Guardian understands early drafts of UK government’s autumn statement include at least £35bn reduction in spending
Jeremy Hunt will set out tax rises and spending cuts totalling £60bn at the autumn statement under current plans, including at least £35bn in cuts, the Guardian understands.
Ministers must submit the key points of the autumn statement to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) by Monday morning.
Continue reading...Angry at not being invited to the Queen’s funeral, minister sent string of abusive texts
Gavin Williamson is facing an investigation over a series of abusive and threatening messages sent to the then Tory chief whip complaining he had been excluded from the Queen’s funeral.
The cabinet minister, who was a backbencher at the time, accused Wendy Morton of using the death of the monarch to “punish” senior MPs who were out of favour with Liz Truss’s government.
Continue reading...Protest by People’s Assembly campaign group will also call for action on the cost of living crisis
Thousands of people are expected to hold a demonstration in London on Saturday, demanding an immediate general election, as well as action to combat the worsening cost of living crisis.
Trade unions and community organisations will take part in the protest, which will include a march around parliament, said its organisers, the People’s Assembly campaign group.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Indian firm from which Rishi Sunak’s wife collects £11.5m in annual dividends retains staffed Moscow office
The Indian IT services company Infosys from which the prime minister’s wife collects £11.5m in annual dividends is still operating from Moscow eight months after the company said it was pulling out.
The company retains a staffed office and is paying subcontractors in the Russian capital to carry out IT services for a global client although a spokesperson said they were looking to end that arrangement.
Continue reading...Bamford family has contributed almost £50,000 to former PM’s lifestyle since July, register of MPs’ interests shows
Boris Johnson has accepted another £10,000 of accommodation from the Bamford family, taking their contributions to his lifestyle to almost £50,000 since he resigned as Conservative leader.
The former prime minister registered the additional gift from Lady Carole Bamford, for “concessionary use of accommodation for me and my family in October”.
Continue reading...Chris Philp’s comments spark row as government faces pressure to fix ‘chaos’ at Manston refugee centre
No 10 has distanced itself from a Home Office minister’s remarks that it is “a bit of cheek” for asylum seekers to complain about the conditions at immigration processing centres.
The government has come under criticism for allowing 4,000 people to be held at the Manston centre, a short-term holding facility in Kent, which is designed to hold no more than 1,600 asylum seekers for only a few days.
Continue reading...Mayor tells Suella Braverman of his shock at people from Manston facility being left cold and hungry in capital
Suella Braverman is facing demands from Sadiq Khan to launch an urgent review of how dozens of people once held in Manston holding centre were abandoned without food or accommodation in the capital.
The mayor of London has also raised concerns with the home secretary that overcrowding and poor safeguarding in hotels housing people seeking asylum has led to reports of sexual assaults against children.
Continue reading...Officials are also looking at incorporating cut in tax-free allowance for dividends into autumn statement
Treasury officials are examining whether the autumn statement could include changes to non-dom status and moves to raise taxes on dividends by cutting tax-free allowances.
No final decisions have been taken but Whitehall sources said options were being examined by the Treasury’s high net worth individuals policy team.
Continue reading...Exclusive: CT Group, co-owned by Lynton Crosby, planned secretive African campaign on behalf of Canadian mining giant
A lobbying firm with deep ties to the Conservative party planned a secretive campaign to influence elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in exchange for millions of pounds from a mining company.
Leaked documents suggest the influential firm co-owned by the veteran Tory strategist Sir Lynton Crosby agreed to help the mining company swing a presidential election in the central African country.
Continue reading...Palestinian mission in UK welcomes statement, which appears to put end to review ordered by Liz Truss
Rishi Sunak has abandoned moves initiated by Liz Truss to relocate Britain’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Downing Street has confirmed.
Truss, when she was prime minister, ordered a review into whether the UK should follow the Trump administration in moving the embassy from Tel Aviv.
Continue reading...Edi Rama urges ministers to ‘stop discriminating’ after Suella Braverman’s ‘Albanian criminals’ comments in Commons
The Albanian prime minister has accused Rishi Sunak’s government of using his country’s citizens as scapegoats for failed immigration policies after critical comments by Suella Braverman about Albanian asylum seekers.
Edi Rama wrote that the UK was falsely targeting Albanians “as the cause of Britain’s crime and border problems”. In a series of tweets, he called for the UK to “fight the crime gangs of all nationalities and stop discriminating [against] Albanians”.
Continue reading...UK prime minister says he will now attend talks in Egypt next week
Rishi Sunak has reversed on his decision to skip Cop27 and will attend the climate summit in Egypt next week.
“There is no long-term prosperity without action on climate change,” the prime minister said.
Continue reading...Roger Gale says home secretary is only really interested in playing to the right wing of the Conservative party
JK Rowling has described the SNP MSP who quit the Scottish government in a row over plans to allow self-identification for transgender people as a “heroine”.
The author, who is known as a vocal critic of the reforms, praised Ash Regan, saying: “This is what a principled politician looks like.”
Her comments on Twitter came after Regan stood down as community safety minister in the Scottish government. She said then that her conscience would not allow her to vote for the gender recognition reform (Scotland) bill, quitting her ministerial post just hours before it faced its first vote at Holyrood.
Rowling, who has previously tweeted a picture of herself wearing a T-shirt calling Scotland’s First Minister a “destroyer of women’s rights” took to social media to praise Ms Regan.
The Harry Potter author wrote: “This is what a principled politician looks like. @AshtenRegan will rightly be seen as a heroine when future generations of Scottish women look back at the profoundly misogynistic legislation currently being pushed through by the Sturgeon government.”
Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, said she imagines policymakers in France and Germany would look at the UK immigration numbers and “wondering what the fuss is about”.
She said the backlog had increased because, as numbers have risen, capacity for decision-making not increased and there are fewer asylum claim decisions being made over the last year or so than before the pandemic.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
The UK experienced a period for most of the 2010s where there were actually very low numbers of asylum claims by historical standards.
Continue reading...Action taken by party against former minister after it emerges he is to appear on reality TV show
The former cabinet minister Matt Hancock has had the Tory whip suspended after it emerged he was entering the jungle for I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!
The politician will be the 12th contestant to enter the show, which features famous faces performing gruelling tasks such as being smothered in insects or eating kangaroo penis.
Continue reading...Mark Spencer spoke of possibility ‘some little man in China’ could be listening in to his conversations
A UK government minister has been criticised for using a “crass and archaic” trope when talking about Chinese people during a broadcast interview.
The environment minister Mark Spencer referred to the possibility that “some little man in China” could be listening in to his conversations when discussing reports a device belonging to the former prime minister and foreign secretary Liz Truss had been compromised by foreign agents.
Continue reading...Unsecured mobiles, email accounts and WhatsApp chats could pose national security risk, intelligence experts warn
Ministers risk creating “wild west” conditions in matters of national security by the increased use of personal email and phones to conduct confidential business, intelligence experts and former officials have warned.
After a week tainted by a row over the use of a personal email account by the home secretary, it was revealed on Sunday that Liz Truss’s mobile is alleged to have been hacked by overseas agents.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak’s arrival in Downing Street is already helping to repair the party’s reputation for financial management
Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives have overturned Labour’s lead in terms of who voters trust most to manage the economy, a new poll for the Observer has revealed.
The new prime minister is currently drawing up tax rises and spending cuts designed to fill a £40bn fiscal hole left by Liz Truss’s disastrous time in Downing Street, with warnings that any significant attempt to cut Whitehall budgets will lead to huge pressure on public services. It comes with new analysis revealing that freezing public service spending would save £20bn but would also lead to a return to the austerity of the 2010s.
Continue reading...Reinstalled levelling up secretary says he understands public anger at party’s choice of Truss and her tax cuts for the rich
Michael Gove has said the Conservative party owes the public an apology for installing Liz Truss as leader.
Gove, who was reinstated as levelling up secretary by Rishi Sunak this week, acknowledged that the Tories “made the wrong choice this summer about the path we should take”.
Continue reading...Civil servants say there was ‘significant disquiet’ over home secretary Suella Braverman’s dealings with Tory rightwinger John Hayes
Home Office officials raised concerns over a series of secretive meetings Suella Braverman held with an influential rightwing backbench MP weeks before she was forced to resign over leaking sensitive information to him, the Observer has been told.
In addition, sources have claimed that the home secretary appears to have instructed officials to look at potentially implementing hardline proposals cooked up by a rightwing thinktank that would in effect prohibit “genuine refugees” from settling in the UK, a move that threatens an even more uncompromising approach to asylum seekers.
Continue reading...Breach discovered during Tory leadership in summer but details suppressed, the Mail on Sunday reports
The government has been urged to launch an urgent investigation after reports that Liz Truss’s phone was hacked.
The breach was discovered when Truss, then the foreign secretary, was running for the Tory leadership in the summer, but details were suppressed by the then-prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, the Mail on Sunday reported.
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