Detailed annual statistics on the structure of the agricultural industry at 1 June in England and the UK.

Energy Trends and Energy Prices publications are published today 26 September 2019 by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The publications cover new data for the second quarter of 2019 (April to June). Energy Trends covers statistics on energy production and consumption, in total and by fuel, and provides an analysis of the year on year changes. Energy Prices covers prices to domestic and industrial consumers, prices of oil products and comparisons of international fuel prices.

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Published 26 September 2019

Transatlantic export and investment deals expected to be worth over £85 million have been announced by the UK government as the UN General Assembly takes place in New York.

The UK government has announced a number of export wins to the United States from a range of British companies, all of which were achieved with support from the Department for International Trade, expected to be worth over £50 million.

Accompanying the Prime Minister in New York, the International Trade Secretary, Liz Truss said:

It’s great to see UK SMEs selling their British-made products – from food and drink to tech – to the US.

British businesses have seen great success in the US, with exports reaching £100 billion last year.

Signing a comprehensive US-UK free trade agreement will ensure we see this figure grow and British small businesses are going to be the big winners.

Strengthening US-UK collaboration in healthcare, American and British gene therapy company MeiraGTx has invested over £35 million in the UK to build and operate a gene therapy manufacturing facility next to Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. The company has created more than 70 highly specialised jobs, and expects to hire another 30 professionals over the coming months. This state-of-the-art facility is developing novel treatments for patients living with serious diseases.

Companies securing new export deals include:

• Yorkshire-based food maker Symingtons Ltd who have secured a deal expected to be worth more than £8 million over the next two years with American retail giant Walmart which will see their Naked Noodle brand sold in 3,000 stores across the states;
• Geollect, a geospatial technology start-up founded in 2017 by Cate Gwilliam, a former Geospatial Intelligence Officer with National Geospatial Agency in the US and Richard Gwilliam, a former Royal Navy Intelligence Officer, who has secured a deal with a US cruise line operator projected to be worth £5.5 million by the end of 2024;
• Southampton-based technology firm Clearvision who have secured two export wins for their software tools and applications to the US worth a combined £15 million;
• Leeds-based firm Booking Protect which secured a £6 million export win to the USA for their refund and ticket insurance technology;
• Feed Me Bottles based in Dartford, Kent, has secured a new deal in the United States which will see its Yoomi range, which includes a pioneering self-warming baby bottle, sold in Buy Buy Baby stores across the country as well as online via Macy’s department store and major US retailer Walmart. The deal is expected to be worth more than £1 million by 2025;
• Specialised wholesaler of Indian books Motilal Books from St Albans have secured a £2.5 million export win to the United States;
• UK tech firm Cognisess have secured an export win to the United States for their predictive HR technology which helps businesses identify, nurture and retain workforce talent. The company estimates this deal to be worth around £3.5 million over five years;
• London-based online fashion marketplace Love The Sales has expanded its business to the United States with support from the Department for International Trade. The company project the expansion will boost revenue by £9 million over five years.

One British producer, The Foraging Fox has signed agreements which will see their award-winning all-natural beetroot ketchup and flavoured mayonnaise stocked on American shelves in more than 1,000 stores. The company believes this could lead to tens of millions of pounds of sales within the next five years as they grow their reach in North America.

Total trade in goods and services between the UK and the US in the four quarters to the end of Q1 2019 was £199.5 billion, up 9.0% on the previous 12 months, with UK exports reaching £100 billion last year.

The preparations for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China next month along with breakthroughs in science which have eradicated the scourge of smallpox and improved the lives of millions are reminders of global progress that we can celebrate.

But trans-national challenges still remain and threaten our friends and neighbours around the world: the natural disasters, death and havoc brought by climate change and extreme weather; the suffering of people living in extreme poverty; and the virulent spread of killer diseases — at least 2.5 million people died as a result of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in 2017.

The United Nations General Assembly, which opened this week in New York, is the world’s forum for addressing these challenges. The U.K. and China are active members and participants. We are also partners. And as permanent members of the UN Security Council, the U.K. and China have a particular responsibility to ensure that the UN is addressing the most pressing challenges facing the international community. For the past three years, for example, British and Chinese peacekeepers have been deployed in South Sudan, Africa’s youngest country, to protect its people from violence and instability; British and Chinese doctors and nurses have been tackling Ebola in West Africa.

Around the world, people face a myriad of challenges. As the world’s leaders meet in New York, I want to highlight three global challenges where we should strengthen international cooperation in the year ahead.

First, climate change is not a distant threat — as this week’s global climate strikes have reminded us. Accelerating action to reduce emissions and protect our environment is an urgent priority. We welcome President Xi’s strong support for the Paris Climate Change Agreement. At the UN General Assembly, the U.K. and China will co-lead the “resilience and adaptation” and “nature-based solutions” strands of the Secretary General’s Climate Action Summit. We are also funding joint research, piloting green projects and bringing together our leading scientists to support climate resilient development. The U.K. is the first major economy to legislate to become a net zero emissions economy and will host “COP26” in 2020, the successor to the landmark Paris Conference. At the same time, China will be host to the Conference on Biodiversity, focusing on protecting the species of our planet. Together, we can sustain momentum for climate change mitigation, resilience and finance and approaches which emerge from this week’s UN discussions.

Second, although — in large part thanks to China’s efforts in lifting over 800 million people out of poverty — we reached the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, more than 730 million people still live in extreme poverty globally, over half of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Realising the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 will give the most vulnerable people food, housing, education, medical care and livelihoods. The U.K. and China are cooperating to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals through our research partnerships, which bring leading British and Chinese institutions together to improve our development impact. Our Partnership for Investment and Growth in Africa encourages sustainable, job-creating investment in East Africa, helping African countries improve their manufacturing capacity and generate growth.

Third, disease continues to devastate the lives of millions of the poorest and most vulnerable. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, over 2,000 people have died and 3,000 been infected with the Ebola virus. We are working with the World Health Organisation and regional countries to respond to this public health emergency. For the past 7 years, the U.K.-China Global Health Support Programme has also led a range of projects focused on issues like malaria control in Tanzania and reproductive, maternal and child health in Ethiopia and Myanmar. Working with the China Centre of Disease Control, China’s National Health Commission, Public Health England and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Thanks to international efforts, at least 13 million lives have been saved from vaccine-preventable diseases since 2000.

The UN plays a crucial role in all these challenges. Secretary General António Guterres has set an ambitious agenda for the General Assembly with five summits to boost global ambition to tackle climate change, achieve universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals, unlock international finance for development and protect vulnerable Small Island Developing States. The UN Secretary General needs our support not just for this agenda but also to reform the UN to ensure it adjusts to the new challenges of the 21st Century. We welcome the Secretary General’s wide-ranging reform agenda.

U.K.-China cooperation on global challenges will be unaffected by Brexit. The U.K. will be an outward-looking and innovative country as it has always been. Here in China the U.K. already has over 1,500 people working in the embassy, consulates and our network across China.

We will continue to work closely with China to address the global challenges facing our citizens and the world. Next year, at the UN’s 75th anniversary, we hope to be able to celebrate progress in tackling the world’s challenges bringing us a step closer to a peaceful, secure and prosperous world.

• [Press release] (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lord-ahmad-there-is-a-moral-imperative-to-stop-threat-to-media-freedom) issued at the ministerial meeting on Media Freedom at the UN General Assembly 2019
• [Statement] {https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/we-need-every-country-to-recognise-that-attacks-on-media-freedom-are-beyond-the-pale} on the conclusion of the ministerial meeting on Media Freedom at the UN General Assembly 2019

Your Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it’s my immense pleasure to be here. I am delighted to be joined here by Amal Clooney, who’s the Special Envoy for the UK on the issue, the important issue, of Media Freedom, and in the time since the Conference and the lead up to the Conference that we held over the summer in London, I pay tribute to how she’s worked tirelessly on this primary and priority objective for the UK Government.

At this time, I am also truly delighted to welcome on the panel this morning His Excellency, the Prime Minister of Sudan, who really epitomises how change can happen very quickly. Just before we came in I remembered visiting Khartoum not so long ago, and what we’ve seen happen on the ground so rapidly is a tribute to how civilian rule can be instigated and I’m sure we’re very much looking forward to his contribution this morning. Thanks to the efforts of his government, for the first time in three decades Sudan’s journalists will be free to report without fear or favour.

I am also delighted that we welcome the UNESCO Director-General here this morning as well and she is representing also of course the Secretary-General in her capacity this morning.

And finally to my right is journalist Jason Rezaian. Many of you know Jason. I said to him this is the first occasion we’ve had to meet, but I know about him, I’ve heard about him, and many of you will recall that he was imprisoned for 544 days in Iran, and he’ll be speaking about his insights and experience as well.

From our perspective, I’m proud to come from a country that has been a beacon of free speech for more than four centuries, from the abolition of the Licensing Act which set free the printing presses of the 17th century to the invention of television, which changed the landscape of how we receive news.

It is the home of George Orwell, whose caustic criticism of Newspeak and the Thought Police shone light on the chilling totalitarian efforts to silence the press.

And it is the home of William Russell, who became the first modern war correspondent when he brought the bloody battles of the Crimean War to British broadsheets, shocking a nation with his description of, famously quoted, “the thin red line.”

We have much to be proud of in our rich tradition of media freedom. And yes, like many countries, we are grappling with the balance between free speech, national security and privacy. But those are tough questions we are willing to ask of ourselves.

Because ultimately a free media is essential to any flourishing democracy. It is the bedrock on which all other freedoms are based and indeed preserved.

As Thomas Jefferson poignantly wrote, ““The liberty of speaking and writing […] guards our other liberties.”

We are gathered here this morning because as member states of the United Nations, we have all long recognised the importance of media freedom in building more just, peaceful and prosperous societies, as reflected in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We need it to ensure free and open debate. We need it to promote discussion and the exchange of ideas, technological and economic ideas as well as political ones. We also need it to root out corruption, hold governments to account. We need it to inform and engage people around the world, on the issues that matter most to them in their day-to-day lives.

Today, that freedom is under threat. Freedom House reported this year that, and I quote from the report, “Freedom of the media has been deteriorating around the world over the past decade,” – indeed that is true even in the most influential democracies in the world.

In their pursuit of the truth, just for simply doing their jobs, journalists, often in the front line, have become the targets of censorship and intimidation. And too many, too many your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, have paid the ultimate price. We are approaching the anniversaries of the tragic deaths of journalists Martin O’Hagan, Jamal Khashoggi and Daphne Caruana-Galizia.

While the world continues to express its outrage at these and other murders, the violence hasn’t stopped. Just this year, and I’m sure we’ll hear from UNESCO as well, UNESCO itself reports that 41 journalists and media workers have been killed. According to Reporters Without Borders, 383 journalists and media workers are imprisoned in countries such as Turkey, China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea.

We must remember journalists like Javid Noori, a citizen journalist who was executed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Or the Venezuelan journalist, Luis Carlos Diaz, who was arrested, charged with ‘public incitement’ linked to the nationwide extended blackout in March and banned from leaving the country.

Or Huang Qi, himself a human rights reporter, who was sentenced to 12 years in a Chinese prison in a flagrant violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This tide of oppression against free media across the world harms the countries affected, and offends others against the values we hold so dear.

So we all have a moral imperative to stop the threat to media freedom, whether it’s violence, unduly restrictive laws and regulations, imprisonment, detention or indeed internet censorship.

Last year, the United Kingdom launched a campaign to shine a global spotlight on this crucial issue.

And this summer, the then Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, and Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, used the convening power of the UK and Canada to bring together 1500 representatives from over 100 countries to the world’s first Global Conference for Media Freedom in London. I know many in this room were there and both Amal and I were delighted to be part of that landmark event.

Together with our Canadian friends, we asked ministers, leaders in civil society, academics, and of course, the media themselves – what are the challenges facing journalists and the media? How can we galvanise support in holding the powerful to account?

It is clear there are some countries who are unable to protect media freedom. And there are others who are simply unwilling to do so.

First, to those unable to protect media freedom. We know that creating legislative protections in domestic law, and I’m sure that will come up in our discussions this morning, provides the foundations for media freedom.

So we are encouraging countries around the world to sign the campaign’s Global Pledge, and to live up to the commitments within it.

Today, I am proud to announce that I believe 30 governments have signed the Global Pledge, and in doing so, we have become founding members of the new Media Freedom Coalition.

For each signatory, being part of this Coalition means that laws within our own countries will be held to the highest of standards. But some countries need technical support to turn their ideals into legal protections.

So we are delighted to support the independent high-level panel of legal experts, which has been convened by Amal to advise countries on how to strengthen their legal protection of journalists, whether it’s advising governments on new international commitments or indeed assisting with the repeal of outdated or restrictive legislation.

All members must also ensure their country frameworks are up to task – and of course the United Kingdom is no exception.

So we are taking steps to establish a National Committee on the Safety of Journalists, tasked with developing a National Action Plan to ensure that those who threaten journalists are held to account.

And a new dedicated international Task Force, led by UNESCO, will assist governments around the world in developing their own plans, tailored to the needs of their own legal systems.

Next, we must protect journalists and help them avail themselves of these legal resources. With that in mind the second prong of our approach is helping journalists enforce those legal protections.

The Global Media Defence Fund, administered by UNESCO, will support, train and indeed provide legal support and advocacy for journalists in the most dangerous scenarios, whether it’s covering the Taliban on the battlefields of Afghanistan or cartel violence in Mexico.

The UK government has already pledged £3 million worth of support for this new fund and I strongly encourage those gathered here today to consider making a commitment and contribution too.

And third part of our strategic approach: we will act as the advocacy group to lobby those who are not just unable, but also importantly unwilling, to sign up to the commitments currently in the Global Pledge.

And we will raise our voices on behalf of journalists who have been imprisoned or indeed tragically murdered.

Ultimately, we need every country to recognise that attacks on media freedom are beyond the pale. And just like any assault on human rights, and I speak as the UK Human Rights Minister, we must hold abusers accountable, both legally and financially.

We want to make sure that no profit comes from serious human rights violations or abuses anywhere in the world.

So when we leave the European Union, we will be introducing a UK Magnitsky law.

This will allow the United Kingdom to impose sanctions in the form of barring entry and freezing assets against anyone is responsible for the most serious human rights violations or abuses, and yes that includes against journalists or whistleblowers.

And we won’t give up the fight for justice on behalf of those who have suffered or been killed. More than two years has passed since the death of young freelance journalist Christopher Allen in South Sudan. But sadly no investigation has taken place into this murder. We are re-doubling our efforts to ensure justice for Christopher and for his family.

Many remain imprisoned such as Erick Kabendera in Tanzania. Others such as Maria Ressa from the Philippines, here with us today, live under threat of prosecution.

In every case, your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, in every case and on behalf of every journalist and indeed every family, we will continue to press for justice and accountability to keep the flame of media freedom burning in some of the darkest corners of the world, where the work of reporters is so very, very important.

In concluding, I’m touched by and I’m sure many of us recount, in a speech before she was killed, the renowned Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin once described her work as “send[ing] home that first rough draft of history.” She died doing just that.

But with each abuse of power against media, those drafts of history – and the reporters who bear witness to them – risk being lost.

Our mission, simply put, is to secure those basic freedoms for the media around the world. But I fully accept it is not an easy task.

It won’t be accomplished with the will of the few. It will take the absolute commitment and resolve of the many.

We hope we can count on your support. Because those who ultimately put their lives on the line every day in pursuit of the truth deserve no less. Thank you.