WIREDGOV NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE
Government search goes to the ‘ends of the earth’ in hunt of impartiality |
Home Secretary Theresa May has announced that she plans to appoint Justice Lowell Goddard to lead the Independent Panel Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Justice Goddard, a judge of the High Court of New Zealand, has accepted the post and will appear at a pre-appointment hearing before the Home Affairs Select Committee on 11 February 2015. A highly respected member of the judiciary, Justice Goddard conducted an inquiry into the police handling of child abuse in New Zealand when she was chairman of the country’s Independent Police Complaints Association. The Home Secretary also announced the Inquiry will be placed on a statutory footing under the 2005 Inquiries Act, with the power to compel witnesses to give evidence. The current panel will be disbanded and replaced by a new panel selected against a set of criteria which will be published in the House of Commons Library and on Gov.uk. |
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Should senior council & police officers take responsibility for their alleged actions / inaction and also resign, as they are paid to be ‘responsible’? |
Documents relating to the inspection into the governance of Rotherham council, collating all the publications relating to Louise Casey’s best value inspection of Rotherham metropolitan borough council, conducted under section 10 of the Local Government Act 1999. |
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At last - an organisation that can ‘make’ Google do something! |
The ICO has required Google to sign a formal undertaking to improve the information it provides to people about how it collects personal data in the UK after changes to the company’s privacy policy in March 2012. The ICO found that the search engine was too vague when describing how it uses personal data gathered from its web services & products. The ICO ruled that the new policy did not include sufficient information for service users as to how & why their personal data was being collected. |
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It’s one thing to pay for you own care, but why should ‘silver savers’ have to subsidise the care of those who didn’t save? |
Minister urges people to take part in the Care Act consultation to ‘help give people peace of mind about paying for their care costs’. |
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Making it much more ‘worthwhile’ to save for a pension! |
Minister for Pensions, Steve Webb, has set out how from April 2015, people automatically enrolled into a workplace pension will see their charges capped at 0.75%, unless they have chosen a more expensive option. For an average earner currently paying into a fund with a charge of 1.5%, this new cap could save them around £100,000 over the course of their working life. |
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Unfortunately, isolationism will not provide a ‘safe & secure future for the UK |
The Government must evolve to find new ways of working with emerging powers & developing countries, and the Department for International Development must do more to influence policy across the whole of Government, say MPs. |
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It is a ‘balance of freedoms’ that ensures a civilized society |
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has published new legal guidance on freedom of expression (FoE). The new guidance aims to help address ‘muddle & misunderstanding’ around specific areas of Britain’s laws on FoE. It explains there are legitimate ways the state restrains what we can say but the test for curtailing FoE in law is a stringent one, and much that is offensive is still legal. FoE can however be restricted in certain circumstances. For example, where it incites violence against others or promotes hatred based on the colour of someone’s skin or their sexual orientation or their religion. |
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Do you know who your Councillor is? |
Local authority websites could do a lot better when it comes to presenting information about local democratic representation, says the first trailer in a series to be published ahead of the main Better connected 2015 report on 2 March 2015. |
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