ASH Daily News for 21/12/2000
HEADLINES
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ASH Daily News
20 December 2000
Headlines
‘MPs rebel over plans to let carers hit children’
Examination of plans to relax restrictions on who can adopt children
Profile of ‘forestalling’
Full Text
MPs rebel over plans to let carers hit children
The Independent reports that, ‘Labour backbenchers are set to defy the
Government by demanding a ban on childminders smacking children.
Members of the Commons Select Committee on Education and Employment
will declare in a report to be published next month that childminders
should never be allowed to smack a child in their care.’
The article adds that, ‘The committee, chaired by Barry Sheerman,
Labour MP for Huddersfield, will also recommend in the report on
education in the early years that childminders should not be allowed
to smoke in front of children in their care.’
Gill Haynes, chief executive of the National Childminding Association,
said: “I am really encouraged to hear the select committee is going to
come out with some strong recommendations…Regulation is about the
protection of children. You cannot put to the vote whether children
should have minimum protection in the eyes of the law.”
Source: The Independent, 16 December 2000
Link:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/Politics/2000-12/rebelmps201200.s
html
Examination of plans to relax restrictions on who can adopt children
‘The Panel’ column in the Guardian’s G2 interviews a variety of
opinion formers in the area of adoption. There is a mixed response to
the Government’s proposal to relax the restrictions on who can adopt a
child in an attempt to encourage more people to think about adopting a
child. However, Christine Freeman of the ‘British parents who adopted
from abroad’ organisation believes that, ‘The one restriction here I
am in favour of is the one on adoptive parents who smoke because I
think it is bad for a child to be brought into an environment where
parents smoke.’
Source: The Guardian, 16 December 2000
Link:
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4108093,00.html
Profile of ‘forestalling’
The Grocer provides an extensive piece on ‘forestalling’ and the UK
government’s plans to end it. Forestalling is where a retailer bulk
buys tobacco products ahead of the anticipated tobacco duty increase
in the annual budget and then sells the tobacco products for months
afterwards at pre-budget prices. This undermines the good health
policy of high tobacco taxes. The piece also heavily discusses tobacco
smuggling and according to a survey finds that over 80% of retailers
feel that their business has suffered due to tobacco smuggling and
that ‘most’ retailers believe that tobacco taxes should be cut to
solve the problem.
Source: The Grocer, 16 December 2000
Karl Brookes
Action on Smoking and Health
102 Clifton Street
London
EC2A 4HW
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