Reluctant to make big fiscal changes, chancellor Rishi Sunak considers tax adjustments and fuel duty cut
The Treasury has drawn up a range of options to help with the cost of living crisis – including a 1p cut to income tax, raising the national insurance threshold and a significant cut to fuel duty.
But government sources said Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, was still reluctant to make big fiscal changes.
Continue reading...Charles Goodwin, 21, was under investigation when he raped and assaulted two women
A “cold, unempathetic, manipulative” student who raped and sexually attacked two women while he was on bail and being investigated for an earlier violent rape has been jailed for 17 years.
Charles Goodwin, 21, attacked his victims after getting them drunk, Liverpool crown court heard.
Continue reading...‘Russian state actors’ blamed for prank call made to Ben Wallace
• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates
A video of defence secretary Ben Wallace being duped into speaking by phone to an impostor posing as the Ukrainian prime minister was published on Monday – hours after Downing Street said it believed Russian state actors were responsible for the hoax.
In the short clip, Wallace replies with scepticism and apparent confusion when the caller asks him questions.
Continue reading...News comes after questionnaires were sent to more than 100 people thought to be involved in lockdown gatherings
Boris Johnson is facing a possible police interview over lockdown breaches in Downing Street as the Metropolitan police said they intended to start questioning witnesses after sending out questionnaires to more than 100 people.
But the police statement – issued two months since inquiries began – suggests officers have not yet found breaches that meet the evidentiary threshold for fixed-penalty notices to be issued without further interviews. No FPNs have been issued so far, the force said.
Continue reading...PM meets industry bosses to discuss new power stations, with several reactors slated for closure as energy demand rises
Boris Johnson has told nuclear industry bosses that the government wants the UK to get 25% of its electricity from nuclear power, in a move that would signal a significant shift in the country’s energy mix.
Johnson on Monday met executives from major nuclear utilities and technology companies including the UK’s Rolls-Royce, France’s EDF, and the US’s Westinghouse and Bechtel to discuss ways of helping to speed up the development of new nuclear power stations.
Continue reading...Second whistleblower suggests to committee that top civil servants lied to cover up episode
A second whistleblower has gone public to say it was “widespread knowledge” in government that Boris Johnson ordered the prioritisation of an animal charity based in Afghanistan for evacuation during the Taliban takeover last summer.
Josie Stewart, who worked in the Foreign Office for seven years, including a stint in the Kabul embassy, suggested senior civil servants in the department had lied to cover up the embarrassing episode.
Continue reading...RMT says agency rates for seafarers are ‘gut-wrenching betrayal’ of 800 sacked British staff
Seafarers from abroad brought in to replace the 800 sacked British P&O Ferries crew are being paid as little as £1.80 an hour, unions have claimed.
The news emerged as Labour accused the government of doing “absolutely nothing” when it learned of the planned sackings, as a memorandum with the “game plan” of P&O was circulated on Wednesday evening.
Continue reading...Technology firm should help spot Russian-based users, says founder of group matching up with UK hosts
• Russia-Ukraine war: latest updates
One of the largest Facebook groups matching Ukrainian refugees with UK host families has warned of the dangers of infiltration posed by Russian trolls and traffickers.
Room for Ukrainians in the UK is a Facebook group that was set up little over two weeks ago and already has 12,500 members. Most of those posting are Ukrainians in need of sponsors and British people who want to open their homes to the new arrivals.
Continue reading...Politicians and business leaders sign open letter as Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visit Caribbean
Jamaican campaigners have accused the Queen of perpetuating slavery in a letter urging the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to atone for colonialism during their Caribbean tour.
As the country celebrates 60 years of independence, a coalition of Jamaican politicians, business leaders, doctors and musicians have called in the open letter for the British monarchy to apologise for colonialism and pay slavery reparations.
Continue reading...Resolution Foundation says pegging benefits to inflation will target help to needy better than scrapping NI rise
Rishi Sunak should consider raising benefits and pensions to keep pace with inflation, research has suggested, as the chancellor faced increasing pressure to tackle the cost-of-living squeeze in this week’s spring budgetary statement.
Increasing benefits by an extra five percentage points, by 8.1% rather than the 3.1% currently planned, would give four times as much help for low-to-middle income households for every pound spent as scrapping the planned national insurance rise, the Resolution Foundation said.
Continue reading...Welsh government hails ‘historic moment’ for children’s rights amid calls for England to follow suit
Smacking and slapping children has been outlawed in Wales, with people told to contact social services or police if they see a parent or carer meting out physical punishment.
The law change, which came into force first thing on Monday, was hailed as “historic” by the Labour-led Welsh government and a number of child protection champions, who called for England to follow suit.
Continue reading...Asking prices up 1.7% in March, biggest monthly rise for this time of year in 18 years, according to Rightmove
The average price tag on a home in Great Britain has topped £350,000 for the first time, according to Rightmove.
Typical asking prices hit £354,564 in March, up 1.7% or £5,760 compared with February, the property website said. It was the biggest monthly rise for this time of year in 18 years, and pushed the annual rate of growth in asking prices to 10.4%.
Continue reading...Offer of top-up dose to over-75s, care home residents and those who are immunocompromised follows JCVI advice last month
The NHS in England will on Monday start giving a second booster vaccine to millions of people who are at higher risk from Covid-19 to help combat the latest resurgence in infections.
Over-75s, care home residents and those who are immunocompromised – 5 million in all – will be contacted by the NHS and then be able to book an appointment online or by calling 119.
Continue reading...Conservationist detained since 2018 left behind when Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori released
Morad Tahbaz, the British-Iranian-American citizen left behind last week when Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori were allowed to return home to the UK, has been taken from Evin prison to a hotel in Tehran after representations by the British and American governments, the Foreign Office has said.
The department added that it was lobbying the Iranian authorities at the highest levels to allow him to return to his Tehran home immediately as the Iranian government had previously committed to do.
Continue reading...Meeting comes as Boris Johnson prepares to publish his energy security strategy amid soaring prices and Ukraine war
Boris Johnson will chair a meeting on how to increase the UK’s nuclear power output on Monday, as he prepares to publish his energy security strategy this month amid soaring prices.
The prime minister will discuss domestic nuclear projects with leaders from the nuclear industry at a roundtable meeting at Downing Street, No 10 said.
Continue reading...Letter to business secretary calls firm’s sacking of 800 workers ‘scandalous’ and a criminal offence
Labour has urged the business secretary to launch legal action against P&O Ferries over its “scandalous” decision to sack 800 workers without warning, which the party said is a criminal offence.
Shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, deputy leader Angela Rayner and shadow business secretary Jonathan Reynolds have written to Kwasi Kwarteng, asking if he will begin proceedings for what they called the “scandalous action” of the ferry company.
Continue reading...Tory MPs want ministers to follow health bill amendment banning goods from regions with ‘risk of genocide’
Ministers are looking “sympathetically” at plans to stop the government buying health goods made in China’s Xinjiang province when the health and social care bill returns to the Commons later this month. The move would be a first sign that the government is willing to toughen its approach to authoritarian regimes in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
In an interview at the weekend, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, said the west still needed to apply pressure on the Chinese government not to support the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Continue reading...According to documents, Cape played down dangers and lobbied for warning labels to be tempered
One of the UK’s biggest manufacturers of asbestos and the industry bodies that it co-founded historically withheld information on risks posed by the carcinogenic material, playing down the dangers while lobbying the government for product warnings to be tempered, according to documents released after a lengthy court battle.
A lawyer who acted for the Asbestos Victims Support Groups Forum UK in its fight to obtain the documents about Cape compared its behaviour to the tobacco industry’s former refusal to admit evidence of harms from smoking while its own research showed the opposite.
Continue reading...Maher Maaroufe, 22, arrested on suspicion of murder after death of Sabita Thanwani in Clerkenwell
Police investigating the death of Sabita Thanwani, 19, at a student flat in London over the weekend have arrested a man.
Police were called to an accommodation block in Clerkenwell for students at City, University of London at 5.10am on Saturday after emergency services received reports of an injured woman.
Continue reading...Union leaders call for employment bill and accuse ministers of failing to challenge sacking of 800 staff
Ministers have serious questions to answer on the growing scandal at P&O Ferries and must make it a catalyst to improve workers’ rights, the Trades Union Congress said on Sunday.
The TUC accused the government of sitting on its hands and failing to protect workers after P&O sacked 800 staff on Thursday with a plan to replace them with cheaper agency workers. It has emerged that ministers were informed in advance about the mass redundancies.
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