Category Archives: UK news

Liz Truss oversaw jump in credit card spending at Foreign Office

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Guardian analysis of data shows officials spent more under former PM than predecessor Dominic Raab

Liz Truss oversaw a major jump in spending on government credit cards at the Foreign Office when she took over, a Guardian analysis shows, with spending on restaurants, bars, leisure activities and hotels all rising sharply during her time in office.

An analysis of data collated by the Labour party shows officials spent far more on procurement cards under the former prime minister than they had under her predecessor, Dominic Raab.

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Leaders urged to ‘take a stand’ after violence outside Knowsley asylum hotel

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Charities condemn policies that ‘demonise’ refugees after home secretary accused of victim blaming

Political leaders must “take a clear stand” and condemn violence against asylum seekers, charities have said, after the home secretary was accused of victim blaming after a riot outside a hotel in Merseyside.

Refugee organisations have signed an open letter after “horrifying” scenes on Friday outside the Suites hotel in Knowsley, which is housing asylum seekers. Fireworks were thrown at police and a police van was attacked with hammers and set alight.

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Clear chances missed to identify Wayne Couzens as danger to women

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Police took no action after Couzens exposed himself three times before he went on to murder Sarah Everard

Police missed clear chances to identify Wayne Couzens as a potential sex offender and danger to women before he kidnapped and murdered Sarah Everard, it can finally be revealed.

He exposed himself three times, with witnesses recording either full registration details of vehicles he used, or partial details. But police took no action, leaving Couzens to continue as a serving Metropolitan police officer entrusted with a gun.

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UK embassy worker accused of spying had pro-Putin views, court told

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Old Bailey hears legal argument about motivation of David Ballantyne Smith who has admitted eight charges

A security guard spying for Russia while working at the British embassy in Berlin was driven by an intense hatred for his own country and pro-Putin views, a UK court has heard.

David Ballantyne Smith pleaded guilty to eight charges under the Official Secrets Act in November 2022 for sharing confidential and sensitive material.

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Tories urge Jeremy Hunt to reverse army cuts in forthcoming budget

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Planned 4% reduction in troop numbers should be abandoned in light of Ukraine war, say MPs and officials

Senior Tories are calling on Jeremy Hunt to abandon further cuts to the army by raising defence funding at next month’s budget, amid growing unease at the state of Britain’s military capabilities.

The chancellor has been urged by MPs to ensure the number of troops is held at the current level of about 76,000, instead of reducing it to 73,000 by 2025.

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US firm Liberty Global buys stake in Vodafone after tumultuous year

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‘Cable cowboy’ John Malone rules out takeover bid but says he believes UK telecoms company is undervalued

The US telecoms group chaired by “cable cowboy” John Malone has snapped up a stake in Vodafone in a bet on the UK company’s revival – but has ruled out making a takeover bid.

Liberty Global, which is an investor in ITV and Virgin Media O2, told investors on Monday it had acquired a 4.92% stake in Vodafone, saying it believed the shares were undervalued.

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Tory vice-chair Lee Anderson faces libel claim over bribery allegations

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Man who runs a food bank charity alleges MP for Ashfield defamed him in a Facebook post

A man who runs a food bank charity is pursuing a libel claim against the new vice-chair of the Conservatives, a law firm has said.

Michael Hollis alleges that Lee Anderson, who once claimed that people could feed themselves on 30p a day, defamed him in a Facebook post that he later refused to take down.

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Sunak rejects calls for BBC chair, Richard Sharp, to stand down

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PM says he does not want to prejudge inquiry and that appointment was made after the ‘correct process’

Rishi Sunak has rejected calls for Richard Sharp to stand down as BBC chairman, despite the businessman failing to declare his role in arranging a secret £800,000 personal loan for Boris Johnson.

Sharp has been criticised by MPs for “significant errors of judgement” over his failure to mention his role in helping to arrange the loan for the former prime minister in early 2020. Johnson later appointed Sharp, a Conservative party donor, to oversee the BBC’s board.

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UK fighter jets always on standby, Sunak says after US shoots down objects

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Prime minister will do ‘everything it takes’ to keep country safe as Britain conducts security review

UK fighter jets are on standby to shoot down Chinese spy balloons if any are spotted in British air space, the prime minister has said.

Rishi Sunak said Typhoon planes were ready at all times in case the UK came under threat from balloons such as the one US officials said they shot down last week.

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How one Derbyshire museum took initiative in returning Indigenous artefacts

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Buxton Museum returned entire collection of Native American and First Nation artefacts to their original communities

When Taa.uu ‘Yuuwans Nika Collison first opened the email from Buxton Museum, she was, she says, “sort of in shock”.

Collison is a member of the Haida nation, the Indigenous inhabitants of a remote archipelago called Haida Gwaii off the very far north-west coast of Canada. For 25 years she and others had been lobbying museums and collectors around the world to return items made by her people back to their homeland, often with very little success. Here was a curator from a small town in Derbyshire she had never heard of, saying it had some Haida items in its collection, and it wanted to send them back.

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Gibraltar’s chief minister threatens top rights lawyers with defamation

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Lawyers call for apology and withdrawal of threats made during inquiry into alleged government corruption

Two leading London-based human rights lawyers have been threatened with defamation proceedings for making submissions on behalf of their client, in a highly unusual development.

The threat was made by lawyers representing the Gibraltar government and senior ministers, including the chief minister, Fabian Picardo, at an inquiry exploring alleged corruption at the top of the British overseas territory’s administration.

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Heathrow has busiest start to year since before Covid lockdowns

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More than 5.4m passengers travelled through airport in January, double the 2.6m from 2022

Heathrow airport had its busiest start to the year since before the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns in 2020 as travel restrictions continued to ease, according to data published on Monday.

More than 5.4 million passengers travelled through the UK’s and Europe’s busiest airport in January, double the 2.6 million from 2022, Heathrow said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange.

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Labour condemns ‘catalogue of waste’ on government ‘credit cards’

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Analysis of civil service spending includes Rishi Sunak’s Treasury department spending £3,000 on Tate photographs

Spending on government-issued “credit cards” has risen 70% since 2010, when the Conservatives first warned they were generating “hideous waste”, according to a Labour analysis of civil service spending.

Civil servants at 14 of the 15 main government departments spent nearly £150m on government procurement cards (GPCs) in 2021, the figures show, a steep rise since 2010-11, when David Cameron warned about the lax rules and oversight governing their use.

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Whitehall procurement cards serve a purpose but oversight is patchy

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Labour analysis shows use of GPCs has risen under Tory government despite David Cameron decrying ‘hideous’ spending levels in 2010

Nestled inside a shaded courtyard, Plataran in south Jakarta offers diners the promise of authentic Indonesian food “with the atmosphere of Javanese royalty”. Five miles to the north, Kaum gives guests a taste of tribal Indonesian cooking with modern inflections.

Together, these are two of the city’s finest restaurants, and they are where Liz Truss and her team decamped, first for lunch and then for dinner, during a whistle-stop trip to the Indonesian capital in 2021. The two meals cost the taxpayer £1,443 – all paid for conveniently by handing over one of the thousands of government procurement cards (GPCs) that officials can use to pay for anything under £20,000.

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Nurses’ union in UK warns of exodus of young staff

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RCN says nearly 43,000 nurses in UK have quit early in their careers over past five years

The UK’s largest nursing union warned of a workforce “exodus” with tens of thousands of young staff leaving the profession, as NHS bosses backed calls for ministers to meet unions to agree on a pay deal and avoid further strike action.

Nearly 43,000 nurses across the UK in the early stages of their careers have quit over the past five years, figures from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) show – almost equal to the record 47,000 nursing posts now vacant in NHS England.

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Brexiters claim ‘sellout’ after Tories discuss rapprochement with EU

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Nigel Farage, John Redwood and Lord Frost rail against news of senior Tories joining cross-party summit to tackle failings of Brexit

Prominent Brexit supporters have hit out at senior Conservative figures after the Observer revealed they had taken part in a private cross-party summit entitled: “How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?”

John Redwood, the prominent Brexit-supporting Tory MP, and Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence party, criticised those attending the summit at Oxfordshire’s Ditchley Park retreat, including the cabinet minister Michael Gove.

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Brianna Ghey: boy and girl, both 15, arrested on suspicion of murder

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Police had appealed for witnesses after 16-year-old was found with stab wounds in Culcheth’s Linear Park in Warrington

A boy and girl, both aged 15, have been arrested on suspicion of murder after the fatal stabbing of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey in a park in Warrington, Cheshire police have said.

A statement from the force said: “Detectives have arrested two teenagers following the death of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey.

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Drag queen storyteller says readings ‘help youngsters discover true selves’

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Aida H Dee’s Tate Britain events attracted rival protests from a far-right group and counter-protests led by Stand Up to Racism

A drag queen whose storytelling sessions for children prompted rival demonstrations over the weekend has defended the event as a way of helping youngsters discover their true selves.

Sab Samuel, whose drag name is Aida H Dee, hosted three Drag Queen Story Hour UK readings in Tate Britain in London on Saturday, while about 30 protesters from the far-right group Patriotic Alternative gathered outside chanting “leave our kids alone”.

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‘He’s a bit of a prat’: voters in Ashfield turn on Lee Anderson

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The Tories’ new deputy chairman thinks he has the support of his constituency. But a tour around the market town says otherwise

Depending on your political instincts he’s a prime candidate for the “worst man in Britain”, no-nonsense voice of the people, or pugnacious darling of the Tory right.

Lee Anderson defends his inability to swerve controversy by claiming that what might make parliamentarians blanch, the people of Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, unequivocally back.

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Brexit is a self-inflicted wound of unparalleled severity | Phillip Inman

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Quitting the EU has stalled business investment, making us reliant on workers who are now scarce. Hence rising wages, high inflation and increased interest rates. Result? A looming recession

Whenever Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, talks about the economy, he is forced to mention the toll taken by Brexit.

Business leaders, initially reluctant to criticise the Tory decision to quit the EU, have begun to find their voice. Most recently, leading City figure Guy Hands called Brexit a “complete disaster” and a “bunch of total lies” that has harmed large parts of the economy.

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