Split gives new powers to home secretary

Split gives new powers to home secretary

The Home Office is to split with a new Ministry of Justice created to take over responsibility for prisons, probation and the criminal justice system, the government will announce today.

The much-trailed move will take effect on 8 May and the justice department will be headed by Lord Falconer and absorb his Department of Constitutional Affairs.

Source:- Financial Times Thursday 29 March 2007, page 2

NHS ‘will continue to grow’ at minimum 3 per cent in real terms

Health secretary Patricia Hewitt has expressed her confidence that adult social care will get a “fair settlement” in the comprehensive spending review, which is due to take place in October.

In an interview with the Financial Times she said that the NHS would grow faster than the rate of economic growth during the spending review period, 2008-11, which the Treasury has estimated at 2.75 per cent, suggesting a 3 per cent annual rise for the health service.

She then added: “I have no doubt that we will get a fair settlement both for health and for social care.”

Source:- Financial Times Thursday 29 March 2007, page 2

Families face fines for visitors who go missing

The Home Office has announced plans to raise the age for a marriage visa from 18 to 21, preventing foreign teenagers from marrying British spouses.

Source:- The Independent Thursday 29 March 2007, page 20

Child care cases closed to media

Thousands of children’s care cases could be heard behind closed doors under proposals to extend the power of courts to exclude the media.

Source:- The Times, Thursday March 29 2007, page 2

Visible offender

A registered sex offender has been ordered to wear a fluorescent jacket when he goes out at night to prevent him from spying on potential victims.

Source:- The Times, Thursday March 29 2007, page 4

Welsh news

Home carers in Carmarthenshire are set to stage a protest about home care service contracts being given to private companies tomorrow.

The carers say that the service is being undermined due to Camarthenshire Council giving contracts to the private sector rather than keeping them in house.

Source:- Western Mail, Thursday 28 March 2007

Scottish news

Hundreds of unaccompanied asylum seeker children are in line to be housed in Scotland to ease pressure on English local authorities.

The Home Office is consulting on proposals to find homes for about 3,000 children who arrive alone in the UK each year and claim asylum, after complaints from London and south-east England that they take too many of the youngsters.

Glasgow Council, which houses hundreds of asylum seeker families as part of the government’s previous dispersal scheme, has confirmed it is discussing proposals with the Home Office to become a “specialist authority” caring for unaccompanied asylum seeker children.

Source: The Herald, Thursday 29 March 2007

Last month, Jack McConnell drove to a farmhouse in South Lanarkshire to visit six female heroin addicts undergoing a controversial withdrawal treatment.

Six weeks later, the First Minister welcomed the same women into his official residence in Edinburgh, Bute House, and found them transformed.

The women had been on the NET (neuro-electric therapy) programme – a type of drug detoxification treatment invented in the seventies by a Scottish surgeon.

Source: The Herald, Thursday 29 March 2007