Category Archives: Politics

Ministers may siphon off stalled £950m fund for motorway chargers

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Talks to take place with operators about the scheme, announced in 2020, which has failed to make any grants

Ministers are considering diverting money from a £950m scheme to install rapid chargers for electric cars on the UK’s motorways, announced five years ago, after it failed to make a single grant.

Much of the cash allocated to the rapid charging fund (RCF) could be redirected to investments in other charging schemes, or to support the transition to electric vehicles more broadly, although decisions have yet to be made, according to a person close to discussions in government.

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MPs think they may have been targets of ‘disinformation’ over Bangladesh inquiry

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Group received emails about Ahsan Mansur, the central bank official investigating money laundering allegations

British MPs believe they may have been targeted by a “disinformation” campaign aimed at discrediting the man leading efforts to trace funds allegedly laundered from Bangladesh into the UK.

MPs raised the alarm after receiving emails about Ahsan Mansur, who was installed as the central bank governor of Bangladesh last year, after a student-led revolution swept away the autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina.

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Starmer is warned against ‘appeasing’ Trump with tax cut for US tech firms

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Labour MP and Lib Dem leader express concern social media companies could be let off hook just as benefits are cut

Keir Starmer has been warned against “appeasing” Donald Trump as he considers reducing a major tax for US tech companies while cutting disability benefits and public sector jobs.

His chancellor, Rachel Reeves, confirmed on Sunday that there were “ongoing” discussions about the UK’s £1bn-a-year digital services tax that affects companies including Meta and Amazon.

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Service at Heathrow airport returns to normal two days after forced closure

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More than a thousand flights were cancelled on Friday after a fire at an electrical substation caused a power cut

Heathrow airport has returned to normal business two days after it was forced to close when a fire at an electrical substation caused a power cut.

Europe’s busiest airport had more than 1,000 flights cancelled on Friday after the fire at the substation in Hayes, west London.

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Labour must involve whole country if it wants to achieve its goals, report warns

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Age of ‘command and control’ is over, says Demos, with work needed from business, charities, unions and public

Labour’s missions are at risk of failing unless the government does more to involve the whole country from businesses to the wider public, as the age of “command and control” is over, a report from Demos has warned.

The thinktank called on the government to embrace “mass mobilisation” for businesses, charities, unions and the wider public to drive its flagship missions, which promise growth, clean energy, cutting crime, rebuilding the NHS and reforming education.

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Labour mayoral candidate on race to stop Reform – and ‘Doge Lincolnshire’

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Jason Stockwood, ex-chair of Grimsby Town FC, has plan for keeping rival Andrea Jenkyns from implementing US-style cuts

Labour can beat Reform UK by focusing relentlessly on the cost of living, the party’s mayoral candidate for Greater Lincolnshire, who is taking on the Conservative defector Andrea Jenkyns, has said.

Jason Stockwood, the former chair of Grimsby Town football club, is standing for Labour in the most high-profile mayoral race of the local elections.

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Keir Starmer says he ‘likes and respects’ Donald Trump

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PM agrees with US president that Europe must bear greater burden for its collective self-defence

Keir Starmer has spoken of how he personally “likes and respects” the US president, Donald Trump, and understands what he is trying to achieve.

The prime minister made the comments in an interview with the New York Times, saying: “President Trump has a point when he says there needs to be a greater burden borne by European countries for the collective self-defence of Europe.”

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Civil service to be told to slash more than £2bn a year from budget by 2030

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Departments will be asked next week to reduce spending by 10% by 2028-29, says Cabinet Office source

The civil service will be told to slash more than £2bn a year from its budget by the end of the decade as part of the government’s spending review, with unions warning of significant job losses, the Guardian understands.

The Cabinet Office will tell departments to cut their administrative budgets by 15%, which is expected to save £2.2bn a year by 2029-30.

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All UK families ‘to be worse off by 2030’ as poor bear the brunt, new data warns

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Keir Starmer has been dealt a fresh blow to his living standards pledge in advance of the spring statement

Living standards for all UK families are set to fall by 2030, with those on the lowest incomes declining twice as fast as middle and high earners, according to new data that raises serious questions about Keir Starmer’s pledge to make working people better off.

The grim economic analysis, produced by the respected Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), comes before the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, makes her spring statement on Wednesday in which she will announce new cuts to public spending rather than increase borrowing or raise taxes, so as to keep within the government’s “iron clad” fiscal rules.

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Reeves to raise spectre of Liz Truss to persuade Labour MPs to accept cuts

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Chancellor to tell party she is making steep cuts to avoid similar fallout to that which followed 2022 mini-budget

Rachel Reeves will raise the spectre of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget in the lead-up to next week’s spring statement as she tries to persuade her Labour colleagues to accept the steepest departmental cuts since austerity.

The chancellor will tell her fractious party she has decided to cut public spending rather than increasing borrowing because of the risk of a similar fallout to that which followed the then prime minister’s disastrous fiscal statement in 2022.

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UK to accelerate military planning to support Ukraine, No 10 says

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Intensive talks to take place next week on detail and structure of any British deployments if ceasefire deal reached

The UK is to “accelerate the pace and scale” of its military planning to be ready to support Ukraine, with No 10 saying all options, including troops on the ground, are possible.

Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said thousands of troops would be needed to support Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire and agreement to end the war with Russia, whether by “sea, on land or in the air”.

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Ministers urged to act as thousands more hit by UK carer’s allowance debts

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Latest overpayment figures bring total number falling foul of ‘cliff-edge’ rules on earnings to 144,000

More than 9,000 unpaid carers looking after ill and disabled loved ones have become the latest to be hit with carer’s allowance overpayment debts in the past year, prompting calls for ministers to suspend the controversial practice.

While the government has promised to tackle the carer’s allowance scandal and launched a review, the latest figures show carers continue to be unwittingly caught by the system, landing them with debts often running into thousands of pounds.

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Post-Brexit reliance on NHS staff from ‘red list’ countries is unethical, Streeting says

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Exclusive: NHS England has dramatically increased recruitment of workers from states with critical medical staff shortages

Brexit has left the NHS increasingly dependent on doctors and nurses from poor “red list” countries, from which the World Health Organization says it is wrong to recruit.

The health service in England has hired tens of thousands of health staff from countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe since the UK left the EU single market at the end of 2020.

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House of Lords proceedings disrupted by protesters – UK politics live

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Campaigners in gallery shout ‘Lords out, people in’ and drop leaflets into the chamber

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has defended politicians who get involved in entertainment TV.

In an article for the Daily Telegraph, he hit back at Kemi Badenoch, who used an interview with the paper earlier this week to dismiss Farage as just a reality TV phenomenon.

Having appeal doesn’t mean that people want you running their lives. That’s one of the things that we need to make sure that we remind people.

This isn’t I’m A Celebrity or Strictly Come Dancing. You don’t vote for the person that you’re enjoying watching and then switch off when the show’s over.

Anyway, it’s not as though I’m the first politician to have been prominent in the media. Ronald Reagan combined his early political activities with a film and TV career for 20 years, until the 1960s. When he announced in the 1970s that he wanted to become the US President, everybody said he was a B-Movie actor who stood no chance. These days, American conservatives look back on this two-term leader with a slight sense of awe in terms of his achievements.

And what about Donald Trump? He was a well-known New York property developer from the 1970s onwards but it was his massive success with the reality to show The Apprentice from 2004 that put him in a position where he could win the nomination for the Republican Party.

Kemi Badenoch has a problem. Most members of the public have no opinion of her. Even fewer know what she stands for. I have an idea for her. She could appear on a reality TV show herself. A spell in the I’m a Celebrity… jungle would be perfect. I’ll gladly give her some tips if she wants to sign up for the next series.

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Starmer unlikely to fulfil pledge on hospital waiting times, says IFS

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Thinktank predicts PM will not realise ambition for 92% of patients in England to wait less than 18 weeks for planned care by 2029

Keir Starmer is unlikely to fulfil his pledge to restore the maximum 18-week wait for planned hospital care before the next election, a leading thinktank has said.

The prime minister has made bringing back the 18-week access standard in England, by ensuring that 92% of patients are seen within that time, one of the six “milestones” he has promised to achieve by 2029.

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Minister refuses to rule out more benefit cuts amid backlash over Liz Kendall move to slash disability payments – UK politics live

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Stephen Timms, social security and disability minister, says ‘who knows what will happen in next five years’ as welfare bill is increasing even with cuts

Matt Hancock, the former Tory health secretary, has just started giving evidence to the Covid inquiry as part of its inquiry into PPE procurement.

There is a live feed here.

Of course people who can work should work - no one is questioning that - but for my relatives, friends and neighbours, and your constituents who have the misfortune to suffer from a chronic, debilitating, long-term condition that leaves them bed-bound, unable to leave their home or crushed by mental illness, these cuts will not motivate them to get back to work, it will instead scare and humiliate them and strip them of their dignity and self respect and for some it will send them to an early grave. The blame for this will lie squarely with you and the sycophants within your party who passively support these dreadful cuts.

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Peer who led government NHS review failed to declare shares in health firms

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Lord Darzi’s undeclared interests in four companies included $500,000 of shares in US-based healthcare venture

The independent peer Lord Darzi, a senior adviser to the government on the NHS, failed to officially declare shareholdings in healthcare companies worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Ara Darzi is an eminent surgeon and professor at Imperial College London whose report on the NHS for the government in September informed the decision announced last week by the health secretary, Wes Streeting, to abolish NHS England. Darzi also has an extensive portfolio of private interests in commercial medical companies.

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Rising bill for benefits has wreaked ‘terrible human cost’, says Keir Starmer

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PM defends welfare cuts amid disquiet in Labour over plan charities say will push more disabled people into poverty

The rising benefits bill is “devastating for public finances” and has “wreaked a terrible human cost”, Keir Starmer has said as he defended the government’s drastic changes to the welfare system.

Writing in the Times, the prime minister said “the facts are shocking”, noting one in eight young people were not in education, employment or training and 2.8 million working-age people were out of work because of long-term sickness.

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Covid inquiry: ex-minister defends VIP contract lane despite ‘one or two crooks’

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Lord Agnew says fast-track PPE procurement was not ‘some kind of plan by rightwing people to enrich themselves’

A former minister behind the controversial VIP lane for supplying personal protective equipment during the pandemic said “some crooks” were probably awarded contracts, but defended the scheme as necessary to plug shortages.

Lord Agnew, who was a Cabinet Office minister responsible for procurement during the pandemic, accused the Covid inquiry of having a “misconceived obsession with the high-priority lane”.

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Downing Street rejects Lammy’s claim Israel broke international law in Gaza

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Foreign secretary receives rare public rebuke as No 10 rows back by saying Israel ‘at risk’ of breaching rules

Downing Street has rejected David Lammy’s assessment that Israel has broken international law by blocking aid to Gaza, in a rare public censure for the foreign secretary.

A spokesperson for the prime minister said on Tuesday morning Israel was “at risk” of breaching humanitarian law, despite Lammy having told the Commons on Monday that the country had definitely done so.

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