Download or read book NHS Pay Review Body Twenty third Report 2008 written by NHS Pay Review Body and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2008 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The NHS Pay Review Body was originally known as the Review Body for Nurses and Allied Health Professions (NAPRB) and was set up in 1983 to advise the Government on the pay of NHS nursing staff, midwives, health visitors, and the professions allied to medicine (PAMs). Following the introduction of Agenda for Change in late 2004, the Review Body's remit was extended to cover all allied health and health care science professions, pharmacists, optometrists, applied psychologists and psychotherapists, as well as clinical support workers and technicians supporting these groups. The Body's name was changed to Review Body for Nursing and Other Health Professions. In July 2007 the Review Body's remit was again extended, firstly to cover the remaining NHS staff not within its remit but who were nevertheless paid under the Agenda for Change pay system; and secondly to include staff working in Northern Ireland. The Body's name changed again, to the NHS Pay Review Body, to reflect the broader remit. In this report the Review Body recommends a pay increase of 2.75 per cent. There is evidence of declining levels of morale within the NHS and the Review Body is concerned that declining morale would have an adverse effect both on the NHS's ability to meet service delivery targets and on its ability to recruit and retain staff in the longer term. For these reasons, it is necessary that the figure recommended for the pay award is above that sought by the Health Departments. Individual chapters cover: recruitment and retention; high cost area supplements; morale, motivation and training; funds available to the Health Departments; pay and prices; level and structure of 2008-2009 pay recommendations.

Download or read book Twenty Third Report written by India. Parliament. Committee on Public Undertakings and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Twenty third Report of Session 2005 06 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: European Scrutiny Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-third report of Session 2005-06 : Documents considered by the Committee on 29 March 2006, including, Promotion of clean road vehicles, report, together with formal Minutes

Download or read book House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee Twenty Third Report of Session 2013 14 HC 83 xxi written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: European Scrutiny Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-04 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With correction slip dated December 2013

Download or read book Twenty fifth report of the Independent Monitoring Commission written by Independent Monitoring Commission and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010-11-04 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report focuses mainly on paramilitiary activity in the six month period 1 March to 31 August 2010. Dissident republican groups continued to pose a substantial and potentially lethal threat, especially to the security forces. They are also held to be responsible for several outbreaks of disorder, involving hijacking and burning of vehicles. On the Loyalist side, most groups were not engaged in terrorist activity though there is still evidence of heavy involvement in serious criminal activity.

Download or read book The Un Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities written by and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities builds on existing human rights treaties including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. The UN Handbook for Parliamentarians on the Convention stresses that it is not intended to create new rights, but "clarifies the obligations and legal duties of States to respect and ensure the equal enjoyment of all human rights by all persons with disabilities". Its purpose is to: "Promote, protect and ensure the full enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by all persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity." The UK was among the first countries to sign the Convention on 30 March 2007. The findings of our recent inquiry on the rights of adults with learning disabilities showed that although UK law and policy on the treatment of adults with learning disabilities takes a human rights based approach, the day to day experiences of people with learning disabilities are not so positive. Ratification will send a strong signal to all people with disabilities in the UK, and abroad, that the Government takes equality and the protection of their human rights seriously. The Government first publicly stated that reservations to the Convention were being considered in its response to our Report on the treatment of adults with learning disabilities, in May 2008, more than a year after it signed the Convention. Despite the Committee's call for a full explanation of the government's views on the compatibility of domestic law with the Convention, the were then provided with little detail on the reservations being considered or the Government's approach to the process. The Committee considers that progress towards ratification of the Convention by the UK has so far lacked transparency and has unfortunately alienated disabled people and their organisations. This is unacceptable in the light of the clear Convention commitment which the Government intends to make to the involvement of disabled people in the development of policies and laws which affect them. This approach undermines the previous role that the UK Government has played in championing equality for disabled people and their leading role in negotiating the terms of the UNCRPD.

Download or read book The efficiency of radio production at the BBC written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009-06-04 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The BBC, in 2007-08, spent £462 million on its 16 radio stations. The BBC has set these 16 stations a combined target of efficiency savings of £69 million over the five year period to March 2013, representing an annual saving of 3 per cent. The BBC proposed unacceptable constraints on the Comptroller and Auditor General's access to information and his discretion to report to his findings to Parliament. The situation arose because the Comptroller and Auditor General does not have statutory unrestricted rights of access to the BBC, which he does with all other publicly funded bodies. The BBC has wide ranges of costs for similar programmes within and between its radio stations. The average cost for an hour of comparable music programmes on Radio 2 is more than 50 per cent higher than on Radio 1. For most breakfast and 'drivetime' slots, the BBC's costs are significantly higher than commercial stations, largely because of payments to presenters. The BBC has not used cost comparisons across its own programmes, or against commercial radio, to identify scope for efficiencies. The BBC uses its principal value for money indicator-cost per listener hour-to justify the cost of presenters on the basis of audience size, but the indicator does not provide assurance that programme costs are the minimum necessary to reach the required quality and intended audience. For most radio programmes, presenters' salaries represent the majority of programming costs, but the BBC is paying more than the market price for its top radio presenters. The BBC has prevented full public scrutiny of the value for money of expenditure on presenters by agreeing confidentiality clauses with some presenters.

Download or read book Management of asylum applications written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009-06-16 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Committee is pleased to note that the Home Office (the Department) has responded positively to recommendations made in a previous report (34th report, HC 620, session 2005-06, ISBN 9780215027795). The Department has implemented the New Asylum Model, whereby a case owner manages all new asylum cases from application to conclusion, at which stage the applicant is either allowed to stay in the UK or returned to their country of origin. The Department has also established a separate process to clear the backlog of 400,000-450,000 legacy cases unresolved at the introduction of the New Asylum Model. The New Asylum Model has resulted in the Department reaching an initial decision more quickly and in cases being concluded faster than in 2006. Legacy cases will be cleared by 2011. Amongst the many cases awaiting completion, there are undoubtedly many people who genuinely need humanitarian protection because they are fleeing oppression, as well as those with more tenuous claims to asylum. The Department still faces significant challenges, however, in bringing these cases to a prompt conclusion. Faster, more accurate completion of cases reduces both uncertainty for the applicant and the cost to the tax payer. Removal poses a challenge. It will be another four years before the Department has the total of 4,000 detention spaces that it needs to increase removals to optimum levels, and before its new IT system is fully operational. The Department also needs to work with the Courts, foreign governments and other bodies to bring about the legal changes and diplomatic solutions needed to resolve obstacles to removal that lie outside its control.

Download or read book Twenty third report of session 2010 11 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: European Scrutiny Committee and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-03-31 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-third report of Session 2010-11 : Documents considered by the Committee on 23 March 2011, report, together with formal Minutes

Download or read book NHS Pay Review Body twenty fifth report 2011 written by NHS Pay Review Body and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-03-21 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the 25th report from the NHS Pay Review Body and was conducted within the context of the public sector pay policies of the UK Government and Devolved Administrations which announced a two-year pay freeze, except for public sector workers earning £21,000 or less. The Review Body therefore recommends the following: that an uplift of £250 to Agenda for Change (AfC - which is the current NHS grading and pay system for all NHS staff, with the exception of doctors, dentists and some senior managers) spine points 1 to 15 from 1 April 2011, based on the assessment that there is no recruitment and retension evidence to justify an increase above the single uniform uplift of £250 proposed by the Health Departments; that a national recruitment and retension policy (RRP) should not be implemented for pharmacists in bands 6 and 7, although the Review Body will continue to monitor the situation; that there is no substantive evidence to support the case presented by the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT) for a national RRP for building craft workers. The publication is divided into five chapters, with seven appendices.

Download or read book Building Schools for the Future written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009-06-11 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department for Children, Schools and Families' Building Schools for the Future Programme (BSF) plans to renew every secondary school in the country, by rebuilding half of them, structurally remodelling 35 per cent, refurbishing 15 per cent and providing Information Communication Technology to all. Its aim is to use capital investment in new buildings as a catalyst to improve educational outcomes. The Department estimates that the programme will cost £52-£55 billion over its lifetime. The Department was over-optimistic in its original planning assumptions for BSF: of the 200 schools originally planned to be completed by December 2008, only 42 had been by that date. The Department now expects the programme to take 18 years, with the last school completed in 2023. Local authorities are responsible for the local delivery of BSF. They plan, procure and manage the BSF school buildings. In 2004, the Department established Partnerships for Schools to manage the national delivery of the programme. The Department and Partnerships for Schools encourage local authorities to procure their schools through a Local Education Partnership. These are 10-year partnerships to procure a flow of projects, structured as joint ventures between the local authority, a consortium of private companies that build, finance and maintain schools, and Building Schools for the Future Investments. It is too early to conclude whether BSF will achieve its educational objectives. To date, over-optimism has meant the programme could not live up to expectations. Establishing Partnerships for Schools to manage the programme centrally has helped local authorities to deliver more effectively, but while Local Education Partnerships have potential advantages, their value for money is yet to be proven. And it will be very challenging to deliver all schools by 2023.

Download or read book Management of tax debt written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2007-08, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) collected around £450 billion in tax and National Insurance contributions from 35 million taxpayers. At 31 March 2008 the Department was owed £17.3 billion in outstanding tax, interest and penalties, £4.5 billion of which was more than a year old. Debts arise when people or businesses forget to pay, do not understand the need to pay or deliberately try to avoid or delay payment. Most tax payments are made on time, but during 2007-2008 30 per cent of tax payments were made after they were due, the number of tax debts increased by 22 per cent and the level and age of debt increased on some taxes. HMRC needs to change the behaviour of taxpayers who persistently pay late. HMRC could do more to encourage prompt payment and it also lags behind best practice in recovering debt. For example, it does not risk score its debtors. Risk scoring would allow it to tailor the help it gives to those who do not understand their obligations or are in financial crisis, while dealing promptly with debtors who deliberately pay late. HMRC is also unable to automatically link debts owed on different taxes by the same taxpayer. In managing tax debt, HMRC must balance the need to maximise revenue for the Exchequer with that of offering support to individuals and businesses in temporary financial difficulty. Balancing these objectives becomes more difficult in a recession. Since launching the Business Payment Support Service in November 2008, HMRC had - by February 2009 - agreed over 60,000 'time to pay' arrangements with individual businesses, worth £1 billion in deferred tax.

Download or read book Maintaining the Occupied Royal Palaces written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Occupied Royal Palaces Estate (the Estate), which includes Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, is held in trust for the nation and used to support the official duties of The Sovereign. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is accountable to Parliament for the upkeep of the Estate, but has delegated day to day responsibility to the Royal Household. The annual grant to maintain and run the Palaces has remained at around £15 million since 2000-01 (a 19 per cent real terms reduction). An increase in running costs over the same period means there has been a 27 per cent fall in maintenance expenditure to £11.1 million in 2007-08. The Department has set the Household an objective which focuses on the condition of the Estate, but none of the key indicators measures performance against it, and the Household does not have a comprehensive analysis of the condition of the Estate. In addition, a £32 million maintenance backlog has built up and important work has been deferred. The Department and the Household have yet to agree criteria for assessing the backlog and develop a plan for managing it. In addition, the Household does not have a strategy for managing its Estate. The Royal Collection Trust (the Trust) manages visitor admission to the Palaces and receives the income generated, which in 2007-08 totalled £28 million. Buckingham Palace is open for 63 days because of the number of official engagements and the costs involved. Other buildings such as the White House and Houses of Parliament manage to open for most of the year, despite similar obligations and security concerns.

Download or read book Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping written by Kelly Neudorfer and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2014-12-31 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While serving in United Nations peacekeeping missions, some peacekeepers sexually exploit and abuse the local population, a fact which erupted into a scandal published by many media outlets in 2005 and 2006. This book analyzes factors which may increase the risk of such behavior as well as measures the UN has taken which may have decreased the number of incidents. Using a mixed methods design, the book argues that previous analyses have been largely undertheorized—with the exception of gender theories—and turns to criminology to look at the phenomenon of so-called “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse” (SEA) in a new light. The three risk factors found to increase the likelihood of SEAs are an environment of sexual violence in the mission’s host country, the presence of internally displaced persons close to the mission, and a lack of supervised or regulated contact with the local population. In turn, the presence of an office whose purpose is to collect reports and investigate allegations, training on preventing SEAs for the incoming peacekeepers, and campaigns to empower the local population on these issues all seem to reduce the risk of sexual exploitation and abuse occurring. By using a statistical analysis followed by case studies of the UN peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, and the Golan Heights, the author demonstrates the importance these factors have in the peacekeepers’ behavior on the mission, providing a solid basis upon which future policy recommendations can be made.

Download or read book Children s rights written by Great Britain: Parliament: Joint Committee on Human Rights and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010-03-03 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Government response to HL 157/HC 318, session 2008-09 (ISBN 9780108458996)

Download or read book Learning from the Secret Past written by Robert Dover and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-04 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifying “lessons learned” is not new—the military has been doing it for decades. However, members of the worldwide intelligence community have been slow to extract wider lessons gathered from the past and apply them to contemporary challenges. Learning from the Secret Past is a collection of ten carefully selected cases from post-World War II British intelligence history. Some of the cases include the Malayan Emergency, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Northern Ireland, and the lead up to the Iraq War. Each case, accompanied by authentic documents, illuminates important lessons that today's intelligence officers and policymakers—in Britain and elsewhere—should heed. Written by former and current intelligence officers, high-ranking government officials, and scholars, the case studies in this book detail intelligence successes and failures, discuss effective structuring of the intelligence community, examine the effective use of intelligence in counterinsurgency, explore the ethical dilemmas and practical gains of interrogation, and highlight the value of human intelligence and the dangers of the politicization of intelligence. The lessons learned from this book stress the value of past experience and point the way toward running effective intelligence agencies in a democratic society. Scholars and professionals worldwide who specialize in intelligence, defense and security studies, and international relations will find this book to be extremely valuable.

Download or read book Demonstrating Respect for Rights written by Great Britain. Parliament. Joint Committee on Human Rights and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The report opens with an affirmation that the British Government should protect the right to protest peacefully. It then discusses some concerns about policing of protest which could be addressed by legal and operational changes : -- 1. Reference to insulting words or behaviour should be removed from section 5 of the Public Order Act. This change would allow the police to arrest people for using threatening or abusive language or behaviour but not for using insulting language or behaviour; -- 2. Counter-terrorism powers should never be used against peaceful protestors : the Government's guidance on stop and search powers in Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 should make this clear' - 3. The Government should protect the right to freedom of peaceful assembly around Parliament by repealing the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Protest around Parliament should be governed by the Public Order Act 1986, which should be amended to deal with the specific circumstances of Parliament; -- 4. police and protestors need to focus on improving dialogue. The police should aim for 'no surprises' policing : no surprises for the police; no surprises for protestors; and no surprises for protest targets. Protestors should also, where possible, engage with the police at an early stage in their planning, in order to facilitate peaceful protest; Tasers should never be used against peaceful protestors.