Watchdog said it was ready to supply information, but was not asked to do so by Kwasi Kwarteng
Q: Can you reassure listeners that your judgment is better than that of people like the IMF and the Bank of England, who have criticised the mini-budget?
Truss says:
I have to do what I believe is right for the country and what is going to help move our country forward.
Continue reading...Inaugural summit of EU initiative that aims to unite Europe on issues such as security and energy to take place in Prague
Liz Truss will attend the inaugural summit of the European Political Community (EPC) next week, an initiative by the EU aimed at uniting the continent to work together on security and other common projects.
The prime minister plans to attend the first EPC summit in Prague on 6 October, a No 10 source told the Guardian, despite her scepticism about the EU-led initiative.
Continue reading...Mortgage market meltdown has left many amateur landlords facing a stark choice: to raise rents or sell up
Britain’s amateur landlords have benefited from years of runaway house price inflation, while intense competition among tenants has sent rents soaring. Now, thanks to the meltdown in the mortgage market triggered by last week’s disastrous mini-budget, many face a financial cliff edge.
Figures shared with the Guardian show that the number of new buy-to-let mortgage deals available has plummeted by 55% in less than a week as lenders frantically pulled products and in many cases increased prices.
Continue reading...Finance minister announces €200bn fund to protect citizens from rising gas prices driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine
Germany’s finance minister has vowed that he will not follow the UK “down the path of an expansionary fiscal policy” as his government announced a €200bn (£177bn) fund designed to protect consumers and businesses from rising gas prices driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Europe’s largest economy will reactivate an economic stabilising fund previously used during the global financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, said the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, at a joint press conference with the finance minister, Christian Lindner, and the economic minister, Robert Habeck, on Thursday afternoon.
Continue reading...Health officials urge parents to ensure children have routine jabs amid fears of measles outbreak
Thousands of children face an increased risk of catching deadly diseases in England, and significant outbreaks are likely, child health experts have warned, as “alarming” figures show vaccination levels have plunged across virtually all jabs.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) is urging parents and guardians to ensure their children have received the routine jabs against potentially serious diseases, such as polio and measles, after official data revealed a drop in vaccination rates.
Continue reading...Circumstantial evidence enough to convict William MacDowell, now 80, of killing Renee and Andrew MacRae
An 80-year-old man has been found guilty of murdering his secret lover and their three-year-old son almost half a century after the pair vanished without trace from a layby on the A9 near Inverness, concluding one of Scotland’s most extensive and longest-running missing persons investigations.
Although the bodies of Renee MacRae, who was 36 when she disappeared in 1976, and her younger son, Andrew, have never been found, William MacDowell, now 80, was convicted by a “compelling and classic case of circumstantial evidence”, as the prosecutor Alex Prentice KC described it in his closing speech to the jury.
Continue reading...Headteachers say more children are using vapes, forcing them to take action to tackle the problem
The government’s school behaviour adviser has called on headteachers to crack down on vaping among pupils, calling it “a huge health hazard” and an “enormous distraction”, amid reports that more children are using the devices, including some of primary age.
Tom Bennett said vaping was now as big an issue in schools as cigarettes once were, with children becoming “addicted to the practice and the chemicals involved”.
Continue reading...Tory chair Mel Stride says watchdog needs to hear how chancellor will boost growth, and suggests one option might be via immigration
Kwasi Kwarteng will be called before parliament’s Treasury watchdog and asked to hand over independent growth forecasts, as its chairman said there is “not a very broad path” out of the current economic situation.
Mel Stride, a Conservative MP and chair of the Treasury committee, said Kwarteng was “very, very unlikely to reverse” the £45bn of unfunded permanent tax cuts he announced last Friday, even though that is an option. The alternative, he said, was to act quickly to “demonstrate to the markets that growth is realistic”. The third option would be deep cuts to public spending, but that would be difficult given the current pressure of inflation, Stride said.
Continue reading...Family of Nnamdi Kanu granted judicial review over failure of Britain to intervene after arrest last year
The family of a British citizen who was allegedly taken to Nigeria in an act of extraordinary rendition has been granted a court hearing to challenge the UK government for not intervening in his case.
Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (Ipob), a prominent separatist movement proscribed in Nigeria, was arrested in Kenya in June last year before being transported against his will to Nigeria, where he has been held ever since.
Continue reading...Services such as debt advice and hardship funds under threat amid £400m bill caused by inflation
A network of councils in England is warning support services for families hit hardest by the cost of living crisis face being axed amid an unexpected £400m bill caused by soaring inflation.
Services that district councils have no legal obligation to provide – such as debt and benefits advice, hardship funds for families, homelessness prevention projects and help hubs for people facing poverty – are under threat.
Continue reading...King’s College London finds 65% believe campuses places of ‘robust debate’ – but growing number disagrees
Most UK students say their universities are places of free speech and debate – although a growing number are aware of free speech being restricted on campus, a study published by King’s College London has found.
The analysis, by KCL’s Policy Institute, found that 65% of students agreed that “free speech and robust debate are well protected in my university”, a higher proportion than the 63% who felt that way in a survey three years ago.
Continue reading...No injuries have been reported and there is no significant impact on departures or arrivals
Two aircraft have been involved in a “minor collision” on the runway at Heathrow, the airport has said.
Emergency services are at the scene but no injuries have been reported. An Icelandair plane and Korean Air aircraft are understood to have had a collision on the airfield at about 8pm on Wednesday, which is being investigated.
Continue reading...Bank of England left with no action but to intervene after Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget
The Bank of England has been forced into emergency action to halt a run on Britain’s pension funds after the impact of Kwasi Kwarteng’s ill-received mini budget prompted fears of a 2008-style financial crisis.
Threadneedle Street said the fallout from a dramatic rise in government borrowing costs since the chancellor’s statement had left it with no choice but to intervene to protect the UK’s financial system.
Continue reading...Sally Mays’ parents fought for seven years to hear details of chat outside mental health unit their daughter was turned away from
An NHS trust has “not covered itself in glory” in its dealings with the family of a vulnerable young woman who killed herself after being refused admission to hospital, a coroner has found.
The three-day hearing looked at evidence withheld from the original inquest into the death of Sally Mays, who killed herself in 2014 after being turned away from a mental health unit.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org.
Continue reading...Additional requirements would be time-consuming and threaten capacity, Dover port boss says
Post-Brexit Channel border delays could multiply from next May, with a five-person vehicle being held for up to 10 minutes if the EU goes ahead with a planned biometric entry system, the Port of Dover has said.
The entry-exit system (EES), which is due to start in May 2023, will require all non-EU nationals to register their fingerprints and be photographed before entering the bloc.
Continue reading...No 10 says PM has faith in chancellor, as Treasury minister says tax cuts are the ‘right plan’. This blog is now closed
Q: When would you get debt falling as a proprotion of GDP?
Starmer says Labour does want to get that down.
Continue reading...While there are questions about the pace of Labour’s proposals, criticism in rightwing newspapers is bizarrely wide of the mark
Labour’s ambitious plan for zero-carbon power by 2030 raises legitimate questions – which we’ll come to shortly – but the commentary in rightwing newspapers is bizarrely wide of the mark.
Perhaps the strangest was a Daily Telegraph editorial that claimed Labour’s plan “would make the country more dependent on imported gas, not less”. As should be obvious, the opposite is true.
Continue reading...Shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson to announce plan to fund breakfast clubs in every primary school
Labour will rebuild a new childcare system to ease the pressure on parents from the “end of parental leave right through to the end of primary school”, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said, starting with a pledge on free breakfast clubs.
Phillipson will announce on Wednesday that fully funded breakfast clubs for every primary school in England would be funded by the revenues raised by restoring the top rate of income tax to 45p, if Labour were elected.
Continue reading...Grant Shapps ‘revolutionary’ GBR plan faces huge challenges
Barely 18 months have elapsed since a starry-eyed Grant Shapps unveiled the blueprint for a “revolutionary” Great British Railways, but it already has the flavour of an optimistic misnomer. Even an adequate British railway would be welcomed by those passengers stranded by everything from Avanti’s collapse to failing infrastructure and unprecedented strikes.
Only a fraction of the timetabled trains continue to run between London and Britain’s biggest cities, though operator Avanti has pledged to start its recovery to full service this week. National strikes, the likes of which had not been seen for 30 years, are now a regular occurrence, with little sign of breakthrough in talks. Infrastructure projects have been pared back or shelved, with the public all but gaslit with reannounced schemes for new railways.
Continue reading...Artist dined at Mayfair restaurant almost every night in later years, and would sometimes share a table with co-founder Jeremy King
A portrait by Lucian Freud of the restaurateur behind the Wolseley, the Mayfair establishment where the artist dined nearly every evening in the last few years of his life, is to be sold next month.
Freud was completing the etching of Jeremy King when he died in 2011. The two had become friends over a period of about 30 years after Freud began dining at Le Caprice, another King establishment (and a favourite of Diana, Princess of Wales’s), and at the Wolseley when it opened in 2003.
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