a concern that the children’s services assessment is essentially a bureaucratic exercise that adds little understanding of children’s services in an area over & above the individual inspections that underlie it. It is seen to make little if any contribution to driving service improvement. Ending the annual assessment will create cost savings to Ofsted of approximately £1.6m per year.
Following a targeted consultation exercise, the Government has now laid the draft Legislative Reform (Annual Review of Local Authorities) Order before Parliament. Subject to Parliamentary approval, the Government expects to effect the repeal of the legislation requiring annual children’s services assessments to be conducted – section 138 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 – before summer recess starts on 17 July 2012.
CO: The Government recently published the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, which, if passed, will ‘tackle electoral fraud by speeding up the introduction of individual electoral registration and modernise the system of voter registration’. The Bill includes the Government’s plans for individual electoral registration, which would end the practice of the head of a household being responsible for registering everyone in a property.
Currently, the head of a household registers everyone who lives at the same address. Under the system of individual registration, everyone would register separately, each providing their own unique identifiers, like National Insurance number and date of birth, so their information can be verified. The new registration system is due to be in place by the end of 2015.
ScotGov: Scottish Government proposals to safeguard frontline police and fire & rescue services in Scotland are a step closer, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said. It follows the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Bill successfully passing Stage 1 of the parliamentary process. The new services aim to go live on April 1, 2013..
DCMS: A simpler & stronger age-rating system for video games will soon be law after proposals were laid in Parliament recently. The new system will stop inappropriate video games being sold direct to young children while providing industry with a simpler system for having games age rated.
