Foreign Office denies minister’s claim the Chagos Islands deal has been paused – UK politics live

Minister told MPs the deal had been been paused, but that was immediately denied by the Foreign Office

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published figures showing that local authorities in England dealt with 1.26m flytipping incidents in 2024/25 – 9% increase on the previous year.

And there was an 11% increase in incidents involving a “tipper lorry load” amount of rubbish. There were 52,000 of these, up from 47,000 in 2023/24. Defra said these alone cost councils £19.3m.

These figures show the equivalent of 142 monster landfills a day took place, confirming what communities across the country know all too well – our beautiful countryside is being used by criminal gangs as their personal landfill.

For far too long, waste gangs have pocketed millions in illegal earning, poisoning our environment and our health without consequence. The Liberal Democrats are demanding an end to this environmental vandalism.

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Confusion over Chagos Islands deal as Foreign Office denies handover ‘paused’

Minister ‘misspoke’ by telling MPs UK was ‘pausing for discussions with our American counterparts’, officials say

Plans to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius are still on track, the UK government has insisted, after a minister caused confusion by telling MPs that the deal was “paused”.

Hamish Falconer, a Foreign Office minister and former diplomat, was speaking on Wednesday as the deal came under increasing pressure from opposition parties in the UK and from Donald Trump.

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David Lammy lifts cap on court sitting days in effort to cut backlog of cases

Criminal barristers welcome justice secretary’s move to remove limit on hearing days at crown courts in England and Wales

A cap on court sitting days is to be lifted as the government seeks to ease the cases backlog, David Lammy has announced.

The justice secretary and deputy prime minister said every crown court in England and Wales would be funded to hear more cases in the next financial year.

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Phillipson says Send reforms needed ‘even if money were no object’ because current outcomes ‘not good enough’– UK politics live

Education secretary says education, health and care plans (EHCPs) shouldn’t be the ‘only way’ for children to get help

Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, has been speaking about the Send reforms at an event in Peterborough.

This is what she said about the need for inclusion.

Inclusion is a choice. It is an educational choice, and it is also a political choice because we could duck this challenge, ignore the injustice of a postcode lottery in life chances putting off fixing the Send system yet again.

The system works well for some at least.

We welcome the scale of vision contained in the white paper which has the potential to create an education system that fully values children and young people with additional needs and their families.

We also welcome the commitment to retain statutory education, health and care plans (EHCPs) for children and young people whose needs cannot be met through this new model. We know that many parents will welcome the legal requirement for schools to create individual support plans (ISPs) for all children with Send.

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Martin Lewis ambushes Badenoch on Good Morning Britain over student loans plan

Finance campaigner marches on to set and tells Tory leader her policy to cut interest rates will only help top earners

Kemi Badenoch has faced what could be described as the stuff of nightmares for a UK politician being interviewed about a personal finance policy: being ambushed and contradicted live on air by Martin Lewis.

As the Conservative leader was being interviewed on ITV about her party’s plans to cut interest rates for some student loans, Lewis, a campaigner and finance expert, marched on to the set to announce that he completely disagreed.

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Defence secretary says he hopes to deploy British troops to Ukraine – as it happened

European leaders said in December that Europe was ready to lead a “multinational force” in Ukraine as part of a peace agreement proposal

Searches are expected to continue today at Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s previous home – Royal Lodge, in Windsor – as calls grow for a probe into the former prince’s links with Jeffrey Epstein.

Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian’s police and crime correspondent, Vikram Dodd, about what could be next for Andrew here:

If the government bring forward this bill with the support of the King then we will back it. We have to be realistic. Andrew is the eighth in line to the throne, so there’s no chance of him becoming our monarch.

And so parliament really should be focused on things that are of more importance to the public, whether that’s the economy, crime, the health service, immigration. But if the bill does come before parliament, then we’ll support it.

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‘Immensely heartened’: Sally Rooney hails Palestine Action high court ruling as victory for UK civil liberties

Exclusive: Irish author, who feared her books being withdrawn from UK, says proscription had been ‘extreme assault’ on rights and freedoms

Sally Rooney has hailed the high court’s decision that it was unlawful to ban Palestine Action under anti-terrorism laws as a victory for civil liberties in Britain.

Ministers suffered a humiliating legal defeat a week ago when three senior judges ruled that proscription of the direct action group, which targets organisations it considers complicit in arming Israel, was disproportionate and unlawful.

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Don’t be fooled by recent good news, the UK economy is still in a precarious state

Labour MPs may clamour for bolder spending, but – like their Tory and Reform counterparts – they ask for the unaffordable

Too many Labour MPs want it all, and no amount of pleading from the top of government about the depleted public finances seems to make a difference.

The mainly leftist MPs want all the wrongs of the last 15 years put right and quickly. Their next opportunity to demand more cash arrives when Rachel Reeves delivers her spring statement on 3 March.

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Survivor of financial abuse invited to advise ministers after Guardian report

City minister Lucy Rigby acts after woman faced repossession of house burned down by controlling husband

A woman who was nearly killed by her abusive husband has been invited to advise the government on measures to support victims of financial abuse after the Guardian highlighted her story last weekend.

Francesca Onody was left homeless and penniless when her husband doused their cottage with petrol while she and her two children were inside. Her husband, Malcolm Baker, died when the property exploded.

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Trump changed mind on Chagos deal ‘after UK blocked use of Diego Garcia for Iran strikes’

US president links deal with military strikes against Iran in connection with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions

Donald Trump changed his mind on supporting the Chagos Islands deal because the UK will not permit its airbases to be used for a pre-emptive US strike on Iran, the Guardian has been told.

In his latest change of heart on the deal, the US president said on social media that Keir Starmer was “making a big mistake” by handing sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius in exchange for continued use by the UK and US of their airbase on one of the islands, Diego Garcia.

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Ministers must end ‘barking mad’ restraints on civil service pay, union leader warns

Exclusive: Prospect boss Mike Clancy cites problems retaining technical and digital experts

Ministers must end “barking mad” restraints on civil service pay or risk being unable to recruit the technical and digital specialists it needs to keep pace, a union leader has warned.

Mike Clancy, the Prospect general secretary, said the government should end the “rightwing trope” that restrained the pay of highly skilled civil servants and left government unable to compete with the private sector. He said it should be realistic for senior specialists in competitive fields to be paid more than the prime minister.

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Councils in England call for ‘radical’ means testing of Send school transport

Demand is rising at unsustainable rate and could cost £3.4bn by 2030-31, local authorities warn

Families who have children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) should be means tested for school transport, according to councils in England, who say demand is rising “at an unsustainable rate”.

Local authorities are urging the government to be “radical” in its Send reforms, which are expected imminently, warning that annual costs on home-to-school transport for children with Send could rise to £3.4bn by 2030-31, up from £2bn last year.

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Starmer says Reform’s pledge to restore two-child benefit cap in full is ‘shameful’ – UK politics live

Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick has announced party’s plans to cut welfare spending

Robert Jenrick, Reform UK’s Treasury spokesperson, is giving his speech now.

He has announced, or confirmed, three measures to cut welfare spending.

The number claiming disability benefits for an attention disorder has more than doubled since Covid. We all know a significant number of these claims are spurious …

We will stop those with mild anxiety, depression, and similar conditions from claiming disability benefits and instead encourage them into the dignity of work.

We will end the abuse of the Motability scheme, where expensive cars are handed out for conditions like tennis elbow, and paid for by working people who can’t afford them themselves.

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Boost to British Steel as Turkey places high-speed rail order

‘Eight-figure agreement’ made to supply new line between Ankara and İzmir – but questions over plant’s future remain

British Steel has secured an order worth tens of millions of pounds to supply rail for a high-speed electric railway in Turkey, amid continuing uncertainty over the long-term future of the government-controlled steelworks in Scunthorpe.

The site will supply 36,000 tonnes of rail to ERG International Group, the company announced, in what it called an “eight-figure agreement”.

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Key aide to Nigel Farage was frontman for Premier League billionaire’s betting syndicate, lawsuit claims

Exclusive: George Cottrell ‘gave control’ of gambling accounts to syndicate headed by Tony Bloom, the owner of Brighton & Hove Albion FC

George Cottrell, a close associate of Nigel Farage and a key figure in Reform UK’s inner circle, acted as a front for a major gambling syndicate that was “given control” of his betting accounts, a high court document alleges.

Cottrell acted as a stalking horse for a syndicate involving one of the world’s most successful gamblers, Tony Bloom, it is claimed in the public documents, filed at the high court.

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UK government delays decision on China’s super-embassy until January

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.

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OBR says its inadvertent release of budget report is ‘worst failure’ in its 15-year history – UK politics live

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.”

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Bangladesh court sentences UK MP Tulip Siddiq to two years in prison in absentia

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.

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OBR says inadvertent budget leak is ‘worst failure’ in its 15-year history

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.

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Plan to reduce jury trials an ‘irremediable error’, lawyers say in MoJ letter

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.

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