Category Archives: UK news

One in 52 Blackpool children in care as poverty soars in north of England

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£25bn of public money would have been saved between 2019 and 2023 if north had same care entry rates as south, report says

One in every 52 children in Blackpool are in care compared with one in 140 across England, leading to calls for more to be done to urgently tackle the widening north-south divide, brought on by “decades of underinvestment”.

Nine in every thousand children are in care in the north, compared with six in the rest of England, according to a report by Health Equity North.

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Ban smacking children in England and Northern Ireland, say doctors

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Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health urges ministers to follow lead of Scotland and Wales

Parents in England and Northern Ireland should be banned from smacking their children because doing so is unjust, dangerous and harmful, leading doctors have urged ministers.

It was “a scandal” that Scotland and Wales had outlawed smacking but not the other two home nations, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said on Wednesday.

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Rwanda bill delayed for at least a day after Lords pass amendments

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Legislation to return to the Commons with changes that would ensure conformity with UK and other law and protect claimants

The Rwanda deportation bill has been delayed for at least one more day after the House of Lords voted for amendments that would ensure that it adheres to international and key domestic laws.

The plan to spend £541m to send 300 people seeking asylum to east Africa was sent back to the House of Commons after peers voted several times to add protections for claimants to the bill.

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Tory rebellion against Sunak smoking ban rekindles leadership talk

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Prospective contenders Badenoch, Braverman, Jenrick and Mordaunt abstained or voted against the ban

In his speech to the Tory faithful at the Conservative party conference in Manchester in October, Rishi Sunak declared that he wanted to ban smoking for future generations.

His announcement – confirming a plan first reported by the Guardian – was met with applause from grassroots members then. But Tuesday night’s vote demonstrates the challenges for a Tory prime minister championing what his own side deems an archetypal “nanny state” policy.

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Clustering of AI firms in south and east of England will foil levelling up – report

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Hi-tech ‘golden triangle’ of Oxford, Cambridge and London risks deeper regional inequalities, says thinktank

Investments in new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are “profoundly skewed” towards the “golden triangle” of Oxford, Cambridge and London, and risk deepening existing regional inequalities in England, according to research.

Ministers have promised to level up the country, narrowing the gap between the best- and worst-performing areas, but the rapid rollout of generative AI and automation could cut against that aspiration, according to the Institute for the Future of Work (IFOW).

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Rishi Sunak and Belgian PM criticise mayor’s halting of NatCon conference

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Emir Kir ordered police to close down radical rightwing conference attended by Suella Braverman and Nigel Farage

The UK prime minister has rounded on Belgian authorities for closing down a radical rightwing conference in Brussels that was addressed by British politicians including Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman.

After a day of chaos, claims and recriminations, the decision by a local Belgian mayor to stop the National Conservatives (NatCon) event was also condemned as “unacceptable” by Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo.

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MPs vote to give smoking ban bill second reading – as it happened

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Rishi Sunak’s authority suffers blow as several Conservatives vote against bill, which clears first Commons hurdle with 383 votes to 67

At 12.30pm a transport minister will respond to an urgent question in the Commons tabled by Labour on job losses in the rail industry. That means the debate on the smoking ban will will not start until about 1.15pm.

Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is one of the Britons speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels starting today. The conference, which features hardline rightwingers from around the world committed to the NatCons’ ‘faith, flag and family’ brand of conservatism, is going ahead despite two venues refusing to host them at relatively short notice.

The current UK government doesn’t have the political will to take on the ECHR and hasn’t laid the ground work for doing so.

And so it’s no surprise that recent noises in this direction are easily dismissed as inauthentic.

Any attempt to include a plan for ECHR withdrawal in a losing Conservative election manifesto risks setting the cause back a generation.

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Baby died after being left face-down at Stockport nursery, court hears

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Kate Roughley, then deputy manager, accused of causing death of Genevieve Meehan, who was swaddled and strapped to bean bag

A nursery deputy manager caused the death of a baby she placed face-down, tightly swaddled and strapped to a bean bag for more than 90 minutes, a court has heard.

The resulting distressed cries of nine-month-old Genevieve Meehan, known to her family as Gigi, were “simply ignored”, the jury was told on Tuesday.

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Dr Martens chief to exit as shares hit record low after profit warning

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British bootmaker says it does not expect to increase prices this year as it reports poor US sales

Shares in Dr Martens plummeted to a new low as the UK bootmaker warned on profits and poor performance in the US, and announced the departure of its chief executive.

The brand, known for its yellow-stitched thick-soled boots, warned sales would fall by a single-digit percentage in the year to the end of March 2025, compared with a year earlier. Profit before tax could be just a third of last year’s £159m in a worst-case scenario.

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Scottish Power to pay out £1.5m after overcharging 1,700 households

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Supplier mistakenly charged direct debit customers at rate meant for those who pay when they get bills

Scottish Power is to pay £1.5m in refunds and compensation after overcharging nearly 1,700 households at the height of the energy crisis and in previous years, paying out an average of £294 to each customer.

The energy regulator, Ofgem, said it agreed the redress package with the supplier after it confirmed that, between 2015 and 2023, it mistakenly charged 1,699 direct debit customers at a higher rate that should only apply to those who pay when they receive their bill.

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Former Post Office executive says he should not have said Horizon was robust

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David Miller, then chief operating officer, tells inquiry he does not remember 1999 meeting in which comment was made

A former Post Office executive has told a public inquiry that he “should not have said” to its board that the Horizon IT system was “robust and fit for purpose” and agreed there had been a “missed opportunity” to investigate post office operators’ concerns.

David Miller, who retired in 2006 as chief operating officer of Post Office, had been told of problems with Horizon when he held meetings with post office operators in June 1999, the inquiry into the scandal has heard.

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High court upholds top London school’s ban on prayer rituals

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Muslim pupil loses case against Michaela community school, run by former government social mobility tsar Katharine Birbalsingh

A ban on prayer rituals at one of the highest-performing state schools in England, famous for its strict discipline and high-profile headteacher, has been upheld by a high court judge.

The case against Michaela community school in Brent, north-west London, was brought by a Muslim pupil, known only as TTT in court proceedings, who claimed the ban was discriminatory and breached her right to religious freedom.

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Teasing children about weight increases risk of self-stigma as adults, study finds

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Research reveals ‘long-lasting effects’ caused by pressure from parents, families, bullies and the media

Parents who tease their children about their weight are putting them at greater risk of feeling bad about their bodies decades later, regardless of whether they grow up to have obesity or not, a groundbreaking study has found.

Thirteen-year-olds who felt pressure from family members to shed pounds and endured weight-based teasing showed higher levels of internalised weight stigma when they turned 31, according to research by the University of Bristol published on Tuesday in the Lancet Regional Health Europe journal.

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Creating sexually explicit deepfake images to be made offence in UK

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Offenders could face jail if image is widely shared under proposed amendment to criminal justice bill

Creating a sexually explicit “deepfake” image is to be made an offence under a new law, the Ministry of Justice has announced.

Under the legislation, anyone who creates such an image without consent will face a criminal record and an unlimited fine. They could also face jail if the image is shared more widely.

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Sunak to give Rwanda £50m if deportation bill passed into law

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MPs voted through plans on Monday and bill is expected to become law within days

Rishi Sunak will hand over £50m to Rwanda as soon as his flagship deportation bill is passed into law, it emerged on Monday.

On Monday night, MPs voted through plans to forcibly send asylum seekers to east Africa if they arrived in the UK via small boats. The bill, one of the most controversial pieces of legislation passed in decades, is expected to pass into law at some point this week after further criticisms and amendments in the Lords.

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Woman charged with murder of baby found in Warrington woodland in 1998

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Joanne Sharkey faces charge in ‘extremely emotional case’ of baby known as Callum

A woman has been charged with murder by detectives investigating the death of a baby found in woodland in Warrington more than 25 years ago.

“Baby Callum” was discovered close to the Gulliver’s World theme park in the Callands area of the town in March 1998 and a murder investigation was launched.

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Carers having to pay back thousands is very wrong, says Keir Starmer

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Labour leader was responding to a question from the BBC about Vivienne Groom, who was prosecuted over breach of benefit rules

Keir Starmer has called for fairer treatment of unpaid carers plunged into poverty after being forced to pay back thousands of pounds – and in some cases facing criminal prosecution – for minor breaches of benefit rules.

Last week the Guardian revealed thousands of carers had run up big debts, were given criminal records and forced to sell their homes when chased by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over “honest mistakes” that officials could have spotted years earlier.

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High court judge removed from case in part due to his Garrick membership

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Sir Jonathan Cohen was due to hear case involving alleged rape victim but second judge ruled he should not hear it

A high court judge has been removed from presiding over a case involving an alleged rape and domestic abuse victim, in part due to his membership of the men-only Garrick Club.

Sir Jonathan Cohen was due to hear a family court case involving a dispute between a separated couple over shared care arrangements for their child, but another high court judge ruled last Thursday that Cohen should not hear the case.

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Sunak says ‘all sides should show restraint’ after Iranian attack on Israel – as it happened

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British PM says he will speak to Netanyahu to express solidarity and discuss how further escalation can be avoided

UK general election opinion poll tracker: Labour leading as election looms

David Cameron ruled out trying to become PM again in an interview this morning. (See 9.30am.) But Liz Truss has not done so. In an interview with LBC’s Iain Dale, being broadcast tonight, she did not entirely dismiss the possibility. This is from LBC’s Henry Riley.

Truss is giving interviews to publicise her memoir which is out this week. According to extracts sent out in advance, she also confirmed in her LBC interview that she wanted to see Donald Trump win the US presidential election. She said:

I don’t think [Joe] Biden has been particularly supportive to the United Kingdom. I think he’s often on the side of the EU. And I certainly think I would like to see a new president in the White House …

The thing I would say about Donald Trump is, because I served as secretary of state under both Trump and Biden, and Trump’s policies were actually very effective. If you look at his economic policies, and I met his regulatory czar, I travelled around the United States looking at what he’d done. He cut regulation, he cut taxes, he liberated the US energy supply. And this is why the US has had significantly higher economic growth than Britain.

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Rare lunar event to shed light on Stonehenge’s links to the moon

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Archaeologists and astronomers to study Wiltshire site’s lesser understood connection to the moon

The rising and setting of the sun at Stonehenge, especially during the summer and winter solstices, continues to evoke joy, fascination and religious devotion.

Now a project has been launched to delve into the lesser understood links that may exist between the monument and the moon during a rare lunar event.

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