Fears of Easter chaos over scaling up of new EU border system are eased, with no facial IDs for Eurotunnel and Eurostar passengers
Passengers crossing the Channel from the UK to France will not face new biometric checks in the coming weeks, despite an imminent deadline for the complete implementation of the EU’s entry-exit system (EES), ports say.
Airlines and airports across Europe have feared chaos over the Easter holidays.
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Starmer says he understands why people are concerned about the cost of living.
He says he has already set out a five-point plan to deal with the crisis.
Just look at what’s happening today. Today your energy bills will be cut because of the action that we took at the budget. And whatever happens in Iran, that price is now fixed until July.
The most effective way we can support the cost of living in Britain is to push for de-escalation in the Middle East, and a reopening of the strait of Hormuz, which is such a vital route for energy.
To that end, we’re exploring each and every diplomatic avenue that is available to us.
Continue reading...Bypassing animal health certificate system by using cheaper pet passport issued abroad could backfire, experts say
British pet owners who want to take their furry friends elsewhere in Europe have been warned not to try to dodge expensive health certificates by using a pet passport issued abroad.
Before Brexit, taking a cat, dog or ferret to the EU was relatively simple: the Pet Travel Scheme meant an animal needed a microchip, vaccination against rabies, a pet passport and, for dogs, there were also requirements concerning tapeworm treatment.
Continue reading...Nigel Farage echoed Nick Timothy’s comments after he said public prayer for Ramadan was an ‘act of domination’
Cleverly is trying to show a video, but it is not working. So he just invites Kemi Badenoch to start her speech.
The Conservatives are launching their local elections campaign. There is a live feed here.
Continue reading...Mayor of London says returning to EU now more desirable because of economic instability caused by Donald Trump
Labour should go into the next general election promising to rejoin the EU, Sadiq Khan has said.
The mayor of London has repeatedly made the case for joining the customs union and single market, but went much further on Wednesday night by suggesting the party should promise full membership at next ballot.
Continue reading...PM to face opposition leader and MPs in the House of Commons
Polanski says the government should be doing more to improve home insulation, and on the drive towards renewable energy.
And he says the government should commit to ensuring energy bills do not rise above the April-June price cap.
The government should guarantee right now that it will not allow energy bills to rise beyond the April-June price cap – instead setting aside approximately £8.4bn to prevent a rise of up to £300 per household that could be coming down the track.
No, it’s not cheap. But the alternative is unacceptable: if the price cap rises, we will see interest rate rises. Mortgage rates up. Bond yields up. And inflation up – and we will be back into the doom loop that has done untold damage to our economy and caused misery for households across the UK for years now.
There are ways to pay. Instead of scrapping the windfall tax on energy companies, as this government is planning to do, we should be strengthening it instead. We need a real, loophole-free windfall tax with no exemptions for reinvesting in fossil fuels. A robust tax that claws back every single pound of reckless profiteering from this crisis and repurposes it immediately to protect every home in the country. And while taxing extreme wealth in the ways we need to will take time to implement, there are levers the government could pull right now – like equalising capital gains tax with income tax and reforming the base, to raise £12bn.
It’s time for the government to act decisively, eliminate the uncertainty that is plaguing people and the markets and insulate us from some of the worst economic effects of Trump’s war.
This was not a war of self-defence, there was no imminent threat. Negotiations were ongoing. It was, as the BBC’s international editor said, a war of choice.
People across the Middle East are terrified of what Trump and Netanyanhu’s war will mean for them and their loved ones. And the repercussions are echoing across the world as instability spreads and oil prices spike.
People are already struggling so hard just to make ends meet. People feel like they’re running every day just to stay in the same place. The idea that yet again – for the second time in just a few years – that we are going to have to deal with another enormous spike in the cost of the basics is unacceptable.
It’s unacceptable because we didn’t need to be here. It’s unforgivable that just four years after we last saw an energy price shock, that one triggered by Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, far too little has been done to protect this country, its people, and its economy – from the impact of yet another energy price shock.
Continue reading...Office for Budget Responsibility says Rachel Reeves ‘had every right to expect that the [report] would not be publicly available until she sat down at the end of her budget speech’
Q: Yesterday you said Rachel Reeves was lying. Today you are saying she gave out false information. Are you still accusing her of being a liar?
Badenoch replies: “Yes.”
Continue reading...Government announces overnight levy ahead of tomorrow’s budget
John McFall is standing down early as Lord Speaker in the House of Lords so that he can care for his wife, Joan, who has was Parkinson’s. According to Sam Blewett and Bethany Dawson in their London Playbook briefing for Politico, the main candidates to replace him are Michael Forsyth, a rightwing Scottish secretary in the final two years of the John Major government, and Deborah Bull, a crossbencher and former Royal Opera House creative director. They reports:
Labour isn’t expected to put forward a candidate as McFall’s previous political affiliation means it’s seen as another party’s turn to rule the roost, Noah [Keate] writes in to say. Forsyth has garnered support from some Labour grandees who like his traditional approach and aversion to modernization while Bull has being promoted by some female peers keen for a woman to take charge. One Tory peer described Forsyth as a “political animal” who may struggle to encourage a consensus across the chamber. A list of candidates’ register of interests and election addresses (up to 300 words) will be emailed to all peers on Dec. 1. Watch your inboxes!
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander rejected a rival proposal from Arora Group, saying Heathrow’s own plans were “the most credible and deliverable option”.
The Heathrow proposals involve building a 3,500-metre runway and require a new M25 tunnel and bridges to be built 130 metres west of the existing motorway.
Following a comparative assessment of the remaining proposals for Heathrow expansion, the government’s view is that the Northwest runway scheme brought forward by Heathrow Airport Limited offers the most credible and deliverable option, principally due to the relative maturity of its proposal, the comparative level of confidence in the feasibility and resilience of its surface access plans, and the stronger comfort it provides in relation to the efficient, resilient and sustainable operations of the airport over the long-term.
The HAL scheme is considered comparatively more mature in its approach to road infrastructure. While the HAL scheme requires major works to the M25, assessment indicates that the HWL scheme would also have a considerable impact on the M25.
Continue reading...It would be expedient for Reform to take Labour’s advice and disavow ‘Putin talking points’
The discovery of a pro-Russian asset, Nathan Gill, at the heart of a British political party reads like the plot of a John Le Carré novel.
Russia was long known to have been trying to interfere in foreign politics with online bots and cyber-disinformation over the past decade.
Continue reading...As Reform announces what it claims are £25bn in savings through cuts, Labour says ‘Farage’s fantasy numbers don’t add up’
Alf Dubs, the Labour peer and former MP who came to the UK on Kindertransport in 1939 and who campaigns on behalf of migrants, told the Today programme this morning that he was “depressed” by the asylum politicies announced by the government yesterday. He explained:
I find it upsetting that we’ve got to adopt such a hard line – what we need is a bit of compassion in our politics, and I think that some of the measures were going in the wrong direction, they won’t help.
The hard line approach will not, in fact, deter people from coming here – at least on the basis of people I spoke to in Calais, for example – I don’t think it will deter them.
I think there is a proper case for children, there’s a proper case for family reunion – when there are children who are on their own and who’ve got family in this country, then I think the right thing to do is to have family reunion and bringing children over here.
But to use children as a weapon, as the home secretary is doing, I think is a shabby thing – I’m lost for words, frankly, because my concern was that if we remove people who come here, what happens if they’ve had children in the meantime?
Continue reading...Traders report long waits at Sevington inspection post and claim trees and shrubs are repeatedly being damaged
Importers of plants say long delays and damage to shipments at a Kent border control post risk driving up prices and could lead to transport companies stopping deliveries across the Channel.
Traders have reported long waits in recent weeks at the government’s Sevington facility off the M20 near Ashford, which was built to check goods of plant and animal origin arriving from the EU. One importer said delays were adding £200 of costs to each load.
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Lindsay Hoyle starts by telling MPs that speakers from the parliaments in Fiji and Ukraine are in the gallery. And he says it is four years to the day since David Amess was murdered.
It’s PMQs. Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.
Continue reading...Experts call for urgent strategy to end overfishing as report shows just 41% of stocks of species such as cod and mackerel considered healthy
The UK’s populations of fish such as cod, herring and mackerel are still being “grossly mismanaged” by politicians and overfished, despite hitting unhealthy levels, a study has found.
British fish stocks have been under growing pressure for decades, but during the Brexit campaign some politicians promised that leaving the EU would allow the UK to take control.
Continue reading...Shadow chancellor distances himself from words after Robert Jenrick accused of racism in comments he made about Handsworth
Asked about the Jenrick story, Badenoch again suggests Guardian reporting is reliable.
Q: Jenrick was making a distinction between white faces and brown faces.
Continue reading...Reform UK plans to force non-citizens to apply for visas with high salary thresholds and no access to NHS services
Nigel Farage has said Reform UK would scrap the main route that migrants take to gain British citizenship, leaving tens of thousands of legally settled people facing deportation unless they met strict rules.
Farage said the plans would tackle the “Boriswave” – the increase in the number of legal migrants who came to work in the UK under post-Brexit migration rules established under Boris Johnson. Much of that increase was because of schemes from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan to settle refugees.
Continue reading...The MP said police should be focusing on people who are members of the group, not those who ‘recklessly express support’ for it
Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, used his speech to conference this morning to say that the TUC expected the government to deliver its workers’ rights bill “in full”. He said employment rights were “overwhelmingly popular with voters across the political spectrum”.
And he condemned Reform UK for its stance on employment rights. After saying that Nigel Farage claimed to represent working class people, he went on:
Here’s the truth – there is a world of difference between what Nigel says and what Nigel does.
Every single Reform MP, including Mr Farage, voted against outlawing fire and rehire, against banning zero hours contracts and against day one rights for millions of workers.
Ask yourself this fundamental question. Do you believe in your gut that that Nigel Farage really cares about the people of Clacton when he’s off collecting his speaker’s fees in the United States?
Do you believe that Richard Tice really worries about the people of Skegness while he’s living it up at home in Dubai, or are they just rightwing conmen lining their own pockets?
I just have to say this. No amount of TikToks, or ozempic, or expensive haircuts, will ever hide the eager inner ugliness of Robert Jenrick.
The man who ordered murals painted over in a reception centre for children seeking asylum is indeed a xenophobe, an opportunistic xenophobe hoping to create a political climate that ends up with far right folks laying siege to hotels and black and Asian people being threatened and harassed on our streets.
If we look at the powerful geopolitical push factors, they’re things like regime change. We think Afghanistan, war, civil conflict. And when we look at people crossing in small boats, where do they come from? Well, the top nationalities: Afghan, Eritrea, Iranian, Syrian, Sudanese – just those five nationalities account for almost two thirds of all small boat arrivals, and these individuals are from some of the most chaotic parts of the world.
But there are also some pull factors, and the question is, why not claim asylum in France, why come to the UK? A number of reasons recur there when we speak with asylum seekers. It’s the presence of family members, the English language.
In those circumstances, typically, flagged upon the system, the UK government would be able to issue a speedy refuse refusal and try and effect removal.
As it is, people arrive, we don’t have that record, so we don’t know who they are.
Continue reading...Labour MP says she and Reform MP want a committee set up, after news of UK’s post-Brexit environmental rollbacks
Stella Creasy and Richard Tice are pushing for Labour to allow a Brexit scrutiny committee to be formed in parliament, after the Guardian revealed environmental protections had been eroded since the UK left the EU.
The Labour and Reform UK MPs argue that there is no scrutiny or accountability over how Brexit is being implemented. Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow and chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, said the UK needed a “salvage operation” to clear up the environmental and regulatory havoc caused by Brexit.
Continue reading...Former minister says Tories are ignoring heartland voters and risk losing ground to Reform in next election
The Conservatives are “not close to recognising” how badly they are positioned for the next election, the former cabinet minister David Gauke has said.
Gauke, a former justice secretary who also worked in the Treasury under George Osborne, said many in the party were not willing to fully repudiate Liz Truss and Boris Johnson.
Continue reading...Former chancellor says employees’ contributions should rise to help address a £6bn shortfall caused by recent U-turns
The Unite union has voted to re-examine its relationship with the Labour party in the light of the government’s failure to support its members in the Birmingham bin strike.
It has also said it was suspending Angela Rayner’s membership, given her role as minister in charge of the department that oversees local government. The union is in dispute with Birmingham city council over proposals to reorganise waste disposal services in the city, and Unite has repeatedly said the government should step in and force the Labour-led council to settle.
Unite is crystal clear it will call out bad employers regardless of the colour of their rosette. Angela Rayner has had every opportunity to intervene and resolve this dispute but has instead backed a rogue council that has peddled lies and smeared its workers fighting huge pay cuts.
The disgraceful actions of the government and a so-called Labour council, is essentially fire and rehire and makes a joke of the Employment Relations Act promises.
Continue reading...Biometrics app not ready, meaning travellers through Port of Dover will have to exit vehicles to have identity verified
British citizens who travel frequently to the EU face having their fingerprints individually checked each time they cross the border into the Schengen area because of delays in developing an app to verify biometrics digitally, it has emerged.
It will be “business as usual” this summer but “a big change” in travel will be phased in from November, Doug Bannister, the chief executive of the Port of Dover has said.
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