Prime minister will do ‘everything it takes’ to keep country safe as Britain conducts security review
UK fighter jets are on standby to shoot down Chinese spy balloons if any are spotted in British air space, the prime minister has said.
Rishi Sunak said Typhoon planes were ready at all times in case the UK came under threat from balloons such as the one US officials said they shot down last week.
Continue reading...Analysis of civil service spending includes Rishi Sunak’s Treasury department spending £3,000 on Tate photographs
Spending on government-issued “credit cards” has risen 70% since 2010, when the Conservatives first warned they were generating “hideous waste”, according to a Labour analysis of civil service spending.
Civil servants at 14 of the 15 main government departments spent nearly £150m on government procurement cards (GPCs) in 2021, the figures show, a steep rise since 2010-11, when David Cameron warned about the lax rules and oversight governing their use.
Continue reading...Labour analysis shows use of GPCs has risen under Tory government despite David Cameron decrying ‘hideous’ spending levels in 2010
Nestled inside a shaded courtyard, Plataran in south Jakarta offers diners the promise of authentic Indonesian food “with the atmosphere of Javanese royalty”. Five miles to the north, Kaum gives guests a taste of tribal Indonesian cooking with modern inflections.
Together, these are two of the city’s finest restaurants, and they are where Liz Truss and her team decamped, first for lunch and then for dinner, during a whistle-stop trip to the Indonesian capital in 2021. The two meals cost the taxpayer £1,443 – all paid for conveniently by handing over one of the thousands of government procurement cards (GPCs) that officials can use to pay for anything under £20,000.
Continue reading...RCN says nearly 43,000 nurses in UK have quit early in their careers over past five years
The UK’s largest nursing union warned of a workforce “exodus” with tens of thousands of young staff leaving the profession, as NHS bosses backed calls for ministers to meet unions to agree on a pay deal and avoid further strike action.
Nearly 43,000 nurses across the UK in the early stages of their careers have quit over the past five years, figures from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) show – almost equal to the record 47,000 nursing posts now vacant in NHS England.
Continue reading...Nigel Farage, John Redwood and Lord Frost rail against news of senior Tories joining cross-party summit to tackle failings of Brexit
Prominent Brexit supporters have hit out at senior Conservative figures after the Observer revealed they had taken part in a private cross-party summit entitled: “How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?”
John Redwood, the prominent Brexit-supporting Tory MP, and Nigel Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence party, criticised those attending the summit at Oxfordshire’s Ditchley Park retreat, including the cabinet minister Michael Gove.
Continue reading...The Tories’ new deputy chairman thinks he has the support of his constituency. But a tour around the market town says otherwise
Depending on your political instincts he’s a prime candidate for the “worst man in Britain”, no-nonsense voice of the people, or pugnacious darling of the Tory right.
Lee Anderson defends his inability to swerve controversy by claiming that what might make parliamentarians blanch, the people of Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, unequivocally back.
Continue reading...Quitting the EU has stalled business investment, making us reliant on workers who are now scarce. Hence rising wages, high inflation and increased interest rates. Result? A looming recession
Whenever Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, talks about the economy, he is forced to mention the toll taken by Brexit.
Business leaders, initially reluctant to criticise the Tory decision to quit the EU, have begun to find their voice. Most recently, leading City figure Guy Hands called Brexit a “complete disaster” and a “bunch of total lies” that has harmed large parts of the economy.
Continue reading...William Shawcross analysed just six Channel cases before calling for more focus on Islamist extremism, say critics
The author of a controversial review into Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy has been accused of failing to do his job properly because he attended only a handful of the thousands of meetings of its key deradicalisation programme.
William Shawcross was appointed to review Prevent, the government’s counter-extremism programme, in January 2021. Last week his controversial conclusion that the programme had concentrated too much on the far right and not enough on Islamist extremism was met with widespread condemnation.
Continue reading...Agricultural businesses risk closure as figures show government paid only tiny fraction of slashed EU farming subsidies
Cuts to post-Brexit farming payments mean farms risk “going out of business” as new figures reveal only a tiny fraction of slashed EU subsidies went to agriculture businesses last year.
The government is replacing the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which paid subsidies to farmers to keep them in business, with “payments for public goods”, meaning land managers get paid for improving nature.
Continue reading...UK’s biggest nursing union prompts alarm among senior officials by calling on intensive care workers to join walkouts
The UK’s biggest nursing union is preparing an escalation of its pay dispute with the government that will see members working in emergency departments, intensive care units and cancer care services being asked to join the next round of strikes.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is also planning to announce the first continuous 48-hour strikes running through two days and two nights, rather than limiting walkouts to the 12 hours from 8am to 8pm, as they have done to date.
Continue reading...Erkin Tuniyaz is head of the Xinjiang region, where human rights abuses are alleged to be taking place
The former Conservative party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has joined calls for a governor from a region of China where the UN has said crimes against humanity may be taking place to be arrested during a potential visit this week.
The Tory backbencher said that the governor of Xinjiang, Erkin Tuniyaz, should be arrested if he arrives in the UK. The House of Commons heard this week that he was due to visit the UK next week and may meet Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) officials.
Continue reading...Chancellor’s comments follow call from consumer champion Martin Lewis to cancel the rise in the energy price cap
This morning the Daily Mail splashed on a story about AstraZeneca building a new factory that had been planned for the north-west of England in Ireland instead. Sir Pascal Soriot, the company’s chief executive, suggested the government’s plan to increase corporation tax was a key factor (although, as my colleague Nils Pratley reports in his analysis, other factors are relevant too). The Mail is one of the Tory papers pushing for tax cuts and it reports the story as evidence that supports its case.
Asked about the AstraZeneca decision, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said today he was “disappointed” but that he would not implement tax cuts funded by borrowing. He told reporters:
We’re disappointed that we lost out this time and we agree with the fundamental case they’re making which is that we need our business taxation to be more competitive and we want to bring business taxes down.
But the only tax cuts we won’t consider are ones that are funded by borrowing because they’re not a real tax cut. They’re just passing on the bill to future generations.
Continue reading...Ashley Dalton retains constituency for Labour after resignation of Rosie Cooper last autumn
Labour has retained the West Lancashire constituency in a byelection called after its MP, Rosie Cooper, resigned last autumn.
Ashley Dalton, a part-time charity worker, won with 14,068 votes. Her comfortable win, securing a 10.2% swing from the Tories, marks Labour’s third byelection victory since Rishi Sunak became prime minister.
Continue reading...Damning report by MPs urges government to ensure safe passage for interpreters and contractors at risk from Taliban
Several thousand Afghans who helped British forces before the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 remain stranded and at risk from the Taliban because of failures of the government’s settlement schemes, according to a damning report by MPs.
The defence select committee’s report urged the government to set out what action it is taking to ensure safe passage to the UK for at least 4,600 Afghans, including interpreters and contractors, who worked for UK forces.
A lack of preparedness for the number of potential applicants resulting in under-resourcing, backlogs in applications, and errors in decision making.
Poor communications with applicants causing stress to them and increasing correspondence to MPs and others.
Unclear and frequently changing eligibility criteria.
Continue reading...Labour candidate Ashley Dalton odds-on favourite to hold seat after resignation of Rosie Cooper
Polls have closed in the West Lancashire byelection, with Labour confident of retaining the seat it has held since 1992.
The bookies have the party at 1/25 to keep hold of the seat where it had a majority of 8,336 in the last election. A result is expected between 2am and 4am.
Continue reading...Government evaluation of the legislation is the first official review of the policies that led to the Windrush scandal
The Home Office’s hostile environment policies appear to have had a disproportionately negative impact on people of colour, a government evaluation of the legislation has shown.
The long-awaited impact assessment of the package of hostile environment measures which were introduced when David Cameron was prime minister, and later rebranded as “compliant environment” policies, reveals for the first time the government’s own assessment of the legislation’s potential risks.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Children as young as three in emergency departments for mental health problems, data obtained by Labour reveals
‘We are letting young people down’: the secret psychiatrist on NHS delays
Children suffering mental health crises spent more than 900,000 hours in A&E in England last year seeking urgent and potentially life-saving help, NHS figures reveal.
Experts said the huge amount of time under-18s with mental health issues were spending in A&E was “simply astounding” and showed that NHS services for that vulnerable age group were inadequate.
Continue reading...Business group says as much as £9bn of investment is needed to improve system
Rishi Sunak should funnel billions of pounds into free childcare to help get more parents into work to tackle acute workforce shortages, according to Britain’s leading business group.
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said the government urgently needed to announce extra funding and changes to childcare and early years support, arguing that a more accessible and affordable system was an immediate economic priority.
Continue reading...Jeremy Hunt urged to reconsider raising state-subsidised energy rate from April as market prices make delay affordable
Jeremy Hunt must act now to reverse plans to raise energy bills from April, MoneySavingExpert’s Martin Lewis has warned, saying the change cannot wait until the spring budget next month.
In a letter to the chancellor seen by the Guardian, Lewis warned more than 1.7m more households could be plunged into fuel poverty if he does not urgently commit to freezing energy prices.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Erkin Tuniyaz ‘played central role’ in persecution of Uyghurs, says inter-parliamentary alliance on China
The Foreign Office has shocked cross-party opponents of the Chinese treatment of Uyghur groups by revealing that it has asked the Xinjiang governor for talks.
MPs belonging to the inter-parliamentary alliance on China (Ipac) called it “incomprehensible” that “anybody within government would think it appropriate to meet with someone who has played a central role in the persecution of Uyghurs – crimes our own parliament has declared to be genocide”.
Continue reading...