I am pleased to announce that the Ministry of Defence has approved the award of a contract with VT Maritime Affairs Ltd for the charter and logistic support of a new 1,854 tonne patrol vessel for use in the Falkland Islands.

The new ship will be a modification of the highly successful river class ships, also chartered from VT, currently employed for fishery protection. Like them, the new patrol vessel will also follow an innovative public-private partnership arrangement for the provision of maritime capability. While manned by the Royal Navy, the Department will pay a set monthly fee for the provision of the ship and a guaranteed level of availability, with an incentivised payment structure to ensure that any shortfalls are dealt with promptly and effectively.

The vessel will thus provide a significant increase in availability as compared with the old, and increasingly difficult to maintain, castle class ships that have provided the Falkland Islands patrol capability for the past two decades.

It is planned that the ship will enter service in 2007 and be chartered for an initial period up to 2012. Over this period, she will generate in excess of £2 million savings compared with continuing to run the old ships, while providing at least as good an overall capability at a much lower level of risk.

I am today announcing the National Offender Management Service's targets for England and Wales for 2005–06. These targets reflect the Government's commitment to protecting the public, reducing re-offending, and ensuring that sentences are enforced firmly and fairly.

PUBLIC PROTECTION TARGETS

REDUCING RE-OFFENDING TARGETS

¹ With the transfer to the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) of lead responsibility for delivering offender learning skills, and introduction of the fully integrated service in three regions (North East, North West and South West) from August 2005, basic skills awards achieved by offenders in those regions will count towards operational targets for the LSC led partnerships and the NOMS targets have been adjusted accordingly.

REDUCING RE-OFFENDING TARGETS cont'd

TARGETS CONTRIBUTING TO WIDER CRIMINAL JUSTICE OBJECTIVES

The Minister for the Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Miliband), and I are today announcing a review of the persistent social, economic and cultural factors that combine to deny individuals the opportunity to make the best of their abilities and contribute to society fully.

The equalities review, which will report to the Prime Minister by the summer of 2006, will look at barriers to opportunity and will make practical recommendations on key policy priorities for: the Government and public sector; employers and trades unions; civic society and the voluntary sector. Its findings will inform the modernisation of equality legislation and the development of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR).

In the Queen's Speech, the Government announced that they intend to bring forward a Bill to establish the CEHR as soon as parliamentary time allows. The CEHR will bring together existing expertise from the current equality commissions on gender, disability and race and make provision for the new equality strands on sexual orientation, religion and belief and age, as well as promoting human rights. The Bill will also introduce provisions to outlaw discrimination on grounds of religion or belief in the provision of goods, facilities, services and public functions; and a general framework to introduce a duty on public bodies to promote equality of opportunity between women and men and; prohibit sex discrimination in the exercise of public functions.

The creation of the CEHR underlines the Government's commitment to equality and human rights as the foundations of a fair and prosperous society. A just society is one in which life chances are not determined at birth and everyone has the chance to achieve their full potential. A dynamic economy relies on using the talents of all.

It was to address inequality and prejudice that the first Race Relations Act was introduced in 1965. Since then, Governments have legislated to protect people from discrimination on the basis of gender, race and disability and most recently sexual orientation, age, and religion. Since 1997 new legislation has also created the duty to promote race equality, following the Lawrence Inquiry; the Human Rights Act and most recently the civil partnership scheme for lesbian and gay couples.

But despite this progress there is still evidence of deep-seated patterns of disadvantage. For example, disabled people are at far greater risk of poverty than non-disabled people. The unemployment rate of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis is 2.5 times greater than that of the white population. Educational attainment for black Afro-Caribbean boys consistently falls below that of their female and white peers. The pay gap between men's and women's earnings remains. And hate crimes threaten the security of many different minority groups.

Much work has already been done, and is ongoing, within and outside government, to understand specific barriers faced by particular groups, but much of this excellent work focuses on particular groups or sectors. The equalities review will build on this existing work, such as the Government's recently published Community Cohesion and Race Equality Strategy, the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit's report on the life chances of disabled people and the current Women and Work Commission to develop a better understanding of the long term and underlying barriers to opportunity that can be addressed by public policy. This will allow us to better to assess the relative impact of legislation and other action in transforming people's life chances, based on evidence of what works at home and abroad.

It is widely recognised that in many cases the root causes of disadvantage go beyond discrimination and cannot therefore be rectified by anti-discrimination legislation alone. Earlier consultation on the CEHR also demonstrated considerable support for modernising equality legislation and creating a simpler, fairer, legal framework.

In response to this and in conjunction with the Equalities Review, the Government will also now begin a review of discrimination legislation, led by the Department of Trade and Industry, which will benefit from the background and analysis that will be provided by the Equalities Review. This will assess how the equality legislative framework can be modernised to fit the needs of Britain in the 21st Century. Specifically, proposals will aim to minimise the burdens on business and on public services while leading to demonstrably better outcomes for minority groups. This work will be the foundation for the development of a clearer and more streamlined legislative framework.

The Prime Minister has asked Trevor Phillips to Chair the Equalities Review in a personal capacity. He will be joined by a small panel of leaders from the fields of business, the public sector and the social policy arena. The review panel will draw advice from a Reference Group co-Chaired by Bert Massie (Chair, Disability Rights Commission) and Julie Mellor (Chair, Equal Opportunities Commission) whose members will include key equality, human rights, business and trade union stakeholders and other experts. The Equalities Review will be supported by a Secretariat based in the Cabinet Office and will be overseen jointly by DTI and Cabinet Office Ministers.

The Government's response to the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering report: "Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties", has been published today.

The report was commissioned by Lord Sainsbury in June 2003 to: summarise current scientific knowledge on nanotechnology; identify applications of nanotechnology, both current and potential, with indications of when they might be developed; identify what environmental, health and safety, ethical and societal implications or uncertainties may arise from the use of the technology, both now and in the future; and identify areas where additional regulation should be considered. The report was published in July 2004 and has 21 recommendations to the Government.

Our response sets out the Government's agenda on nanotechnologies to ensure that the Government have clear policies and regulation, informed by good research, in place to ensure the responsible development of nanotechnologies in the UK.

The response includes:

a review of current safety regulations to make sure that safeguards for workers' health and the environment are robust;

a new cross-Government group to co-ordinate all aspects of research into nanoscience to underpin safety assessments;

a consultation with industry and the EU on how companies could disclose their safety testing methods and label consumer products; and

the Government will facilitate a dialogue with the science community and the public to explore both aspirations and concerns around the development of nanotechnologies.

Our programme will be reviewed by the Council for Science and Technology after two and five years (i.e. 2007, 2010).

The Prime Minister, the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology and the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology will be sent copies of this report, and I have placed copies in the Libraries of both Houses. An electronic version of the report has been placed on the Office of Science and Technology website: http://www.ost.gov.uk/policy/issues/index.htm

Last summer the Government asked the Low Pay Commission to produce their next report on the national minimum wage by the end of February 2005. We asked the commission to monitor and evaluate the impact of the minimum wage and make recommendations on the need for any change.

The Government are today publishing the commission's 2005 report and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the chair of the commission, Adair Turner, and its other members for their work on this very important issue.

The main recommendations put forward by the commission concern the rates of the minimum wage.

The commission has first recommended increasing the adult rate of the minimum wage from the present £4.85 to £5.05 in October 2005, and to £5.35 in October 2006, subject to confirmation by the commission in February 2006, to check that the macroeconomic conditions continue to make it appropriate, and in light of the implementation of forthcoming age discrimination legislation.

The commission has recommended increasing the development rate from the present £4.10 to £4.25 in October 2005 and £4.45 in October 2006. And it has also recommended that the Government should invite the commission to review the operation of the 16–17 year old rate and to report in 2006, with recommendations for any subsequent increases.

The commission's evidence confirms that the minimum wage has been a success. The economy has continued to generate new jobs, including in the main low-paying sectors. Around 1 million workers have benefited from the minimum wage each year since its introduction, with around two-thirds of the beneficiaries being women.

The Government agree with the broad approach that the commission continues to adopt; namely that the minimum wage should be increased in order to help the low paid, while taking care not to damage their employment prospects. We are therefore pleased to accept the recommended rate increases for 2005 and provisionally to accept the increase in the adult rate for 2006 subject, as the commission proposes, to their further advice in early 2006. We also accept the commission's recommendation that they should review the operation of the 16–17 year old rate and report on this in February 2006.

The commission has also recommended that we should move 21 year old workers onto the adult rate. The economic evidence on this point remains mixed. While the employment prospects for 21 year olds has improved in recent years, it remains behind that of 22 year olds and not much better than that of 20 year olds. We therefore intend to make no change in 2005 but to look carefully at this issue in the future.

The final key commission recommendation is that we should introduce interest charges on arrears of underpayment of the minimum wage and impose financial penalties for seriously non-compliant employers. The great majority of employers are either compliant or pay minimum wage arrears without the need for any formal enforcement action. However the Government understand the underlying point that the commission are making, about the need to tackle seriously non-compliant employers more effectively. We are already considering a number of options for improving enforcement and intend to make a statement on this in early summer. We will consider the point about interest charges in this context.

I would also like to take this opportunity to announce that the Government have decided not to pursue employers where workers are paid below the minimum wage in some pay periods, but above the minimum wage overall. Such action will enable us to concentrate our resources on employers deliberately seeking to pay workers below the minimum wage.

I have placed copies of this statement, the report from the Low Pay Commission, the Government's individual response to the commission's recommendations and our draft regulatory impact assessment in the Libraries of both Houses.