Category Archives: UK news

UK to announce fresh military aid package for Ukraine

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UK and Ukrainian ministers met to view missile systems and armoured vehicles that could be used in next phase of fighting

Britain is preparing to announce a fresh package of military aid for Ukraine and has demonstrated new missile systems and armoured vehicles that it believes can help Kyiv in the next phases of fighting.

Junior defence ministers Jeremy Quin and James Heappey invited Ukraine’s deputy defence minister Volodymyr Havrylov to Salisbury Plain on Wednesday, where they discussed what extra weapons the UK could supply.

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Trial of Greek pilot accused of murdering British wife Caroline Crouch to begin

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Babis Anagnostopoulos alleged to have confessed to Athens murder and to hanging puppy

The trial of a Greek helicopter pilot accused of strangling his British wife as she slept next to their baby daughter is due to begin on Friday in Athens.

Nearly a year after Caroline Crouch was found dead in the couple’s maisonette, her husband, who had originally tried to blame the murder on ruthless “foreign thieves”, will appear before a mixed jury court in the Greek capital. It will be the first time Babis Anagnostopoulos, 33, has been seen in public since his alleged confession to a crime that has gripped the nation.

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Two Britons are among four tourists missing after diving trip in Malaysia

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The group, which also includes a French woman and a Norwegian woman, disappeared during diving training off the southern town of Mersing

Malaysian authorities were searching on Thursday for four Europeans, including two Britons, who disappeared during diving training off a southern island.

The divers are a 46-year-old British man, a 14-year-old British boy, an 18-year-old French woman and a 35-year-old woman from Norway.

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UK’s transparency laws are being undermined, warn journalists

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Letter signed by several MPs urges better enforcement of transparency law, as government accused of obstructing requests

More than 100 journalists, politicians and campaigners have signed an open letter warning that the UK’s freedom of information (FoI) laws are being undermined by a lack of resources and government departments obstructing lawful requests.

The signatories include the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Katharine Viner, the editor of the Observer, Paul Webster, as well as the shadow solicitor general, Andy Slaughter, the former Brexit secretary David Davis, and the former Green party leader Caroline Lucas.

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Liberty threatens to sue government over ‘racist’ joint enterprise law

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Human rights group argues law unfairly attaches gang motives to black and minority-ethnic young men

The human rights group Liberty is threatening to sue the government and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) over the bitterly contested law of joint enterprise, arguing that it is discredited and racist in the way the authorities pursue it.

Under the law, people present when a person is killed can be convicted of murder despite not committing any serious violence themselves, if they are found to have “encouraged or assisted” the perpetrator. Liberty is acting for the campaign group Joint Enterprise Not Guilty By Association (Jengba), which supports approximately 1,400 people in prison who believe they have been unjustly convicted of serious crimes perpetrated by somebody else.

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PM to put nuclear power at heart of UK’s energy strategy

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Plan will not please environmental campaigners, who say it fails to meet government’s net-zero targets

Boris Johnson is to put nuclear energy at the heart of the UK’s new energy strategy, but ministers have refused to set targets for onshore wind and vowed to continue the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas.

Amid deep divisions among senior Conservatives, the strategy will enrage environmentalists, who say the government’s plans are in defiance of its own net-zero targets and neglect alternative measures that experts say would provide much quicker relief from high energy bills.

Increasing nuclear capacity from 7 gigawatts to 24GW

Offshore wind target raised from 40GW to 50GW (from 11GW today)

Solar could grow five times from 14GW to 70GW by 2035

An “impartial” review into whether fracking is safe

Up to 10GW of hydrogen power by 2030

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National insurance rise forces UK employers to shoulder £9bn tax burden

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Bosses say 1.25-point rise heaps pressure on firms already enduring soaring costs linked to Covid and Brexit

Britain’s employers are being forced to shoulder a £9bn tax rise after the government pushed ahead with raising national insurance on Wednesday despite stiff opposition.

Company bosses said the 1.25-percentage-point rise in national insurance contributions (NICs), which is paid by workers and their employers, would add to already severe pressure from runaway inflation and soaring business costs this year linked to Covid, Brexit and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

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Rishi Sunak’s wife claims non-domicile status

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Tax status allows Akshata Murthy to avoid tax on foreign earnings

Rishi Sunak’s multi-millionaire wife claims non-domicile status, it has emerged, which allows her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire.

Akshata Murthy, who receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from her stake in the Indian IT services company Infosys, declares non-dom status, a scheme that allows people to avoid tax on foreign earnings.

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Housebuilders pledge £1.3bn for fire safety work on mid-rise blocks

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Funds for remediation including removal of flammable cladding still short of £4bn government estimate

Major UK housebuilders have so far promised to spend about £1.3bn to remove cladding and other fire hazards from mid-rise housing blocks, but are still short of the estimated £4bn needed to avoid another Grenfell Tower-style disaster.

On Wednesday Barratt Developments and Redrow were the latest to reveal how much they would put aside to address life-threatening fire safety issues in the housing developments constructed by the firms over the past 30 years. Barratt said the decision would cost it up to £400m, while the figure for Redrow is £200m.

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Liz Truss announces full asset freeze against Russia’s biggest bank

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Eight more oligarchs will also face sanctions and UK oil and coal imports will stop by end of year, says foreign secretary

The UK will impose a full asset freeze on Russia’s largest bank and end all imports of oil and coal by the end of the year, the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, has said.

Eight more oligarchs will also be sanctioned, including Moshe Kantor, the largest shareholder of the fertiliser company Acron and Andrey Guryev, the founder of another key fertiliser company, whom the UK described as a close associate of Vladimir Putin.

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UK politics live: Boris Johnson defends national insurance increase amid cost of living crisis

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Latest updates: PM admits households are facing ‘unquestionably tough times’, but says NI increase is right thing for the NHS

Keir Starmer says the national insurance rise is “the wrong tax at the wrong time”.

The Labour leader said:

People are really, really struggling to pay their bills. And this is just going to impact on them very, very hard.

There are lots of landlords who’ve got many, many properties and they are not going to be paying a penny more in tax. Their tenants, who are going out to work, are going to be paying more in tax.

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Johnson says trans athletes should not compete in events that do not match biological sex

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PM also says women should have ‘dedicated’ spaces, amid fallout over decision to exclude trans conversion practices from ban

Boris Johnson has suggested athletes who are transgender should not be allowed to compete in sports competitions that do not match their biological sex, amid the fallout from his decision not to ban conversion practices for people questioning their gender.

The prime minister said the issue “wasn’t something I thought that I would have to consider in great detail”. Johnson also said that women should have spaces in hospitals, prisons and changing rooms which were “dedicated to women”.

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Logan Mwangi: stepfather punched boy twice days before body found, jury told

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Angharad Williamson is accused with partner, John Cole, and teenager of murdering her five-year-old son

A woman accused of murdering her five-year-old son has told a jury his stepfather violently attacked her “beautiful, happy boy” two days before he was found dead in a river.

Angharad Williamson, 31, claimed her 6ft 4in partner, John Cole, 40, punched 3ft 5in Logan Mwangi twice in the stomach, causing him to land hard on the floor.

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National Grid to be partly nationalised to help reach net zero targets

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Electricity System Operator, the division that keeps the lights on in Great Britain, will form part of a new public body

The job of keeping the UK’s electricity and gas flowing will be returned to public control by 2024, under government plans for the effective nationalisation of a division of National Grid.

A new public body, the “Future System Operator”, will have responsibility for planning and managing energy distribution, with a focus on the challenges posed by decarbonisation.

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Briton who died with son in Australia landslide named as Mehraab Nazir

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Lawyer’s wife still in critical condition while second son stable after rockslide in Blue Mountains near Sydney

Tributes have been paid to a British lawyer and his nine-year-old son killed in a landslide while on holiday in Australia.

Mehraab Nazir, 49, had been hiking with his family in the Wentworth Pass area of the Blue Mountains, a national park west of Sydney, on Monday when they were caught in the rockslide. His and his son’s bodies were recovered the next morning.

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Wiltshire hunt supporters fined after admitting clashing with saboteurs

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William Renny, Callum Lewis and Evan Lorne pleaded guilty to public order offences at December hunt in Lacock

Three hunt supporters have been fined for public order offences after admitting clashing with saboteurs at a post-Christmas meet in Wiltshire.

William Renny, 30, Callum Lewis, 26, and Evan Lorne, 18, pleaded guilty to using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour with intent to cause unlawful violence.

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Ex-P&O Ferries chef sues for unfair dismissal and racial discrimination

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John Lansdown seeking up to £76m, which he will use to set up trust to help fellow seafarers

A former P&O Ferries chef is suing the company for £76m over its decision to sack almost 800 staff without notice last month.

John Lansdown, the only seafarer to launch a legal action, has filed a tribunal claim against the company and its chief executive for unfair dismissal, racial discrimination and harassment.

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Maradona’s shirt from ‘hand of God’ England match expected to sell for £4m

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Former England midfielder Steve Hodge has owned Maradona’s no 10 shirt since the 1986 match

Diego Maradona’s infamous “hand of God” goal made footballing history and cemented the legendary status of the Argentinian superstar. Now the shirt he wore when he scored that goal at the 1986 World Cup is estimated to sell for at least £4m.

Maradona’s no 10 shirt has been owned for the past 35 years by the former England midfielder Steve Hodge. The two players swapped shirts at the end of the quarter-final between Argentina and England.

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Partygate: ministers refuse to disclose pictures taken by No 10 photographers

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Cabinet Office won’t confirm or deny existence of taxpayer-funded pictures of illegal gatherings after freedom of information request

Ministers are refusing to disclose any pictures taken by official No 10 photographers of illegal gatherings held inside Downing Street, prompting Labour to call on Boris Johnson to “come clean and release these photos”.

The Cabinet Office refused to confirm or deny the existence of any photographs of events in the cabinet room, leaving parties, and a party in the prime minister’s Downing Street flat, after official pictures of the gatherings were requested under freedom of information laws.

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LGBTQ+ conference cancelled over conversion practices furore

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Organisations pulled out of Safe to Be Me after government failure to ban conversion practices for transgender people

The government’s flagship LGBTQ+ conference is to be cancelled after it fell into disarray with more organisations pulling out and a key government adviser accusing ministers of waging a “woke war”.

With Downing Street under fire for watering down its commitment to ban conversion practices, the Safe to Be Me event due to be hosted in June has now been scrapped.

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