Government Publishes Draft Legislation On Bank Levy

Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Mark Hoban MP, announced today the publication by the Government of draft legislation on the Bank Levy, which was announced in the June Budget. Following consultation with industry over the summer, the draft legislation and accompanying consultation response sets out the details of how the levy will work ahead of final legislation, which will be published before the end of the year. The Government has carefully considered the responses from all interested parties during the consultation to help ensure the successful introduction of the Bank Levy, which is intended to encourage banks to move to less risky funding profiles. The levy is expected to generate around £2.5 billion of annual revenues by 2012-13 and will be permanent. Mark Hoban said: 
“We have consulted on the design of the scheme so that it achieves two objectives: firstly, ensuring that banks make a fair contribution in respect of the potential risks they pose to the UK financial system and wider economy. Secondly, the final scheme design incentivises banks to make greater use of more stable financial sources, such as long term debt and equity, working with the grain of our wider reform programme.”

Home Office Responds To Crime In England And Wales

Commenting on the quarterly crime statistics published today Home Secretary Theresa May said: "Victims of crime know that while any reduction in crime is welcomed, statistics only present a partial picture. There are still too many offences which ruin lives, whether they are recorded or not, and that means more needs to be done to bring down crime. 

It is unacceptable that each day on average more than 26,000 people fall victim to crime and the police report stubbornly high levels of violence - on average 1,000 people are injured each day. We want to ensure that police and their partner agencies continue to work together to focus on fighting crime, which is why we are slashing bureaucracy to ensure police officers are visible and available on the streets and making police forces more accountable to their local communities."

Operation Golf Team Named Children’s Champions

A Metropolitan Police Service unit, that works in partnership with Romanian police to combat child trafficking, has received a prestigious award for its efforts from a leading children’s rights organisation. Officers from Operation Golf were presented with the Children’s Champion Award from the charity ECPAT UK at the Houses of Parliament this week. ECPAT UK, which campaigns against child trafficking/exploitation, gives the Children’s Champion award annually to the person/s or organisation or business which has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to children over the past twelve months which goes beyond their normal employment role. The award recognises those individuals and agencies who have demonstrated that they share the values of ECPAT UK, including an understanding of children's rights. Operation Golf has been working for the last three years to uncover the trafficking of children for benefit fraud and street crime in the UK. This initiative, part funded by the European Commission, has substantially improved the way children forced to beg and steal have been protected as victims. The award was presented to officers from Operation Golf in the Houses of Parliament by Peter Bone MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Human Trafficking to coincide with the start of European Union Anti-Slavery week.

(BMcN)