I will represent the UK at the Environment Council in Brussels on 9 March.

At this Council the Austrian presidency will be seeking Council conclusions on several items. First, the thematic strategy on air quality which sets out the Commission's vision for EU policy on air pollution up to 2020 was the first of the thematic strategies, required under the EU's sixth environmental action programme, to be published. Following publication last year the UK presidency held a debate at the December Environment Council. These Council conclusions welcome the Commission's Strategy and the underpinning analysis, and agree that further action is required to combat air pollution in the EU.

The conclusions in preparation for the eighth conference of the parties to the convention on biological diversity will seek to secure better protection of biodiversity in marine areas beyond national jurisdiction. The COP will consider, among other things, access to genetic resources and sharing of benefits from their use. The Council will also seek to agree conclusions for the third conference of the parties serving as the meeting of the parties to the Cartagena protocol on biosafety, in particular on detailed documentary requirements for the identification of GMOs in bulk agricultural shipments.

For the follow-up to the eleventh conference of the parties to the United Nations framework convention on climate change, in conjunction with the first session of the conference of the parties serving as the Meeting of the parties to the Kyoto protocol (in Montreal in December 2005), the UK supports the conclusions, which prepare the way for the first discussions in May about the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol and a more general global effort to tackle climate change.

For the second conference of the parties to the Stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants, the conclusions cover the intention to include new substances within the convention and set out the EU position on compliance mechanisms, technical issues relating to, among other things, sound waste management, and enhancing co-operation with other United Nations environment programmes such as the Basel, Rotterdam, Vienna and Stockholm conventions. The UK supports the current text.

The Environment Council will also be asked to adopt conclusions on the preparations for the spring European Council. The UK supports the emphasis in the draft conclusions on the important contribution of environment policy to growth and employment and supports the current text, subject to satisfactory resolution of detailed drafting.

The presidency has also called for four policy debates. For the debate on the proposed Euro V directive, Council will be asked whether the new Euro V Regulation proposed by the Commission should provide a longer-term perspective and therefore already include a second stage of significantly lower NOx emission limits.

Council will also conduct a public debate on GMOs on the basis of a presidency paper which focuses on the EU's decision-making process and the role of the European Food Safety Authority.

There will be a policy debate on the EU sustainable development strategy (EU SDS), focusing on the ambition and scope of the strategy. The UK supports the Austrian presidency's aim of a single coherent strategy which focuses on delivery, and aims to be at least as ambitious as the current position. The EU SDS will also be debated in several other Council formations.

The final Council debate will centre on the thematic strategy on the prevention and recycling of waste, with a view to reaching Council conclusions in June.

There will also be a progress report from the presidency on the proposal for a directive on the assessment and management of floods, which the Austrian presidency has been pushing forward rapidly in working group, with a view to reaching political agreement at Council in June.

Under "Any Other Business", water scarcity and biodegradable waste have both been raised by other member states, and the presidency will update Ministers on biofuels, on EU conferences on "Greening Events" and "Environmentally-Friendly Travelling in Europe", and also the outcome of the first international conference on chemicals management held in Dubai in February.

I have previously made it clear that I sympathise with the view that performances by some wild animals in travelling circuses are not compatible with meeting their welfare needs. The Animal Welfare Bill will itself represent a significant step forward: Clause 8 imposes a requirement that someone responsible for an animal, such as a circus proprietor, should meet its reasonable welfare needs.

But having listened carefully to the arguments of hon. Members of this House at Second Reading and during Standing Committee I am not convinced that by itself this element of the Animal Welfare Bill will provide sufficient clarity to circus proprietors and enforcers on what is permitted and what is not. To provide this clarity I intend to use a regulation under clause 10 of the Animal Welfare Bill to ban the use in travelling circuses of certain non-domesticated species whose welfare needs cannot be satisfactorily met in that environment. In drawing up proposals for secondary legislation we intend to ensure a clear read-across between zoo licensing standards and those standards that we will require from permanent circus premises. Individuals or organisations who train performing animals will be subject to inspection. This will be in addition to existing proposals that we introduce a code of practice for circuses and performing animals to deal with other issues such as training activities, trainer competences and accommodation needs for animals when travelling.

The ban will apply to travelling circuses only—zoo performances, performances in the audio-visual industry and performances in static circuses will not be affected. Discussions will start shortly with industry, welfare organisations and other Government Departments on the content of draft regulations, which will then go to public consultation.

Dr. Rod Pullen has been appointed as UK Special Representative at the Inter-Sudanese Peace Talks on Darfur. He took up his position on 6 March. This appointment is a further indication of our commitment on this issue. It is in addition to that of Dr Alan Goulty, HMA Tunis, who will also continue as the UK's Special Representative for Darfur. He will continue to focus primarily on pushing the parties and on getting key regional players (especially Eritrea and Libya) and international players on side. He will also continue to visit Sudan as necessary, in consultation with HMA Khartoum. We also expect him to pay occasional visits to the Abuja talks, in consultation with Rod Pullen, if there is a particular requirement.

The Darfur peace talks are held under African Union (AU) mediation. The UK is a key international partner to the talks, and has maintained an observer at the talks in support of the AU since the beginning. However in response to the unacceptably slow progress made by the parties the UK has decided to appoint Dr Pullen, a senior grade diplomat, our former High Commissioner to Ghana and our former Ambassador to Zimbabwe, as the UK's Special Representative. This appointment signals the UK's commitment to a peace agreement and to work with all parties to the talks, in support of the AU mediation, to help push the parties towards a comprehensive and viable agreement.

I expressed the UK's concern about the slow pace of progress when he addressed the talks on 14 February, and called upon the parties to increase momentum. I called on the movement's leaders to demonstrate their commitment to peace by attending the talks. I also announced that the UK had pledged a package of £1 million to the African Union in support of the talks.

In a written statement in response to a question by my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Gordon Prentice) on 28 November 2005, Official Report, column 165W, I said that I hoped to make an announcement soon on my examination of the relevant diplomatic service regulations with a view to making changes to ensure that they more accurately reflect the overall purpose of the regulations and conventions concerning publications by serving and former officials.

I have now approved a revised version of diplomatic service regulation five which governs the use of official information or experience, and associated guidance. The new version brings the regulations into line with the civil service management code and has been brought to the attention of all FCO staff. The main changes are:

Clarification of the continuing obligation on former officials to obtain permission to write books before entering into commitments with publishers; and to submit texts for clearance.

An explicit bar on memoirs by serving officials, although they may, with permission, write other books and articles.

The additional requirement to avoid writing anything that would damage the confidential relationship between Ministers, or between Ministers and officials.

In addition, all contracts of employment and letters issued on retirement or resignation now explicitly draw attention to the rules on publication and the duty of confidentiality. This will be systematically re-drawn to the attention of staff at key points in their career. Staff are also required to sign an undertaking which states that they have read, understood and agree to be bound by the rules on publication. David Warren, the director of human resources, has already written to all senior FCO officials to explain the revised requirements.

The regulations will be subject to regular review and revision in line with any future changes to the civil service management code. I shall of course also take into account any relevant recommendations from the Public Administration Select Committee when it reports on this issue.

I have placed copies of the new regulations, the guidance, and David Warren's letter to all senior staff in the Library of the House.

On 11 January 2006 the House of Commons Health Committee published its second report of Session 2005–06: "Changes to Primary Care Trusts". The Government have today published their response to this report. Copies have been placed in the Library.

I have today placed before Parliament the Government's response to the Joint Report of the Home Affairs and Work and Pensions Committees on the Government's draft Corporate Manslaughter Bill. This is a key step towards getting a Bill into Parliament and an offence on the statute books.

The draft Bill set out the Government's proposals for reforming the current law of corporate manslaughter. The draft Bill would overcome the main obstacle to convictions under the current law, by removing the need to attach corporate guilt to the criminal negligence of a single very senior individual within the company. This would allow for companies to be found guilty of manslaughter if grossly negligent management failures led to a death. The draft Bill also took the unprecedented step of extending the offence to Crown bodies, creating a level playing field between the public and private sectors in their liability for manslaughter and ensuring that workers in Crown institutions are protected by the offence.

The Government are pleased that the Committees supported the basic tenets of the draft Bill and the Government's policy in this area: the need for reform, an offence aimed at the most serious failures in management of health and safety and the lifting of Crown immunity.

The Committees made a number of recommendations that the Government accept would lead to improvements in the Bill, particularly a re-framing of the test for management failure. The Committees also recommended that the Bill should extend to directors whose negligence contributed to the death. The criminal law already covers those who grossly negligently cause death and those who contribute to health and safety breaches. The Government do not believe that that framework should be revisited in this Bill. But the Government also recognise that a conviction for corporate manslaughter will raise important questions about the overall management of a company and are looking further at the interaction between legislation on disqualification of directors and the new offence.

The Committees welcomed the lifting of Crown immunity. They agreed that some issues should continue to lie outside the offence, such as public policy decisions. But they were concerned that other exemptions were too wide. The Government think that they have got the balance right. But we will look again at precisely where the line has been drawn between those public functions whose management should be subject to scrutiny in the criminal justice system and those where strategic accountability lies properly through other means.

The Government believe that the result of pre-legislative scrutiny will be a better Bill before Parliament and are very grateful for the Committees' careful but swift scrutiny which will enable its introduction without delay.

I would like to make a statement to mark the fact that today is International Women's Day. It is important to reflect on how women are treated in the criminal justice system and what still needs to be done to ensure that women are not disadvantaged in the way they have been in the past, in what is, after all, a system predominantly designed by men, for men.

I am pleased to say that there have been significant improvements towards achieving gender equality, and we are now taking forward a number of important initiatives to ensure that this progress continues across the criminal justice system.

I am glad that our commitment will soon be given a statutory footing, with the forthcoming introduction of the new positive duty which will require all public bodies to promote gender equality. I am determined to ensure that our policies and practices are prepared for the requirements of this new duty well in advance of its implementation next year.

I particularly welcome the Fawcett Commission on women and the criminal justice system, launched in 2004 and, I am pleased to say, continued for a further year in 2005. The Commission has provided some valuable insights into how women are treated, as offenders, as victims of crime and as practitioners in the criminal justice system and I have been pleased to receive the Commission's reports and recommendations on areas for improvement. I am very grateful to Vera Baird MP and her colleagues at the Commission for continuing this important work and I look forward to the publication of their next report later this month.

For our part, we continue to take forward the women's offending reduction programme (WORP) which recognises the need for a distinct response to women's offending, particularly in view of the rising women's prison population in recent years. WORP focuses on improving community based services and interventions that are appropriate for women, to support greater use of community alternatives for women offenders and to reduce the numbers ending up in custody.

As part of that programme, I announced last year that we would devote £9.15 million to setting up new initiatives in the community which would provide women with a co-ordinated multi-agency approach to meeting their needs. We are now working towards getting these new projects set up in the two selected regions—the North West and Yorkshire and Humberside.

The national probation service is also developing a strategy for dealing with women offenders which will be launched later this year.

For women who do need to be held in custody, Government investment in prisons in recent years has enabled improvements in provision to better meet the needs of female prisoners. We have developed gender-specific drug services, with links through to community treatment; offending behaviour programmes designed specifically for women; the introduction of in-reach community mental health teams; and, in partnership with voluntary agencies, the funding of various resettlement projects, such as accommodation advice and mentoring. The prison service continues to develop suicide and self-harm prevention strategies specifically for women, with a focus on dealing with some of the underlying factors that can lead women to harm themselves.

Following the tragic series of deaths at Styal prison, I decided to commission a review to make sure that there is appropriate provision for particularly vulnerable women on each occasion they come into contact with the criminal justice system. The review will profile the characteristics and histories of some of the women who have died in custody in recent years, looking at the pathway through the system that led them to that point. It will consider also the suitability of mainstream prisons for seriously mentally ill or substance abused vulnerable women and the awareness of sentencers of the limitations of prisons. A further statement will be made to announce who will conduct the review and its terms of reference.

The Government take domestic violence very seriously and in 2004 passed the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims Act which brought about the biggest overhaul of domestic violence legislation in 30 years. Then, last year, we published the national delivery plan on domestic violence which draws together resources in the community.

Between 2004–07 we have placed £5.25 million in the new victims fund to develop services for victims of sexual crime. This has helped support a range of good quality services provided through the voluntary sector, and extended the network of sexual assault referral centres (SARCs) from six in 2003 to 14, with a further six to open in the coming year.

Since March 2003, we have provided over £2 million for the POPPY Scheme, to provide safe shelter and support for women trafficked into prostitution in the UK. Over 100 women have been helped through the scheme and a significant number have been supported throughout the successful prosecution of the criminal gangs who trafficked them.

The recently published prostitution strategy was developed to challenge the existence of prostitution which often puts women at serious risk of violence and sexual exploitation. The strategy provides a framework to effectively disrupt street markets, targeting those who exploit prostitutes, as well as tackling off street prostitution. A key issue for women is around finding routes out of prostitution, and the criminal justice system has a role to play here. The prostitution strategy proposes new rehabilitative penalties for women convicted of loitering and soliciting in order to support rather than hamper women from exiting prostitution and re-engaging in the community.

On International Women's Day it is important not only to celebrate the achievements of successful women in society but to think about how we help and support those women who have experienced abuse and victimisation and those who are among the more disadvantaged and socially excluded. They are most often the women who come into contact with the criminal justice system, and I hope that the work and initiatives I have described demonstrate our commitment and determination to ensure the needs of those women are met.

I am pleased to announce today the formation of the Public Service Commission for Northern Ireland. The Government's decisions on the review of public administration, which were announced on 22 November 2005, will require substantial transfers of staff to new organisations in the health, education and local government fields. I am very conscious of the major implications of these changes for staff working in these areas, including those in central Government and I wish therefore to repeat my earlier commitment that I will seek to avoid compulsory redundancies and to safeguard the interests of staff. I also repeat the commitment that Government will work closely with the trade unions representing public service staff.

In November I therefore announced my intention to establish a Public Service Commission.

The proposed role of the Northern Ireland Public Service Commission will be:

"to make recommendations to Government on the guiding principles and steps necessary to safeguard the interests of staff and to ensure their smooth transfer to new organizations established as a consequence of Government decisions on the review of public administration, taking into account statutory obligations, including those arising from section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998".

The Commission will be independent of Government. Although not a statutory body I wish to make it clear that the Government attach the highest importance to the Commission's role and the significance of its advice and recommendations. In establishing this independent Commission, Government are wholly committed to the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission consistently across the public sector. All Government Departments and public bodies will be expected to cooperate with the Commission, in the provision of information and in the implementation of its advice and recommendations as approved by Government. In the exceptional event that it could not accept a recommendation the Government would publicly explain the policy reasons why it felt unable to accept the Commission's advice.

I would expect the Commission's advice to me to be in the public domain. In formulating its recommendations the Commission will be expected to develop direct links with employers, existing sectoral Commissions and relevant trade unions.

The membership of the Commission draws on the expertise of existing organisations across the various sectors. I am delighted that Sid McDowell has agreed to Chair the Commission and that the following have agreed to serve:

I will be attending the Competitiveness Council in Brussels on 13 March. Martin Bartenstein, Austrian Minister for Economics and Labour, will chair the Council in the morning and Elisabeth Gehrer, Austrian Minister for Education, Research and Culture, in the afternoon.

The first item on the agenda will be the Lisbon Process and preparation for the Spring European Council. The Austrian presidency have prepared a Key Issues Paper (KIP), based on the Commission's 2006 Annual Progress Report on Lisbon. The aim is to hold an exchange of views on the KIP, and adopt it as the Competitiveness Council's contribution to the Spring European Council.

The next item on the agenda is on small and medium-sized enterprises. Council conclusions on this item have been prepared in respect of the following:

Commission Communication on "Implementing the Community Lisbon Programme—Modern SME Policy for Growth and Employment".

Commission Communication on "Implementing the Community Lisbon Programme—Fostering entrepreneurial mindsets through education and learning".

There will be an exchange of views based on questions set by the presidency, and adoption of the Council conclusions.

A debate on the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) will then follow, with the aim of agreeing a partial general approach. As there has been broad agreement in working group, the presidency believes that the Council will be able to reach a partial general approach.

The next item on the agenda is the Services Directive. This item will also be discussed over dinner the night before the Council on Sunday 12 March. The presidency want to have an exchange of views in the light of the recent vote in the European Parliament. The presidency is likely to provide a summary of the discussion to the Council the next day.

The final item to be taken before lunch will be the Regulation laying down the Community Customs Code (Modernised Customs Code). The Commission will give a presentation on this item, but a discussion is not expected.

After lunch the Council will discuss the specific programmes implementing the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) on Research and Development. The presidency will provide a progress report on the work done in working group. There will then be an exchange of views relating to the "Cooperation", "Ideas", "JRC" and "Euratom" sections of FP7. The presidency has indicated that they want the Council to focus on two issues: governance of the programme and stem cell research.

Next, the presidency will provide a progress report on the Regulation laying down rules for participation under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7), which will be followed by an exchange of views based on a note prepared by the presidency.

Finally, two items will be taken under "Any Other Business". There is not likely to be any debate on these items:

(i) Preparation of EU and Latin America/Caribbean (LAC) Summit (Report from the Presidency),

(ii) Regulation on type approval of motor vehicles with respect to emissions and on access to vehicle repair information, amending Directive 72/306/EEC (Euro 5) (Requested by the German delegation).