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Author Archives: GovWorldMag

Theresa May must be willing to tell President Trump that he is wrong – her failure to do so is shameful

Responding to the joint press conference held between Theresa May and President Trump, Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry has said:

“The Prime Minister promised to speak frankly to President Trump, and tell him where she disagreed with him, but we heard nothing of the sort.

“She appears only to have discussed those issues on which we already know they agree: trade and security. But we heard nothing about climate change, about respect for human and reproductive rights, about war crimes in Syria, about the nuclear deal with Iran, or about the illegal settlements in the West Bank. 

The Prime Minister referred to a special relationship based on our shared history and interests, but she has to realise that it is also a relationship based on shared values, and if the President is going to discard those values, whether by embracing torture or ignoring climate change, then she must be willing to tell him frankly that he is wrong.

“Her failure to do so today – even behind closed doors – was nothing less than shameful.”

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Labour • • •

Rationing of this kind is totally unacceptable and is against the best traditions of the NHS – Julie Cooper

Julie Cooper MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Minister, commenting on reports of increases in waiting times for hip operations, said:

“It is absolutely shocking in 21st Century Britain that patients in some parts of the country will only qualify for knee and hip replacement operations on the NHS if they can prove pain so exceptional that it prevents sleep.

“Rationing of this kind is totally unacceptable and is against the best traditions of the NHS. However, there are concerns that if the Government continues to deny sufficient funding to the NHS, rationing of treatments could become more widespread.”

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Labour • • •

New vehicle tax rules moves DVLA in to the world of webinar

From 1 April 2017, the way vehicle tax is calculated is changing for new cars and some motorhomes. These changes will only apply to cars registered with DVLA on or after 1 April 2017. We’ve been working closely with stakeholders over the past 12 months to make sure that in the run up to this, they’re aware of the changes and know what, if anything, they need to do to prepare.

Key stakeholders for the new vehicle tax rules are fleet companies. Traditionally, we tend to speak face to face with this customer base, but this can be time consuming and costly for either side when travelling to meetings. So, we asked our fleet customers what the preferred way of communicating with them would be – the consensus was that a ‘webinar’ would work. We’d trialled a new webinar kit recently, so we were looking for an opportunity to use it for the first time. With our fleet customers keen, this was an exciting opportunity to put our new kit into practice!

Two trials later and we were ready to go live. We sent a link to all who expressed an interest and at 10.30am on 10 January we were ready to broadcast.

In total, 195 participants joined the webinar to watch the presentation and listen to the commentary provided by Helen Jones and Rhian Townsend, two of our more experienced Service Designers.

Behind the scenes (in a room not far away!), colleagues were waiting to answer questions as they came through. We were poised with laptops at the ready to answer all that we could. An hour later, presentation over and all questions answered, the webinar was done.

Feedback we’ve had since suggests that it went down really well. So it’s an excellent example of how sharing ideas and working together with our stakeholders helps us meet their needs. Well worth it.

It also shows that our investment in the webinar kit is well worth having and in future we’ll be putting it to good use for other audiences too.

If you weren’t able to make it on the day you can see the presentation and the questions that were asked during the webinar here

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DVLA • • • • •