Policy Announcements, Friday 08 June

**Government **

• The Department of Trade and Industry has rejected a minister's suggestion that paid paternity leave should be doubled.  Beverley Hughes advanced the suggestion in what her department said was her capacity as an MP and not a minister. The children's minister had been due to call for fathers to be able to spend at least a month with their newborn babies. But the DTI said there were no plans to extend the current two week maximum.

Conservatives

• Timber dealers and furniture makers who possess illegally logged wood could face prosecution under Conservative plans to help protect rain-forests from destruction. The Tory leader said yesterday that creating a market value, through the Kyoto agreement, for keeping rainforests rather than cutting them down was also part of the solution to climate change. "We need clear standards so that we don't encourage the use of illegally logged timber," said Mr Cameron in a speech on biodiversity and the environment. He said there needed to be a range of other measures against illegal deforestation. The Conservative Party was looking at a number of ideas, including making the possession of illegally logged timber an offence, though officials stressed that any new laws would be aimed at dealers and the supply chain, rather than individuals who owned a piece of furniture manufactured from endangered timber.