Heaton-Harris says he doesn’t have any details about the talks between Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson last night.
“I was really pleased that they had talks, but I don’t know what transpired from them. I will be speaking to Boris shortly. It’s really important that the party comes together and unifies and shows we are serious about governing.
Continue reading...Fabian Society also says Labour needs to be radical and introduce better provision for the lowest paid
Sir Keir Starmer should promise that a future Labour government would introduce a new workplace pension for self-employed workers and more generous retirement provision for the low paid, a leading left-of-centre thinktank has said.
Calling for the biggest shake-up of the pensions’ system in two decades, the Fabian Society said Labour needed to copy the radical approach of the Turner Commission two decades ago, which encouraged saving through opt-out schemes.
Increasing the minimum contributions for workplace auto-enrolment pensions to 12% of total earnings from the current 8%. This would be done by phasing in higher contributions from employers over time.
The introduction of new pension credits for carers, who are primarily women, to reduce the “gender pensions gap”
Changes to how people access pensions at retirement so that separate pensions are automatically consolidated into a single fund and then converted into new whole-of-retirement pension plans designed to increase with inflation.
Continue reading...Ex-chancellor announces candidacy for Tory leadership contest as allies of Boris Johnson say he is planning to run
Rishi Sunak has won the backing of former rival Suella Braverman as he formally declared he would stand to be Conservative leader, while allies of Boris Johnson said he was still planning to run.
The former chancellor announced his candidacy on Twitter, after coming second in the previous contest against Liz Truss.
Continue reading...Mike Ashley’s increased holding comes after online retailer reported slowing sales and full-year loss
The billionaire retailer Mike Ashley has built up a stake of more than 5% in the online fashion retailer Asos.
His fashion and sportswear retailer Frasers Group informed Asos on Friday that it had become one of the company’s most signifiant shareholders.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Joint venture with Centrica is aimed ultimately at reducing carbon intensity at the site
Hydrogen will be injected into an emergency gas-fired power station for the first time in a pilot backed by the owner of British Gas.
Centrica has invested in an industry joint venture which will trial using hydrogen at an existing “peaking plant” at its Brigg station in Lincolnshire, the Guardian can reveal.
Continue reading...Animal Collective, Bonobo and Mercury prize winner Little Simz among acts to cancel concerts
Musicians are cancelling concerts and entire tours because the rising costs of staff and materials coupled with a drop off in ticket sales is making them too expensive to run.
Earlier this month, US band Animal Collective cancelled forthcoming European dates as“not sustainable”. Within days, the UK downtempo producer Bonobo called time on future live shows in America, describing them as “exponentially expensive”. Then electronic musician Tourist rescheduled a US stint, saying “sometimes tickets just don’t get sold”.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak hold talks as deadline for nominations approaches on Monday
Senior Tories are engaged in a frantic campaign to stop Boris Johnson staging a dramatic return to Downing Street, with claims he would cause further economic damage and risk “the end of the Conservative party”.
Johnson’s team was claiming on Saturday night that he had privately secured the support of the 100 MPs necessary for entering the race, despite only 55 backing him in public. The assertion was immediately disputed by MPs and rival leadership campaign sources. Johnson released a photo of himself lobbying an MP on the phone, but his allies on Saturday night could not confirm he would officially enter the contest to win back the leadership he was deposed from just months ago.
Continue reading...Ireland’s taoiseach says party should honour mandate of people of Northern Ireland ahead of election deadline
Ireland’s taoiseach has called on the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) to “honour” the mandate of the people of Northern Ireland by contributing to the restoration of the Stormont institutions as the election deadline looms.
Micheál Martin said it does not appear that devolved government at Stormont will be restored by Friday’s deadline. He added that it is “not satisfactory” that the powersharing institutions are not functioning.
Continue reading...Anti-Brexit rally sees crowds from across UK waving EU flags and blaming Britain’s crises on departure from union
Thousands of protesters have marched through central London calling for the UK to rejoin the EU.
The national rejoin march on Saturday saw large crowds of people walk from Park Lane to Parliament Square. Marchers from across the UK travelled for hours to attend.
Continue reading...School leaders’ mood turns to despair at funding crisis amid growing poverty
Jonny Uttley, CEO of the Education Alliance academy trust, which runs seven schools in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire, was shouting and swearing at the television news on Wednesday evening. The fracking vote in the Commons had descended into noisy chaos, with allegations that Tory backbenchers were being manhandled into voting with Liz Truss’s ailing government.
The contrast between the Westminster circus and what was happening in his primary and secondary schools couldn’t have been starker. Earlier, Uttley had met his headteachers to make an impossible choice: should they cut vital teaching staff or feed hungry children who weren’t entitled to free school meals.
Continue reading...Heads say they will be in deficit next academic year, even without cuts Jeremy Hunt is planning
Nine out of 10 schools will have run out of money by the next school year as the enormous burden of increased energy and salary bills takes its toll, the Observer can reveal.
Early data from the National Association of Head Teachers – results of a survey of its members are due later this month – shows that 50% of heads say their school will be in deficit this year, with almost all expecting to be in the red by next September,when their reserve run out. This comes as Jeremy Hunt has made clear that all departments, including education, will be expected to make cuts as part of the government’s debt reduction plan, to be announced on 31 October.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson arrives back in UK from Dominican Republic but Penny Mordaunt so far only confirmed runner to succeed Liz Truss
The Conservative former deputy prime minister Dominic Raab said he was “confident” Rishi Sunak would run and was the “standout candidate” in the field.
He said Sunak had been “consistently right” on the economy in the face of the “fundamental” economic challenges the country faces as well as the “crisis of confidence and trust” in the government. Raab told Sky News:
I think again he is the best-placed candidate to restore that trust, get a government of all the talents across the Conservative party and get the government focused relentlessly on going forward on the priorities of the British people.
Continue reading...Moody’s say downgrade from ‘stable’ was driven by political instability and high inflation
The UK’s economic outlook has been downgraded from “stable” to “negative” by the rating agency Moody’s because of political instability and high inflation.
Moody’s said the change in outlook was driven by “heightened unpredictability in policymaking amid weaker growth prospects and high inflation” and “risks to the UK’s debt affordability from likely higher borrowing and risk of a sustained weakening in policy credibility”.
Continue reading...Aderonke Apata says she has Home Office to thank for career as she fought removal to Nigeria
A refugee who has just been called to the bar says she has the Home Office to thank for her career after she became an amateur legal expert while locked up in a detention centre.
Aderonke Apata, 55, from Nigeria, said she was proud to take part in a ceremony last week where she, along with dozens of other newly qualified barristers, were formally called to the bar.
Continue reading...Move will help up to 150 patients a year whose condition has not responded positively to anti-seizure drugs
Up to 150 people a year with epilepsy will have a potentially life-changing new form of surgery on the part of their brain that is causing their seizures, in an NHS initiative.
NHS England is making available a “world-leading” fibre-optic laser beam surgery that would let epilepsy sufferers avoid having to undergo neurosurgery, which is much more invasive.
Continue reading...Former PM Johnson and ex-chancellor Rishi Sunak dominate front pages as the contest for the Conservative party’s top job intensifies
The Conservative party leadership race fills newspaper front pages with a focus on the possible return of Boris Johnson to the top job.
Rishi Sunak, whose backers claim he has passed the threshold of 100 MPs needed to get on the ballot paper, also featured prominently as the contest intensified.
Continue reading...Former health secretary backs former chancellor for PM; Cop26 president backs ex-PM; leader of the Commons announces candidacy
Meanwhile, two out of five maternity units in England are providing substandard care to mothers and babies, the NHS watchdog has warned.
“The quality of maternity care is not good enough,” the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said in its annual assessment of how health and social care services are performing.
Continue reading...With budgets always tight some smaller football clubs are looking to offset their soaring power costs
Shrewsbury Town’s fans had long since filed out of the Montgomery Waters Meadow stadium after the defender Chey Dunkley had scored an injury-time winner against Exeter, when Brian Caldwell looked angrily skyward. The League One club’s chief executive was unimpressed to see the ground’s floodlights still burning bright.
Caldwell is among the football executives trying to limit the financial pain from huge energy bills. Faced with an even bigger surge in his annual costs, Caldwell was forced to settle for a £100,000 increase, to £180,000, when signing a new energy contract in April. “It’s a massive dent in our finances. Football clubs are not normal businesses, they’re set up to break even and put the money you can into the playing budget,” he said.
Continue reading...Number of publicly declared MPs is growing as three candidates emerge as favourites in the race
The number of publicly declared MPs who are backing potential candidates for the Conservative leadership is growing, with three key figures emerging: the former chancellor Rishi Sunak, the former prime minister Boris Johnson, and Penny Mordaunt, the current leader of the House of Commons. Each candidate will need at least 100 signatures to make it to the first round of voting on Monday.
As of 2:10pm on Sunday, Sunak was leading the field having received 135 public nominations.
Continue reading...The mood among backbench Conservatives after PM’s resignation seems to be overwhelmingly one of relief
There are countless indignities in becoming the briefest-serving UK prime minister of all time, and a new one arrived on Friday morning when a No 10 official was able to confirm that Liz Truss had moved into the Downing Street flat – but not whether she had had enough time to fully unpack.
Truss is spending the weekend at another prime ministerial residence, the country retreat of Chequers, where she will presumably reflect on the month and a half of chaos she visited on herself and the nation, a headily compressed incumbency that ended with Thursday’s 89-second resignation speech.
Continue reading...