Category Archives: Politics

Labour to push energy price cap policy in campaign blitz

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Party aims to get out message on plan to tackle cost of living before new Conservative PM enters No 10

Labour is planning a campaigning blitz in order to take ownership of its new energy price cap policy in case the next Tory leader bows to pressure and cancels the 80% rise expected in October.

Keir Starmer has vowed that his party “wouldn’t let people pay a penny more” on their gas and electricity bills this winter, proposing freezing the price cap at current levels and preventing the average household bill from reaching £3,600.

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Labour demands action over Avanti West Coast reduced train service

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Transport secretary urged to press for restoration of full timetable or strip operator of contract after 12 cancellations on Monday

Labour has written to Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, urging him to take immediate action to ensure Avanti West Coast restores more frequent services on its busy intercity rail route, or else strip the train operator of its contract.

The rail firm, which runs trains between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow, cancelled another 12 services on Monday morning, on the first full day of an already drastically reduced emergency timetable.

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Calls to cut bonuses for UK water bosses until reservoirs built and leaks fixed

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Multimillion-pound payouts should be shelved until investment put in to help country recover from drought

Water company bosses should be stripped of their multimillion pound bonuses until they fix leaks and build reservoirs, politicians and campaigners have said as the country is gripped by drought.

The current drought, in which parts of England are the driest they have been since records began after five consecutive months of below average rainfall, have led to homes running out of water, rivers turning dry and farmers facing crop failures, causing many to be outraged at the companies that have failed to invest in reservoirs, fix leaks and stop sewage pollution from their pipes.

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Liz Truss cabinet predictions: who could be in and who would lose out?

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Analysis: Kwasi Kwarteng and Thérèse Coffey could be among the big winners if Truss becomes PM

Liz Truss has three weeks before she is likely to walk through No 10’s black door as prime minister, facing a difficult in-tray. Here we take a look at how senior roles could shape up.

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UK treatment of Afghan refugees ‘continues to be source of shame’

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MoD sources accuse other parts of Whitehall of failing to do enough to help Afghans who worked with British forces

Two RAF flights carrying as many as 500 Afghans who worked with British forces and their relatives are landing in the UK each month from Pakistan but there is deep frustration within the Ministry of Defence about how the rest of government is struggling to accommodate arrivals.

It comes as the Taliban and western allies mark the first anniversary of Nato’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

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Government urged to classify Covid as an occupational disease

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TUC calls on Department for Work and Pensions to make move to help workers access key benefits

Ministers should urgently classify Covid-19 as an occupational disease to prompt employers to reduce the risk of exposure and help workers access key benefits, the TUC has said.

The UK is out of step with other major countries that have recognised Covid as a disease that people can get in the course of their work, especially in certain sectors, it says.

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Number of EU citizens moving to UK plunges post-Brexit – report

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Data shows just 43,000 EU citizens received visas for work, family, study or other purposes in 2021

The number of EU citizens moving to the UK has plunged since Brexit closed the doors to low-paid workers, according to a report.

The dramatic decline in migration from the EU has hit hospitality and support services hard. But the Migration Observatory (MO) at the University of Oxford and ReWage, a group of independent experts, have said that while Brexit “exacerbated” chronic labour shortages in Britain, it was not the only cause.

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Labour announces plan to freeze energy price cap with reinforced windfall tax

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Keir Starmer says people won’t pay ‘a penny more’ and that plan would reduce inflation

Keir Starmer has put a beefed-up £8bn windfall tax on energy company profits at the heart of a new plan to stop people having to pay “a penny more” on fuel bills this winter.

The Labour leader confirmed that under his plan the energy price cap would be frozen at the current level, meaning that an expected 80% rise in October – taking an average household bill to about £3,600 – would not go ahead.

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Police chief quit after abuse by British colonial troops in Kenya covered up

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Documentary reveals how Britain was not only involved in rape and torture but tried to suppress evidence

A former police commissioner resigned after attempts to expose rape and torture by British colonial forces in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising were covered up, a documentary shows.

During the 1950s, Britain fought a war in Kenya against the Mau Mau, a movement that fought for independence from colonial rule. The movement was brutally suppressed through the use of widespread detention camps and systemic violence.

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Ministers reject attempt to curb political influence over the allocation of levelling-up funds

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Analysis shows half of the most-deprived areas in England have not benefited from investment

A proposal to curb ministerial influence over the £4.8bn levelling up fund after claims of possible bias in favour of Tory seats has been rejected by the government.

Analysis has revealed more than half of the 100 most deprived areas of the country have not yet benefited from the fund. The awards are under fresh scrutiny after former chancellor Rishi Sunak told an audience in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, that he changed funding formulas to divert money from “deprived urban areas”.

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British minister accused of trying to hide reports on impact of Tory welfare reforms

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Thérèse Coffey ‘set out to minimise evidence’ on studies including research into deaths of benefit claimants and help for vulnerable

Ministers have been accused of deliberately attempting to hide the impact of the government’s wide-ranging welfare reforms by concealing a range of official reports on benefits.

Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, said she would not publish five reports or research on the benefit cap, deaths of benefits claimants, the impact of universal credit (UC), and benefit sanctions, and that she had no plans to publish two further reports on unpaid carers and work capability assessments.

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Why politicians can’t resist striking a pose in Vogue

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British prime minister-in-waiting Liz Truss is said to want to appear in the fashion glossy, but she should be careful what she wishes for

Liz Truss, heavily tipped to be the next leader of the Conservative party, would like to get into Vogue. We know this because she asked the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, how to go about it at the Cop26 climate conference last November. Sturgeon said Truss “looked a little bit as if she’d swallowed a wasp” when she told her she had made its pages twice.

“This is going to sound really up myself but I don’t mean to … I’d just been interviewed by Vogue, as you do … that was the main thing she wanted to talk to me about – she wanted to know how she could get into Vogue”, Sturgeon told an Edinburgh fringe event last week.

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MP who assaulted wife should stand down, says Plaid Cymru leader

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Jonathan Edwards’s membership of Welsh party sends out ‘wrong message’, says Adam Price

The leader of Plaid Cymru has called for an MP who received a police caution for assaulting his wife to stand down.

Jonathan Edwards, the MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, had been suspended since July 2020 but on Thursday the party said he was being readmitted to its Westminster group.

In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org

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Brexit threatening endangered species as red tape hits zoo breeding programmes

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Transferring critically endangered species within Europe to broaden the gene pool is more difficult with Britain outside the EU

Breeding programmes designed to save critically endangered species are being jeopardised by Brexit, with zoos warning they are being prevented from transferring animals such as rhinos and giraffes by red tape created by the UK’s departure from the EU.

The animal health regulation was passed in 2016 before the EU referendum, but came into force in April 2021. There have been no reports that the UK dissented from the regulation.

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Truss and Sunak woo Tory members with lukewarm stance on climate

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Analysis: noncommittal positions of leadership hopefuls on tackling climate crisis may be short-sighted

It’s the driest, hottest summer in 50 years, yet the Conservative leadership candidates appear to be fiddling while Britain burns.

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss have barely been asked anything about their plans for tackling the climate emergency in all their debates and hustings so far – and nor have they made it a leading campaign issue themselves.

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Keir Starmer defends Labour’s response to cost of living crisis – as it happened

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Labour leader hits back at criticism saying his party has been ‘leading’ on the issue

Keir Starmer has teased Labour’s package to tackle the cost of living crisis, saying his party would end energy prepayment premiums which he claims would offer 4m households relief on bills.

The announcement, which came in what is reportedly his first tweet this month, follows criticism of Labour’s inaction on the cost of living crisis.

Every organisation has its culture, but it’s not fixed, it can be changed.
That’s what ministerial leadership is about: it’s about making sure that the policies we represent, the values we stand for, are reflected in what we do.

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Almost 1.5m England and Wales crime victims opt not to pursue cases

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Annual figures indicate ‘dramatic collapse’ in confidence in criminal justice system, says Labour

Almost 1.5 million victims of crime in England and Wales have decided not to pursue their cases, feeding concern that public confidence in the criminal justice system has collapsed.

Home Office figures unearthed by Labour show there were 1,411,650 victims who did not support continuing action after they had reported a crime in the year to March 2022.

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Tory leadership: Sunak frustrated government attempts to realise benefits of Brexit, Truss allies claim – UK politics live

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Latest updates: foreign secretary’s supporters accuse former chancellor of resisting changes to EU regulation as sixth hustings looms

Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister, has used an article in today’s Guardian to propose that the government should halt the increases in the energy price cap planned for later this year and next year and, if necessary, take energy companies into public ownership to ensure that they keep prices down.

Alongside the Lib Dem plan, with which it has some similarities (they also want a price cap freeze, and more money raised through a windfall tax), it is the most radical and ambitious proposal on the table to tackle the energy bills crisis.

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Cumbria coalmine decision delayed again as critics condemn ‘zombie’ No 10

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Campaigners told new deadline for decision on first new deep coalmine in more than 30 years is 8 November

A much-anticipated decision on whether the UK’s first new deep coalmine in more than 30 years should go ahead has been delayed again.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) has written to Friends of the Earth to inform the organisation that the new secretary of state, Greg Clark, has set a new deadline of 8 November to rule on whether the coalmine should be granted planning permission.

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Ryanair boss blames Brexit for airport chaos and says era of €10 airfares over

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Michael O’Leary warns of rising cost of fuel and says policymakers need to get inflation back to about 2%

The boss of Ryanair has warned the era of ultra-low airfares is over and said Brexit is partly to blame for a shortage of airport workers that has created chaos during the peak holiday period.

The airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said surging oil prices would make it impossible to keep offering promotional tickets for less than €10 (£8.50). He added that Ryanair’s average fare would rise from about €40 towards €50 over the next five years as the company adjusted to rising inflation.

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