Starmer implies he didn’t tell Trump he was ‘fed up’ about his impact on rising UK energy bills – as it happened

Prime minister says conversation with US president on Thursday night focused on need for ‘practical plan’ to open strait of Hormuz

Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, has joined those saying the government should allow drilling for oil and gas in the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields in the North Sea.

Both applications were approved by the last Conservative government, but then overturned by a court ruling. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has to make a decision about the revised applications operating in a quasi-judicial capacity, which means he has to follow due process and can’t take the decision purely on political ground.

The current debate [on energy policy] is deadlocked between two incomplete responses. The government argues the answer is to accelerate Clean Power 2030, focusing on decarbonising the electricity system as quickly as possible. The opposition argues that the answer is to expand domestic oil and gas production. Both positions contain elements of truth, but neither addresses the core strategic problem: outside the power sector the UK economy remains overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels, and electricity is still too expensive to support mass electrification.

The UK is caught in a self-reinforcing high-cost, low-electrification trap. High electricity costs suppress demand, slowing the uptake of electric vehicles, heat pumps and industrial electrification. Weak demand growth, in turn, means that the fixed costs of the system – from networks to long-term contracts – are spread across a smaller base, keeping prices high. The result is a system that is too expensive to electrify and therefore remains dependent on fossil fuels and exposed to global shocks …

The first of these vital measures will ban anyone from possessing or publishing harmful pornography that shows incest between family members, and sex between step or foster relations where one person is pretending to be under 18.

A further amendment will criminalise the publication and possession of pornography where an adult is roleplaying as a child.

This government is uncompromising in our mission to protect women and girls online, and we have taken action to stop tech firms from publishing this abusive content.

In February, we told platforms that they must remove reported non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours.

I greatly welcome the government’s plans to fully address harmful pornographic content such as incest, step-incest and the mimicking of child sexual abuse. This content that is freely and widely available online is deeply harmful, normalising child sexual abuse and abusive relationships within families …

Today the government has answered our calls for change, and I am delighted that once again the UK is leading the way on regulating this high harm industry.

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Israel’s attacks on Lebanon should not be happening, says Keir Starmer

In article for Guardian, PM also calls for Iran conflict to become watershed moment for future UK security

Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon “shouldn’t be happening”, Keir Starmer has said on his visit to the Middle East, as he called for the Iran conflict to become a watershed moment for the future security of the UK.

In an article for the Guardian, the prime minister said the UK’s response to the crisis must involve a fundamental reset in terms of making the country more resilient, including by boosting defence and having closer links to Europe.

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UK navy foiled Russian submarines surveying undersea cables, defence minister says

John Healey says warship and aircraft forced Russia to abandon activity in North Sea in month-long operation

A British warship and aircraft tracked and monitored Russian submarines trying to survey vital undersea infrastructure in the North Atlantic, ensuring they fled the area, the defence secretary, John Healey, has said.

Speaking at a Downing Street press conference, Healey said the UK operation lasted more than a month and saw a Royal Navy warship and P8 marine patrol aircraft “track and deter any malign activity” by three Russian submarines.

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UK sends more troops to Gulf amid Trump jibes over British military role

John Healey says extra deployment is defensive response to ‘expanding threat’ from Iran

The UK is sending more military support to the Gulf, taking the total deployment to 1,000 troops, amid more jibes from Donald Trump about Britain’s refusal to get involved in offensive operations against Iran.

Speaking from Qatar where he met UK troops, the defence secretary, John Healey, said the extra deployment was in response to an “expanding threat” from Iran.

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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.

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Putin’s ‘hidden hand’ lies behind Iran’s drone tactics, UK defence secretary says

Pilots reportedly adopting Russian tactics as statement in name of new Iranian supreme leader vows continued attacks on US bases

Vladimir Putin’s “hidden hand” lies behind Iran’s military methods, the UK defence secretary has said, after a night in which drones struck a base used by western forces in Erbil, northern Iraq.

John Healey was speaking after British officers at the UK’s military headquarters in north-west London told him that drone pilots from Iran and Iranian proxies were increasingly adopting tactics “from the Russians”.

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Foreign Office starts planning evacuation of thousands of Britons in Middle East

About 200,000 nationals thought to be in the region as tensions rise after US-Israeli attacks on Iranian regime

The Foreign Office is drawing up plans to evacuate tens of thousands of British citizens if war in the Middle East escalates, with many travellers currently stranded in Dubai.

Keir Starmer said on Sunday that about 200,000 British people are in the region, on holiday or otherwise travelling across the Gulf. He urged everyone in areas targeted by Iranian strikes to register with the Foreign Office to receive advice, with about 94,000 doing that so far.

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Allegations about Farage’s conduct as schoolboy ‘disturbing’, says No 10 – UK politics live

The Guardian spoke to more than a dozen contemporaries of Farage at Dulwich college, a public school in south London

Healey is now taking questions.

Q: How close are are we to war?

It is Labour that is the party of defence.

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Britain sends small number of troops to monitor Gaza ceasefire

Defence secretary says UK will play ‘anchor role’ in US-led civil military coordination centre

British troops have been sent to Israel to help monitor the ceasefire in Gaza after a request from the US.

The defence secretary, John Healey, announced the deployment of a small number of planning officers, including a senior commander, at an event on Monday night. He said the UK would play an “anchor role”. Ten days ago the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the UK had “no plans” to send soldiers to Gaza.

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RAF Typhoon jets ready to shoot down drones over Poland, UK says

‘Nato is responding with unity and strength’ to Russian threats, says John Healey

RAF Typhoon jets will be deployed within days to shoot down drones over Poland and other Nato allies in eastern Europe if necessary, after last week’s incursion of 19 uncrewed Russian aircraft into Poland.

The British fighters, based at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, will join Nato’s new Eastern Sentry mission working alongside French, German and Danish counterparts who are acting as reinforcements for Dutch F-35s and Polish F-16s.

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Shabana Mahmood to host Five Eyes meeting on people-smuggling

New home secretary will be joined in London by counterparts from US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand

Shabana Mahmood, the new home secretary, will host a meeting of the Five Eyes security alliance to discuss how to stop people-smuggling, as the number of migrants arriving in the UK after crossing the channel topped 30,000 in record time on Sunday.

Mahmood is to be joined in London by Kristi Noem, the US secretary of state for homeland security, as well as interior ministers from Australia, Canada and New Zealand – the other member countries of the intelligence-sharing pact.

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Wallace rejects claim Afghans with ‘tenuous’ links to UK admitted as ex-Tory minister says resettlement scheme was ‘hapless’ – live

Johnny Mercer, former veterans minister, sharply critical of how Afghan resettlement programme handled

In an interview with LBC Ben Wallace, the former Tory defence secretary, hit back at his former ministerial colleague Johnny Mercer rather more forcefully than he did on the Today programme (see 8.09am) over Mercer’s comments about the Afghan resettlement programme.

Tom Swarbrick, the presenter, quoted what Mercer said about how this “whole farcical process has been the most hapless display of ineptitude by successive ministers and officials that I saw in my time in government”.

No, I don’t agree with it. I think my record would show the opposite. It was me and Priti Patel, before the collapse of Kabul, who decided we were going to accelerate bringing people back who were under threat …

People hadn’t come out before. And we made sure that we did this. I think what Johnny, you know, fails to grasp, is quite the massive scale of collapse that happened very quickly in Afghanistan, leaving people at risk, and we had to do our very best.

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No automatic right to resettlement for Afghans in data leak, says Healey

Defence secretary says it was ‘never the plan to bring everyone’ on dataset to UK, while Ben Wallace denies Tories sought superinjunction

The defence secretary, John Healey, has said there is no automatic right to resettlement for Afghans named in a leaked Ministry of Defence database, as the former Conservative ministers Ben Wallace and Johnny Mercer clashed over whether “thousands of people with little or tenuous links” had been admitted to Britain.

The controversy revolves around a dataset containing the personal information of nearly 19,000 people who applied for the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap) that was released “in error” in February 2022 by a British defence official.

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Keir Starmer refuses to set date for UK to spend 3% of GDP on defence

PM says he will not indulge in ‘performative fantasy politics’ before launching strategic defence review

Keir Starmer has refused to give a date for the UK to spend at least 3% of GDP on defence, saying he would not indulge in “performative fantasy politics”, as he prepared to launch the government’s strategic defence review.

Speaking at a defence facility in Scotland, the prime minister said his commitment to hit 2.5% of GDP on defence spending from 2027 showed he was serious about the issue, but that he could not go further without fiscal certainty.

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UK plans to build six weapons factories to bolster military readiness

Plans for £1.5bn investment in munitions manufacturing response to government’s defence review’s call to boost stockpiles

The UK will spend £1.5bn on building six munitions and energetics factories to “better deter our adversaries” as part of its long-awaited strategic defence review.

John Healey, the defence secretary, said the funds formed part of plans for an “always-on” weapons pipeline and would support the procurement of up to 7,000 UK-built long-range weapons.

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UK launches Yemen airstrikes, joining US campaign against Houthi rebels

RAF jets target buildings used to make drones, officials say, in Britain’s first involvement since Trump took office

British fighter jets joined their US counterparts in airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels overnight, the first military action authorised by the Labour government and the first UK participation in an aggressive American bombing campaign against the group.

RAF Typhoons, refuelled by Voyager air tankers, targeted a cluster of buildings 15 miles south of the capital, Sana’a, which the UK said were used by the Houthis to manufacture drones that had targeted shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

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Ukraine allies promise €21bn in military support for Kyiv

Ukraine defence contact group accuses Putin of dragging his feet over deal and Trump urges Russia to ‘get moving’

Ukraine’s allies have announced a record €21bn (£18.2bn) in additional military support for Kyiv and accused Vladimir Putin of dragging his feet and delaying US-led negotiations over a ceasefire deal.

Speaking at a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group in Brussels, the British defence secretary, John Healey, said the Russian president had rejected a 30-day pause in fighting proposed a month ago by Donald Trump.

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Cooper says five grooming gang inquiries to go ahead after Tories claim they’ve been dropped in ‘cover up’ – as it happened

This blog is now closed, you can read more on this story here

During her BBC Breakfast interview Kemi Badenoch claimed that the government has dropped the plans for five local inquiries into grooming gang, or child rape scandals, that were announced in January. As she was trying to fend of the questions about Adolescence, she said:

One of the things that I’m more bothered by is the fact that just yesterday, we had Labour telling us that they’re not going to be investigating the rape gang scandal, something which had happened all across the country. That’s real. That’s happening right now. We’re not talking about that.

I am absolutely astonished that Labour has dropped what it said it would do in January. And, as I said to Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions, if he did not have a full national inquiry, people will start to think that there is a cover-up.

They are clearly uncomfortable with having inquiries that are looking into this issue.

As a rule I believe in mess ups rather than conspiracy.

But if true that Labour have shelved even the most limited public enquiries into grooming gangs, it does suggest that powerful Labour politicians have something to hide.

We are developing a new best practice framework to support local authorities that want to undertake victim-centred local inquiries or related work, drawing on the lessons from local independent inquiries such as those in Telford, Rotherham and Greater Manchester. We will publish the details next month.

Alongside that, we will set out the process through which local authorities can access the £5m national fund to support locally-led work on grooming gangs. Following feedback from local authorities, the fund will adopt a flexible approach to support both full independent local inquiries and more bespoke work, including local victims’ panels or locally led audits of the handling of historical cases.

There’s a huge information about this. This is completely wrong. We’re actually increasing, not reducing, the action being taken on this.

Child sexual exploitation, grooming gangs – these are some of the most vile crimes, things like rape or exploitation, coercion. We’re increasing the action against that.

I think that those are all important issues, and those were issues that I’ve been talking about for a long time.

But in the same way that I don’t need to watch Casualty to know what’s going on in the NHS, I don’t need to watch a specific Netflix drama to understand what’s going on. It’s a fictional series. It is not a documentary.

I’m saying very clearly that my job is not to watch lots of TV. My job is to get out there and make sure that I’m talking about the issues that are happening in the country right now.

Badenoch in the right. Stop basing public policy on telly

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Defence secretary meets family of Kenyan woman allegedly killed by British soldiers

Relatives of Agnes Wanjiru say 13-year fight for justice has taken ‘heavy toll’ after meeting with John Healey

The family of a Kenyan woman who was allegedly killed by British soldiers have said their 13-year fight for justice has taken a “heavy toll”, and that they have been offered “too many empty promises” after a meeting with the defence secretary.

Agnes Wanjiru was 21 when she disappeared in March 2012. She was last seen in the company of British soldiers in a bar in a hotel in Nanyuki, a town in eastern Kenya where the British army has a military base, BATUK.

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250,000 more people will face relative poverty after Rachel Reeves’ benefits cuts, DWP says – spring statement live

Department for Work and Pensions says thousands, including children, will be hit by chancellor’s announcement, as OBR forecasts UK growth to halve in 2025

Rachel Reeves will not be raising taxes in the spring statement today, even though there are many people on the left who would prefer taxes to rise as an alternative to public spending being cut. Reeves came into office promising only one budget-type event a year, and that is one reason why she is not hiking taxes today. But mainly it’s because she thinks Britons are relatively highly taxed already, because Labour was elected on a manifesto ruling out most of the obvious possible tax rises and because she’s not convinced a sweeping wealth tax would work.

But that has not stopped campaigners calling for a wealth tax, and yesterday about 300 people attended a ‘Tax the Super-Rich’ rally outside the Treasury. It was organised by charities and social justice campaign groups, but one of the speakers was Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Green party, which is in favour of a wealth tax.

Across the country, inequality is soaring and people are being left behind, struggling to make ends meet and dealing with broken public services, all while the very richest get richer. Choosing to make cut after cut to the poorest and most marginalised, while leaving the vast resource of the extreme wealth of the super rich untouched, is immoral, harmful, and will not deliver for our communities or the economy.

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