Category Archives: UK news

Time is against Liz Truss as she bets big on plan to turn economy around

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With an election two years away, any failure of her radical approach could shred the Tories’ credibility

When Liz Truss flew to the US this week on her first foreign trip as prime minister, she was unequivocal about how she would achieve her mission in office: “Lower taxes lead to economic growth, there is no doubt in my mind about that.”

There was not a quiver of self-doubt in her voice as she gave a round of television interviews at the top of the Empire State Building expanding on her plans for the economy and saying she was “willing to be unpopular” to push them through.

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Truss axes national security council, sparking ‘talking-shop’ concerns

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Labour says new merged foreign policy council could reduce Whitehall policy-makers’ focus on security

Liz Truss has scrapped the national security council and merged it with two Boris Johnson-era foreign policy committees in a structure that Labour warned risked diluting the government’s security focus.

Created in 2010 under the coalition, led by David Cameron and Nick Clegg, to better coordinate security policy after the disaster of the Iraq war, the NSC is now to be replaced by a broad eight-strong foreign policy and security council (FPSC).

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Mini-budget 2022: pound crashes as chancellor cuts stamp duty and top rate of income tax – live

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Tax cuts to cost Treasury around £37bn in 2023-24, official figures reveal

There are no urgent questions in the morning, and so Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, will be delivering his statement soon after 9.30am.

The Commons starts sitting at 9.30am, but they always begin with prayers in private, and so Kwarteng will be up a few minutes later.

The last time they did it one third of the beneficiaries were people buying second homes or buy to let, so we are sceptical that this is the magic bullet to increase homeownership. What we really need to do is to build more houses and to help get people onto the property ladder by increasing the supply of housing.

When this has been done before, it has often fuelled an already hot market and many of the beneficiaries have been people buying a second or third home, rather than the first time buyers that we really want to help who are often trapped in private rented accommodation where they’re paying as much in rent every month as they would in a mortgage.

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Kwarteng accused of reckless mini-budget for the rich as pound plummets

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Strategy of sweeping tax cuts gets hostile reception from markets and economic thinktanks, leaving some Tory MPs aghast

Kwasi Kwarteng has been accused of delivering a reckless mini-budget for the rich after his £45bn tax-cutting package sent the pound crashing to its lowest level against the dollar in 37 years.

In a high-risk strategy designed to revive Britain’s stagnant economy, the new chancellor announced more than £400bn of extra borrowing over the coming years to fund the biggest giveaway since Tony Barber’s ill-fated 1972 budget.

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Disabled woman wins legal challenge against DWP over automatic benefit deduction

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High court rules DWP scheme to deduct money without consent is illegal and breaches ‘obligation of fairness’

A disabled former police officer has won a legal challenge against the Department for Work and Pensions over its policy of allowing utility companies to automatically deduct hundreds of pounds a year from individuals’ benefits without their consent.

Helen Timson, 51, of Leicester, argued it was unlawful and immoral that the DWP enabled water and energy firms to draw down up to 25% of a claimant’s monthly benefit income at source without undertaking any form of check with the claimant. Hundreds of thousands of claimants are understood to be subject to the deductions.

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Saudi foreign minister defends role in securing Ukraine prisoner swaps

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Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud decries as ‘cynical’ accusations his country was trying to improve its image after Khashoggi killing

It would be cynical to see Saudi Arabia’s efforts to secure the release of international prisoners held by Russian proxies in Ukraine as an attempt to improve the country’s image after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, its foreign minister has said.

Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud said on Friday that Riyadh had first approached the UK government in April, shortly after Aiden Aslin, a British citizen, and others were captured at Mariupol, and had acted for compassionate reasons, hoping to negotiate their release.

This story was amended on Friday 23 September 2022 to correct the name of the Saudi foreign minister.

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Can I Tell You a Secret, episode 1: the beginning – podcast

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In the first part of a new series, the Guardian journalist Sirin Kale takes us to a small town in the north of England to uncover how one man began a decade of cyberstalking

In this new six-episode podcast, the Guardian journalist Sirin Kale investigates the story of Matthew Hardy, a cyberstalker who terrified people in his hometown and beyond for more than a decade.

His harassment would often start in the same way, a fake profile posing as a young woman with a simple message: “Hey hun, can I tell you a secret?”. This series attempts to untangle his web of deception to find out how and why he wreaked havoc over so many people’s lives.

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Tintagel among castles at risk unless England can hold back the tide

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English Heritage identifies six most vulnerable sites as climate change intensifies coastal erosion

The wonderful wildness of the spot, a rocky Cornish headland pounded relentlessly by Atlantic breakers, has inspired poets, artists and dreamers for many a century.

But Tintagel, immortalised in British mythology as the place of King Arthur’s conception, is one of a string of castles at risk of tumbling into the sea as climate change increases the pace of coastal erosion.

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Sunday roasting dwindles as cost of cooking crisis hits home

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Annual Good Food Nation survey finds a fifth of Britons no longer turn on their oven to save money

Families have crossed Sunday roasts, stews and home baking off the menu and in drastic cases no longer use their oven, as soaring energy costs force big changes in the kitchen.

One in four home cooks said they were less likely to prepare a roast dinner, while a fifth were not baking as many cakes or biscuits, according to the annual Good Food Nation report.

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Starmer must not ‘sit back’ if Labour is to win next election, Mandelson says

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Former cabinet minister urges Labour leader to be ‘restless for change’ and challenge ‘post-truth’ campaign by Truss government

Liz Truss will mount a “post-truth” campaign presenting the Conservatives as the party of change at the next election, Peter Mandelson has warned, as he called on Keir Starmer not to “sit back” and assume automatic victory.

While Labour has held a steady lead in the opinion polls for nine months, Starmer was urged by the former cabinet minister to “do a better job” of showing voters how the party has evolved under his leadership to cement its chances of entering government.

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Tory MPs angrily challenge Rees-Mogg’s fracking revival plan

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Energy secretary considers bypassing local planning rules as backbenchers voice opposition

Ministers face a furious backlash from Conservative MPs after overturning a manifesto pledge to pause fracking until it is proved safe, and then indicating drilling could be imposed without local support.

Outlining a return to shale gas extraction in England after three years, Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed worries about earthquakes caused by the practice as “hysteria”, claiming this was often down to a lack of scientific understanding.

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UK in recession and further interest rate hikes probable, Bank warns Kwarteng

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Threadneedle Street makes clear on eve of tax-cutting mini-budget that plans risk triggering more rate rises

The Bank of England has warned Kwasi Kwarteng the economy is in recession and it will most probably need to push interest rates higher after Friday’s tax-cutting mini-budget.

On the eve of a major package of support from the chancellor designed to break what he called the economy’s “cycle of stagnation”, Threadneedle Street said the UK economy was heading for a second consecutive quarter of falling output, with gross domestic product set to shrink 0.1% in the three months to September.

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New bill vows to stop kleptocrats ‘treating UK as their safe deposit box’

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Proposed reforms previously delayed by Boris Johnson reannounced amid accusations Tories are soft on ‘dirty money’

Companies House will be given new powers to challenge incorrect or fraudulent claims made by kleptocrats and their agents in an economic crime bill that was previously delayed by Boris Johnson a few weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.

The new bill – the second of two that had to be hurriedly reannounced amid accusations the government had gone soft on dirty money – is backed by the new security minister, Tom Tugendhat.

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Rail strikes: 40,000 RMT members to stage further action on 8 October

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Strike will affect Network Rail and 15 train operators and comes on top those planned for 1 and 5 October

Another rail strike has been announced for next month, continuing the wave of industrial action sweeping the country.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) announced that 40,000 of its members at Network Rail and 15 train operators will strike on 8 October.

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National insurance increase will be reversed from 6 November, says Kwasi Kwarteng – UK politics live

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The chancellor says the move will save 28m people £330 on average next year

Catholics outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland for the first time, a demographic milestone for a state that was designed a century ago to have a permanent Protestant majority, my colleague Rory Carroll reports.

Thérèse Coffey is deputy prime minister as well as health secretary. Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain this morning, and responding to a question from the former Labour MP Ed Balls, who was presenting, she said that as deputy PM whould be would “chairing things like the home affairs committee and different elements like that”. But she rejected claims this meant she would be doing the health job part time. She said:

I’m conscious that in two weeks we’ve already pulled together our plan for patients and we will continue to develop that.

I don’t think it will be a case of being part-time ... We don’t have fixed working hours.

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Activists subvert poster sites to shame aviation and ad industries

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Billboards have been hijacked across Europe to highlight role of airline emissions in climate crisis

As Kate, 23, walked out of Seven Sisters station, in Tottenham, north London, she noticed an airline advertisement attracting unusual attention.

“I was on my way back home, I was coming out of the station, and I saw two people taking pictures of the billboard,” she said. “I thought at first it was just a normal airline ad, so I just walked past. Then I did a bit of a double take.”

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Family of woman who had fatal reaction to ‘vegan’ wrap call for better testing

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Celia Marsh’s family say more people will die unless testing throughout food industry is improved

The family of a woman with a severe dairy allergy who suffered a fatal reaction after eating a “vegan” Pret a Manger wrap contaminated with milk protein have warned that more people will die unless comprehensive testing throughout the food supply chain and better labelling is introduced.

Celia Marsh’s family also said they believed the 42-year-old dental nurse would still be alive if a company that made a coconut yoghurt added to the wrap had informed Pret there was a risk it could have been contaminated because it was made in a factory that used milk.

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Health secretary sets up £500m fund to discharge medically fit NHS patients

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Thérèse Coffey announces measure aimed at freeing up beds in hospitals in England before winter pressures

Ministers are setting up a £500m emergency fund to get thousands of medically fit patients out of hospital as soon as possible in an attempt to prevent the NHS becoming overwhelmed this winter.

Thérèse Coffey, the new health secretary, unveiled the move in the Commons on Thursday as part of her plans to tackle the growing crisis in the health service, especially patients’ long delays for care.

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Liz Truss could follow Trump and move UK embassy to Jerusalem

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PM considering breaking with decades of British foreign policy by relocating UK embassy in Israel

Liz Truss has said she is considering relocating the British embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in a controversial move that would break with decades of UK foreign policy in order to follow in the footsteps of Donald Trump.

In a meeting on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York, the prime minister told Israel’s caretaker leader, Yair Lapid, about a “review of the current location” of the building, Downing Street said in a statement.

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‘Father of quantum computing’ wins $3m physics prize

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David Deutsch, who proposed an as yet unbuildable machine to test existence of parallel universes, shares prize with three others

A theoretical physicist who has never had a regular job has won the most lucrative prize in science for his pioneering contributions to the mind-bending field of quantum computing.

David Deutsch, who is affiliated with the University of Oxford, shares the $3m (about £2.65m) Breakthrough prize in fundamental physics with three other researchers who laid the foundations for the broader discipline of quantum information.

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