Government announces £6.2bn of savings in 2010-11
No more top-down reconfigurations in the NHS
Health Secretary outlines vision for locally led NHS service changes More
Further arrests in multi-million pound carbon credit fraud investigation
Four people were arrested in early morning raids today by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) officers investigating a £38 million suspected VAT fraud. More
Financial
Secretary to the Treasury, Mark Hoban MP, today
confirmed the Government’s commitment to
establishing an independently designed payment
scheme for Equitable Life policyholders that is
swift, simple, transparent and fair.
Mark Hoban announced that the Government will
take forward a Bill to enable payments to be made
in relation to Equitable Life, as included in
today’s Queen’s Speech to
Parliament. The Government also announced
that the final report from Sir John Chadwick in
relation to Equitable Life will be received by
mid July. The Government has agreed to Sir
John’s request for a short extension to the
stated timetable. This delay will enable
Sir John to respond to issues raised by the
independent actuarial panel which has been
appointed to examine the assumptions and
methodology used by Sir John’s actuaries in
their provisional advice to him, adding a layer
of independent scrutiny. It will also allow him
to consult further on the significant evolution
of his work since his third interim report.
The Government will publish Sir John’s
final report along with a detailed update,
including next steps towards implementing an
independently designed payment scheme.
The Government believes that the design of the
scheme should be determined by an independent
commission. However, it has confirmed two key
points: that there will be no means testing, and
that the dependents of deceased policyholders
will be included.
"For almost a decade, Equitable Life
policyholders have fought for a just resolution
in relation to losses suffered as a result of
regulatory failure”, Mark Hoban said.
"I am very aware of the acute concern among
policyholders who have suffered loss, and the
desire to achieve redress quickly. While there
will be frustration at this short delay, it is
important that our approach is thorough and fair.
"The Government is working hard to address the
situation as quickly as possible so that we can
establish an independently designed payment
scheme for Equitable Life policyholders that is
swift, simple, transparent and fair, as
recommended by the Parliamentary
Ombudsman."
Top of page
Action to cut
Whitehall waste and protect schools spending
Today the Chancellor of the Exchequer George
Osborne and Chief Secretary to the Treasury,
David Laws announced:
1. The details of £6.2 billion of savings
from Government spending in 2010-11 to tackle the
unprecedented £156 billion deficit, while
protecting the quality of key frontline services
2. Schools, Sure Start and spending on
education for 16-19 year-olds will be protected
from these in-year cuts
3. £500 million out of the £6.2 billion will
be used to improve Britain’s growth
potential and create a fairer society, by
reinvesting in further education, apprenticeships
and social housing
4. The foundation of an Efficiency and
Reform group chaired by the Chief Secretary David
Laws and Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude to
oversee the implementation of many of the savings
announced today.
1. £6.2 billion savings in 2010-11 Last week the
Chancellor and Chief Secretary announced that
they would set out plans to cut £6.2 billion of
Government spending this financial year. Today
they have set out the details of these savings.
The details were agreed in discussion with
Secretaries of State over the last week,
following advice from Treasury and the Bank of
England that savings on this scale are feasible
and advisable.
The savings are the first step in the
Government’s efforts to tackle an
unprecedented £156 billion deficit and focus on
driving out Whitehall waste ahead of a Spending
Review later this year.
Other countries with large deficits, including
France, Spain and the USA have already taken
action to make savings this year, in order to
restore confidence and sustain economic recovery.
Today the Government has taken the decisive
action necessary to start tackling the UK deficit
and secure the recovery only 10 days after taking
office.
Savings will be taken out of budgets, without
affecting the quality of key frontline services,
as set out in the coalition agreement. In
addition to £6.2bn of savings in non-protected
departments, savings in health, defence and
international aid will be reinvested in front
line services in those departments.
The savings will come from the areas set out a
week ago:
Outside of Local Government and the Devolved
Administrations, the savings are allocated across
different areas as follows:
- £1.15bn in discretionary areas like
consultancy and travel costs
- £95m through savings in IT spending
- £1.7bn from delaying and stopping
contracts and projects, including immediate
negotiations to achieve cost reductions from the
major suppliers to government
- £170m from reductions in property costs
- at least £120m from a recruitment freeze
across the civil service for the rest of
2010-11
- £600m from cutting the cost of quangos
- £520m by reducing other lower value spend.
In addition, £1.165 bn of savings will be made in
Local Government by reducing grants to Local
Authorites to reflect their contribution to the
£6.2bn. The Government will also remove the
ringfences around over £1.7bn of grants to local
authorities in 2010-11, to give them greater
flexibility to re-shape their budgets and find
savings in the areas set out above, while
maintaining the quality of services to their
customers
As announced a week ago, the Devolved
Administrations will have the option of making
savings this year or deferring their share of the
savings, which totals £704m, until the next
financial year. As well as savings from waste and
efficiency, including £10m from cracking down on
first class travel and £5m from restricting
ministerial entitlement to a dedicated car and
driver, specific low value programs included in
the above list include:
- £320m from reducing and then stopping
government contributions to the Child Trust
Fund. The Government intends to introduce
legislation to scale back payments from August
this year and then stop payments from 1 Jan 2011.
Payments to disabled children due this year will
be made, and the Government will ensure that the
funding allocated for these payments in future
years will be redirected to other forms of
support for disabled children.
- £150m from savings in the last
Government’s housing pledge, while seeking
to protect social housing.
- £320m from ending ineffective elements of
employment programmes, including ending further
rollout of temporary jobs through the Young
Person’s Guarantee (the ‘Future Jobs
Fund’) and removing recruitment subsidies
from the ‘Six-Month Offer’
- £270m from ending lower value RDA spending
- £80m from closing the British Educational
Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) and
other savings in Department for Education
quangos.
In addition to these savings, and as announced
last Monday, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury
and Secretaries of State across Whitehall are
currently undertaking a re-examination of all
spending approvals made since the 1st January
2010, to ensure that they are consistent with the
Government’s priorities of good value for
money
2 - Protecting schools, Sure Start and 16-19 year
olds from in year savings
The Government is also announcing today that
schools, Sure Start and spending on16-19
year-olds will be protected from any in-year
spending cuts.
Efficiency savings made within schools, Sure
Start and 16-19 education will be recycled within
their respective budgets. The Department for
Education will still make savings of £670m from
reducing waste and quango costs elsewhere in its
budget.
3 - Investing in Britain’s growth potential
As set out in the coalition agreement, the great
majority of £6.2billion savings will be used to
reduce the deficit. A total of £500m out of
the £6.2bn of savings will be used to invest in
improving Britain’s growth potential and
building a fairer society:
- £50m of Government investment in Further
Education colleges, which they will be able to
leverage up to create a £150m fund to provide
capital investment to those colleges most in
need.
- £150m to fund 50,000 new apprenticeship
places, focused on small and medium enterprises
- £170m to safeguard delivery of around
4,000 otherwise unfunded social rented homes to
start on site this year, protecting 3,500 jobs
and prioritising provision for the most
vulnerable.
- £50 million for action to tackle backdated
business rates bills, including a freeze on
payments for 2010-11
In addition, Barnett consequentials will be paid
at the same time as Devolved Administrations make
their contribution to the £6.2bn, making a total
of £500m.
4 - Efficiency and Reform Group - delivering the
savings
The savings will be driven by the new Efficiency
and Reform Group, whose board will be chaired
jointly by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury,
David Laws, and the Minister for the Cabinet
Office and Paymaster General, Francis
Maude. The Group will be formed by pulling
together existing capabilities, drawing on
expertise of officials from across Whitehall. As
well as helping departments to deliver savings,
the group will oversee an immediate freeze on
non-critical spending on consultancy,
advertising, and recruitment of non-frontline
civil service staff.
The Efficiency and Reform Group will be comprised
of existing civil servants from across Whitehall,
and will be located within existing premises,
with no additional cost to departmental budgets.
Notes to editors:
1) Departmental savings
Department
Departmental
contributions
in 2010-11
Department for
Education
670 Department for
Transport
683 Communities and Local
Government
780 CLG Local
Government
405 Business Innovation and
Skills
836 Home
Office
367 Ministry of
Justice
325 Law Officers’
Departments
18 Foreign and Commonwealth
Office
55 Department for Energy and Climate
Change
85 Department for Environment Food and Rural
Affairs
162 Department for Culture Media and
Sport
88* Department for Work and Pensions
535 Chancellor’s
Departments
451** Cabinet
Office
79 Devolved
Administrations
704
TOTAL
6243
* includes responsibility for £27m of savings
from the Olympic Delivery Authority **includes
£320m of savings in Annually Managed Expenditure
from reducing the Child Trust Fund
2) Local Government:
- Local Government will make a contribution
of £1,165m towards the overall saving of £6.2bn
across Government in 2010-11 through reductions
to individual grants to Local Authorities.
- There will be no reduction to formula
grant (£29bn) - the main Government grant to
Local Authorities.
- Government is also lifting restrictions on
how local government spends its money, by
de-ringfencing grants totalling over £1.7bn in
2010-11. This gives councils maximum
flexibility to deliver efficiencies and focus
their budgets on the services their residents
value most. This will ensure frontline services
can be protected.
3) Protection for Schools: Schools, 16-19
participation and Sure Start funding has been
protected from reductions in 2010-11. This means
that: - frontline funding to schools will be
protected, and money allocated to individual
school budgets for 2010-11 will not be affected
by the reductions;
- Money allocated to all local authorities
for Sure Start will be protected for 2010-11, and
the ringfence maintained
- 16-19 core participation funding will be
maintained in 2010-11
4) Child Trust Funds: The Government intends
to introduce secondary legislation to scale back
Government payments due to Child Trust Funds from
1 August 2010. From that date, payments at birth
will be reduced from £250 to £50 for better off
families, and £500 to £100 for lower income
families; and payments at age 7 stopped. The
Government intends to introduce primary
legislation to stop all payments from 1 January
2011. Additional contributions for disabled
children will be paid this year. From 2011-12 the
money used for these additional contributions
will be redirected to respite care for disabled
children.
5) Civil Service Recruitment Freeze: The
civil service recruitment freeze will apply
across Government departments, agencies and
NDPBs. The only exceptions will be for: the
graduate Fast Stream which is already underway;
individual business critical appointments, all of
which will require authorisation from the
Secretary of State; and key frontline posts,
which will require the authorisation of the
appropriate Chief Executive, with monthly updates
provided to the appropriate Secretary of State,
Permanent Secretary or Head of Department.
6) Civil Service Pay: consistent with the
Government’s approach to other contracts,
all organisations covered by the civil service
pay guidance, where a deal has not yet been
agreed for 2010-11, will now need to send their
pay remits to the Chief Secretary for review.
7) For more information on the Efficiency
and Reform Group please see the press notice
issued by the Cabinet Office today.
Contacts
NDS Enquiries
Phone: For enquiries please contact the
above department
ndsenquiries@coi.gsi.gov.uk
Top of page
Health Secretary
outlines vision for locally led NHS service
changes
The NHS must make sure that patient outcomes and
clinical evidence are at the heart of any changes
to health services, Health Secretary Andrew
Lansley said today.
In future, all service changes must be led by
clinicians and patients, not be driven from the
top down.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said:
"Today I am fulfilling the pledge I made before
the election to put an end to the imposition of
top-down reconfigurations in the NHS.
"We are committed to devolving power to local
communities – to the people, patients, GPs
and councils who are best placed to determine the
nature of their local NHS services.
"Local decision-making is essential to improve
outcomes for patients and drive up
quality.”
Mr Lansley outlined new, strengthened criteria
that he expects decisions on NHS service changes
to meet. They must:
• focus on improving patient outcomes;
• consider patient choice;
• have support from GP commissioners; and
• be based on sound clinical evidence.
Local NHS organisations, which have already
started to look at changing services, will need
to make sure that that their plans meet these
criteria before continuing.
This change will provide an opportunity for GPs
to work with community leaders and their local
authorities to take the reins and steer their
local services to improve quality standards and
outcomes.
Mr Lansley added:
“As part of this, I want NHS London to lead
the way in working with GP commissioners in their
reconfiguration of NHS services.
“A top-down, one-size fits all approach
will be replaced with the devolution of
responsibility to clinicians and the public, with
an improved focus on quality.
“It will be centred on a sound evidence
base, support from GP commissioners and
strengthened arrangements for public and patient
engagement, including local
authorities.”
Top of page
• Four
people were arrested in early morning raids today
by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) officers
investigating a £38 million suspected VAT fraud.
•
• The alleged fraud involved the trading of
emissions allowances (often called ‘carbon
credits’). Criminal investigators also
found firearms and large amounts of cash during
the raids on seven properties in the London and
Leicester areas. The arrests are linked to raids
that took place in August 2009 where nine
individuals were arrested. All those arrested
today and last August are believed to be part of
an organised crime group operating a network of
companies trading large volumes of high-value
carbon credits.
• The fraudulent companies allegedly
purchased carbon credits from overseas VAT free
sources and then sold them on to businesses in
the UK at a VAT inclusive price. The VAT
charged by the fraudulent companies was
never paid to HMRC.
• Chris Martin, Assistant Director, London,
Criminal Investigation for HMRC said:
• ““HMRC investigates all
criminal attacks on the tax system, gathering
evidence to prevent fraud and enabling
prosecutors to bring offenders before the
courts.
• “These arrests are the result of the
hard work that our investigators have carried out
during a sustained and complex 15 month
operation.”
•
•
• Details
•
•
1. The
opportunity for Missing Trader Intra-Community
(MTIC) VAT fraud arises where standard-rated
goods or services can effectively be traded VAT
free between EU Member States. Up to now,
most emissions allowances have been
standard-rated in UK to UK transactions and VAT
free when purchased from outside the UK by a UK
based company. It is this VAT free source
that provides the opportunity to perpetrate MTIC
VAT fraud. It occurs where the UK company
purchasing the emissions allowances from overseas
sells them to another UK company, charges VAT but
then fails to pay it over to HMRC and disappears.
•
2. In
response to cases of VAT fraud in connection with
trading of emissions allowances legislation was
introduced to zero rate the supply of emissions
allowances within the UK; this took effect from
31 July 2009. It follows similar action
taken by France and the Netherlands earlier in
the summer. However, despite this change,
HMRC still intends to pursue relentlessly those
that may have used carbon credit trading to cheat
the public purse.
•
3. Particulars
of arrests are as follows:
• Male, 30 years old - arrested London Male,
53 years old - arrested Midlands Male, 31 years
old - arrested London Male, 29 years old -
arrested London
• Individuals were arrested on suspicion of
cheating the revenue and/or laundering the
proceeds of crime and have been taken to police
stations for questioning by Revenue & Customs
investigators.
Top of page
The upper layer
of the world’s ocean has warmed steadily
since 1993, indicating a strong climate change
signal, according to a new study. The energy
stored is enough to power nearly 500 100-watt
light bulbs per each of the roughly 6.7 billion
people on the planet.
•
• “We are seeing the global ocean
store more heat than it gives off,” said
John Lyman, an oceanographer at NOAA’s
Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric
Research, who led an international team of
scientists that analyzed nine different estimates
of heat content in the upper ocean from 1993 to
2008.
• The team combined the estimates to assess
the size and certainty of growing heat storage in
the ocean. Their findings will be published in
the May 20 edition of the journal Nature. The
scientists are from NOAA, NASA, the Met Office
Hadley Centre, the University of Hamburg and the
Meteorological Research Institute in Japan.
•
• Josh Willis, an oceanographer at the NASA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the
scientists who contributed to the study said:
“The ocean is the biggest reservoir for
heat in the climate system, so as the planet
warms, we’re finding that 80 to 90 percent
of the increased heat ends up in the
ocean.”
• A warming ocean is a direct cause of
global sea level rise, since seawater expands and
takes up more space as it heats up, accounting
for about one-third to one-half of global sea
level rise.
• Combining multiple estimates of heat in
the upper ocean – from the surface to about
2,000 feet down – the team found a strong
multi-year warming trend throughout the
world’s ocean. According to measurements by
an array of autonomous free-floating ocean floats
called Argo as well as by earlier devices called
expendable bathythermographs or XBTs that were
dropped from ships to obtain temperature data,
ocean heat content has increased over the last 16
years. The team notes that there are still some
uncertainties and some biases.
• Gregory Johnson, an oceanographer with
NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental
Laboratory said: “The XBT data give us
vital information about past changes in the
ocean, but they are not as accurate as the more
recent Argo data. However, our analysis of the
data gives us confidence that on average, the
ocean has warmed over the past decade and a half,
signaling a climate imbalance.”
• Data from the array of Argo floats
– deployed by NOAA and other U.S. and
international partners – greatly reduce
the uncertainties in estimates of ocean heat
content over the past several years, the team
said. There are now more than 3,200 Argo floats
distributed throughout the world’s ocean
sending back information via satellite on
temperature, salinity, currents and other ocean
properties.
Top of page
Following the
CAA announcement to introduce new measures
to reduce airspace closures caused by volcanic
ash, the Met Office will be supporting airlines
by providing guidance to meet the new rules.
Flybe, the first airline in the UK to take
advantage of these new rules, has worked closely
with the Met Office, Bombardier and Pratt &
Whitney to enable them to keep flying safely.
Jim French, CEO of Flybe said: “We thank
the CAA and Met Office for their support in this
work and look forward to working with them
further to keep the UK safely on the move.”
Latest information received from the Icelandic
Meteorological Office indicates that the volcano
is continuing to erupt, with the ash plume
reaching heights of up to around 25,000 ft.
However the ash cloud is not expected to affect
UK airspace as south-westerly winds persist
through much of this week.
While the volcanic activity continues, the Met
Office will provide frequently updated
information to CAA about the dispersion of the
volcanic ash.
The Met Office provides forecasts to the industry
to any tolerance of ash that is deemed safe by
the aviation regulatory authorities. This advice
is based on a combination of observations from
satellite, research aircraft and ground based
observations along with model simulations and
scientific expertise.
Top of page
Six free
toolkits to help agents avoid common errors when
filing clients’ returns for 2009/10 were
published today by HM Revenue & Customs
(HMRC).
The toolkits which are downloadable from
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/agents/prereturn-support-agents.htm
cover:
·
Capital Gains Tax for land and buildings
·
Marginal Small Companies’ relief
·
Private and Personal expenditure (Income Tax Self
Assessment)
·
Trust and Estates
·
Capital Gains Tax for trust and estates
(supplement)
·
Capital Allowances for plant and machinery
Brian Redford, head of HMRC’s Business
Engagement Team, said:
“The toolkits are free and easy to use.
Agents do not have to use them but because they
are designed with the help of the agent community
they are packed with helpful information
including checklists, links to online guidance
and examples of frequent errors and how to avoid
them.
“The toolkits provide evidence of good
working practice and reasonable care and will
help agents ensure that tax returns are completed
correctly from the beginning - therefore
minimising potential error and possible
investigation.”
HMRC worked closely with agents and the
accountancy and tax professional bodies in
developing the toolkits, which were pilot tested
by around 600 accountancy firms, tax
practitioners and solicitors during the course of
last year.
The toolkits are part of a wider HMRC approach to
improving tax compliance which is increasingly
focused on help and support to ensure that
returns are correct. There is a dedicated
section on the HMRC website which holds
information, guidance and news specifically for
agents at
www.hmrc.gov.uk/agents/news.htm
Top of page
The Competition
Commission (CC) has provisionally decided that
consumers will benefit from the introduction of a
point-of-sale prohibition for all forms of
payment protection insurance (PPI), with the
exception of retail PPI.[1]
The point-of-sale prohibition would stop the
completion of sales of PPI during the sale of the
associated credit product such as a personal
loan. It was one of a package of measures the CC
planned to introduce following its investigation
into PPI, which concluded that businesses that
offer PPI alongside credit face little or no
competition when selling PPI to their credit
customers.
The report and in particular the proposed
point-of-sale prohibition were the subject of a
legal challenge last year to the Competition
Appeal Tribunal (CAT) by Barclays, supported by
Lloyds Banking Group and Shop Direct Group
Financial Services Ltd. Whilst upholding the
CC’s conclusions as to the competition
problems in this market, the CAT ruled that it
must in particular consider further the role and
importance of a potential drawback to the
prohibition, namely that it might inconvenience
customers.
Since then, the CC has carried out a detailed
analysis of the likely effects of such a
prohibition including undertaking customer
surveys, and an assessment of parties’
internal documents and of various experiments
looking at the possible impact of splitting the
sales processes of credit and PPI. In its
provisional decision published today, the CC has
concluded that the benefits of a package of
remedies including the prohibition, by
introducing greater competition and choice and
lower prices to the market, will outweigh the
disadvantages, in particular the potential
inconvenience to some customers.
The exception is retail PPI, where it is not
clear to the CC, from the evidence presented so
far and from a new survey of retail PPI
customers, whether the advantages of introducing
the prohibition alongside other measures would
outweigh the disadvantages. It is inviting
comments on whether alternative remedies would be
more effective or would deliver equivalent
benefits at less cost.
The CC has also assessed changes in PPI markets
since it published its report in January 2009 and
provisionally concluded that despite the effects
of the economic climate and regulatory action,
the underlying problems identified remain firmly
in place.
Peter Davis, Inquiry Chairman and CC Deputy
Chairman, said:
"Following the legal challenge at the CAT,
we’ve done an enormous amount of additional
work to examine in further detail whether the
package of remedies we’re proposing
including the point-of-sale prohibition will
provide an effective and proportionate way of
tackling the serious problems that still exist
with PPI.
We found that many customers would place very
significant value on being given the time and
space to choose the right PPI product—or
indeed to decide that PPI is not right for them.
We also found that a significant number of
customers appreciate the convenience of buying
PPI instantly at the point of sale of credit.
Overall we concluded that PPI providers are
overstating the loss of convenience that would
result from the introduction of a prohibition on
selling PPI during the credit sale.
All customers of course will appreciate the lower
prices for PPI and the greater choice we expect
to result from more competitive PPI markets.
Obviously the financial services sector has
experienced some significant changes since our
initial report. We looked at the effect of the
relevant aspects of those changes on the PPI
market and came to the view that, whilst the
financial crisis and recession have certainly had
an effect on providers’ sales, they
haven’t altered fundamental competition
problems. PPI customers currently have little
choice and prices are high because competition is
very limited. It is notable that even in the
depths of the recession following the financial
crisis we found that the economic profits of PPI
distributors remained significant."
PPI covers repayments on credit products if the
borrower is unable to make repayments due to
accident, sickness, unemployment or (in many
cases) death. PPI is sold to cover a variety of
financial products, but over 90 per cent of PPI
sold in the UK is either unsecured personal loan
PPI, credit card PPI, mortgage PPI or secured
loan PPI.
In its 2009 report, the CC stated that the vast
majority of the UK’s more than 12 million
PPI policies are sold at the same time as a
consumer takes out a loan, credit card or other
type of credit. The CC found that many consumers
are unaware that they can buy PPI from other
providers, rarely shop around to compare prices
and terms and conditions of PPI policies, and
rarely switch PPI providers. The resulting
‘point-of-sale’ advantage makes it
difficult for other PPI providers to reach credit
providers’ customers and in the absence of
such competitive pressure, consumers are charged
high prices.
During the inquiry, the CC liaised closely with
the industry regulator, the FSA, which takes the
lead on regulating sales practices and tackling
mis-selling, as well as the Financial Ombudsman
Service, which deals with consumer disputes. The
CC’s focus has been on examining whether
there is effective competition in the market as a
whole.
The CC will now invite comments on its
provisional decision before publishing its final
verdict in July. If it upholds its provisional
decision, it will move to introduce the full
package of measures as swiftly as possible.
Comments on the draft decision are now invited by
4 June 2010. They should be made in writing to:
ppi@cc.gsi.gov.uk or:
The Inquiry Manager PPI Remittal Competition
Commission Victoria House Southampton Row LONDON
WC1B 4AD
[1]Retail PPI is a small part of the overall PPI
market relating to protection taken out on
repayments for shopping through home catalogues,
typically accounting for about 2.5 per cent of
PPI gross written premium paid by
customers.
Top of page
In February,
scientists from the UK Met Office called for a
new international project to modernise global
temperature records.
Published this week in Nature, Peter Stott from
the UK Met Office and Peter Thorne, now of the
NOAA Cooperative Institute for Climate and
Satellites in North Carolina, USA, explain why
this is necessary and how it might work.
They argue that it is now essential for the
climate community to gather all local daily and
sub-daily temperature measurements into a single
global database in a transparent and
comprehensive way. Results would then show
temperature changes on an hourly level, within
distances of a few kilometres and such fine-scale
data are critical for monitoring and predicting
local climate effects.
The project will build on more than 6,000
detailed weather observations held on existing
databases. The plan, endorsed by the World
Meteorological Organization earlier this year,
will take shape following a workshop in September
to refine details and agree
developments.
Top of page
PPI—CC confirms case for point of sale prohibition
The Competition Commission (CC) has provisionally decided that consumers will benefit from the introduction of a point-of-sale prohibition for all forms of payment protection insurance (PPI), with the exception of retail PPI.[1] More
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The upper layer of the world’s ocean has warmed steadily since 1993, indicating a strong climate change signal, according to a new study. The energy stored is enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs per each of the roughly 6.7 billion people on the planet. More
Met Office supports airlines to meet new rules
Following the CAA announcement to introduce new measures to reduce airspace closures caused by volcanic ash, the Met Office will be supporting airlines by providing guidance to meet the new rules. More
Free agent toolkits launched today
Six free toolkits to help agents avoid common errors when filing clients’ returns for 2009/10 were published today by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). More