Johnny Mercer says he will ‘do all I can’ to change rules after veteran turned away from polling station
The veterans minister has apologised to former military personnel who have been prevented from using their veterans ID in order to vote in the local elections in England on Thursday.
Downing Street said it would “look into” changing the controversial new rules, which require photo ID in order to vote, to allow veterans’ ID cards on to the list of valid identification.
Continue reading...Emergency services corden off large area of Darwen while army bomb disposal unit removes and destroys grenade
A town centre in Lancashire was placed in lockdown on Saturday, with British army bomb disposal experts forced to remove and destroy a grenade.
It is understood that a member of the public had donated items to a heritage centre in Darwen which included the grenade.
Continue reading...Risk-filled mission to escort aid from US-built floating pier into combat zone under consideration in defence ministry
Britain’s defence ministry is considering sending troops into Gaza to escort trucks of aid being driven off a giant floating pier built by the US military, a UK defence source has said.
The pier is due to be completed next month in the eastern Mediterranean, and then it will be pushed towards the Gaza shore. But the US president, Joe Biden, has pledged that American forces managing the project will not set foot on land there.
Continue reading...Fighting With Pride charity will lead work for memorial at National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire
The UK’s first memorial commemorating the “lost legion” of LGBT people who have served in the armed forces is to be built at the National Memorial Arboretum.
The memorial will be built after a charity spearheading efforts to get justice for veterans affected by the pre-2000 ban on LGBT people serving in the UK armed forces was awarded a £350,000 grant.
Continue reading...Animals ran through rush-hour streets, colliding with vehicles and leaving four people in hospital
Two of the military horses that broke loose during a morning exercise and bolted through central London on Wednesday are in “serious condition”, a minister has said.
The runaway horses, including one white horse drenched in blood, ran through the rush-hour streets of the capital, colliding with vehicles and resulting in four people being taken to hospital.
Continue reading...Witnesses describe ‘total mayhem’ as horses run through centre of UK capital during rush hour
Four people have been taken to hospital after several military horses broke loose during a morning exercise and bolted through central London, colliding with vehicles.
Astonished witnesses described “total mayhem” as the runaway horses, including one white horse drenched in blood, ran through the rush-hour streets.
Continue reading...PM pledges equipment including 400 vehicles, 1,600 weapons and 4m rounds of ammunition, plus £500m in funding
Rishi Sunak has promised the UK’s largest ever military support package for Ukraine as he warned that Vladimir Putin would “not stop at the Polish border” if Russia won the war.
The prime minister will visit Poland on Tuesday to discuss European security and the threat from Russia with the Polish leader, Donald Tusk, and the Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, before travelling to Germany to meet the chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
Continue reading...For the first time, government military spending increased in all five geographical regions, Sipri thinktank finds
Global military expenditure has reached a record high of $2440bn (£1970bn) after the largest annual rise in government spending on arms in over a decade, according to a report.
The 6.8% increase between 2022 and 2023 was the steepest since 2009, pushing spending to the highest recorded by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) in its 60-year history.
Continue reading...Lords also press ministers to allow independent Rwanda monitoring as deportation bill returns to Commons
Rishi Sunak’s government is considering concessions on the Rwanda deportation bill to allow exemptions for Afghans who served alongside UK forces, parliamentary sources say.
Ministers are also being pressed to give ground to an amendment to the legislation so that the east African country could be ruled unsafe by a monitoring committee.
Continue reading...Joe Biden is believed to have urged restraint, and Tehran deems the matter ‘concluded’ but ultimately Israel’s response lies in the hands of three prickly rivals in its war cabinet
The prospect of a major regional war in the Middle East hangs in the balance on Sunday morning, when Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet is due to meet to decide Israel’s response to Iran’s drone and missile attack.
Netanyahu’s ministers voted in the middle of the night to delegate that decision to the tiny war cabinet, comprising Netanyahu, defence minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, a Netanyahu opponent who joined the government as minister without portfolio after the Hamas 7 October attack, which began the spiral of violence that has brought Israel and Iran to the brink of war.
Continue reading...Whoever wins the next election, a reckoning is overdue on the costs of Britain’s nuclear deterrent
When Rishi Sunak visited Barrow-in-Furness on Monday he said the Cumbrian town was “mission critical for our country” because of its role building four new nuclear submarines to carry the UK’s nuclear weapons. If you believe Sunak’s erstwhile ally, Dominic Cummings, then that mission faces serious problems.
Cummings, once Boris Johnson’s most powerful adviser, said this month – in characteristically aggressive terms – that spiralling costs were making a mockery of the government’s budget plans. He wrote on X: “the nuclear enterprise is so fkd [sic] it’s further cannibalising the broken budgets and will for decades because it’s been highly classified to avoid MPs thinking about it.”
Continue reading...Johnny Mercer given 10 days to reveal source of claims British troops engaged in war crimes
The minister for veterans’ affairs, Johnny Mercer, has been given 10 days to reveal the source of allegations British troops engaged in war crimes in Afghanistan, or face a potential prison sentence.
Mercer in effect admitted last month in front of the public inquiry into the claims that he believed members of the SAS had engaged in dozens of unlawful killings of Afghan civilians between 2010 and 2013.
Continue reading...Survey finds many ex-military personnel fear being misunderstood and are reluctant to seek professional help
More than half of England’s army veterans have experienced mental or physical health issues since returning to civilian life, and some are reluctant to share their experiences, a survey has revealed.
The survey of 4,910 veterans, commissioned jointly by the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) and the Office for Veterans’ Affairs (OVA), found that 55% have experienced a health issue potentially related to their service since leaving the armed forces. Over 80% of respondents said their condition had got worse since returning to civilian life.
Continue reading...Prime ministers to examine plans to confiscate billions of euros in interest from frozen Russian assets and send the money to Kyiv
EU leaders are to meet in Brussels to discuss ways to radically increase military and financial support for Ukraine amid calls for member states to put their economies “on a war footing”.
Fuelled by what one diplomat said was a new “sense of urgency and immediacy” over the war in Ukraine, rhetoric on Moscow has notably hardened in the past few days.
Continue reading...Harris had longstanding relationship with ABTSS, later alleged by British prosecutors to have handled or received illegal payments
One of the largest military contractors in the US paid commissions to a Saudi company later alleged to have been a conduit for bribes for the kingdom’s royal family.
A document disclosed in a UK criminal trial revealed that Harris Corporation, now L3Harris, paid commissions to the Saudi company for over two decades for services in the kingdom.
Continue reading...Aerospace group chief executive urges UK and Europe to pool efforts and merge fighter jet programmes
Europe is unprepared for war with Russia or the risk that Donald Trump could withdraw the US from Nato and needs to ramp up spending on defence equipment, the boss of Airbus has said.
Guillaume Faury, the chief executive of Europe’s biggest aerospace and defence company, said it was a “defining moment” for the continent’s defence industry, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought war to western Europe’s borders.
Continue reading...Victims’ families say Jon Boutcher’s report into British spy proves state and IRA were ‘co-conspirators’ in murder
The police chief who led the inquiry into a murderous British spy in the IRA known as Stakeknife has condemned MI5 for stalling his investigation, as his report was hailed by victims’ families as proof that the British state and the IRA had been “co-conspirators” in murder.
Jon Boutcher criticised attempts “to undermine me and the investigation” and spoke of a delay strategy deployed by the secret services as he revealed that agent Stakeknife had probably killed more people than he saved in the service of the British state.
The army’s claim that Stakeknife saved “hundreds” of lives was “implausible”, “rooted in fables and fairy tales” and should have rung “alarm bells”. He said it was probable that the handling of Stakeknife “resulted in more lives being lost than saved”.
Stakeknife was involved in “very serious and wholly unjustifiable criminality, including murder”.
There were several cases of murder where the security forces had advance intelligence but did not intervene in order to protect sources.
Boutcher had “extremely fractious spells” with the secret services. He was forced to hold several meetings with MI5 to raise “concerns regarding access to information, its decision to classify as ‘top secret’ an accumulation of ‘secret’ documents, the fact that solicitors representing former security force personnel had been given greater and unorthodox access to MI5 materials and my concern that its strategy was one of delay”.
When Operation Kenova tried to submit evidence files in October 2019 to prosecutors on Scappaticci and members of the security services relating to cases of murder, abduction and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, that “MI5 informed us that the building’s security accreditation had expired and we therefore could not proceed”. The evidence was finally submitted in February 2020.
Continue reading...Documents show officials stressing need to ‘keep the Saudis on side’ after revelations about notorious al-Yamamah deal
Britain’s Ministry of Defence moved questionable payments through its own bank account amid one of the biggest corruption scandals in history, despite concerns the money could be pocketed by the Saudi royal family.
Previously confidential documents show how the MoD agreed to make the payments to a Saudi bank account after the transactions came under scrutiny following an investigation by the UK anti-corruption agency, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
Continue reading...Revelations about payments by Ministry of Defence are culmination of decades of British deal-making with Saudis
The revelation that the Ministry of Defence paid millions of pounds to a firm that would later be accused of being a conduit for secret payments to high-ranking Saudi officials is the culmination of a scandal that has been half a century in the making.
The £8m paid from an MoD bank account between 2014 and 2017 was in connection with a large defence deal, Sangcom, first struck in the 1970s.
Continue reading...Project Arrow contract signed amid scramble to keep on track £1.6bn defence deal and ran until at least 2017
The UK Ministry of Defence paid millions of pounds to a company later alleged to have been a conduit for secret payments to high-ranking Saudi Arabian officials including a member of the royal family.
The MoD payments, worth £8m, were made under a contract codenamed Project Arrow that ran until at least 2017, according to documents that surfaced in a criminal trial.
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