Policy Announcements, Monday 05 March

Government  

• The Government presented a package of actions to deliver the step change needed to ensure that supply chains and public services will be increasingly low carbon, low waste and water efficient, respect biodiversity and deliver wider sustainable development goals. The UK Government Sustainable Procurement Action Plan, allied to the Treasury's recent "Transforming Government Procurement" report, forms the key response to the business-led Task Force report.  The Action Plan puts in place clear lines of accountabilities and reporting, and develops plans to raise the standards and status of procurement practice in Government which will strengthen delivery of these targets. Alongside the Action Plan, Government is also publishing an improved set of mandatory environmental product standards, that will ensure Departments procure the most sustainable commodities.  
• Jack Straw has said his proposal for a hybrid House of Lords can command a consensus among MPs. Ahead of the debate and votes in the Commons this week on the make-up of the second chamber, the leader of House has appealed for supporters of reform to compromise with each other. In an article for this week's House magazine, he said MPs must not risk a repeat of the process in 2003 when no one option commanded majority of support.  
• The home secretary has announced new funding for a series of anti-domestic violence initiatives. John Reid unveiled nearly £2m of cash for 40 multi-agency risk assessment conferences (MARACs) to continue their work and for a further 60 to be set up by March next year. The conferences involve local police, probation education, health and housing services sharing information and working with the voluntary sector on individual cases. In a pilot project for the scheme in Cardiff the level of reported repeat victimisation dropped from 32 per cent to less than 10 per cent in two years.  

Conservatives  

• The Conservatives would give head teachers more power to improve school discipline, David Cameron has said. The Tory leader, speaking to a support group for troubled school-leavers in London, said heads should be given the final say on exclusions. Students that are excluded should be given more help, he said, to combat a growing divide between children from well-off and deprived backgrounds. "It seems to me absolutely clear that we have to give the head teacher the ability to decide who can and who can't attend their school," he said.  
• David Cameron launched an impassioned defence of marriage, saying that family breakdown is the chief cause of society's ills. The Tory leader vowed to support marriage with tax breaks if he wins the next election and said children from single-parent families did worse at school and were involved in more crime.