Policy Announcements, Tuesday 10 July

Government  

• Schools secretary Ed Balls has announced a new emphasis on standards in the classroom and curbs on "structural" reform. In his first Commons statement in the post, the cabinet minister and key ally of Gordon Brown clipped the wings of the academy schools programme by handing more control over them to local authorities. Balls said he backed the privately-sponsored schools as an effective means of raising standards, but said the test as to whether an organisation can become involved in them should be its commitment to education, "not its bank balance". He scrapped the £2m minimum sponsorship for the schools so that more universities can become sponsors. Balls said he wanted "every university" to do so and announced that nine had agreed to already. However he denied Conservative suggestions that the government was scrapping the cross-party consensus of support for Tony Blair's pet education project.
• Plans to significantly increase Merseyside's recycling rates and cut the amount of rubbish it sends to landfill were given a boost today, with the award of £90 million PFI credits. Merseyside has drawn up a plan that includes more composting, more household waste recycling centres and facilities to separate the remaining waste for further recycling and energy recovery. Merseyside people recycled 18.5% of their waste in 2005/06. Under planned improvements, the area aims to raise recycling rates to 45 per cent by 2020 and to cut the amount of its waste sent to landfill by over 60%, equivalent to nearly half a million tonnes