Settlement was down from £41.7bn, reflecting payments already made to cover UK obligations
The UK’s Brexit “divorce bill” stood at €41.8bn (£36.7bn) in 2021, according to the EU’s official auditors.
The European court of auditors’ annual report revealed that the UK was expected to make €10.9bn in payments to the EU during 2022.
Continue reading...Commons committee warns there are still shortages of staff to deal with UK’s new status as a third country
UK regulators are struggling to cope with the post-Brexit trading environment because of “poor preparation and planning”, a House of Commons committee investigation has found.
Almost two years after the UK quit the EU, there are still shortages of vets, toxicologists, lawyers and economists to deal with the UK’s new status as a “third country”, found the public accounts committee report, Regulating After EU Exit.
Continue reading...Experts say loss of 50,000 workers exposes ‘absolute crisis’ facing system still reeling from impact of Covid and Brexit
The social care workforce has shrunk for the first time in almost a decade despite rising demand and bed congestion in hospitals fuelled by a lack of care places.
England is projected to need close to 500,000 more care staff by the middle of the next decade, but last year there was a net fall in the workforce of 50,000 people, leaving about 165,000 jobs vacant, according to new figures from Skills for Care.
Continue reading...Chris Heaton-Harris also repeated that he would call an election on 28 October if power sharing is not restored
The British government has said it is looking to move on from the row with the EU over Northern Ireland and is aiming to “move quickly” to reach a solution on Brexit arrangements.
After a joint meeting with Irish ministers in London, the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, said he optimistic for a settlement after the resumption of talks after an eight-month standoff.
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In his interview with LBC Jake Berry, the Tory chairman, was asked if he was channelling When Harry Met Sally when he described Liz Truss as the “Yes, yes, yes prime minister” in his speech to the conference yesterday. (Robert Hutton is very funny about this, and much else, in his sketch for the Critic.) Berry said he was referring to Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister when he delivered that line.
In the same interview, Berry revealed that his joke-making has not improved since yesterday. Talking about the conference in general, Berry said:
I think colleagues saw yesterday that when the going gets tough, the Truss gets going.
I do think my language was a bit clumsy in that regard and I regret it.
The point I was making ... is that the government needs to go for growth to ensure that it can grow the economy and Britain can get a pay rise. You don’t have to tell me how hard people graft in this economy. I know how hard people work.
We’ve got to wait until those figures are available … You simply cannot make a decision on figures you do not currently have.
Continue reading...Northern Ireland minister says he and colleagues had not always respected others’ ‘legitimate interests’
Steve Baker – arch Brexiter and one of the Conservative party’s fiercest campaigners to get the UK out of the EU – has apologised to Ireland and Brussels for the way he and some of his colleagues behaved over the past six years.
Baker told the Tory party conference that he and others in the party had not shown respect to the “legitimate interests” of Ireland or the EU during the campaign to leave the bloc.
Continue reading...Rumours rife as farmers fear PM plans U-turn on financial subsidy measures to improve environment
The chaos in the English countryside began with the click of a civil servant’s mouse. At the end of last week, farmers who had been working with the government on environmental subsidy schemes saw that their regular meetings about it had been removed from their online diaries without warning.
This appeared to hint at what had been feared – that the new post-Brexit farming subsidy scheme was in danger of being scrapped.
Continue reading...Additional requirements would be time-consuming and threaten capacity, Dover port boss says
Post-Brexit Channel border delays could multiply from next May, with a five-person vehicle being held for up to 10 minutes if the EU goes ahead with a planned biometric entry system, the Port of Dover has said.
The entry-exit system (EES), which is due to start in May 2023, will require all non-EU nationals to register their fingerprints and be photographed before entering the bloc.
Continue reading...Delay to protocol resolution likely to pause Stormont elections that were expected this year
The UK has given a six-month deadline for the Northern Ireland protocol row to be resolved, indicating Liz Truss is far more relaxed about the absence of a devolved government in Stormont than previously indicated.
An April 2023 date for the resolution of the Brexit row emerged after a meeting between the prime minister and the US president, Joe Biden, and would coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday agreement.
Continue reading...Exclusive: about 50 peers due to meet on Wednesday morning to discuss how to amend or halt proposed legislation
Liz Truss is facing a potential House of Lords rebellion over proposed legislation to rip up part of the Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland amid concerns that it gives ministers “dictatorial” powers to pen and pass laws without scrutiny.
About 50 Conservative, Labour and cross party peers are due to meet on Wednesday morning to discuss how they can amend or halt the Northern Ireland bill which has already passed through the House of Commons.
Continue reading...Latest updates: prime minister says she is willing to implement unpopular policies to try to boost growth in the UK
Rosie Cooper has indicated that she intends to stand down as Labour MP for West Lancashire to take up a new job as chair of the Mersey Care NHS foundation trust. In her statement announcing the move Cooper says that events in recent years have “undoubtedly taken their toll” – a reference to Cooper being targeted by a neo-Nazi who was jailed for life in 2019 for plotting to kill her.
Cooper’s statement implies she will resign and trigger a byelection. At the last election she had a majority of more than 8,000 over the Conservatives, and in a byelection Labour would be expected to hold the seat very easily.
Continue reading...British prime minister and Micheál Martin understood to have agreed there is opportunity for reset of relations
Hopes that talks between the UK and the EU will resume over a protracted dispute about the Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland have risen after a 45-minute meeting between Liz Truss and the Irish prime minister in Downing Street on Sunday morning.
The taoiseach, Micheál Martin, was one of five world leaders to have “leaders’ meetings” with the British prime minister before the Queen’s funeral on Monday, in what was seen by some as a mark of the UK’s determination to reset soured relations with its neighbour.
Continue reading...‘It’s a nonsense’: government facing claims of manipulating questions to get desired result from survey on ‘Brexit bonus’
It was meant to be one of the sure-fire wins for Brexit, but plans to bring back imperial measurements face criticism over claims of a biased government review.
Ministers were keen to launch a review to revive imperial measurements – such as pounds and ounces – and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), now overseen by Jacob Rees-Mogg, conducted a government consultation over the summer. However, the questions appeared to have something missing.
Continue reading...Move likely further to antagonise EU but leaders hope Queen’s death may help bring about reconciliation
The UK has made a unilateral decision to continue suspending border checks on farm produce and other goods entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain, a move likely to antagonise the EU but not provoke further action.
London notified Brussels of its decision on Thursday in its formal response to seven lawsuits brought by the EU over the alleged failure of the UK to comply with the Northern Ireland protocol.
Continue reading...Brexit chief extends olive branch in effort to bring UK back to negotiating table in long-running dispute
The EU has initiated a fresh attempt to end the Northern Ireland Brexit dispute with the UK with a proposal to reduce checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea to a near “invisible manner” involving just “a couple of lorries” a day.
Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, said physical checks would be made only “when there is a reasonable suspicion of illegal trade smuggling, illegal drugs, dangerous toys or poisoned food”.
Continue reading...Biden administration says undoing the protocol would not be ‘conducive’ to a trade deal between the UK and US
The Biden administration has sent Liz Truss a message on her second day in office warning against “efforts to undo the Northern Ireland protocol”.
The warning came from the lectern in the White House briefing room, where spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about new British prime minister Truss’s first phone call with Joe Biden and whether a US-UK trade deal was discussed.
Continue reading...The new British prime minister also spoke to Volodymyr Zelenskiy on her first day in office, pledging UK ‘assistance for the long term’
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing global energy crisis have emerged as a leading foreign policy priorities for Britain’s new prime minister Liz Truss, as she and her US counterpart Joe Biden promised to strengthen their relationship in face of Vladimir Putin’s aggression.
Truss’s call to Biden on Tuesday night followed a conversation with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, and focused on what she called “the extreme economic problems caused by Putin’s war”. Biden and Truss “reinforced their commitment to strengthening global liberty, tackling the risks posed by autocracies and ensuring Putin fails in Ukraine”, according to Downing Street.
Continue reading...Meeting of Conor Burns and Maroš Šefčovič a promising sign as taoiseach says dispute is ‘testing and fraying’ Anglo-Irish relations
Hopes that Brexit talks between the EU and the UK could restart after nine months of paralysis were raised over the weekend after Northern Ireland minister Conor Burns held talks with the European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič.
He spoke as the Irish prime minister, Micheál Martin, said the deepening row over the Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland was “testing and fraying” Anglo-Irish relations, but that the arrival of a new prime minister offered a chance for a fresh approach to break the impasse.
Continue reading...Brexit campaign group fronted by Nigel Farage leaves thousands in unpaid fines for data law breaches
The Brexit campaign group Leave.EU has gone into liquidation with its controversial co-founder Arron Banks appearing to write off a loan worth more than £7m.
Documents submitted to Companies House also reveal that the anti-EU lobbying group, which was fronted by Nigel Farage during the 2016 EU referendum campaign, has failed to pay tens of thousands in fines owed to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for breaches of data law.
Continue reading...European leaders will head to Prague on 6 October to forge European Political Community
The EU will offer an olive branch to the new British prime minister with an invitation to a summit to discuss a new organisation uniting the democracies of the European continent.
Britain’s next prime minister, widely expected to be Liz Truss, will be invited to join fellow leaders across Europe at a summit in Prague on 6 October to forge a European Political Community, a body dedicated to advancing security across the continent.
Continue reading...