Housing secretary says Labour wants to reverse fortunes of towns plagued by boarded-up shops and rogue businesses
Angela Rayner has said voters will begin to see a difference in their high street before the next general election as Labour prioritises investment in struggling local communities.
The housing secretary said the government had made it a top priority before the country goes to the polls to begin turning around the fortunes of places blighted by boarded-up shops and rogue businesses.
Ex-energy secretary Ed Miliband’s agenda appears undermined as money is diverted from renewables to defence
Britain is unlikely to hit its targets on green heating after the cuts announced by John Healey this week, experts have warned, as critics of Ed Miliband claim the former energy secretary’s green agenda is being dismantled.
The chancellor unveiled more than £3bn worth of cuts to the energy department’s budget this week, much of which will pay for higher defence spending.
Force says ‘inquiries ongoing’ into visit to royal estate in Scotland, when Ghislaine Maxwell was also present
Detectives are investigating time spent by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the king’s private estate in Scotland.
Police Scotland said it had received “information” and an investigation was at a “very early stage” into the time the disgraced royal spent with the late child sex offender at Balmoral.
Wes Streeting says overseas suppliers of defence contracts will need to spend the equivalent amount in the UK
John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, and Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Welsh first minister, arrived together for the national economic council meeting in Glasgow. The SNP and Plaid Cymru are sister parties, and recently Swinney, ap Iorwerth and the Sinn Féin leaders Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill held a meeting in Cardiff that was characterised by opponents as a summit to dismantle the UK.
This is fromRhun ap Iorwerth, the Welsh first minister, summarising what he will be putting to Andy Burnham at their meeting in Glasgow today.
Today, I represent Wales at the National Economic Council in Glasgow.
This is an opportunity for the UK Prime Minister to prove his commitment to a respect agenda that works both ways.
UK house prices grew by an annual rate of just 0.5% in October, the slowest pace in more than two years, as higher mortgage rates put off potential buyers.
The average price for a property in the UK stood at £273,566 in October, flat on the previous month and down from 0.8% in the year to September, according to the lender Nationwide.
Prime minister says room for manoeuvre was limited by geopolitical crises and Labour’s 2024 manifesto
Andy Burnham has admitted his first budget as prime minister was not as radical as he would have liked because of the economic uncertainty facing the country.
He said he would have liked to have gone further with this week’s announcement – including with higher energy support payments – but felt hemmed in by external events such as the war in Iran, which has pushed up borrowing costs.
BP’s profits have hit their highest level in almost two decades, as the war in the Middle East drove up oil and gas prices and led to “significantly higher” trading.
The energy company hailed a “banner quarter” on Friday, with its underlying replacement cost profit – a key measure of its income – almost quadrupling to $8.46bn (£6.3bn), up from $2.2bn a year ago.
Home secretary’s colleagues fear homelessness will rise as a result of changes to the asylum system
Shabana Mahmood has infuriated ministerial colleagues by failing to share what they see as crucial information about the impact of her migration changes.
Sources say the home secretary has repeatedly refused to reveal how much she expects homelessness to rise as a result of changes to the asylum system.
Up to 1.4 million people could benefit from change to trading allowance announced in budget, with some saving hundreds in tax
The amount Britons can earn from a side hustle without paying tax will rise to £3,000 next year in a fillip for those who make extra cash from hobbies or reselling.
Up to 1.4 million people could benefit from the change announced in the budget, with the chancellor confirming the tax-free “trading” allowance will increase from £1,000 to £3,000 in April 2027.
Cross-party committee says ‘moonshot’ vow to end obesity epidemic in a decade will fail without personal leadership from PM
The UK government’s promise to reverse rising obesity rates in the next decade is “doomed to fail” without a major rethink and a new plan led directly by the prime minister, a cross-party committee of MPs has concluded.
The health and social care select committee said in a report that there are no signs the so-called “moonshot ambition on obesity”, set out in the 10-year health plan for England, will achieve anything significant.
Andy Burnham must tread cautiously, but Brexit was a very grave act of self-harm – and he is right to address it
Andy Burnham’s opening debate on whether Britain should rejoin the EU is divisive, painful and politically risky. That is why it should be welcomed. To jeopardise his popularity so soon after coming to office might seem reckless, but the issue is urgent and not going away. Brexit is continuing to damage the nation’s economy. The prime minister’s job is to challenge, if not reform it.
The Brexit decade has evoked a bizarre sense of guilt among Britons. Opinion polls show nearly 60% regard it as a mistake, with just a third still in favour. Almost a quarter of those who voted for Brexit now regret it. While early forecasts of economic disaster were proved wrong, the accumulated cost of cutting links with Britain’s biggest trading partner is estimated at 6-8% of GDP.
Conservative-run Hillingdon aims to save £100,000 but local people fear dog poo will ‘be dumped everywhere’
People in a west London borough fear it will become covered in dog poo after their cash-strapped council decided to remove 700 dog-waste bins to save money.
“People are worried there’s going to be dog shit everywhere,” said Daniel O’Neill, the chief road steward at Ruislip Residents’ Association.
Ryan Dinnage – who accompanied Reform UK leader on walkabouts before local elections – was later jailed, raising questions about vetting failure
One of Nigel Farage’s security team who accompanied him on the local election campaign trail this year was facing a rape charge and was later jailed for eight years, raising questions about a failure of vetting.
Ryan Dinnage spent time protecting Farage in April and May, but in June was convicted of having raped a woman while she slept in a caravan at the Royal Windsor horse show.
Paul Nowak says ‘hundreds, if not thousands’ of employers could sign access agreements as ‘transformative’ rules come into force
The TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak, is predicting a wave of union recognition deals in the private sector over the next year as “transformative” rules on accessing workplaces come into force.
From Friday, as part of Labour’s Employment Rights Act, unions will have the right to enter workplaces or communicate with staff electronically. From January, employers will be obliged to inform workers of their right to join a union.
Commons report calls on Foreign Office to bail out soft-power flagship reeling from job cuts and asset sales
Ministers should explore writing off a crippling £197m loan to the British Council by converting as much of it as possible into “a grant or similar”, MPs have said.
The Commons public accounts committee said the government lacked a “positive vision” for the council, whose soft power value to the UK is put at £1bn a year. The MPs called on the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to set out what more it could do to support the council and its work.
Report calls for an effort to tackle harms in similar way to obesity and smoking, and stresses need to ‘offer boys something better’
The manosphere and online misogyny should be treated by the government as a public health issue, in the same way as obesity or smoking, experts have said.
Writing in the Lancet, the authors of a new report argue that a coordinated response is needed, involving governments, schools, health services and community organisations, similar to the public-health response to tobacco use and ultra-processed food.
Security incident linked to performance-monitoring tool spurred platform to halt trading for about an hour
Polymarket temporarily halted trading on its international platform on Thursday because of a security incident that compromised a third-party provider, the company said.
Trading was paused for about an hour and resumed on Thursday afternoon. The company has promised to fully reimburse any affected traders.
Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British stage and screen actor renowned for both Shakespeare and sci-fi, has died. He was 86.
The Star Trek: the Next Generation and X-Men star died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia”, said Kelly Bush Novak, his longtime spokesperson, to the Hollywood Reporter.
Experts round on chancellor over ‘scattergun’ budget, saying he ducked big tax and spending decisions
John Healey has backed away from cutting the cost of welfare this parliament, amid dire warnings his first budget could lead to brutal spending cuts because of a £28bn shortfall in public finances.
Experts rounded on Healey’s steady-as-she-goes budget on Thursday, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies saying he had left himself a mountain to climb by ducking big tax and spending decisions.
The prime minister’s ambitions might be ambiguous, but unlike the Conservative leader, he is following voters and the facts
British politics is still polarised around Brexit, although 10 years on from the referendum, the terms of debate are very different. Or they should be. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has moved discussions of European solidarity from the realm of abstraction to a matter of urgent defence partnership. Donald Trump’s presidency in the US, marked by scorn for European democracies and indulgence of Vladimir Putin, has undermined confidence that Britain can rely on any “special relationship” with Washington.
Under these circumstances, it would be absurd to deny that a reappraisal of Brexit is in order. The prime minister acknowledged this in his speech at the Labour party conference last month, calling for a national conversation about the future relationship with every option, including rejoining, on the table. The Eurosceptic opposition are having none of it. The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, accuses the government of stirring division by raising the European question. She told MPs this week that Labour should thank the Tories for the Brexit deal they negotiated.
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