Category Archives: UK news

Charities urge government not to ‘fiddle’ benefits increase after inflation hits two-year low – as it happened

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Cost of living campaigners say government should use September’s inflation rate to set benefits, not October’s, after CPI falls to 4.6% from 6.7%

Falling energy bills, and the economic drag caused by higher interest rates, should get the credit for the drop in inflation.

That’s the view of Suren Thiru, economics director at ICAEW (The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales).

“This dramatic drop suggests that the UK has turned the corner in its battle against soaring inflation, particularly given the fall in core inflation, which indicates that underlying price pressures are also easing.

“While the Prime Minister has achieved his target to halve inflation this year, this owes more to the downward pressure on prices from falling energy costs and rising interest rates than any government action.

“The fall in inflation will come as some relief for families struggling with the cost of living.

“But now is not the time for Conservative ministers to be popping champagne corks and patting themselves on the back.

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Sunak pins hopes on a new Rwanda asylum pact after supreme court defeat

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Whitehall sources say it could take more than a year for any treaty to be passed, with next election looming

Rishi Sunak is attempting to finalise a new pact with Rwanda after a central plank of the British government’s immigration plans was ripped up by the supreme court.

A treaty, which would have to be ratified by the UK parliament, was being drawn up with the government in Kigali, the prime minister said.

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Average UK house sale price suffers first annual fall for 11 years

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ONS says average price dropped 0.1% year on year in September, with those in London decreasing 1.1%

The average price of a home in the UK dropped by 0.1% in the year to September, official figures show – the first annual fall for more than a decade.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures, which are based on completed sales, have shown annual price inflation slowing since July 2022, when the headline rate stood at 13.8%.

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Concerns as China welcomes David Cameron’s return as foreign secretary

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Critics raise concerns that PM during ‘golden era’ of UK-China relations has maintained ties with Beijing

Chinese state media have welcomed the appointment of the former prime minister David Cameron as the UK’s foreign secretary, as opponents of Beijing raised concerns about the return of a figure closely associated with the “golden era” of UK-China relations.

In an editorial published on Tuesday, the Chinese state tabloid the Global Times said Cameron “could potentially play a constructive role, both in mending the UK’s relations with China and in rebuilding and advancing the UK’s post-Brexit diplomatic landscape”.

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Barton House: what happened and what is Bristol council doing about it?

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After the building was evacuated, leaving hundreds temporarily homeless, we look at what happens next for residents and the council

What has happened at Barton House tower block in Bristol?

Barton House, a 65-year-old 15-storey tower block, was built in the late 1950s using reinforced concrete cross walls, pre-cast concrete floors and reinforced concrete external walls.

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Selfridges comes under full control of Thailand’s Central Group

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Announcement after Central’s Austrian partner Signa Group was placed in hands of restructuring expert

Thailand’s largest department store owner, Central Group, has announced it has taken control of Selfridges department stores.

Central Group and Rene Benko’s Austrian real estate company Signa Group bought Selfridges in 2021 in a deal worth $5bn.

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Flood protection plans for English homes cut by 40%

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Quarter of new flood defence projects will also not go ahead, NAO finds, as Environment Agency blames cuts on inflation

The number of properties that will be better protected from flooding by 2027 has been cut by 40%, and 500 of 2,000 new flood defence projects have been abandoned, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).

The number of homes forecast to be under enhanced flood protection by 2027 has been slashed from 336,000 to 200,000. This means 136,000 more homes will be at risk of flooding since plans were drawn up in 2020, figures from an NAO report show.

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Antibiotic-resistant infections rise in England but still below pre-Covid levels

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Number of antibiotic prescriptions also up and officials warn against giving leftovers to friends and family

Giving leftover antibiotics to friends and family risks fuelling a surge in infections resistant to the drugs, officials have warned, as data shows a rise in related cases in England – with people of Asian heritage at greater risk than those who are white.

While severe antibiotic-resistant infections – such as bloodstream infections, UTIs, surgical site infections and respiratory infections – remained below 2018 levels last year, the latest estimates suggest there was a 4% rise between 2021 and 2022, from 55,792 to 58,224. The uptick follows a notable decline during the height of the Covid pandemic.

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NHS England boss to say cervical cancer can be eliminated by 2040

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Amanda Pritchard will say combination of vaccination and screening means goal within two decades is realistic ambition

Cervical cancer can be eliminated in England by 2040, saving thousands of women’s lives, the head of NHS England will say on Wednesday.

A combination of HPV vaccination and screening for the disease means that elimination of it is a realistic ambition, Amanda Pritchard, NHS England’s chief executive, will say.

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Thérèse Coffey says she nearly died from ministerial stress

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Former environment secretary says government work stresses left her hospitalised for a month nearly five years ago

Thérèse Coffey said she “nearly died” due to the stress of being a government minister.

Speaking to BBC Radio Suffolk, the former environment secretary said she was admitted to hospital after “working [herself] into the ground”.

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Suella Braverman says Rishi Sunak broke secret promises he made to win her support and accuses him of betrayal – as it happened

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Former home secretary tells PM he broke promises he made to gain her support during party leadership contest

Rishi Sunak took something of a risk when he decided to sack Suella Braverman. Her hardline, anti-immigration rhetoric was popular, not just with rightwing MPs, but with most of the Tory press (particularly the Daily Mail), and this morning those papers might have come out in her defence.

But, judging by their editorials, they are broadly supportive of Sunak. They have not turned on him – at least today.

Moving the impressive James Cleverly to Home Secretary is smart, as is appointing Esther McVey as ‘Common Sense Tsar’ to oversee the anti-woke agenda.

Will this be enough to placate the Tory Right? Only time will tell, but any MP who thinks salvation lies in yet more no- confidence letters – and trying to unseat another leader – needs their head testing.

The seeds of his downfall were planted that year when his promise of an EU referendum was included in the Tory manifesto, not least to see off a populist threat from Ukip. Mr Sunak is facing something similar in that the country is increasingly alarmed by high levels of immigration, both legal and illegal, and extremism. The recent pro-Palestinian marches and the rise of anti-Semitic hatred have brought much of this to a head.

Mrs Braverman articulated many of these concerns, and those who agree with her will be angry that she has been dropped, seeing it as appeasing the Left and deepening Tory divisions.

[Cameron’s] central achievement in 11 years as party leader, often overlooked after the Brexit debacle, was to give the Conservative party a much broader base. In his time, great strides were made in making sure a fiscally conservative party was also socially liberal and internationalist: advancing the careers of women in politics, championing same-sex marriage, expanding development aid and becoming the natural home of ethnically diverse British leadership, of whom Rishi Sunak himself is the outstanding embodiment.

Cameron’s renewed prominence is a reminder that the cabinet in which he will be sitting is mainstream and centre-right, looking to reduce taxation but only in a financially responsible way, controlling migration effectively but without divisive language, improving the UK’s relations with Europe while eschewing nationalistic rhetoric. That is what Sunak has been doing but against the backdrop of mixed messages from former PMs and some of his own cabinet. The Conservatives after this reshuffle are more unmistakably the party that some of its disenchanted former voters will recognise as their own.

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Men hold top four roles in UK government for first time since 2010

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Downing Street says it is not focused on ‘tick-box diversity’ and women get senior jobs elsewhere

After Rishi Sunak’s cabinet reshuffle, men hold the top four positions in government for the first time since 2010.

Liz Truss’s ministry was notable for initially having no white men serving in the great offices of state for the first time in British political history, with Kwasi Kwarteng becoming the first black chancellor.

Three of the four top cabinet ministers – Sunak, Hunt and Cameron – graduated with first class honours in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) from Oxford.

The last time all four top ministerial positions were held by men was at the end of Gordon Brown’s Labour government, with Brown in No 10, Alistair Darling as chancellor, Alan Johnson as home secretary and David Miliband as foreign secretary.

The number of female cabinet ministers has dropped by 5%. Some of those in post include Victoria Atkins, the health and social care secretary; Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary; and Claire Coutinho, the energy and net zero secretary.

The number of minority ethnic ministers has dropped from five to four. Those ministers are Sunak, Britain’s first Asian prime minister, Cleverly, Badenoch and Coutinho.

According to the Sutton Trust, 63% of the new cabinet were privately educated, which compared with 71% in John Major’s 1992 cabinet and 91% in Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 cabinet.

Of the 32 ministers around Sunak’s cabinet table, 21 went to private school, five went to grammar schools and six attended comprehensive schools.

Of those who were privately educated, 41% went on to attend Oxford or Cambridge university.

The six who went to comprehensive school equate to 19%, much lower than the 27% in Boris Johnson’s cabinet.

The Sutton Trust says the proportion of Sunak’s top team who went to an independent school is nine times the rate in the general population, which is roughly 7%.

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UK rows back on ex-PM’s claim Israel is outside remit of international criminal court

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Government appears to withdraw from past assertion by Boris Johnson amid shift to more pointed criticism of Israeli campaign in Gaza

The British government appears to have withdrawn an assertion made by the former prime minister, Boris Johnson, that the international criminal court has no jurisdiction in Israel, amid a wider western shift to more pointed criticism of the way Israel is conducting its campaign to remove Hamas from Gaza.

In a statement to MPs on Tuesday, the Foreign Office minister, Andrew Mitchell, said: “It is not for ministers to seek to state where the ICC has jurisdiction; that is for the chief prosecutor. The chief prosecutor has not been silent on this matter, and I am sure he will continue to express his views.”

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Hong Kong lecture by British barrister linked to Jimmy Lai trial cancelled

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Timothy Owen, who in May was blocked from representing the activist Jimmy Lai, was due to give a talk on law and democracy

A lecture in Hong Kong by the British barrister embroiled in a legal battle over whether he can represent the pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai has been cancelled without explanation, raising concerns about the diminishing space for free speech in the semi-autonomous Chinese city.

Timothy Owen KC was due to give a talk entitled “Judges, Democracy and the Criminal Law” at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) on 17 November. But on Tuesday, the lecture was cancelled without explanation, with the university citing “unforeseen circumstances”. The website for the law faculty appears to be offline.

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Victoria Atkins: the steady, ‘able’ minister promoted to health secretary

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The barrister has been welcomed as a competent and intelligent choice by centrist Tories

Victoria Atkins might not have the public profile of cabinet peers, but her appointment as health secretary caps several years of steady, if unshowy, handling of briefs in junior ministerial roles.

An MP since 2015 and a backer of Rishi Sunak in the 2022 Conservative leadership contest, her elevation has been warmly welcomed by colleagues in the centrist wing of the Conservative party, who also emphasised what they regarded as her competence.

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Tuesday briefing: David Cameron is back in government – can he help save Sunak?

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In today’s newsletter: Why the former prime minister has returned to frontline politics as Rishi Sunak’s foreign secretary

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Good morning. David Cameron really is the new foreign secretary. In a way, Rishi Sunak warned us: just over a year ago, he told Tory party conference that his mission was to break with a failed 30-year political consensus and usher in something genuinely different. All the same, I don’t know if anyone could have predicted that he was planning to go back to a 60-year-old idea, instead. Even Cameron, truly the grown-up’s grown-up, was barely out of nappies when Alec Douglas-Home, the last former prime minister to take over at the foreign office, got the job in 1970.

On the other hand, it seems … quite hard to break with a 30-year consensus by appointing one of its architects, even if doing so successfully drives the firing of home secretary Suella Braverman – who lost her job via an unceremonious phone call - from the front pages. “He was the future once,” the new cabinet minister once teased Tony Blair at prime minister’s questions. We can now say that Cameron was the past once, a significantly more mind-bending proposition. The weirdest fact of the day: seven years after his resignation as prime minister, he’s still four years younger than Keir Starmer.

Israel-Hamas war | Israeli forces have reached the gates of Gaza’s largest hospital as hundreds of patients, including dozens of babies, remained trapped inside. Thousands of people have fled al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, but health officials said the remaining patients were dying due to energy shortages amid intense fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas militants. For the latest, head to the live blog.

Iceland volcano | Iceland’s prime minister has sought to reassure the nation as it braces for a volcanic eruption. Between midnight and early afternoon on Monday, the Icelandic meteorological office detected about 900 earthquakes amid warnings of the significant likelihood of the Fagradalsfjall volcano erupting within days.

Fertility | People who donate sperm, eggs and embryos to help others have children will lose the right to anonymity from the moment the child is born, under proposed changes to UK fertility law. The proposal, prompted by the ease with which people can sidestep formal routes to trace donors via private DNA testing and social media, is one of several proposals published by the regulator today.

Environment | BP and Spotify were among companies who bought carbon credits at risk of being implicated in potential Uyghur forced labour, an investigation has found. A Guardian investigation found that provider South Pole was aware of the risk of forced labour linked to the scheme in 2021.

Counter-terrorism | Downing Street’s plan to ban the glorifying of terrorism risks criminalising “supporters of the suffragettes, Nelson Mandela, or even the crowd at Murrayfield belting out Flower of Scotland”, a former independent reviewer of terror legislation has warned.

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UK to loosen post-Brexit chemical regulations further

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Experts warn UK’s regulations now lag behind those of the EU and that Britons will be exposed to more toxic chemicals as a result

The government is to loosen EU-derived laws on chemicals in a move experts say will increase the likelihood of toxic substances entering the environment.

Under new plans the government will reduce the “hazard” information that chemical companies must provide to register substances in the UK. The safety information provided about chemicals will be reduced to an “irreducible minimum”, which campaigners say will leave the UK “lagging far behind the EU”.

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Millions of UK households forced to unplug fridge to cope with rising bills

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Families resorting to ‘desperate measures’ and struggling with ‘frightening’ level of hardship amid cost of living crisis

About 2m UK households have been forced to turn off their fridge or freezer to save money as they continue to struggle with what poverty campaigners called a “frightening” level of hardship.

Nearly half of those households said that since May they had to disconnect their fridge or freezer for the first time, a sign the cost of living crisis was still hurting low-income families, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) charity.

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‘Back to the future’: how the papers covered the return of David Cameron

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Rishi Sunak’s decision to bring a more moderate figure to his cabinet and oust Suella Braverman is viewed as likely to set up a clash with the Tory right

The return of former PM David Cameron to government as foreign secretary has evoked surprise for many, shock for some, and anger among MPs on the right of the Tory party. The British papers reflect the full spectrum of reactions.

The Guardian says: “Cameron’s shock return in high-stakes reshuffle”, noting that the political comeback for the now Lord Cameron marks a return to a more centrist team for Rishi Sunak, particularly given the sacking of Suella Braverman as home secretary.

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The Crown actor says events leading to Diana’s death must have been ‘unbearable’

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Elizabeth Debicki has spoken about filming car chase through Paris that led to Diana’s death for final season of royal drama

The actor who played Diana in The Crown said the moments leading up to her death must have been “completely unbearable” after the cast reenacted the car chase through Paris that led to her death for the final season of the divisive royal drama.

The sixth season of The Crown deals with the weeks preceding Diana’s death, as well as the fallout, after a car crash in Paris in August 1997. The first instalment of the season is released on 16 November.

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