1 The UK Atomic Energy Agency announced a public-private partnership to compete for nuclear decommissioning contracts when the £56 billion market is opened up to competition. The partnership with Amec and CH2M Hill, the civil engineering groups, is the first of a number expected to be announced in the near future. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has allocated £2 billion a year for cleaning up 20 civil nuclear sites.
2 Fifty-six sex offenders have been cleared to work in schools since 1997, the Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, told the House of Commons. She said that those convicted or cautioned for a sex offence against children or serious offences against adults would be banned automatically from working with children.
3 Debt collectors will try to recover unpaid child maintenance on behalf of the Child Support Agency. Parents’ maintenance will not be reduced because the collectors will not be entitled to keep a proportion of any recovered debt to finance their work. Up to £3 billion in due maintenance is unpaid.
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4 The Government has abandoned plans to privatise the probation service after criticism from judges and MPs. The Home Office had wanted to create a “mixed market” in the supervision of 200,000 offenders, but will think again after opposition from within the criminal justice system.
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5 Potentially life-saving research is being blocked by overzealous interpretation of data protection laws, according to a report from the Academy of Medical Sciences. Excessive red tape was hindering efforts to carry out the large studies needed to investigate many diseases, the report said.
6 A scheme to encourage women GPs to return to work after childbirth have been scrapped. The scheme began in 2001 and has been used by more than 2,500 doctors. Funds intended for the scheme have been held back to pay for NHS deficits.
7 Two thirds of hospitals have closed wards to save money, a survey of 117 NHS trust chief executives found. In the survey, carried out by Health Service Journal, three quarters said financial pressure from restructuring primary and acute care would affect patient care.
8 The House of Lords voted to delay plans to introduce identity cards until a new report into the cost of the scheme is approved. The Government said the ten-year cost of running the scheme would be £5.8 billion, but a report by the London School of Economics had estimated the cost at up to £19 billion.
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9 Mini-brothels, with three women working together, are to be allowed to operate legally. Reforms to the law on prostitution, aimed at reducing risks to women working as prostitutes, will also include more rigorous prosecutions of kerb crawlers.
10 The Government has lost millions of pounds through tax credit fraud. David Varney, chairman of HM Revenue and Customs, told the Public Accounts Committee that prosecutions so far covered £15 million in tax credits. He said he knew of 13,000 identities that were hijacked for fraudulent use.
11 Doctors helped nearly 3,000 patients in the UK to die in 2004, a study by Brunel University shows. The deaths, described by doctors as “voluntary euthanasia”, amount to 0.16 per cent of all deaths that year.
12 A total of 230 servicemen have been wounded by hostile fire while serving in Iraq, with 40 suffering life-threatening injuries, the Government has said. The death toll is 98, of which 75 died in combat.
13 Geraldine Peacock plans to stand down as chair of the Charity Commission by June, Third Sector (Jan 18) reports. She has cited personal reasons, including health. She has Parkinson’s disease.