Category Archives: UK news

‘There’s a bit of a queue forming’: how UK firms are enticing buyers for the next generation of fighter jets

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Inside the hangars where robots are poised to keep the UK a top-tier military nation and continue more than a century of building military aircraft

In a factory on the banks of the River Ribble in Lancashire, robot arms stand on a floor striped with glowing lights. They will hold the tail fin for a test model for the UK’s next generation fighter jet, which is intended to fly for the first time in 2027. The jet, known as Tempest, will act as a symbol of Britain’s hopes to remain a top-tier military nation and keep alive more than a century of building military aircraft.

Yet things are markedly different in another hangar at the Warton site, run by British arms manufacturer BAE Systems. There, production of the Typhoon jet, a mainstay of the Royal Air Force (RAF) for two decades, has – for now at least – ground to a halt.

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UK’s anti-corruption champion to visit offshore haven on fact-finding mission

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Foreign Office sending Margaret Hodge to British Virgin Islands to investigate slow progress against financial crime

The Foreign Office will dispatch the UK’s anti-corruption champion, Margaret Hodge, to the British Virgin Islands (BVIs) to find out why the offshore haven is dragging its feet on proposals designed to fight financial crime.

Several of the UK’s semi-autonomous British overseas territories missed last month’s deadline to implement new registers of corporate ownership, a measure targeting the secrecy regimes campaigners say benefit criminals and kleptocrats.

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Wallace rejects claim Afghans with ‘tenuous’ links to UK admitted as ex-Tory minister says resettlement scheme was ‘hapless’ – live

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Johnny Mercer, former veterans minister, sharply critical of how Afghan resettlement programme handled

In an interview with LBC Ben Wallace, the former Tory defence secretary, hit back at his former ministerial colleague Johnny Mercer rather more forcefully than he did on the Today programme (see 8.09am) over Mercer’s comments about the Afghan resettlement programme.

Tom Swarbrick, the presenter, quoted what Mercer said about how this “whole farcical process has been the most hapless display of ineptitude by successive ministers and officials that I saw in my time in government”.

No, I don’t agree with it. I think my record would show the opposite. It was me and Priti Patel, before the collapse of Kabul, who decided we were going to accelerate bringing people back who were under threat …

People hadn’t come out before. And we made sure that we did this. I think what Johnny, you know, fails to grasp, is quite the massive scale of collapse that happened very quickly in Afghanistan, leaving people at risk, and we had to do our very best.

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Sick pay changes could benefit UK firms by up to £2bn, TUC says

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Exclusive: Analysis shows covering part of salaries from first day off can boost productivity and employee retention

Changes to sick pay to cover part of workers’ salaries from the first day off could end up benefiting British businesses by as much as £2bn, according to analysis commissioned by the UK’s main union body.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), which is pushing for the government to stick with its plans for workers’ rights, said modelling showed businesses would gain benefits of £2.4bn thanks to productivity boosts, while facing direct costs of £425m to pay for extra sick days.

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Dismay after Southampton airport gets permission to cut down cemetery trees

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Campaigners attack council for backing plan to fell trees in burial site near runway to allow for increase in passengers

A Labour-led city council has been criticised for backing an airport’s scheme to cut down “majestic” trees in a historic, wildlife-rich cemetery close to a runway.

Environmental campaigners, people whose loved ones were laid to rest in the cemetery and opposition politicians have expressed dismay that the trees in South Stoneham Cemetery in Southampton are to be lost.

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Southern Water issues hosepipe ban for 1m people in Hampshire and Isle of Wight

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Announcement takes number of people hit by restrictions across England to about 8.5 million

Southern Water has become the fourth English utility to issue a hosepipe ban, taking the number of people hit by such restrictions to about 8.5 million.

The latest ban, which comes into force for about 1 million residents across large swathes of Hampshire and all of the Isle of Wight from 9am on Monday, comes after Yorkshire, Thames and South East Water announced similar measures.

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No automatic right to resettlement for Afghans in data leak, says Healey

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Defence secretary says it was ‘never the plan to bring everyone’ on dataset to UK, while Ben Wallace denies Tories sought superinjunction

The defence secretary, John Healey, has said there is no automatic right to resettlement for Afghans named in a leaked Ministry of Defence database, as the former Conservative ministers Ben Wallace and Johnny Mercer clashed over whether “thousands of people with little or tenuous links” had been admitted to Britain.

The controversy revolves around a dataset containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 people who applied for the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap) that was released “in error” in February 2022 by a British defence official.

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Thousands of Afghans relocated to UK under secret scheme after data leak

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Conservative government used superinjuction to hide error that put Afghans at risk and led to £2bn mitigation scheme

Conservative ministers used an unprecedented superinjunction to suppress a data breach that required the UK to offer relocation to 15,000 Afghans in a secret scheme with a potential cost of more than £2bn.

The Afghan Response Route (ARR) was created in haste after it emerged that personal information about 18,700 Afghans who had applied to come to the UK had been leaked in error by a British defence official in early 2022.

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‘The worst day of all time’: Afghans speak of safety fears after UK data leak

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Law firm representing thousands says some already killed and others in hiding as a result of government ‘blunder’

When Abdullah received an email from the British government saying his details had been included in the military data leak, it became “the worst day in all time”.

Speaking from Afghanistan, where he is in hiding, Abdullah fears he will be tortured and killed.

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‘Investing in destruction’: campaigners attack plans to fill Yorkshire tunnel with concrete

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Government decision to infill disused Queensbury railway line comes amid calls for it to be converted to subterranean cycle path

Campaigners hoping to convert a disused railway line into England’s longest cycle and pedestrian tunnel are challenging a government decision to fill much of the historic structure with concrete.

Earlier this month ministers decided to award several million pounds to permanently shutter the Queensbury tunnel built in the 1870s for a railway between Halifax and Keighley in West Yorkshire, despite spending £7.2m to shore up the structure less than four years ago.

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UK’s cavalier attitude leaves Afghans facing yet more fear and uncertainty

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Leaked details are just another example of how the UK let down Afghans who believed in what Britain promised their country

This week’s revelations about the UK’s dangerously cavalier treatment of Afghans who worked with British forces are shocking but not surprising.

The carelessness with which Britain went to war in Afghanistan was matched by the carelessness with which it left the country and its people to Taliban rule two decades later.

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Pupils in England to be taught law behind sex and gender identity, new guidance says

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Updated RSHE guidance says curriculum should be ‘age appropriate’ and lifts strict age limits around teaching gender

Pupils in England should be taught what the law is on biological sex and gender reassignment, but schools must be “careful not to endorse any particular view or teach it as fact”, according to new government guidance.

The updated relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) guidance, published on Tuesday, says schools “should not teach as fact that all people have a gender identity” and must avoid any suggestion that social transitioning offers a “simple solution” to feelings of distress or discomfort.

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Children investigated over Russian and Iranian plots against UK, says police chief

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Teenagers suspected of being hired by criminals paid to carry out acts on behalf of states, it is understood

Schoolchildren have been arrested by detectives investigating Russian and Iranian plots against Britain, a police chief has said, as he warned hostile state aggression was rising and youngsters were at risk.

Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism unit, said children in their “mid teens” had been investigated. It is understood they were suspected of being hired by criminals paid to carry out acts for Russia and Iran.

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Windrush commissioner pledges to fight for justice for marginalised groups

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Clive Foster aims to ‘confront uncomfortable realities’ and expand his remit to help those faced with discrimination

The newly appointed Windrush commissioner has promised to expand his remit to fight for marginalised communities who have experienced discrimination in housing, education, employment and policing.

At a launch event on Wednesday, Clive Foster will tell the immigration minister, Seema Malhotra, that he does not intend to perform a public relations role for the government.

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UK ex-Middle East minister accused of transparency rule breach over Bahrain advisory role

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Tory peer Tariq Ahmad denies contact while in office with King Hamad Global Center for Peaceful Coexistence

A former UK Middle East minister has been accused of breaching transparency rules over a paid advisory role with an influential Bahraini centre that has links to the Gulf state’s government.

The Conservative peer Tariq Ahmad, who denies wrongdoing, was cleared by a watchdog to take up his role as a paid adviser to the King Hamad Global Center for Peaceful Coexistence (KHC).

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Fauja Singh, ‘world’s oldest marathon runner’, dies in road accident aged 114

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Singh’s east London running club confirms death in India of athlete thought to be first centenarian to run a marathon

The runner Fauja Singh, believed to be the oldest person to complete a marathon, has died in a road accident in India aged 114.

The athlete, who lived in Ilford in east London, was hit by a car and suffered fatal injuries while trying to cross a road in his birth village of Beas Pind, near Jalandhar in Punjab, on Monday, according to reports in India.

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Reeves to say cuts to City red tape will bring trickle-down benefits to households

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Chancellor to announce raft of deregulation changes as City regulators move to pare back transparency rules

Rachel Reeves will claim that cutting red tape for City firms will have trickle-down benefits for households across Britain, as she tries to drum up support for a new financial services strategy.

A raft of regulatory reforms are due to be announced by the chancellor on Tuesday, in what the Treasury says will be the “biggest financial regulation reforms in a decade”. It will come before her Mansion House address to City bosses during a dinner at Guildhall in London on Tuesday evening.

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Five-year-olds in England with special educational needs 20 months behind peers – report

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Children from lower-income families also remain significantly behind their peers as impact of pandemic continues to be felt

Five-year-olds with special educational needs in England are lagging a record 20 months behind their peers, according to a report that says the country’s youngest learners face a “deepening crisis”, five years after the pandemic.

Since Covid closed schools, disrupting learning and triggering falls in attendance, there has been widespread concern about the growing attainment gap that leaves disadvantaged pupils and those with special educational needs significantly behind their peers.

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Secondary schools in England to tackle ‘incel’ culture and teach positive role models

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Government says new guidance will challenge ‘manosphere’ myths as DfE reports epidemic-scale misogyny

Secondary school pupils in England are to be taught about “incel” culture and the links between pornography and misogyny as part of long-awaited statutory government guidance due to be published on Tuesday.

It will include a new focus on positive role models for boys and challenge “myths about women and relationships that are spread online in the ‘manosphere’”, but will warn schools against “stigmatising boys for being boys”.

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Sydney man charged over attack on Stone of Scone in Scottish museum

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The 35-year-old charged with ‘malicious mischief’ after alleged attempt to break the glass case containing the famous artefact

A man from Sydney has appeared in a court in Scotland charged with “malicious mischief” following reports a glass case containing the Stone of Scone was broken in Perth.

It follows an incident at Perth Museum on Saturday afternoon when visitors reported a man in a kilt attempting to smash through the case containing the ancient artefact, which has long been associated with the monarchy.

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