Category Archives: Liz Truss

Jersey issues 49 more fishing licences to French boats amid row

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Officials from France and UK to meet in Brussels after threats from both sides in post-Brexit dispute

Jersey has issued another 49 licences to French boats in an apparent attempt to de-escalate a post-Brexit row over fishing rights in which the UK and France have issued tit-for-tat threats.

The Jersey government said it was allowing another round of temporary licences until the end of January to allow time for new arrangements to be put in place, as the two sides prepared to meet to try to resolve the row.

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Conversion therapy to be restricted but not banned in proposed bill

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Equalities minister Liz Truss will consult on plans to allow counselling for non-vulnerable adults

Consenting adults should be able to undergo so-called conversion therapy, the government has recommended.

Setting out proposals for how they plan to crack down on “coercive and abhorrent” practices that seek to change sexual orientation or gender identity, the Government Equalities Office said: “We recognise there is a plurality of experience in this area and that there are adults who seek counselling to help them live a life that they feel is more in line with their personal beliefs.”

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband on second hunger strike in effort to free her

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Richard Ratcliffe seeks to persuade Foreign Office to do more to secure wife’s release from prison in Iran

The husband of the jailed British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has gone on hunger strike for a second time in an attempt to persuade the UK foreign secretary to do more to bring his wife back from detention in Iran. His hunger strike is to take place outside the Foreign Office in London.

Richard Ratcliffe took the radical step in desperation after the Iranian authorities said earlier this month that Nazanin had lost her appeal against a second prison sentence. She will return to jail for another year, and then subject to a travel ban for a further year after that.

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Britain must repay £400m debt and lift sanctions, Tehran tells Liz Truss

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UK meeting with Iranian foreign secretary coincides with 2,000th day of detention for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Britain should repay its four decade-old £400m debt to Iran and take serious steps to lift sanctions, Iran has told the British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, in the first meeting between the two countries at foreign secretary level since 2018.

Truss’s meeting with Hossein Amir-Abdollahian came in the week that the British-Iranian dual national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe marked her 2,000th day in detention in Iran. She is now staying with her mother in Iran, pending an appeal on her additional sentence of one year.

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Brazilian minister tests positive for Covid after meeting maskless Johnson

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Marcelo Queiroga sat close to Boris Johnson and Liz Truss at New York meeting

Brazil’s health minister, Marcelo Queiroga, has tested positive for Covid and gone into isolation, 24 hours after meeting a maskless Boris Johnson and other British officials in New York.

Queiroga, who sat close to Johnson and the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, on Monday during their meeting with Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, announced his positive test on Twitter on Tuesday night.

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Baptism of fire as Liz Truss heads to US amid submarine row

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As France accuses the US and Australia of ‘lies and duplicity’, new UK foreign secretary faces major diplomatic incident on her first official overseas trip

Liz Truss is heading for a furious diplomatic confrontation with France on her first trip abroad as foreign secretary, as anger mounts in Paris over the cancellation of a £48bn nuclear submarine contract.

Truss, whose appointment was one of the biggest surprises of Boris Johnson’s cabinet reshuffle last Wednesday, will arrive in the US on Sunday before a four-day visit to New York and Washington during which she is aiming to promote the prime minister’s vision of “global Britain” to international leaders.

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‘A perfect storm’: UK beet growers fear Brexit threatens their future

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They produce half the country’s sugar needs, but expect new trade deals to make their tough situation worse

In a field in Norfolk, the sight of lush green leaves sprouting from the soil are giving farmer Ed Lankfer cause for optimism. “I think this is one of the best crops we have ever grown,” he says, surveying one of his fields of sugar beet.

The signs are promising so far for this year’s harvest – known in the trade as a campaign – which takes place later than for other crops, during the autumn and winter. It would mark quite the turnaround from 2020’s terrible harvest, when bad weather and pests caused yields of the white sugar-yielding root to plummet by as much as 60%, leaving Lankfer with a £12,000 loss.

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UK expected to offer post-Brexit trade deal to Australia

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Gradual tariff-free deal will be victory for free-trade Brexiters but will likely alarm UK farmers

UK ministers are expected to offer Australia a trade deal which will gradually eliminate all tariffs and quotas, one seen as a victory for free-trade Brexiters in the cabinet but likely to prompt alarm among UK farmers.

Downing Street did not deny reports on Friday that the likely offer to Australia would be a transition to zero quotas and tariffs over 15 years, although insisted discussions were still taking place.

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UK may help EU before domestic vaccination programme complete, says Liz Truss

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Trade secretary had previously hinted supplies may not be diverted until UK population was vaccinated

The UK could help the EU and other nations with coronavirus vaccine supplies even before the domestic vaccination programme has been completed, the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, has said.

As ministers sought to smooth relations with Brussels after the EU’s much-criticised and swiftly rescinded decision to impose a vaccine border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, Truss sought to stress the need for international cooperation.

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Liz Truss: we will vaccinate people in UK before helping other countries – video

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The UK can help EU nations with coronavirus vaccine supplies, the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, has said, but only if it does not affect the government’s timetable for vaccinating its own population. She told Sky News's Sophy Ridge: 'We first need to make sure that our population is vaccinated ... It’s a bit too early to say how we would deploy vaccines but we certainly want to work with friends and neighbours, we want to work with developing countries'

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UK to apply to join free trade pact with nations on other side of world

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Liz Truss to seek to join 11-nation trans-Pacific partnership, whose nearest member is 3,000 miles away

The British government is to formally apply to join a mammoth free-trade pact that includes Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand now that it has left the EU.

Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, will ask to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) when she speaks to ministers in Japan and New Zealand on Monday.

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UK and Canada to trade on EU terms after Brexit transition

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Conservative government says agreement paves the way for new bespoke deal with Canada

The UK and Canada have agreed to continue trading under the same terms as the current EU agreement after the Brexit transition period ends.

The Conservative government said the agreement paved the way for negotiations to begin next year on a new comprehensive deal with Canada, which has long been trumpeted as one of the benefits of the UK leaving the EU.

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UK trade department faces race to get £80bn of trade agreements ratified

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Deals to ensure UK can go on trading with non-EU countries after Brexit transition must be laid before MPs by Wednesday

Liz Truss’s Department for International Trade (DIT) is scrambling to meet a Wednesday deadline for tabling £80bn of trade agreements before parliament, in time for them to come into force in January under standard procedures.

Truss’s department has signed a string of “continuity agreements” to ensure the UK can go on trading with non-EU countries on similar terms, when the Brexit transition period comes to an end on 31 December.

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UK government hails ‘historic’ trade deal with Japan

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Agreement in principle comes as Britain races to secure deals before Brexit transition ends

Japan and the UK have agreed a “historic” free trade deal, as Britain races to secure easy access to overseas markets as it prepares to leave the European Union.

“This is a historic moment for the UK and Japan as our first major post-Brexit trade deal,” Liz Truss, the international trade secretary, said after a video call on Friday with the Japanese foreign minister, Toshimitsu Motegi.

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Love of Stilton drives wedge between UK and Japan in post-Brexit trade talks

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Consensus crumbles after Liz Truss reportedly sought to make the cheese a part of negotiations

Having promised to rush through a post-Brexit trade deal, Japan and Britain made significant progress only to discover that the fate of Stilton has driven a wedge between them.

During recent talks in London, international trade secretary Liz Truss and the Japanese foreign minister, Toshimitsu Motegi, reached a “substantial” preliminary agreement on trade, promising to conclude a preliminary deal by the end of this month.

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UK close to securing post-Brexit ‘continuity’ trade deal with Japan

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Both sides seeking deal to secure continuous trade once Brexit implemented on 1 January

The UK is close to sealing a “continuity” trade deal with Japan that will mirror that of the EU pact that Britain will no longer be part of next January.

But in order to strike an agreement in time for it to be ratified by the Japanese parliament, the international trade secretary, Liz Truss, has had to drop her ambitions for preferential treatment for British food exports.

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Liz Truss warns Boris Johnson over Brexit border plans

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International trade secretary tells PM and chancellor plans risk smuggling and damage to UK reputation

An extraordinary cabinet row has erupted over Brexit with Liz Truss warning that Boris Johnson’s border plans risk smuggling, damage to the UK’s international reputation and could face a legal challenge from the World Trade Organization.

The international trade secretary wrote to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and Michael Gove on Wednesday warning of four “key areas of concern” over their plans for the border next January.

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Britain to resume sale of arms to Saudi Arabia despite Yemen fears

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Official review finds airstrikes on civilians were ‘isolated incidents’

Britain is to resume the sales of arms to Saudi Arabia that could be used in the Yemeni conflict just over a year after the court of appeal ruled them unlawful because ministers had not properly assessed the risk to civilian casualties.

In a written statement, the trade secretary, Liz Truss, said sales would restart after an official review concluded there had been only “isolated incidents” of airstrikes in Yemen that breached humanitarian law.

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UK accused of selling arms to Saudi Arabia a year after court ban

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British firms fulfilling fighter jet contracts which enable kingdom to wage war in Yemen, despite the trade being ruled unlawful

The government stands accused of ignoring a landmark court ruling restricting UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

In a judgment handed down a year ago, the court of appeal ruled it was “unlawful” for the government to have allowed the sale of arms to the kingdom for use in Yemen, where independent estimates suggest a Saudi-led coalition has been responsible for the deaths of more than 8,000 civilians since 2015.

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