New date to approve site near Tower Bridge in London aligns with Keir Starmer’s planned visit to Beijing
The government has delayed its decision on whether to approve China’s super-embassy in London until January, when Keir Starmer is expected to visit Beijing.
Ministers are expected to greenlight the controversial plans after formal submissions by the Home Office and Foreign Office raised no objections on security grounds.
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...MP for Hampstead and Highgate in London denies allegations and condemns ‘flawed and farcical’ trial
A court in Bangladesh has sentenced the British MP Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail after a judge ruled she was complicit in corrupt land deals with her aunt, the country’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
In a ruling on Monday, a judge found Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, guilty of misusing her “special influence” as a British politician to coerce Hasina into giving valuable pieces of land to her mother, brother and sister.
Continue reading...Investigation finds organisation’s leadership over many years was to blame for error, and similar breach happened earlier this year
Britain’s budget watchdog has said the early leak of its budget documents before Rachel Reeves made her speech was the “worst failure” in its 15-year history as it emerged a similar breach had occurred earlier this year.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said an investigation had found that the leadership of the organisation, over many years, was to blame for the early release of its Economic and Fiscal Outlook (EFO) document online nearly an hour before Reeves’s address last Wednesday.
Continue reading...More than 100 lawyers have accused the Ministry of Justice of ignoring the legal profession’s objections
More than 100 lawyers who wrote to the Ministry of Justice expressing significant concerns about plans to severely restrict jury trials say representations by the legal profession are being ignored.
The government is expected to formally announce the changes, which have caused deep division among the judiciary and senior lawyers, as soon as next week.
Continue reading...Spokesperson says move – seen as a victory for Zarah Sultana – shows organisation is ‘a truly member-led party’
Kemi Badenoch has reiterated her calls for the chancellor to resign on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, after accusing Rachel Reeves of breaking promises not to raise taxes.
In this year’s budget, Reeves froze tax thresholds for three years longer than previously planned, meaning that as wages rise more people will have to start paying income tax.
The chancellor called an emergency press conference telling everyone about how terrible the state of the finances were and now we have seen that the OBR had told her the complete opposite. She was raising taxes to pay for welfare.
The only thing that was unfunded was the welfare payments which she has made and she’s doing it on the backs of a lot of people out there who are working very hard and getting poorer. And because of that, I believe she should resign.
The shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, has written to the FCA (the Financial Conduct Authority). Hopefully there will be an investigation, because it looks like what she was doing was trying to pitch-roll her budget – tell everyone how awful it would be and then they wouldn’t be as upset when she finally announced it – and still sneak in those tax rises to pay for welfare. That’s not how we should be running this process.
Continue reading...MPs warn axing FCDO’s migration and conflict directorate amid staff cuts risks undermining peace work and expertise
The Foreign Office has been warned that a plan to axe its dedicated unit on emerging conflicts and refugee crises is a “real error” that “undermines UK security” as the department grapples with swingeing cuts.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) migration and conflict directorate, which employs about 100 civil servants, is being abolished at the end of this year and its work subsumed by the rest of the department.
Continue reading...Rightwing activist claimed Commons deputy speaker Nusrat Ghani should be barred because she was born in Pakistan
GB News is facing calls to cut ties with a regular contributor who has been accused of racism after claiming that the House of Commons deputy speaker, Nusrat Ghani, should not be allowed in the house because she was born in Pakistan.
The comments by Lucy White, a rightwing activist, have drawn criticism from across the political spectrum amid warnings that explicitly racist language is becoming increasingly normalised in British life.
Continue reading...Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea says it is checking whether data taken contained residents’ details
A London council has urged thousands of residents to be “extra vigilant” when receiving calls, emails or text messages after confirming that data had been taken in a cyber-attack.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), which has 147,500 residents, said some data had been copied from its systems in an attack this week.
Continue reading...David Coburn, who was leader of Ukip in Scotland, denies involvement after Nathan Gill jailed for taking bribes
A former leading member of the group of MEPs headed by Nigel Farage has denied taking money as part of a campaign to promote Russian interests.
David Coburn, who was leader of Ukip in Scotland for four years, was responding after the jailing of his former colleague, Nathan Gill, on charges of being bribed by an alleged pro-Russian asset.
Continue reading...Peter Kyle denies unfair dismissal policy U-turn is breach of manifesto pledge but unions and Labour MPs criticise decision
On Wednesday Kemi Badenoch had to respond to Rachel Reeves’s speech because, by convention, with budgets that’s a job for the leader of the opposition, not the shadow chancellor. And normally no one takes much interest, because what’s in the budget is more interesting.
But Badenoch’s speech has attracted a lot of attention, for two reasons. First, even by Badenoch’s standards, it was unusually personal, and brutal. The full text is here, but it’s best to watch it to get a full sense of what it was like. As an example of precision, parliamentary viciousness, it was like Norman Tebbit in the 1970s. Some people were appalled, but Tories have said it was easily her best Commons peformance to date and that view is shared by others too. Even Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, the gods of centrist punditry, judged it to be highly effective.
When I walked in for prime minister’s questions, I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, she looks absolutely broken, this OBR leak must be very upsetting for her, I’ll pull my punches.’
And then she launched into the most extraordinary tirade against the Conservatives in her own speech. So she started it … And I thought, ‘Well, I’m not pulling any punches now.’
Well, you can’t please everybody.
But I also have to deal with a barrage of abuse every single week at prime minister’s questions. The prime minister can get very personal. Labour MPs shouting – there’s only 120 Conservatives. There’s well over 400 Labour MPs.
Continue reading...While some call budget ‘tactical victory’, few MPs believe it is enough for Labour to beat Reform
Labour MPs have said they believe Keir Starmer’s leadership is safe until at least the May elections, after a budget that avoided any major damaging measures but which few MPs believe will revive the party’s fortunes.
More than a dozen previously loyal MPs told the Guardian they did not believe the budget would shift the fundamentals required for the party to beat Reform. “It only delays what is inevitable,” one minister said.
Continue reading...Lati-Yana Brown’s parents had asked for application to be expedited so she could join them in UK after house ruined
An eight-year-old girl left destitute in Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa has been barred from coming to the UK to join her parents.
The Guardian reported on the case of Lati-Yana Stephanie Brown after the hurricane. Her mother, Kerrian Bigby, a carer, moved from Jamaica to be with Lati-Yana’s British father, Jerome Hardy, a telecommunications worker, in April 2023, leaving their daughter to be cared for by her grandmother.
Continue reading...Flagship Labour plan to be replaced with six-month threshold after Peter Kyle vows to not let businesses ‘lose’ under new law
The government is to ditch its flagship policy from the workers’ rights bill, removing the right to protection from unfair dismissal from the first day of employment and replacing it with a six-month threshold.
The move comes after the business secretary, Peter Kyle, told businesses at the CBI conference this week that he would listen to concerns about the effects of the law change on hiring. A trade union source told the Guardian: “They’ve capitulated and there may be more to come.”
Continue reading...Global Counsel signed $3m contract with WuXi AppTec in Europe months after it was named in US national security drive
Global Counsel, the lobbying firm co-founded by Peter Mandelson, was brought in to advise the Chinese pharmaceutical company WuXi AppTec in Europe months after it was targeted in a US national security crackdown.
WuXi AppTec signed a $3m contract with Global Counsel last year to deal with the international fallout from claims that it had links with the Chinese military and was implicated in human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Continue reading...PM says: ‘We kept to our manifesto in terms of what we’ve promised. But I accept the challenge that we’ve asked everybody to contribute’
The Conservative party is attacking the budget on the grounds that Rachel Reeves is putting up taxes supposedly to fund more spending on benefit claimants. Even though the rationale for this claim is questionable, the Tories were making it before the budget was announced, and Kemi Badenoch firmed it up last night, claiming it was a “Benefits Street budget”.
On LBC this morning, asked if the budget meant “alarm clock Britain paying for Benefits Street”, Reeves said she did not accept that. She said 60% of the families that would benefit from the removal of the two-child benefit cap (the most expensive welfare announcement in the budget) were in work.
I don’t think children should be punished by this pernicious policy any longer. And the cost to society of this is huge, the cost for councils of temporary accommodation, when people can no longer afford the rent, putting families in B&Bs, kids having to move to school all the time because parents have moved from B&B to another lot of temporary accommodation, and there’s costs for years to come, because all the evidence shows that kids that are growing up poor are less likely to get into work and more reliant on the welfare state in the future for them.
So this is a good investment in those kids, to give them the chances that I want for my kids, and everyone wants for their kids. It also saves money for taxpayers on that accommodation, on those additional health costs, and ensuring that those kids grow up to be productive adults.
Continue reading...Chancellor axes two-child benefit cap and cuts energy bills paid for by mansion tax and freezing tax thresholds
Rachel Reeves targeted Britain’s wealthiest households with a £26bn tax-raising budget to fund scrapping the two-child benefit policy and cutting energy bills.
On a chaotic day that involved key details of her budget accidentally being released early by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the chancellor defended the measures, saying she was “asking everyone to make a contribution to repair the public finances”, but that she wanted the wealthiest to pay the most.
Continue reading...By the time the chancellor reached the dispatch box, the OBR had accidentally published its verdict in full online
Shortly before midday on Wednesday, a series of headlines about Rachel Reeves’s budget began appearing on the Reuters newswire, sending instant ripples though financial markets.
The details were jaw-dropping: they appeared to spell out the key policies of the chancellor’s budget more than 40 minutes before she was due to deliver them to a crowded Commons chamber.
Continue reading...By the time the chancellor reached the dispatch box, the OBR had accidentally published its verdict in full online
Shortly before midday on Wednesday, a series of headlines about Rachel Reeves’s budget began appearing on the Reuters newswire, sending instant ripples though financial markets.
The details were jaw-dropping: they appeared to spell out the key policies of the chancellor’s budget more than 40 minutes before she was due to deliver them to a crowded Commons chamber.
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...