Author Archives: HM Government

Both men have given undertakings to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, which prevents them from becoming directly or indirectly involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company for six years.

Mr Islam and Mr Monaf were the directors of M & Y Enterprises Ltd, a company trading as a restaurant, and on 27 January 2015 Home Office Immigration Enforcement Officers discovered that they were employing two workers who were not eligible to work in the UK, an offence under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006.

The company went into liquidation on 29 February 2016 owing £76,853 to creditors, of which £30,000 was the outstanding penalty imposed by the Home Office Immigration and Enforcement for employing the illegal workers.

Commenting on the disqualification, Martin Gitner, Deputy Head of Investigations with the Insolvency Service said:

Illegal workers are not protected under employment law, and as well as cheating legitimate job seekers out of employment opportunities these employers defraud the tax payer and undercut honest competitors.

The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, makes employers responsible for preventing illegal workers in the UK. To comply with the law, a company must check and be able to prove documents have been checked prior to recruitment that show a person is entitled to work.

The public has a right to expect that those who break the law will face the consequences and this should serve as a warning to other directors tempted to take on illegal staff.

Notes to editors

Mr Abu Muhammod Yusuf Islam resides in Ilford. and his date of birth is 23 December 1967.

Mr Mohammod Abdul Monaf resides in Twickenham and his date of birth is 24 September 1958.

M & Y Enterprises Limited (CRO 04611913) was incorporated on 9 December 2002. The company traded as Deea Restaurant from 145-147 Richmond Road, Kingston.

Mr Islam was a director from 12 December 2002 to 29 April 2015 and Mr Monaf was a director from 12 December 2002 to liquidation. The Company went into Creditors Voluntary Liquidation on 29 February 2016 with an estimated deficiency of £70,353.

On 03 January 2017, the Secretary of State accepted a Disqualification Undertaking from Mr Islam, effective from 24 January 2017, for a period of 6 years.

On 5 January 2017, the Secretary of State accepted a Disqualification Undertaking from Mr Monaf, effective from 26 January 2017, for 6 years.

The matters of unfitness, which Mr Islam and Mr Monaf did not dispute in the Disqualification Undertakings, were that:

I failed to ensure that M & Y Enterprises Limited (M&Y) complied with its obligations as an employer under The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 in that M&Y employed two illegal workers and following a visit to M&Y’s trading premises by Home Office Immigration Enforcement on 27 January 2015, was fined £30,000. M&Y failed to pay the penalty in full and the sum of £30,000 remained outstanding at the date of liquidation.

A disqualification order has the effect that without specific permission of a court, a person with a disqualification cannot:

• act as a director of a company
• take part, directly or indirectly, in the promotion, formation or management of a company or limited liability partnership
• be a receiver of a company’s property

Disqualification undertakings are the administrative equivalent of a disqualification order but do not involve court proceedings. Persons subject to a disqualification order are bound by a range of other restrictions.

The Insolvency Service, an executive agency sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), administers the insolvency regime, and aims to deliver and promote a range of investigation and enforcement activities both civil and criminal in nature, to support fair and open markets. We do this by effectively enforcing the statutory company and insolvency regimes, maintaining public confidence in those regimes and reducing the harm caused to victims of fraudulent activity and to the business community, including dealing with the disqualification of directors in corporate failures.

BEIS’ mission is to build a dynamic and competitive UK economy that works for all, in particular by creating the conditions for business success and promoting an open global economy. The Criminal Investigations and Prosecutions team contributes to this aim by taking action to deter fraud and to regulate the market. They investigate and prosecute a range of offences, primarily relating to personal or company insolvencies.

The agency also authorises and regulates the insolvency profession, assesses and pays statutory entitlement to redundancy payments when an employer cannot or will not pay employees, provides banking and investment services for bankruptcy and liquidation estate funds and advises ministers and other government departments on insolvency law and practice.

Further information about the work of the Insolvency Service, and how to complain about financial misconduct, is available.

Contact Press Office

Media enquiries for this press release – 020 7674 6910 or 020 7596 6187

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It is a pleasure to be at the Music and Drama Education Exposition. This event offers teachers and organisations promoting music and drama education the opportunity to attend seminars, workshops and debates. And after the growth in popularity over the past 5 years, the exposition will be visiting Manchester in October, giving teachers from all over the country the opportunity to benefit from what the exposition has to offer.

Thanks to the likes of Pinewood Studios, the West End, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Britain is world leading when it comes to film, theatre and music. The arts contribute to the wealth of our nation, both culturally and financially.

As a child I was in the church and school choirs and began piano lessons at the age of 5; alas, ceasing piano lessons at the age of 6. But every day in school assemblies we were played a piece of classical music; we never knew the names of the pieces but it introduced us to the wonders of the best music ever written and from that I became a lifelong lover of classical music.

That’s why I am keen for primary schools to become involved with the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM)’s Classical 100. This free resource, designed specifically for primary schools in conjunction with Classic FM, Decca and primary teachers, can help introduce pupils to classical music. Since it was launched, over 3,000 English primary schools have registered to use the resource.

Last month I visited 2 schools in Birmingham to see Classical 100 in operation. I joined in with a class of year 3 children in Bournville Junior School playing Beethoven’s Ode to Joy on bell plates and hand chimes.

It is important that all pupils are taught about and have the opportunity to participate in the arts. When I returned to the Department for Education in 2014 as Minister of State for School Reform, one of the first announcements I made was that funding for music education hubs would increase from £58 million in 2014 to 2015, to £75 million in 2015 to 2016. And in November last year I announced that music education hubs would continue to receive £75 million every year until 2020.

That funding should support all pupils, whatever their background, whatever their family’s income, and whatever particular special needs or disabilities they may have. No child should be excluded from music because their parents cannot afford to pay for lessons or an instrument, or because they have physical disabilities or other special needs.

Last week I met Stephen Hetherington, founder of the One-Handed Musical Instrument Trust and heard about the excellent work the trust is doing to remove the barriers to music faced by physically disabled people. This includes a pilot, with the Birmingham music education hub and others, teaching children to play one handed recorders and specially adapted trumpets. I am delighted to see that Stephen is here today with colleagues from Birmingham City University and I urge you to find out more about their work and how it could help your pupils.

The Department also provides £29 million for the Music and Dance Scheme, which ensures that exceptionally talented young musicians and dancers are able to fulfil their potential. The vast majority of pupils at the specialist schools like the Royal Ballet School and Yehudi Menuhin School receive means-tested support.

Similarly, the £13.5 million Dance and Drama Award scheme provides means-tested support for aspiring young dancers and actors, helping many young people on their way to careers in the performing arts.

The government provides funding for the national youth music ensembles such as the National Youth Orchestra and Youth Music Theatre UK. And we provide funding for In Harmony, an intensive orchestral experience focused on schools in some of the country’s most deprived communities.

These specialist schemes are vital, but they do not reach everyone, which is why the government has focused on improving the quality of arts education in schools. Music and art and design are compulsory in the national curriculum from the age of 5 to 14. Dance is a compulsory part of the PE curriculum for 5- to 14-year-olds. And drama is a compulsory part of the English curriculum for 5- to 16-year-olds.

Following the review of the national curriculum, a greater emphasis was placed on teaching pupils the core knowledge and techniques underpinning these subjects:

• The new art and design curriculum has a stronger focus on the teaching of drawing from an early age and a new emphasis on knowing about the historical development of art through a greater emphasis on teaching about great artists and designers.
• The revised programmes of study for music place a greater focus on the historical development of music and listening to the work of great composers. For example, there is a new reference to pupils being taught to appreciate and understand a wide range of high quality live and recorded music in key stage 2.
• And, in the new drama GCSE, pupils will study at least 1 play in depth and 2 extracts from a second contrasting play. This rigorous study of pieces of drama will be accompanied by participation in at least 2 performances.

And today, I can announce that the government has updated content for the GCSE in drama and A level in drama and theatre studies. This update specifies that all pupils will now have the entitlement to experience live theatre, reaffirming the government’s commitment to providing pupils with an enriching arts education. When studying for qualifications in drama, pupils should not be limited to watching a DVD or a peer performance; they should have the opportunity to sit in the audience, experiencing a live performance.

The government is committed to ensuring that high-quality arts education is the entitlement of every single child. All pupils, whatever their background, should have access to the best that has been thought and said, including a secure grounding in the arts.

In 2010, the government inherited a school system where the curriculum had been stripped of the rich knowledge content that all children deserve to be taught. For our society to be socially just and socially mobile, all pupils must be endowed with the core knowledge needed to be culturally literate.

The government acted.

As well as ending the grade inflation that devalued the public’s faith in exams and removing many so-called ‘equivalent’ qualifications, the government, through the introduction of the EBacc, has placed greater emphasis on ensuring pupils are taught a core academic curriculum.

The government now publishes both the proportion of pupils entering and the proportion of pupils achieving a good pass in the 5 EBacc subjects: English, maths, a science, a humanity and a language. In 2010, just one-fifth of pupils were studying this combination of subjects. This has since risen to two-fifths, with the proportion of pupils entering the EBacc rising year on year.

Yesterday, I launched the New Schools Network’s report into the importance of the arts – alongside Matthew Hancock, Minister of State for digital and culture policy. The report examined the relationship between arts education and the EBacc.

Despite the success of the EBacc in ensuring greater numbers of pupils are now taking the combination of subjects that facilitate pupils pursuing any post-16 path they should choose – including attending one of the country’s world-leading universities – the policy has consistently come in for criticism.

This report puts to rest the tired and inaccurate criticisms of the EBacc policy, a policy which is designed to make this country more meritocratic. In fact, a recent Sutton Trust report found that schools enthusiastically adapting their curriculum to enter more pupils into EBacc subjects were more likely to achieve good English and maths GCSEs and go on to take A level or equivalent level 3 qualifications, as compared to a set of schools with similar characteristics. Additionally, the pupil premium gap closed slightly more in these schools compared with schools with similar pupil intakes.

But a particularly damaging criticism of the policy is that it is driving the arts out of education. This is not true, as the report makes clear. The EBacc was deliberately restricted to 5 subject areas to ensure that pupils could take the EBacc and still pursue a number of other subjects, including arts subjects. Data suggests that on average pupils in state-funded schools enter 9 GCSE subjects which count in the performance tables – rising to 10 for pupils with higher prior attainment – leaving ample room for pupils to study a number of arts subjects alongside the EBacc. The proportion of pupils in state funded schools taking at least 1 arts subject has increased from 45.8% in 2011 (when the EBacc was announced) to 48.0% in 2016.

But the report is correct that the government must do more to extol the importance of a high-quality arts education. The government’s vision for arts education is encapsulated in 2 words: equity and quality. And this vision must be backed up by concrete action.

That is why I am here to speak today: to express my gratitude to you for what you do for arts education in this country, and to offer you my support as you help to ensure all pupils – whatever their background – receive the high quality music and arts education they deserve.

Thank you.

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Anglers had penalties of over £450 each imposed at Uxbridge Magistrates Court on 6 February 2017 for fishing illegally, without an Environment Agency rod licence.

Adam Younie 26 of Haverhill, John Tibbs 46 of Romford, and Steve Sullivan 48 were caught fishing without a licence by Environment Agency fisheries enforcement officers at Thorney Weir lakes, West Drayton, Middlesex. Each were fined £300 (with £127 costs and £30 victim surcharge) when an Environment Agency annual licence at the time, cost just £27.

All anglers failed to appear in court. Environment Agency Fisheries Team Leader, Richard Tyner said:

We check licences across all fisheries in Hertfordshire and Essex, and work in partnership with fishery owners and the police to detect and deter fisheries crime. People who don’t buy a licence are cheating other anglers and the future of the sport. The Environment Agency relies on the income from rod licence sales to continue the important work we do to protect fish stocks, improve fisheries and encourage more people to take up fishing.

If you are caught fishing without a rod licence you risk a criminal conviction and a fine up to £2,500. There is no excuse. Annual rod licences for trout and coarse fishing remain at £5 for 12 to 16 year olds, £18 for senior and disabled concessions and £27 for non-concessions. Children under 12 can fish for free. Licences are easy to buy from the Post Office website or by phone on 03448 005 386 prior to fishing. Anglers should always ensure they have permission to fish at a fishery and check Environment Agency byelaws.

Last year, Environment Agency officers checked more than 62,000 licences and prosecuted more than 1,900 licence cheats. Between them, they were ordered to pay fines and costs in excess of £600,000. To help crack down on unlicensed fishing, the Environment Agency urges anyone to report illegal activity by calling 0800 80 70 60 or anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Money raised from rod licence sales is reinvested in the environment, including; a wide range of projects to improve facilities for anglers, protecting stocks from illegal fishing, fish restocking, invasive species eradication, and working with partners to encourage people to take-up fishing for the first time.

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