Proposals deter ‘death tourism’ by requiring applicants to have lived on the island for at least 12 months
Jersey could legalise assisted dying for people who are terminally ill or have an incurable condition with unbearable suffering under proposals to be debated in the island’s parliament.
The proposals, published on Friday, may lead to Jersey becoming the first jurisdiction in the British Isles to allow assisted dying.
Continue reading...Labour presses foreign secretary as human rights groups seek judicial review of government’s refusal to ban arms exports
The shadow UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has urged David Cameron to publish the Foreign Office formal legal advice on whether Israel is breaching international humanitarian law in Gaza.
Lammy’s move comes as two human rights groups have been given permission for an oral hearing to seek a judicial review of the government’s refusal to ban arms exports to Israel.
Continue reading...Home secretary chartered a private jet to make the one-day round trip to Kigali in December
James Cleverly, the home secretary, spent £165,561 chartering a private jet for a one-day round trip to Rwanda to sign Rishi Sunak’s deportation deal in Kigali.
The trip took place on 4 December to sign the new deal with the east African state after the supreme court’s finding that Rwanda was an “unsafe country”.
Continue reading...Channel 4 News finds 255 British people including its presenter Cathy Newman to have been doctored into explicit images
More than 250 British celebrities are among the thousands of famous people who are victims of deepfake pornography, an investigation has found.
A Channel 4 News analysis of the five most visited deepfake websites found almost 4,000 famous individuals were listed, of whom 255 were British.
Continue reading...Alex Mahon says former staff member made ‘serious’ allegation in 2009 that was not ‘investigated as it should have been’
The head of Channel 4 has apologised to a former staff member for the organisation not properly investigating a “serious” allegation made against Russell Brand in 2009.
However, the broadcaster found “no evidence” that staff at Channel 4 knew about the accusations made by four women in a Dispatches documentary before it was aired in September.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Letter with more than 60 signatories says membership ‘perpetuates systemic discrimination against women’
A group of more than 60 lawyers in England and Wales have called on all judges who are members of the men-only Garrick Club to resign from it immediately, claiming membership is “incompatible with the core principles of justice, equality and fairness”.
In an open letter, the barristers, solicitors and legal professionals say they have been concerned by recent reports in the Guardian naming dozens of senior figures in the judiciary as current members of a club that has repeatedly blocked attempts to allow women to join.
Continue reading...Jamie Cassidy was sentenced to 13 years and three months for his part in an international drug operation
A former Liverpool football prodigy of “exceptional talent and promise” has been jailed for more than 13 years for his part in a multimillion-pound drugs conspiracy.
Jamie Cassidy, 46, was “drawn” into the drugs business by his brother Jonathan Cassidy, 50, who the court heard joked about having the same birthday as the Mexican drug lord Joaquín Guzmán, also known as El Chapo.
Continue reading...An Israeli official denied the claim in an online row with the UK foreign secretary and has since been suspended
David Cameron has accused Israel of demanding the closure of a key aid crossing into Gaza, in a clash with a British-born government spokesperson that has reportedly resulted in the official’s suspension.
In a blistering letter, the UK foreign secretary said aid was not getting into Gaza owing to “arbitrary denials by the government of Israel and lengthy clearance procedures, including multiple screenings and narrow opening windows in daylight hours”.
Continue reading...Minister says ‘labelling ups and downs of life as medical conditions holds people back and drives up benefit bill’ as report comes out into women’s pensions
Q: Are you supporting Esther Rantzen’s campaign for an assisted dying law?
Starmer says he is. He says as director of public prosecutions he produced guidelines to limit prosecutions for people who help someone end their life.
Continue reading...The way women’s state pension age was raised plunged retirement plans into chaos with many now in line for compensation
Thousands of women are owed compensation because of government failings related to the way changes to the state pension age were made, a long-awaited official report has said.
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) said those affected were owed compensation but added that that Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) had clearly indicated it would “refuse to comply”, which was “unacceptable”.
Continue reading...Borrowing of £8.4bn last month could threaten OBR forecast for £114.1bn deficit for 2023-24 as a whole
Jeremy Hunt has been handed disappointing news from the public finances after government borrowing was higher than expected in February, leaving the national debt at the highest levels since the 1960s.
The Office for National Statistics said public sector net borrowing was £8.4bn in February, £3.4bn less than in the same month a year ago. However, it was higher than any economist expected in a Reuters poll that predicted a deficit of £6bn.
Continue reading...Richard Branson has already indicated he will back takeover that will require the agreement of the group’s shareholders
Nationwide Building Society is lined up to take over its smaller rival Virgin Money after the pair formally agreed a deal worth £2.9bn.
The deal, which will solidify Nationwide’s position as the UK’s second largest mortgage lender, will also trigger the resignation of Virgin Money boss David Duffy, and is likely to lead to job cuts as well as an official “review” of the combined group’s workforce.
Continue reading...Former Tory leadership contender says she would not join men-only club even if it changed rules
A government minister has criticised Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, for having been a member of the men-only Garrick Club and said she wouldn’t join if it began admitting women.
Andrea Leadsom, a junior health minister and former Conservative leadership contender, said she thought it was “extraordinary” that the cabinet secretary had “only just discovered” the club excluded women.
Continue reading...Shares hit new high as chain says consumer backdrop is improving and ‘feels like it is now entering a new era’
Next said the prices it charges customers are falling this year, as the fashion and homeware retailer reported bumper profits and said the UK consumer backdrop was improving.
Simon Wolfson, the group’s chief executive, said that it had been “a long time” since the group had started a financial year in such a positive frame of mind after the positive sales and growth results for the year to January.
Continue reading...Prime ministers to examine plans to confiscate billions of euros in interest from frozen Russian assets and send the money to Kyiv
EU leaders are to meet in Brussels to discuss ways to radically increase military and financial support for Ukraine amid calls for member states to put their economies “on a war footing”.
Fuelled by what one diplomat said was a new “sense of urgency and immediacy” over the war in Ukraine, rhetoric on Moscow has notably hardened in the past few days.
Continue reading...Lords back amendments saying bill must comply with international law, on classifying Rwanda as a safe country and independent monitoring
Yesterday I covered quite a lot of comment on the Rachel Reeves’ Mais lecture based on a three-page press release sent out by Labour with advance extracts. The full speech runs to 8,000 words and it is certainly worth a read. Here is some commentary published after the full text was made public.
Paul Mason, the former economics journalist who is now an active Labour supporter, says in a blog for the Spectator that Reeves is proposing an approach that should make it easier for the government to justify capital investment. He explains:
Reeves effectively offered markets a trade-off. She set out the same broad fiscal rule as the government: debt falling at the end of five years and a deficit moving towards primary balance. She will make it law that any fiscal decision by government will be subject to an independent forecast of its effects by the OBR. But, she said: “I will also ask the OBR to report on the long-term impact of capital spending decisions. And as Chancellor I will report on wider measures of public sector assets and liabilities at fiscal events, showing how the health of the public balance sheet is bolstered by good investment decisions.”
Why is this so big? Because the OBR does not currently model the ‘long-term impact of capital spending decisions’. It believes that £1 billion of new capital investment produces £1 billion of growth in the first year, tapering to nothing by year five. Furthermore, since 2019 it has repeatedly expressed scepticism that a sustained programme of public investment can produce a permanent uplift in the UK’s output potential.
George Eaton at the New Statesman says the Reeves speech contained Reeves’ “most explicit repudiation yet of the model pursued by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments”. He says:
In her 8,000-word Mais Lecture, delivered last night at City University, the shadow chancellor offered her most explicit repudiation yet of the model pursued by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments. Though she praised New Labour’s record on public service investment and poverty reduction, Reeves warned that the project failed to recognise that “globalisation and new technologies could widen as well as diminish inequality, disempower people as much as liberate them, displace as well as create good work”.
She added that the labour market “remained characterised by too much insecurity” and that “key weaknesses on productivity and regional inequality” persisted. This is not merely an abstract critique – it leads Reeves and Keir Starmer to embrace radically different economic prescriptions.
Mais lecture is the most intellectually wide-ranging speech Rachel Reeves has given. Worth reading for takes on Lawson, austerity, New Labour, link between dynamism & worker-security, and how geo-politics changes our national growth story (& more besides)
Continue reading...High court papers filed by prince and others allege media mogul was aware of unlawful news gathering at newspapers from 2009
Rupert Murdoch “turned a blind eye” to an extensive cover-up of wrongdoing at his newspapers, Prince Harry’s lawyers have alleged at the high court in London.
The direct allegations against the 93-year-old billionaire about activity at his publications are the latest stage in Harry’s war against the tabloid media, with lawyers for the Duke of Sussex and others accusing the media mogul of overseeing a “culture of impunity” at News Group Newspapers, the publisher of the Sun and the now defunct News of the World.
Continue reading...Prime minister held key meeting with backbenchers, who are worried he is leading them to catastrophic defeat in May
Rishi Sunak has sought to unify his fractious party ahead of what could be a brutal set of local elections, urging his MPs to ignore dissenting voices and present a coherent front.
The prime minister’s address to the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers gave the appearance of agreement, with much of the traditional banging of desks and no public criticism, although some attenders doubted how genuine it all was.
Continue reading...Waltham Forest council has not yet found suitable location for statue that was completed in 2020
The first photographs of the dormant sculpture of the Bayern Munich and England striker Harry Kane have been published, five years after it was commissioned. The statue has sat in storage because Waltham Forest council in east London has been unable to find a suitable location for it.
The sculpture of the Walthamstow-born, Chingford-raised record goalscorer for Tottenham and England was completed in 2020 at a cost of £7,200, but has yet to appear in public.
Continue reading...Richard Brock arrived late at detectorists’ outing, but within 20 minutes had found Hiro’s Nugget, likely to be worth over £30,000
A metal detectorist in Shropshire has unearthed England’s largest ever gold nugget worth £30,000 – despite turning up an hour late for the dig with a faulty metal detector.
Richard Brock, 67, travelled three and a half hours from his home in Somerset to join an organised expedition on farmland in the Shropshire Hills last May, and ended up arriving late. He also had problem with his metal detecting kit, and was forced to use an older machine that was not working properly.
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