Category Archives: UK news

Government’s Rwanda asylum policy is ‘absolutely shameful’, says Lady Amos

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Labour peer who is first black member of Order of the Garter says scheme threatens to undermine UK’s global standing

Sending asylum seekers to Rwanda is an “absolutely shameful” policy that threatens to undermine Britain’s potential to lead in a changing world, the Labour peer Valerie Amos has said.

Lady Amos, who this week became the first black member of the Order of the Garter, said the scheme “sends a message” to other countries about “how seriously we take our responsibilities” to the UN’s security council and charter on refugees.

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Boris Johnson promises Ukraine UK-led troop training scheme on Kyiv visit

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PM announces programme including battle skills and counter-explosive tactics that will take place outside Ukraine

Boris Johnson has announced that the UK will oversee a new three-week training programme for Ukrainian soldiers, as he visited Kyiv for the third time this year for talks with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The prime minister had been expected to address Conservative MPs at the Northern Research Group conference in Doncaster on Friday, but pulled out at the last minute.

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‘Frankly insulting’: Rwanda resents its portrayal in UK asylum row

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Kigali government seeks to shift narrative with managed tours of processing facilities and accommodation for deportees

Rwanda has been caught in the eye of a British political storm this week, and its officials are not happy with how the country has been portrayed.

It was preparing to welcome asylum seekers on Tuesday until a dramatic 11th-hour ruling by the European court of human rights.

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NHS to offer women in England drug that cuts recurrence of breast cancer

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Abemaciclib can improve chances of certain type of cancer not returning after surgery by more than 30%

Thousands of women in England with breast cancer are to benefit from a new pill on the NHS which reduces the risk of the disease coming back.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) has given the green light to abemaciclib, which cuts the chance of breast cancer returning after a patient has had surgery to remove a tumour.

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Rare birds’ arrival an ‘unmissable sign’ climate emergency has reached Britain

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Pushed northwards by global heating, exotic birds like the rainbow bee-eater seen nesting in Norfolk will likely become established summer visitors

Rainbow-hued bee-eaters breeding on the Norfolk coast this summer and three rare black-winged stilts fledglings in Yorkshire are an “unmissable sign” that the nature and climate emergency has reached Britain, according to conservationists.

Birdwatchers are flocking to north-east Norfolk to see the bee-eaters, a colourful rare visitor from Africa and southern Europe, after seven birds were spotted close to Cromer by a local birder.

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Election guru Lynton Crosby attending PM’s morning meetings

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Greater role for head of polling company coincides with prime minister’s shift to the right

Lynton Crosby, the election guru and businessman, has been attending Boris Johnson’s 8.30am meetings in No 10, showing he is more involved in the prime minister’s decision making than previously thought.

The Australian political strategist, whose advisory firm has represented tobacco as well as oil and gas interests, is known to have been helping Johnson remotely over his leadership woes but his involvement in the regular meetings shows he appears to have taken a much greater role than before.

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‘Boris Johnson thinks he’s honest’: Devon candidate declines to say if PM trustworthy

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Helen Hurford, Tory candidate in Tiverton and Honiton, blames media for stopping public from moving on from Partygate

The Conservative candidate in Tiverton and Honiton has blamed the media for preventing the public from “moving on” from Partygate and twice declined to say that Boris Johnson was honest.

In an interview with the Guardian, Helen Hurford acknowledged the party faced a very tight battle to retain the previously ultra-safe seat and criticised what she called the media’s “persistent regurgitating of Partygate”. Asked if she believed Boris Johnson was fundamentally honest, Hurford twice refused to say.

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Gatwick reduces summer capacity to prevent repeat of jubilee chaos

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Number of flights in August will be below pre-pandemic levels to ensure those on sale are ‘deliverable’

Gatwick airport will reduce its summer capacity to ward off potential chaos, after dozens of last-minute cancellations wrecked the travel plans of holidaymakers over the platinum jubilee and half-term holiday.

London’s second busiest airport will limit the number of daily take-offs and landings to 850 in August – about 50 more than the average in early June, but more than 10% below its pre-pandemic maximum.

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UK not on track to cut air pollution and is not informing public on air quality, NAO says

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Spending watchdog warns existing policies not enough to meet most targets by 2030

The government is not on track to cut air pollution and is not effectively informing the public about the issue, the spending watchdog has warned.

The National Audit Office (NAO) warned that existing policy measures will not be enough to meet most of the government’s air quality targets by 2030.

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No 10 refuses to say if ethics adviser will be replaced following Lord Geidt’s resignation after being put in ‘impossible position’ – live

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Boris Johnson ‘carefully considering’ whether to appoint new ethics adviser after Lord Geidt’s resignation

Ellis has finished. He has not told us anything new about why Geidt resigned.

Ellis says the powers of the independent adviser on ministers’ interests have changed.

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Grant Shapps tells rail staff not to ‘risk striking yourself out of a job’

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Unions accuse transport secretary of threats and intimidation of workers, and government of trying to make political capital out of the strike

The transport secretary has told rail staff not to “risk striking yourself out of a job”, before industrial action that will close much of the railway next week.

In a speech in which Grant Shapps said he was “appealing directly to workers” instead of unions, he claimed the strikes were “a bid to derail reforms that are critical to the network’s future, and designed to inflict damage at the worst possible time”.

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Morrisons mistakenly lists £2.50 whisky

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The retailer identified the pricing error on its website before any bottles were sold

Mark Twain reputedly said “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whisky is barely enough”.

Online shoppers at the supermarket Morrisons came close to testing his theory when the retailer accidentally priced bottles of a Scotch whisky at just £2.50, a 93% discount from its usual price of £36.

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London state school pupils train to take on private schools at rugby fives

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Bold experiment uses sport to boost social mobility while bringing organised games to state schools

St Paul’s and Winchester are facing a new rivalry at fives – the handball game that for hundreds of years has largely been the preserve of the most rarified public schools.

Children at Stoke Newington school in Hackney, east London, are leading a new wave of state school rugby fives players who have started training to take on their privileged counterparts in matches that will reach across one of the UK’s most entrenched social divides.

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Lord Geidt letter says request from Boris Johnson put him in ‘odious position’

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Ethics adviser who quit says PM asked him to consider matter that risked deliberate breach of ministerial code

Boris Johnson placed his ethics adviser in an “impossible and odious” position by asking him to “risk a deliberate and purposeful breach of the ministerial code”, letters from the adviser show.

Johnson revealed in his reply that he had asked Christopher Geidt to consider plans by the government to continue some steel tariffs – a move that could break World Trade Organization terms – but hinted he was unsatisfied with the explanation.

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UK aims sanctions at Russians accused of abducting Ukrainian children

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Maria Lvova-Belova accused by Ukraine of organising capture of vulnerable children in Luhansk and Donetsk

A fresh wave of sanctions against Russia has been imposed by the government, as the UK signalled its disapproval of the Russian abduction of Ukrainian children into Russia, by aiming new sanctions at people involved with the “barbaric treatment of children in Ukraine”.

Those targeted by sanctions include the Russian children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, the so-called mastermind behind the shadowy abduction programme.

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Almost 100,000 facing excessive wait for serious cardiac care in England

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Some patients will have heart attack and die as a result of ‘dangerous’ delays, charity warns

Almost 100,000 people with serious heart problems, including some “living on borrowed time”, are enduring long waits for potentially life-saving NHS care because hospitals are so busy.

Some of them are in such poor health they will have a heart attack and die as a consequence of facing such “dangerous” long delays, the British Heart Foundation has warned.

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British Gas owner signs deal with Norway firm for extra UK supplies

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Centrica says Equinor will deliver enough gas for next three years to heat 4.5m extra homes

The British Gas owner, Centrica, has signed a major supply deal with the Norwegian state oil company, Equinor, as ministers scramble to secure domestic energy supplies.

Equinor has agreed to deliver an additional 1bn cubic metres of gas supplies to the company for each of the next three years, enough to heat an additional 4.5m UK homes.

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Raab says court was wrong to block Rwanda deportation flight

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Decision by European court of human rights strengthens case for overhaul of UK laws, says deputy PM

A last-minute court ruling that prevented the first asylum seekers being forcibly removed to Rwanda was wrong and has strengthened the case for overhauling Britain’s human rights laws, Dominic Raab has said.

The deputy prime minister urged the European court of human rights (ECHR) to “respect the limits of its mandate”, though rejected calls from some Conservative MPs to cut ties with the Strasbourg-based body.

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Claim for £750m against Apple launched alleging battery ‘throttling’

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Consumer champion Justin Gutmann alleges older iPhones made slower to cope with software updates

A consumer champion has launched a more than £750m legal claim against Apple, linked to an incident in 2017 relating to a power management tool on older iPhones.

Justin Gutmann has accused the tech giant of slowing down the performance of iPhone handsets – a process known as “throttling” – by hiding a power management tool in software updates to combat performance issues and stop older devices from shutting down suddenly.

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Queen’s ‘seabed rights’ swell to value of £5bn after auction of plots

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British crown estate portfolio rises in value by 8.3% to £15.6bn

The value of rights owned by the Queen’s property company to exploit the seabed around Britain’s coastline has swelled to £5bn after a record-breaking auction of plots for offshore windfarms.

Profits for the crown estate, which generates money for the Treasury and the royal family, jumped by £43.4m to £312.7m in the year to the end of March.

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