The death of Peter Carrington at the age of 99 marks the end of an era and the loss of a statesman who was respected globally for his remarkable lifetime of public service.

There can be few people who have served our country for as long, and with such dedication, as Lord Carrington did – from his gallantry as a tank commander in the Second World War, for which he was awarded the Military Cross, to his service in Government under two Monarchs and six Prime Ministers, dating back to Winston Churchill.

He was a much loved and widely respected member of the House of Lords for nearly eight decades, and served with great honour and integrity in Government as Foreign Secretary, Defence Secretary, Leader of the House of Lords, Chairman of the Conservative Party and much more besides. These were qualities that he also brought to bear as a highly esteemed Secretary General of NATO – and, in the week of the NATO Summit, I know that my fellow leaders will join me in offering our gratitude for his lifetime of service and our deepest condolences to his family.

There is simultaneous grant funding and private investment for precision medicine projects that improve how we diagnose, monitor and treat disease for individual patients.

Innovate UK has up to £6 million available in grants for UK-based small and medium-sized enterprises, with at least the same amount in additional match funding coming from equity partners.

This joined up approach should benefit businesses by removing the need to chase their own match funding or additional investment while supporting access to skills, knowledge and market opportunities.

Earlier, more accurate diagnosis and treatment

We are inviting funding applications for projects that will advance precision medicine technologies to support early and accurate diagnosis and inform treatment options. They should help to ensure that the right treatment is selected for individual patients, first time.

We are looking for projects that focus on at least one of the following:

• next-generation medical diagnostics, including new molecular and cellular diagnostics, advanced medtech devices, and imaging and clinical pathology technologies
• wearable or implantable devices such as biosensor tattoos or contact lenses that can inform treatment options for the patient outside of the hospital
• tailor-made therapies or medicines designed around an individual patient’s molecular diagnosis. This includes gene therapy, regenerative cell therapy, immunotherapy, synthetic biology or combination therapies
• bioinformatic or artificial intelligence applications that rapidly and accurately extract digital data from medtech devices, imaging systems or clinical pathology platforms

This need for earlier diagnosis and precision medicine is one of areas being addressed by the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. The challenge will invest up to £210 million in industry and research to combine research data with evidence from the health service and transform precision medicine.

The investor partners

There are 13 investor partners providing match funding in this competition. These are:

If you have a preferred investor partner that you would like to work with, you can specific this in your application. For a grant to be offered both Innovate UK and the investor partner must identify a project as fundable.

Competition information

• the competition opens on 23 July 2018, and the deadline for applications is at midday on 26 September
• only a single SME can claim a grant
• projects can last up to 24 months and have total costs of between £500,000 and £1.5 million
• successful applicants will be provided with 100% of their project costs. This will be split between Innovate UK and the equity partner, depending on whether it is an industrial research or experimental development project
• you can register to attend a briefing event on 2 August 2018 to help you complete your application

Transport Minister Nusrat Ghani is urging maritime charities across the UK to enter this year’s Rescue Boat Grant Fund competition, which she launched at Shepperton Marina today (10 July 2018).

The fund is now in its fifth year, and so far has given charities £3.6 million, helping them buy almost 100 boats and other craft, as well as nearly 4,000 items of crew kit and more than 1,400 other pieces of equipment to support their life-saving work.

It has already helped Loch Lomond Rescue Boat buy a vertically mounted winch to launch in higher waters and Ferryside Lifeboat to get a hovercraft to help navigate shallow waters. Other winners have bought kayaks for inland riverbank searches or crowded beaches, and rafts to help people affected by floods.

Maritime Minister Nusrat Ghani said:

Our search and rescue services attend more than 40,000 incidents a year, saving countless lives and assisting hundreds of thousands of people every year.

This money will provide volunteer rescue teams with advanced lifeboats and equipment which could make the difference when it comes to saving lives.

It means if anyone gets into trouble on or around our waterways, help is never far away.

Rescue Boat Grant Fund video

Last year’s fund helped buy 14 new lifeboats and maritime equipment including lifejackets, helmets, boots, ropes, knives and torches.

The competition comes as part of Maritime Safety Week, which highlights the work being done across the UK to cut the number of lives lost at sea or on rivers. So far this week, the Maritime Minister has met the UK Chamber of Shipping and visited Shell’s London headquarters to discover more about its Partners in Safety initiative to drive down casualties at sea.

Tomorrow (11 July 2018), Nusrat Ghani will host an MP round table meeting on fishing vessel safety to promote recent work to improve safety in the industry, which is currently the most dangerous in the UK with 92 lives lost since 2006.

The minister will also visit the Royal Yachting Association and meet RNLI personnel and volunteers saving lives on the Thames.

More children across the country met the expected standard at the end of primary school this summer in English and mathematics, amid rising education standards in England, Minister for School Standards Nick Gibb announced today (Tuesday 10 July).

Figures published today show:

• 64 per cent of pupils met the expected standard in all of reading, writing and mathematics at Key Stage 2 nationally. This figure was 61 per cent in 2017;
• 75 per cent met the expected standard in reading, up 4 percentage points on last year;
• 78 per cent met the expected standard in writing. This figure was 76 per cent in 2017;
• 76 per cent met the expected standard in mathematics, up on 1 percentage point on last year; and
• 78 per cent met the expected standard in grammar, punctuation and spelling, up 1 percentage point on last year.

The new national curriculum and assessments have set a higher standard in schools and today’s rising results show more pupils are meeting that standard, thanks to the hard work of teachers and pupils, and government reforms.

This year’s results are the third to be released following the introduction of a more rigorous national curriculum assessments in Summer 2016, bringing primary education in line with the best in the world.

Standards are rising in primary schools. There are now 154,000 more six-year-olds on track to become fluent readers today than in 2012, in 2017 the attainment gap between disadvantaged primary pupils and their more affluent peers had narrowed by 10.5 per cent since 2011, and England’s rise up the international PIRLS rankings for literacy put the success of the government’s reforms on a global scale.

School Standards Minister Nick Gibb said:

A good primary education lays the foundations for success at secondary school and beyond. That’s why we introduced a more rigorous, knowledge-rich primary school curriculum – with an emphasis on reading and fluency in arithmetic – to ensure every child is helped to reach their potential from the moment they start school.

Today’s results and the rising standards we are seeing in our primary schools are the fruit of our reforms and a tribute to the hard work and dedication of teachers across the country. These reforms promise even more success in the years to come and will help to improve education for every child, no matter their background.

The government has invested in programmes to help raise standards in our primary schools, including a £26 million network of specialist English Hubs around the country to improve pupils’ literacy and £41 million to follow the same approach to teaching maths as world leading countries through the Shanghai Mastery for Maths programme. ‎This is on top of wider changes to the primary assessment system which will reduce unnecessary workload for teachers so they can focus on what really matters in the classroom.

Today’s figures build on the record 1.9 million more children now in good or outstanding schools than in 2010. The government is continuing to ensure all parents have a good school place on their doorstep, with the recent announcement of £680million to create 40,000 more good school places in primary and secondary schools. Since 2010, 825,000 new school places have been created, with recent analysis showing 91 per cent of those in 2016-17 were in good or outstanding schools.