Thursday 20 January 2005

Getting the Balance Right: Implementing Standards of Conduct in Public Life has been published today by the committee. Copies have been placed in the Libraries of the House.

Review of the Criminal Justice System in Northern Ireland. Consistent with his terms of reference, the report was submitted to the Attorney-General, Baroness Ashton, Minister for the Northern Ireland Court Service, and me in December.

Lord Clyde concludes that the position overall is one of solid progress continuing to be made over the whole range of the work. Whilst some few areas of delay have been identified, as more and more of the particular elements of the whole package of reforms begin to fall into place, the picture of the new system of criminal justice is beginning to emerge and the overall progress towards that end remains commendable. The Government warmly endorse these conclusions.

The Government discussed this step in advance with both the Chief Electoral Officer of Northern Ireland and the Electoral Commission.

As part of the Government's continuing commitment to openness and transparency on Gulf veterans' illnesses I am today publishing the regular data on the mortality of veterans of the 1990–91 Gulf conflict. The most recent figures for the period 1 April 1991 to 31 December 2004 were published on 17 January 2005. The tables from that publication are set out below. Table 1 gives the causes of death to UK Gulf veterans over that period; table 2 shows the deaths due to neoplasms (cancers) among Gulf veterans.

As with previous information, the data for Gulf veterans are compared to those of a control group known as the Era cohort which is made up of Armed Forces personnel of a similar profile in terms of gender, service, regular/reservist status and rank, who were not deployed to the Gulf. Subsequent to the previous release of this data, further examination of trends in some cause-groups has revealed differences between the Gulf and Era cohort age groups: although each Era cohort age group was randomly sampled to be the same size as the corresponding Gulf cohort age group, those who were aged 40 years or over on 1 January 1991 who deployed to the Gulf were often younger than those sampled for the Era cohort. All figures for the Era cohort have therefore been adjusted to the single years of age structure of the Gulf cohort, as at 1 January 1991, to ensure appropriate comparisons. The main impact is slightly to reduce the previously noticed excess of deaths in the Era cohort caused by disease-related conditions, and cancer in particular, increasing the similarity between the two cohorts. The effect on accidental deaths is minimal.

Notes:

1 Service and Ex-Service personnel only.

2 Causes have been coded to the World Health Organisation's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th revision (ICD-10), 1992.

3 Adjusted for age of the Gulf cohort at 1 January 1991. The numbers may not add up to the totals shown due to rounding.

4 Includes cases with insufficient information on the death certificate to provide a known cause of death.

5 The MoD's casualty branches have notified DASA that one of the personnel who died in a road traffic accident was riding a motorbike rather than being a car occupant. This change has been reflected in the numbers.

6 Under ICD-10 coding if the death certificate does not specifically mention the type of vehicle that was involved in the accident, the death is coded to "motor-or non-motor vehicle accident, type of vehicle unspecified". There were 36 deaths to Gulf veterans compared to 33 in the Era group.

7 These events include those given a coroner's verdict of suicide or open verdict death by a Coroner in England and Wales and similar causes in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It includes one death which has been coded to the ICD-10 code F11.1 ("Mental and behavioural disorders due to use of opoids") by the ONS. This death has been excluded from the mental and behavioural disorders.

8 ONS have recently informed DASA that deaths where the inquest has been adjourned are coded to Y33 ("Other specified events, undetermined intent"). Historically these have been included with the intentional self-harm and events of undetermined intent.

Notes:

1 Adjusted for age of Gulf cohort at 1 January 1991.

The consultative document reflects the Government's view that our existing system of takeover regulation overseen by the Takeover Panel has many strengths and enjoys the confidence of business. In order to minimise disruption to the current regime, the Government have therefore concluded that the panel should retain responsibility for takeover regulation and that a central objective in implementing the directive should be to build on the strengths of the existing system.

In order to comply with the requirements of the directive this will require the panel being given powers to make statutory rules whilst retaining scope to determine its own constitutional and operational framework. The consultative document explains the issues to which this gives rise and how the Government propose to deal with them.

Primary legislation making the necessary provisions to implement the directive on this basis will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.