Category Archives: UK news

‘It’s game over’: Tory gloom spreads as Sunak fights for his five pledges

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Frontbenchers fear they have become ‘zombie government’ with polls indicating PM’s priorities remain unclear to public

Progress on meeting Rishi Sunak’s “five pledges” has privately come under fire from Conservative MPs this week, six months on from his urge to be judged on delivering what he called the “people’s priorities”.

Jitters have extended all the way into Downing Street, with the prime minister’s senior aides traipsing across Whitehall to raise concerns about how the pledges are landing with the public.

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Teachers in England strike as minister says it is ‘impossible to say’ if pay recommendation will be accepted – live

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Robert Halfon says government cannot promise to accept pay review body recommendation, as NEU members strike again

Q: My fear is that sewage in water could lead to a typhoid problem?

Ferrari asks if Labour favours water nationalisation.

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Pay rise of 6.5% would stop teaching strikes in England, union boss suggests

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Mary Bousted urges ministers to publish recommendation from pay body, thought to be 6.5%, and fund schools to pay it

Ministers could ward off potential teachers’ strikes in the autumn term in England if they accept a salary increase recommended by the teachers’ independent pay review body, the head of the biggest education union has said.

Teachers who belong to the NEU continued industrial action on Friday. Mary Bousted, the joint general secretary of the union, said: “This could stop. What the government must do is publish the independent pay review body recommendations.”

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UK house prices fall at fastest annual rate since 2011, says Halifax

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Average price of property drops by 2.6% year on year in June as mortgage rates climb

UK house prices experienced their biggest annual fall in 12 years, according to Halifax, the latest sign that soaring interest rates on mortgages is bringing a halt to the housing boom.

The average price of a UK home tumbled 2.6% year on year last month, the largest annual decrease the lender has reported since June 2011, a significant acceleration from the 1.1% decline record in May.

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Older UK workers who retired early in pandemic were ‘forced into poverty’

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Thinktank challenges view that those taking early retirement under Covid were relatively well off

Half of older adults who left the UK workforce amid mass redundancies in the first year of the Covid pandemic ended up falling into relative poverty, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Britain’s foremost economics thinktank said job losses during the early stages of the crisis, coupled with the additional health risks faced by older workers, were likely to have forced many people into early retirement.

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Labour faces wrath of UK media bosses by opposing repeal of regulation rule

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Government plans to abolish section 40 law under which news publishers are liable for libel trial legal costs

Labour is heading for a potentially bruising clash with UK news publishers over a controversial piece of post-Leveson press regulation.

Shadow ministers are set to incur the wrath of some of Britain’s most powerful press bosses, including Rupert Murdoch, by opposing the repeal of a rule designed to force news publishers to sign up to the government-backed regulator.

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Skin cancer cases reach record high in UK with sharp rise among older adults

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Cancer Research UK says melanoma cases ‘could soar’ by 50% over next 20 years and warns against sunburn

The number of people in the UK being diagnosed with skin cancer has hit a record high with a sharp rise among over-55s.

Melanoma cases across all age groups have reached 17,500 a year in the UK, the highest since records began, according to Cancer Research UK.

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Kevin Spacey came out as gay to ‘disguise’ behaviour, UK court hears

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Alleged victim says actor was ‘hiding in plain sight’ as he made sexual comments and grabbed him at theatre

An alleged victim of the actor Kevin Spacey has accused him in court of being “insensitive” after claiming his decision to come out as gay was used to “disguise” his behaviour.

The actor was “hiding in plain sight” as he allegedly directed a “machine gun” of vile sexual comments at the man in a London theatre and grabbed him in an intimate area, a court heard.

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Mermaids v LGB Alliance: who was involved in tribunal case?

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As judges rule trans children’s charity cannot challenge charitable status of gay rights organisation, we look at decision

A tribunal has ruled that the law does not allow the transgender children’s charity Mermaids to challenge the charitable status of the gay rights organisation LGB Alliance. Who was involved?

LGB Alliance was founded in October 2019 to campaign for the rights of same-sex attracted people by two veteran lesbian activists: Bev Jackson, a founder member of the Gay Liberation Front in 1970, and Kate Harris, who was previously a volunteer fundraiser for the leading gay rights organisation Stonewall. They were concerned at the implications of Stonewall’s decision to alter its definition of sexual orientation in 2015 from “same-sex attracted” to “same-gender attracted”.

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Leeds hospital trust apologises after rapper MF Doom Dumile Daniel Thompson died in its care

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London-born musician Dumile Daniel Thompson, 49, had a lack of oxygen to his brain after a reaction to a blood pressure drug

An NHS trust has apologised for the substandard care given to MF Doom, an underground rap icon who died aged 49 while having hospital treatment.

The artist behind songs including Accordion and That’s That, whose real name was Dumile Daniel Thompson, died in October 2020 due to a lack of oxygen to his brain after a reaction to a drug prescribed for blood pressure.

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‘A huge relief’: scientists react to hopes of UK rejoining EU Horizon scheme

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Expected return also greeted with dismay at UK’s decision to avoid being a net contributor to EU’s flagship programme

Scientists including the physicist Brian Cox have reacted with a mixture of caution, anger and relief that the UK appears set to rejoin the EU’s flagship £85bn Horizon science research programme after a protracted Brexit row.

Sources indicate that an announcement could come in days, possibly next week when Rishi Sunak is scheduled to meet the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, at a Nato summit.

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Benefits claimants in UK were underpaid by record £3.3bn last year

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National Audit Office criticises Department for Work and Pensions over its ‘material fraud and error’

Thousands of people in the UK could receive a payout after official figures revealed that benefit claimants were underpaid by £3.3bn last year, the highest level on record.

The Department for Work and Pensions also admitted that as many as 330,000 people, some of whom have since died, may have missed out on as much as £1.5bn of valuable state pension entitlement – a disclosure that prompted some commentators to warn of a new scandal. Steve Webb, the former pensions minister, said: “The scale of these errors is huge.”

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London Underground staff to take week of industrial action at end of July

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‘Rolling action’ by RMT members between 23 and 28 July likely to cause widespread disruption across capital

London Underground staff will take industrial action over a week at the end of July, spelling widespread transport disruption in the capital.

Members of the RMT union will take “rolling action” between Sunday 23 July and Friday 28 July. The RMT said there would be no strike on Monday 24, with staff in different sections and grades halting work on different shifts on each of the other days.

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Eight-year-old girl dies after car hits London primary school

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Sixteen people treated at scene and 10 taken to hospital, as woman in her 40s arrested over incident in Wimbledon

An eight-year old girl has died with at least 10 people taken to hospital after a car crashed into a primary school in Wimbledon, south London.

The Metropolitan police declared a major incident on Thursday morning when a Land Rover ploughed through a fence and collided with a building at the Study private preparatory school for girls aged four to 11.

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Keir Starmer heckled by protesters during education speech – UK politics live

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Latest updates: group complains about Labour’s lack of commitment to green new deal as leader speaks about extending opportunity

Starmer is now being heckled by someone complaining about his lack of commitment to a green new deal.

He says he has already given a speech on this. He offers to speak to the protesters later.

Keir Starmer asked two protesters holding a banner saying “Green New Deal now” to “let me finish” as they interrupted his speech.

The Labour leader told the pair he would “speak to you after” as they accused of him of U-turning on his £28bn green prosperity plan before being led off stage by security.

I promise you this, wherever there are obstacles to opportunity, wherever there are the barriers to hope, my Labour government will tear them down.

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UK ministers planning on ‘trafficking’ people to Rwanda, says bishop

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Rose Hudson-Wilkin, bishop of Dover, calls for ‘compassionate’ treatment of those seeking asylum in UK

A senior Church of England bishop has accused the British government of planning to engage in “trafficking” of people to Rwanda, as part of its efforts to tackle people smugglers.

The bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin, who was the first black woman to serve as chaplain to the speaker in the House of Commons, told Sky news on Thursday: “We have to deal with them compassionately, we have to deal with them justly,” when asked about the backlog of asylum seekers’ claims

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Byelection likely as Chris Pincher faces suspension over groping claims

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Recommendations of standards committee inquiry will trigger recall petition in Pincher’s Tamworth constituency

Rishi Sunak faces the prospect of yet another byelection after a parliamentary report into groping allegations against Chris Pincher recommended that the former government whip be suspended as an MP for eight weeks.

The suspension will automatically trigger a recall petition in Pincher’s constituency of Tamworth if approved by MPs. If 10% of constituents sign it then there will be a byelection.

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Keir Starmer refuses to commit to free school meals pledge

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Labour leader says ‘money is a big factor’ as he also declines to promise 6.5% pay rise for teachers

Keir Starmer has refused to commit to supporting free school meals for all primary school children, as he stuck to a tough fiscal position despite pressure from inside and outside of his party.

The Labour leader also declined to commit to a 6.5% pay rise for teachers as he urged the government to resolve the dispute at the centre of strike action.

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Tory MPs back mandatory swift bricks in all new homes to help declining birds

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Calls grow for legislation requiring developers to include hollow bricks for endangered nesting species

Conservative MPs are joining calls for a new law to guarantee swift bricks in every new home to help the rapidly declining bird and other endangered roof-nesting species.

Pressure is growing to amend the levelling up bill so that developers are required to include a hollow brick for nesting birds in all new housing, with MPs to debate the issue in parliament on 10 July.

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David Adjaye steps back from Holocaust memorial after misconduct claims

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Acclaimed architect, whose firm is designing London memorial, accused of sexual assault and harassment by three women

The acclaimed architect Sir David Adjaye has stepped back from working on the planned UK Holocaust memorial in Westminster after being accused of sexual misconduct.

His architectural firm, which won a competition to design the memorial, has told the government that Adjaye will not be involved in the project until the issues raised by the allegations have been addressed.

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