Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The department is a world leader in programmes based on gender equality. The government must show this will continue
News that the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are to merge raised many questions about the UK’s commitment to supporting the world’s poorest people. A key question for us is how the new department will support women and girls.
For more than 20 years, UK aid has saved and transformed the lives of women and girls in some of the world’s poorest countries. In the past five years, 10 million women and girls have received humanitarian assistance and more than 6 million girls have been able to access quality education. Upwards of £25m has been invested to prevent violence against women and girls through the government’s What Works programme, and a further £67m committed.
Calls intensify for withdrawal from security arrangement with kingdom over human rights
The British government has been accused of “empty talk” over human rights as two pro-democracy campaigners in Bahrain face the death penalty.
The UK has provided security advice to the island nation in the Persian Gulf for five years and funds a body that examines allegations of police mistreatment.
Scots will be able to meet each other indoors and stay overnight from Friday for the first time in more than three months, as Nicola Sturgeon confirmed that the country was ready to enter phase 3 of her government’s route map to reopening.
Announcing a raft of new guidance in a statement to Holyrood on Thursday, she added that non-cohabiting couples would be allowed to meet outdoors, indoors and overnight without physical distancing, while children under 12 would no longer have to physically distance outdoors or indoors.
Boris Johnson’s pledge to recruit 50,000 more NHS nurses is in doubt after the number coming from the EU fell again and coronavirus prevented thousands of arrivals from the rest of the world.
The prime minister made the promise a cornerstone of his general election campaign last year and has since reiterated many times his determination to deliver the increase.
International trade secretary tells PM and chancellor plans risk smuggling and damage to UK reputation
An extraordinary cabinet row has erupted over Brexit with Liz Truss warning that Boris Johnson’s border plans risk smuggling, damage to the UK’s international reputation and could face a legal challenge from the World Trade Organization.
The international trade secretary wrote to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and Michael Gove on Wednesday warning of four “key areas of concern” over their plans for the border next January.
Boris Johnson is learning the hard way that the UK’s position on the globe is a relevant factor in its negotiations with Brussels
It is possible that Boris Johnson meant it when he said last year that Brexit would not involve checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but only if he did not understand the deal he had signed. His position made sense as dishonesty or ignorance. It was never true.
As Brexit talks continue in London this week, it turns out the government has submitted to the EU its application to put border control posts at Irish Sea ports. That is a necessary act of compliance with the Northern Ireland protocol in the withdrawal agreement.
While ministers insist that it is too early to fully consider what lessons might be learned from the coronavirus outbreak, the UK’s death toll – the highest in Europe – is expected to prompt an inquiry into the handling of the pandemic.
In recent weeks, the government has been accused of seeking to pre-emptively shift the narrative on responsibility for the country’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak and blame others for what went wrong.
The Department of Health and Social Care has recorded a further 155 deaths in the UK in its latest daily update on coronavirus. That takes the official UK death total to 44,391.
As we try to point out every day, this official headline total used by the government is not the actual total. That is because these figures only include people who tested positive for coronavirus and died. Taking into account the deaths of people who did not have a test, but where coronavirus was cited on the death certificate, the real total is more than 55,000.
The Welsh health minister has expressed concern that workers at a food factory where there has been an outbreak of Covid-19 might be spreading the virus because they take it turns to use the same bed.
Speaking at the Welsh government’s daily briefing, Vaughan Gething said there had been a suggestion that workers were coming off shift and jumping into a bed just vacated by a housemate who then went off to work.
I’m genuinely concerned about the conditions that people live within, not just in houses of multiple occupation where people may share bathroom and toilet facilities or kitchens, and the opportunity for contact indoors and surfaces is an obvious concern. You’ve heard that from our scientists, and others.
But in particular, if there is reality to the suggestion that people are sharing beds, there’s an obvious risk if people finish one shift, then return from that shift to get into a bed that someone has just got out of. So there are real issues here about accommodation and how it may be an unhelpful factor in driving transmission within that workforce.
Figure revealed by home secretary highlights concerns about slowness of compensation scheme
At least five people have died before receiving the Windrush compensation they had applied for, the government has revealed, reigniting concern about the slowness of the scheme.
No details were revealed about who these individuals were, but the figures appear to come in addition to a number of people interviewed by the Guardian, who died before they were even able to file a compensation claim.
Official review finds airstrikes on civilians were ‘isolated incidents’
Britain is to resume the sales of arms to Saudi Arabia that could be used in the Yemeni conflict just over a year after the court of appeal ruled them unlawful because ministers had not properly assessed the risk to civilian casualties.
In a written statement, the trade secretary, Liz Truss, said sales would restart after an official review concluded there had been only “isolated incidents” of airstrikes in Yemen that breached humanitarian law.
PM claimed there had been ‘loads’ of consultations over department which faces a £2bn cut this year
Boris Johnson has been accused of misleading parliament over who was consulted before the merger of the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee (IDC), said despite the prime minister’s assurances that there had been “massive consultation” ahead of the announcement last month, evidence suggested there had not been.
Measures target individuals in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Myanmar and North Korea
The UK set itself on a diplomatic collision course with one of its key allies after introducing long-awaited sanctions against human rights abusers, including a close aide to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Long-awaited UK government sanctions against human rights abusers, including a close aide to the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, have been unveiled by the foreign secretary.
Ads pulled after Haxby Bakehouse owner and Labour member Phil Clayton complains
There are thousands of bakeries from which the UK government had to choose to star in its latest public information campaign. The Haxby Bakehouse was probably the only one to have produced loaves flour-stencilled with “F*ck Boris” during last year’s general election.
Nonetheless, a photograph of its owner, Phil Clayton, dusted with flour and carrying a tray of freshly baked goods appeared in national newspapers on Saturday with the headline “Welcome back to freshly baked bread”, to promote the government’s “Enjoy summer safely” campaign.
People do not want to go back to the way things were, but the good intentions could fade without the right leadership
Britain is crying out for a better normal. Communities across the country are emerging from lockdown with a new sense of what is possible and what is necessary – and the answers to both go a lot further than Westminster’s efforts to drive the country back to business as usual.
That was the overriding impression from a two-week reporting trip around Britain, asking people in different regions how they view recovery and whether there is an appetite for more fundamental change.
Justice secretary, Kate Forbes, among those asking for language to be prioritised
Senior politicians in Scotland’s Gaelic-speaking areas have called for the language to be given much greater priority in civil and public life to stop it dying out.
Kate Forbes, the Scottish justice secretary, and Alasdair Allan, a former minister, said Gaelic had to be given precedence or parity in all areas of public life and the economy across Gaelic areas of the Highlands and islands.
Exclusive: ex-chief prosecutor’s lawyers say behaviour of Boris Johnson’s aide warrants ‘thorough investigation’
The Metropolitan police have been urged to launch an immediate investigation into Dominic Cummings’ trip from London to Durham at the height of the coronavirus outbreak by the former chief prosecutor for north-west England.
Lawyers for Nazir Afzal have written to the Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, arguing that the behaviour of Boris Johnson’s chief adviser during the lockdown warrants a “thorough investigation” by the force.
After PM’s behaviour with the Bullingdon Club, evidence emerges of further antics at Union Society fundraiser
It may have only merited a few paragraphs in the student newspaper and have taken place 33 years ago, but an Oxford Union Society “slave auction” in which Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were involved is powerful proof of how politicians’ pasts can come back to haunt them.
“Union slave auction” was the headline in Cherwell, the journal for Oxford students, on 12 June 1987. The small story has escaped the notice of the two men’s biographers and their profile writers until now.
Boris Johnson has refused to criticise his father over trip to holiday home during lockdown
The prime minister’s father, Stanley Johnson, has defended travelling to his villa in Greece amid growing condemnation by saying that he was making the property “Covid-proof”.
Government guidelines state that British nationals should avoid all but essential travel, but his son Boris has refused to criticise the trip and, on Friday, suggested the media should raise the issue directly with his father.
Barrister says Home Office’s unwillingness to protect 11-year-old makes a mockery of FGM protection orders
Human rights lawyers have launched a scathing attack on the Home Office for failing to grant asylum to an 11-year-old girl found by judges to be at high risk of female genital mutilation if removed from Britain.
The girl, who is thriving at school and only speaks English, was brought to the UK in 2012 by her mother, herself a victim of what is known as type 3 FGM whose two sisters died after being cut in their native Sudan.
The US will be on a “red list” of high-risk countries that people in England are advised not to visit for non-essential reasons because of its continued high level of coronavirus cases, the government has confirmed.
Travel restrictions will be relaxed in England for more than 50 countries including nearly all EU countries, British territories such as Bermuda and Gibraltar, and Australia and New Zealand.