UK announces £10 million aid this financial year to the Occupied Palestinian Territories to support the provision of basic services.
- Funding will go towards the provision of basic services and the payment of salaries in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
- The UK will also contribute up to £5 million in technical assistance this financial year to support the Palestinian Authority’s programme of reform.
The UK will provide vital financial support to the Palestinian Authority to support the provision of basic services, providing £10 million in aid this financial year. As the Foreign Secretary has said, a strong and effective Palestinian Authority is vital for lasting peace and progress towards a two-state solution.
This £10 million funding package will provide vital support for key services, for example through the payment of salaries for 8,200 health workers over two months, and will send a clear message to other donors to consider making similar pledges.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa has committed to implementing reforms across the Palestinian economy to fight corruption and tackle inefficiency. The Foreign Secretary has spoken with the Prime Minister on a number of occasions, most recently on 10 June, to reiterate the UK’s support for his agenda.
The Minister for the Middle East Lord Ahmad will discuss the funding package in a meeting with Prime Minister Mustafa at the Gaza Humanitarian Conference in Jordan later today.
The Minister of State for the Middle East Lord (Tariq) Ahmad said:
The UK remains committed to providing serious, practical and enduring support to the Palestinian Authority as they take much-needed steps to enact reform.
An effective Palestinian Authority is vital to ensure lasting peace and progress towards a two-state solution but without international support, it is on the brink of collapse.
Today’s meeting of vital regional partners will be another constructive step towards achieving tangible progress on this key issue.
The Palestinian Authority is facing a severe financial crisis – it has only been able to pay its employees half of their salaries, and Israel has withheld tax revenues from the Palestinian Authority, further deepening the crisis.
The financial aid will be delivered through a trusted multilateral mechanism, the World Bank’s Palestinian Umbrella for Resilience Support to the Economy (PURSE) Trust Fund’s Palestine Emergency Financing Facility (PEFF) project. A further amount of up to £5 million will be available in technical assistance to support the Palestinian Authority’s programme of reform, with the objective of increasing transparency, fighting corruption, and improving public sector efficiency.
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UK explanation of vote delivered by Ambassador Barbara Woodward, UK Permanent Representative to the UN, following the Security Council vote on resolution 2735.
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Environment Agency prosecutes after routine sampling results. Court told how water company broke permitted levels three times in 10 months.
At Worcester crown court on Friday (June 7th), Welsh Water entered a guilty plea and were fined £90,000 for exceeding permitted levels of sewage effluent into the River Wye from the Kingstone and Madley sewage treatment works. The company were also ordered to pay costs of £14,085.05 and a £190 surcharge.
The court was told that officers from the Environment Agency were alerted to an issue following routine sampling results in July 2021.
The environmental permit states that during monthly sampling visits, Welsh Water must not discharge effluent containing more than 7 milligrams per litre of biochemical oxygen demand on more than two occasions in a 12-month period.
From August 6th 2020 to June 19th 2021, the sampling system showed that Welsh Water allowed levels to exceed the permitted levels on three occasions.
On 8 August 2020, the levels were recorded at 13 milligrams per litre; on 19 May 2021, levels were recorded at 74 milligrams per litre; and 19 June 2021 levels, were recorded at 41 milligrams per litre.
The court was told that such levels indicated that the treatment works was performing very poorly and that it was extremely unusual to have this many breaches in a 12-month period.
A report concluded that this showed “either poor operational management, inadequate asset provision or a mixture of both.”
Welsh Water, in mitigation, said on the first two occasions, they could not identify a “root cause” for the permit breaches. On the third occasion, the company said the breach had occurred during a “significant storm.”
Adam Shipp, a senior environment officer at the Environment Agency who led the investigation, said: “Incidents like this are preventable and are completely unacceptable.
“Water companies are aware that their activities have the potential for serious environmental impacts, and they know that we will take action when they cause pollution.
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VICH consultation until November 30th 2024 on guidelines relating to the technical requirements for demonstrating genotoxic safety of residues of veterinary drugs in human food.
From the Veterinary Medicines Directorate
As an Observer Member of VICH (the International Cooperation on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Veterinary Medicinal Products), we are inviting comments through a public consultation on a draft guideline relating to the technical requirements for demonstrating genotoxic safety of residues of veterinary drugs in human food (VICH Safety Guideline 23(R2)).
The proposed draft document is published on the VICH website.
The consultation is open until 30 November 2024.
Comments should be relevant to this specific guideline, and can either be general on the approach outlined or on the actual text of the guideline.
Send your comments to vichcomments@vmd.gov.uk and we will compile and submit all comments to the relevant VICH expert working group for consideration.
We are not able to respond to questions or comments directly.
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ENVIRONMENT
Statement by Ambassador James Kariuki at the UN Security Council meeting on UNOCA.
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GRENFELL TOWER UPDATE
A summary of current activity at the Grenfell Tower site.
In this community update, we provide information on activity and events at the Grenfell Tower site this month, including commemorations for the seventh anniversary of the tragedy, and health and wellbeing support. Other updates include site maintenance, air quality monitoring, and the reappointment of the principal contractor of the Grenfell Tower site.
You can watch a recording of the update on the DLUHC YouTube channel:
Grenfell Tower site update June 2024
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Owners must ensure their cat is microchipped
All cat owners should now have their pets microchipped as new legislation came into force yesterday (June 10th).
Owners must ensure their cat is microchipped before they reach the age of 20 weeks with their contact details stored and kept up to date in an approved pet microchipping database.
With more than nine million pet cats in England, the introduction of mandatory microchipping will make it easier for lost or stray pet cats to be reunited with their owners and returned home safely. Microchipping is already compulsory for dogs and is proven to be the most effective method for identifying lost pets, with microchipped dogs more than twice as likely to be reunited with their owner.
Microchips are safe and easy to implant with an average cost of around £25 for microchipping and registration. Charities and reputable cat rescue organisations may be able to microchip your cat for a reduced rate.
The process of microchipping involves the insertion of a chip, generally around the size of a grain of rice, under the skin of a pet. The microchip has a unique serial number that the keeper needs to register on a database. When an animal is found, the microchip can be read with a scanner and the registered keeper identified on a database so the pet can quickly be reunited with them.
Microchipping is not compulsory for free living cats that live with little or no human interaction or dependency, such as farm, feral or community cats.
Editor’s note: The above are thumbnail (or larger) details of various Government communiques / press releases which you may / may not have read about. Not all involve politicians. But not all the headings on them say what the item is REALLY about so, in a few cases, NFCP have put an alternative headline (or alternative opening paragraph) on them…
All can be found in full at News and communications – GOV.UK https://www.gov.uk/search/news-and-communications
NEWS FROM CRYSTAL PALACE 