Ryan is second MP to face sanctions after emergence of details of Trigger Me Timbers group
The Labour MP Oliver Ryan has been suspended by the party over his membership and comments on a WhatsApp group that featured offensive messages, including alleged racism and sexism.
The party took action against the Burnley MP after the emergence of details about the Trigger Me Timbers group, mainly involving a group of councillors and party activists in Greater Manchester.
Continue reading...Ministers mothball promised reforms to simplify the process amid fears over rise of Reform UK
Labour has quietly shelved plans to make it easier for people to legally change their gender amid concerns about the rising popularity of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Ministers have mothballed their promised reforms to simplify the process whereby anyone seeking to change gender in the UK must get approval from a panel of doctors and lawyers.
Continue reading...Lord Sumption says Israel’s actions ‘grossly disproportionate’ and in new book points to suppression of free speech over Palestinian cause
A former UK supreme court judge has described Israel’s assault on Gaza as “grossly disproportionate” and said there was “at least an arguable case” that it was genocidal.
Lord Sumption, who served on the UK’s highest court from 2012 to 2018, was one of the highest profile signatories of a letter last year warning that the UK government was breaching international law by arming Israel.
Continue reading...Prime minister takes home test at No 10 with soul singer Beverley Knight to promote HIV Testing Week
Keir Starmer has taken a public HIV test in an effort to destigmatise testing for the virus and to highlight HIV Testing Week.
The prime minister took a home test at 10 Downing Street alongside the soul singer Beverley Knight. “It’s really important to do it and I’m really pleased to be able to do it. It’s very easy, very quick,” he said.
Continue reading...Businesses pay hundreds of millions of pounds more and losing trust in HMRC, reports National Audit Office
An increasingly complex tax system is burdening the government and businesses with hundreds of millions of pounds more in administration costs, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has warned.
The report by the National Audit Office (NAO) also said “poor levels of service” meant some taxpayers and their representatives were “finding it more difficult to deal with their tax matters and are losing trust in HM Revenue & Customs [HMRC]”.
Continue reading...Legalise Loos initiative intended to halt slump in number of conveniences in town centres, parks and other locations
It will involve spending more than a penny, but it’s a call that is likely to be viewed sympathetically by anyone who has ever been caught short while out and about.
A campaign has been launched to make the provision of public toilets a legal requirement for central government and local authorities after a slump in the number of loos in town centres, parks and other locations.
Continue reading...Ex-Foreign Office official says he saw conduct that ‘crossed the threshold into complicity with war crimes’
Britain’s system for controlling arms exports is broken, subject to political manipulation and has seen conduct that crossed the threshold into complicity with war crimes, a former UK diplomat has claimed.
Writing for the Guardian, Mark Smith, who resigned from the Foreign Office in August, said officials were instructed to manipulate findings on the misuse of UK arms by allies, and if they did not do so, their reports were edited by senior colleagues to give the impression that the UK was in compliance with the law.
Continue reading...Industry insiders say it will be ‘tricky’ to find suitable candidate who would agree to location and civil service pay
Britain’s state-owned energy company faces a “challenging” task to find a chief executive for its Aberdeen HQ when it begins recruiting this month, senior industry sources have said.
Great British Energy is poised to begin the hunt, but sources claim there are still no obvious frontrunners for the top job almost six months after the £8.3bn publicly owned clean energy company was formed.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Health experts and cancer charities say findings should serve as wake-up call to ministers
More than 1,100 people a year in the UK are developing the most prevalent form of lung cancer as a result of air pollution, the Guardian can reveal.
Exposure to toxic air was attributed to 515 men and 590 women in the UK in 2022 getting adenocarcinoma – now the most dominant of the four main subtypes of lung cancer – an analysis by the World Health Organization’s cancer agency found.
Continue reading...The rise of Nigel Farage’s party is a concern for many MPs in seats where Reform came a close second at the general election
Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, is now neck and neck with Labour largely because its stance on immigration is proving attractive to floating voters, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer.
The rise of the populist rightwing party is causing increasing concern in the Labour high command and among the many Labour MPs who hold seats where Reform came a close second at last summer’s general election.
Continue reading...MP also suspended from Labour party after exposure of messages in which he said he hoped for pensioner’s death
A Labour minister has been sacked and suspended from the party after messages were exposed in which he said he hoped a pensioner who did not support him would die before the next set of elections.
Andrew Gwynne, who was a health minister, was also accused of writing a series of other messages containing racist and sexist comments. They included apparent antisemitic remarks and demeaning comments about Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister.
Continue reading...Pledge to fix broken welfare system follows new evidence that people are worried about returning to work for fear that benefits will be withdrawn
Britain’s broken welfare system is fuelling the “greatest unemployment challenge of a generation”, ministers have concluded as they draw up a root-and-branch overhaul designed to counter the spiralling numbers deemed too unwell to work.
Rules that force benefit claimants into an “all or nothing” choice between working and being deemed too sick to work are set to be redrawn, the Observer understands. It follows new evidence that thousands of people who want to work are worried about taking steps to return to the workplace out of fear that their benefits will be withdrawn.
Continue reading...Two months after the fall of Assad’s regime, Whitehall’s decision to pause asylum applications from Syrians has left more than 6,600 cases stuck on hold in the UK
More than 6,000 Syrians in Britain are stuck in limbo because of an ongoing freeze on their asylum claims, two months after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The Home Office announced a “pause” on Syrian asylum seekers’ claims on 9 December, the day after rebels swept into Damascus, saying that it needed to “assess the current situation”.
Continue reading...Veterans of May and Johnson governments share lessons from their experiences with unpredictable US president
It was just a few mangled sentences spoken in the darkness on an airport tarmac. But Donald Trump’s comments this week – his most significant yet regarding the UK – were enough to give heart to people in Downing Street and the Foreign Office.
“UK is out of line. But I’m sure that one, I think that one, can be worked out,” Trump said to reporters travelling with him at the Joint Base Andrews air force facility in Maryland. “Prime Minister Starmer has been very nice. We’ve had a couple of meetings, we’ve had numerous phone calls, we’re getting along very well.”
Continue reading...Exclusive: Local authority in Surrey declared itself effectively bankrupt in 2023 after series of risky investments
Two former senior figures at bankrupt Woking council are to be investigated by the UK’s accounting watchdog after it racked up more than £2bn in debt on a failed investment spree.
The Surrey council declared itself effectively bankrupt in 2023 after ploughing vast sums of borrowed money into skyscrapers, a luxury hotel and other risky commercial investments, in what was one of the biggest financial failures in local government history.
Continue reading...UK economy expected to grow by just 0.75% this year, in fresh blow to Rachel Reeves’s attempts to raise confidence
Rachel Reeves’s plans for growth suffered a double blow after the Bank of England halved its forecast for the year and warned households would face mounting pressure from rising prices.
In a downbeat assessment as it cut interest rates for a third time in six months, Threadneedle Street warned people would face a fresh squeeze on living standards from rising inflation even as the economy stalled.
Continue reading...With member states keen to link quotas to any deal, António Costa says defence and fisheries ‘are different things’
The EU will not let the question of fishing rights derail a pact with the UK on security and defence, the president of the European Council has said.
The comments from António Costa, who took over as the European Council president in December, is a boost for Keir Starmer, amid frustration among UK officials over EU insistence on linking a security deal to other demands, notably fishing rights.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Barristers also say offenders could pay compensation to victims, in effort to tackle court backlog
First-time offenders in low-level crimes should be diverted from trials by paying compensation to victims or enrolling in rehabilitation to solve the courts crisis, the Bar Council has said.
The government has proposed abandoning jury trials in some cases to tackle the backlog in crown court cases, but the body representing barristers in England and Wales said this was “not a principled response” and would not work.
Continue reading...New UK ambassador to US says is hoping to persuade Trump administration to maintain isecurity guarantee for Europe and boost growth
During PMQs yesterday Keir Starmer implied there were national security factors not in the public domain that explained why the government was so committed to transferring sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
Alex Wickham from Bloomberg says he has cracked the secret. It is all to do with the International Telecommunication Union, apparently. He explains this in a post on social media. Here is an extract.
The US and UK currently have full and unrestricted access to the electromagnetic spectrum at the Diego Garcia military base, allowing them to securely control American and British military and diplomatic communications in the region, as well as monitor hostile activity from foreign states, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity discussing sensitive information …
The US and UK are members of the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency based in Geneva, Switzerland which coordinates the electromagnetic spectrum and global satellite communications. If an international court was to rule in future that the US and UK were using Diego Garcia to run satellite communications in breach of international law, that would have consequences for the base and defense and technology companies involved in supply chains used there, the people said, highlighting the need to secure its legal status.
There must be no forced displacement of Palestinians, nor any reduction in the territory of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian civilians should be able to return to and rebuild their homes and their lives. That is a right, guaranteed under international law.
The UK is clear that we must see a negotiated two state solution, with a sovereign Palestinian state, which includes the West Bank and Gaza, alongside a safe and secure Israel with Jerusalem as the shared capital that has been the framework for peace for decades.
Continue reading...Weak jobs market and above-target inflation will dent Reeves’s growth plans and may wipe out fiscal headroom
With the public finances tight and Rachel Reeves having pledged to balance the books, interest rate cuts are one of the few levers that could boost the UK’s economic growth in the short term, and the chancellor will be glad of the Bank of England’s quarter-point reduction on Thursday – and the clear signal that it is now in cutting mode.
Seven of the monetary policy committee’s (MPC) nine members backed the quarter-point drop, taking the Bank’s policy rate to 4.5%, while two wanted to be more “activist”, proposing a half-point cut. The Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, said the MPC would be “taking a gradual and careful approach to reducing rates further”.
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