Minister claimed thousands of pounds on expenses for promotional videos

Videos of Labour’s Al Carns include him talking about his time as a marine and challenging a firefighter to pull-up contest

Labour minister Al Carns has claimed thousands of pounds on parliamentary expenses for promotional videos including one showing him doing pull-ups at a fire station in competition with a firefighter.

The veterans minister and former Royal Marine, who is tipped by some MPs as a leadership hopeful, claimed about £3,000, approved by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), for the production of 17 videos that show him interacting with local businesses.

Continue reading...

Labour claims extremist candidate revelations show Reform UK’s launch in Scotland has fallen apart – UK politics live

Some Holyrood candidates have been accused of spreading false rumours about asylum hotels, describing Humza Yousaf as ‘not British’, and backing Tommy Robinson

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

Malcolm Offord, Reform UK’s Scottish leader, has doubled down on his defence of the party’s vetting by dismissing remarks by candidates backing Tommy Robinson or describing Humza Yousaf as an “Islamist moron” (see 10.12am) as “fruity language”.

It has taken a matter of hours for Reform Scotland’s big launch to fall apart and their true colours to show.

If Nigel Farage refuses to act and remove this candidate, Malcolm Offord must step up and show some leadership himself. This incident has confirmed once and for all how poisonous and chaotic Reform is and I have no doubt that Scots will send them packing.

Again, as I say, this was done in a former life before she became a member of Reform. We’ve all said things in the past that may be intemperate… I am saying that we have to grow up on this and not take offence at every moment in time.

I’ve been very clear that we have brought in a whole range of candidates, 80% of whom are not politicians. They’re real people with real lives who said real things in a past life. Okay, this was said before she was a candidate. She wasn’t even a member of the party at that time.

And what we got in the situation is that in all our lives in the past, we’ve made comments that might sometimes be intemperate. But the issue with this modern world we live in is everything is now written down and remembered. I just think we have to be more, more realistic about the fact that real people say real things, and now she’s a candidate, she will be held to a higher standard.

Liberal Democrats urge the government to ensure the NCA or new National Police Service takes over investigations into serious waste crime. We also need an independent review of the entire waste crime system to crack down on organised gangs once and for all. New powers for the Environmental Agency simply won’t cut it.

Continue reading...

Farage backs Tory attack on Muslim iftar event, saying public prayer ‘was a shock’ – UK politics live

Nigel Farage echoed Nick Timothy’s comments after he said public prayer for Ramadan was an ‘act of domination’

Cleverly is trying to show a video, but it is not working. So he just invites Kemi Badenoch to start her speech.

The Conservatives are launching their local elections campaign. There is a live feed here.

Continue reading...

Sadiq Khan urges Labour to campaign on rejoining EU at next election

Mayor of London says returning to EU now more desirable because of economic instability caused by Donald Trump

Labour should go into the next general election promising to rejoin the EU, Sadiq Khan has said.

The mayor of London has repeatedly made the case for joining the customs union and single market, but went much further on Wednesday night by suggesting the party should promise full membership at next ballot.

Continue reading...

Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at prime minister’s questions – UK politics live

PM to face opposition leader and MPs in the House of Commons

Polanski says the government should be doing more to improve home insulation, and on the drive towards renewable energy.

And he says the government should commit to ensuring energy bills do not rise above the April-June price cap.

The government should guarantee right now that it will not allow energy bills to rise beyond the April-June price cap – instead setting aside approximately £8.4bn to prevent a rise of up to £300 per household that could be coming down the track.

No, it’s not cheap. But the alternative is unacceptable: if the price cap rises, we will see interest rate rises. Mortgage rates up. Bond yields up. And inflation up – and we will be back into the doom loop that has done untold damage to our economy and caused misery for households across the UK for years now.

There are ways to pay. Instead of scrapping the windfall tax on energy companies, as this government is planning to do, we should be strengthening it instead. We need a real, loophole-free windfall tax with no exemptions for reinvesting in fossil fuels. A robust tax that claws back every single pound of reckless profiteering from this crisis and repurposes it immediately to protect every home in the country. And while taxing extreme wealth in the ways we need to will take time to implement, there are levers the government could pull right now – like equalising capital gains tax with income tax and reforming the base, to raise £12bn.

It’s time for the government to act decisively, eliminate the uncertainty that is plaguing people and the markets and insulate us from some of the worst economic effects of Trump’s war.

This was not a war of self-defence, there was no imminent threat. Negotiations were ongoing. It was, as the BBC’s international editor said, a war of choice.

People across the Middle East are terrified of what Trump and Netanyanhu’s war will mean for them and their loved ones. And the repercussions are echoing across the world as instability spreads and oil prices spike.

People are already struggling so hard just to make ends meet. People feel like they’re running every day just to stay in the same place. The idea that yet again – for the second time in just a few years – that we are going to have to deal with another enormous spike in the cost of the basics is unacceptable.

It’s unacceptable because we didn’t need to be here. It’s unforgivable that just four years after we last saw an energy price shock, that one triggered by Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, far too little has been done to protect this country, its people, and its economy – from the impact of yet another energy price shock.

Continue reading...

Andy Burnham says Labour would ‘do well to listen’ to Angela Rayner

Greater Manchester mayor adds to Rayner’s criticism of planned immigration changes, which she has called ‘un-British’

Andy Burnham has backed stark criticism of the direction of Keir Starmer’s government by Angela Rayner after she said the very survival of the Labour party was at stake.

Rayner, the former deputy prime minister and an influential backbencher, used a speech on Tuesday night to warn that the prime minister “cannot go through the motions” in the face of declining support.

Continue reading...

Zelenskyy says Europe is a ‘global force’ that can stand against any other power in address to MPs – as it happened

Keir Starmer previously reassured that the war in Iran would not distract the UK from supporting Ukraine

Nigel Farage is speaking now at the Reform UK event.

The website promoting the lottery is up. It is called nigelcutmybills.com.

Continue reading...

More than 100 Labour MPs call on PM to stop assisted dying bill being blocked

Letter sent to Starmer claims ‘small number of peers have been using procedural tactics’ to stymie its progress

More than 100 Labour MPs have called on Keir Starmer to stop the House of Lords from blocking the assisted dying bill and give it more time to return to the Commons, with the legislation now certain to fall owing to lack of time.

The private member’s bill, sponsored by Labour’s Kim Leadbeater, will fall when the parliamentary session comes to an end in May because peers have used multiple amendments and lengthy debates to prevent it from being put to a vote.

Continue reading...

In linking Iran to Russia, Healey could be laying ground for hard choices ahead

Defence secretary connects Middle East conflict to plight of Ukraine, sympathy for which remains relatively high

After a week or so of wearing media coverage about the deterioration of the Anglo-American relationship and the belated decision to deploy Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dragon to Cyprus, it was time to move the conversation on.

On a visit to the UK’s permanent military headquarters in Northwood, north-west London, the defence secretary, John Healey, asked two senior British military officers if there was “any sign of a link between Russia and Iran” in the sprawling conflict that has suddenly engulfed the Middle East.

Continue reading...

Definition of anti-Muslim hate will not harm free speech, says Steve Reed

Communities secretary tells MPs that government has to act against record levels of hate crimes

A new definition of anti-Muslim hate will not restrict freedom of speech, the communities secretary has pledged, as he said that “clear expectations” will still be set for new arrivals and existing communities in Britain to learn English.

MPs were told by Steve Reed that the government had a duty to act against record levels of hate crime against Muslims, but that “you can’t tackle a problem if you can’t describe it”.

Continue reading...

Labour accuses Badenoch of scoring ‘cheap political points’ over Iran strikes

Defence minister urges ‘serious politics’ after Tory leader criticises prime minister’s stance at spring conference

Labour has accused Kemi Badenoch of scoring “cheap political points” after the Conservative party leader said Keir Starmer was “too scared” to join strikes on Iran.

Al Carns, the defence minister, said “serious politics” was required in response to Badenoch’s speech at the party’s spring conference where she criticised the prime minister’s stance on the US-Israel strikes on Iran a week ago.

Continue reading...

Starmer is facing a cocktail of dissent that is growing ever more potent

After the Greens’ byelection win, PM’s failure to make a progressive offer has angered Labour’s soft-left majority

But for the Iran crisis, Labour’s first major policy announcement since the party’s calamitous defeat in the Gorton and Denton byelection would have been arguably the biggest political story of the week.

Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, pressed ahead with what is intended to be the party’s full-throated answer to the competition it faces from Reform UK as she declared an end to permanent refugee status and the removal of state support from some asylum seekers.

Continue reading...

Mahmood’s move to make asylum temporary ‘may undermine refugee convention’

Law Society says home secretary’s review of refugee status after 30 months is in tension with UK’s legal obligations

Shabana Mahmood’s decision to tell every person applying for asylum from Monday that their status is temporary could undermine the refugee convention, the Law Society has said.

The body representing solicitors in England and Wales said the home secretary’s move to review every refugee’s status after 30 months was “in tension” with the UK’s legal obligations.

Continue reading...

Starmer vows to avoid ‘mistakes of Iraq’ that have haunted Labour for decades

Prime minister does not believe US has a plan beyond ‘shock and awe’ stage, as some MPs dread what lies ahead

US-Israel war on Iran – live updates

What we know so far on day three of the Iran war

A visual guide to strikes on Iran and Tehran’s response

Tony Blair’s support for the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 has long loomed like a spectre over the Labour party.

It was present in 2013 when Ed Miliband as opposition leader voted to block UK military action against the Syrian regime.

Continue reading...

Labour council accuses minister of ‘moral bankruptcy’ over social care dispute

Hartlepool leaders ‘furious and appalled’ after meeting with Steve Reed about growing cost of social care

The housing, communities and local government secretary has been accused by a Labour council of showing “arrogance, indifference and moral bankruptcy” towards children in social care.

In an unusually forthright attack, Labour leaders of Hartlepool council said they were “furious and appalled” at Steve Reed after a meeting with him last week. A cross-party delegation had asked the secretary of state for £3m to help alleviate the growing cost of social care.

Continue reading...

‘Simply not true’ UK is being dragged into Iraq-style conflict, says foreign secretary

Yvette Cooper says plans under consideration to evacuate about 300,000 Britons from Middle East amid Iran war

It is “simply not true” that the UK is being dragged into another Iraq-style conflict in the Middle East, Yvette Cooper has said, after an RAF base in Cyprus was struck by an Iranian drone.

The attack was part of a barrage of strikes by Tehran around the Middle East after a US-Israeli attack on Saturday that killed the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The UK foreign secretary confirmed ministers were considering possible plans to evacuate about 300,000 Britons from the region.

Continue reading...

Most senior council officers in England say building work hit by delays

Funding uncertainty is main concern, despite Labour’s pledge to revitalise construction, survey shows

Almost two-thirds of senior council officers have said they are seeing construction projects delayed, despite the key role of local authorities in creating the wave of new housing and infrastructure promised by Labour.

Before Rachel Reeves’s spring forecast on Tuesday, a survey of senior council officers showed that 40% do not think the local authority they work for is well placed to follow through on its construction plans.

Continue reading...

Starmer faces greater quandary over ‘special relationship’ after Iran attack

PM is in diplomatically precarious position of declining to endorse US strikes while also refusing to condemn them

It was perhaps naive of No 10 ever to position Keir Starmer as a “Donald Trump whisperer” capable of persuading the unpredictable US president to step back from reckless decisions.

The “special relationship” has been under severe strain in recent months over the UK’s decision to give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands and the refusal of European countries to back Trump’s play for Greenland.

Continue reading...

OBR a backseat driver with out-of-date maps, thinktanks tell Rachel Reeves

Chancellor urged to reform Office for Budget Responsibility to open way to more public investment

Rachel Reeves must reform the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to open the way to more public investment, an alliance of thinktanks has argued ahead of the chancellor’s spring forecast on Tuesday.

With Keir Starmer’s government under intense pressure after Labour’s defeat by the Greens in Thursday’s Gorton and Denton byelection, the thinktanks called on Reeves to review the watchdog’s remit.

Continue reading...

It’s been decreed: something must be done about student loans in England

The education secretary wants a fairer system and the Tories have leapt in with their own plan – but why now?

For anyone who attended university in England in the last 15 or so years, the idea of student loans feeling like some sort of debt trap is hardly news. But three weeks ago, when the journalist Oli Dugmore discussed this on the BBC’s Question Time, it felt like a moment.

It was less the size of the initial debt, he explained, than the way above-inflation interest rates meant the interest charged alone was now almost as much as the original sum. “So was it mis-sold to me?” he asked, rhetorically. “Yes, I’d say so.”

Continue reading...