UK politics

UK politics

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office's (FCDO) migration and conflict directorate, which employs about 100 civil servants, is being abolished at the end of this year and its work subsumed by the rest of the department. The directorate provides advice and technical support to governments and civil society groups in trouble spots, including Syria, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen and the Philippines.

We are deeply concerned that our extensive experience is simply being ignored. As is the well-known and troubling reality that judicial decisions lack the disparity of 12 jurors.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves' assertion that the Autumn Budget delivers the "lowest tax rates since 1991" for more than 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties has been called into question after detailed analysis revealed that most high-street premises will in fact face significantly higher business-rates multipliers next year. Reeves told MPs that she was introducing the lowest tax rates in over three decades, using the phrase "tax rates" in the plural.

Brent Council has revealed it spends more than 30,000 a year cleaning up pavements and buildings stained with a reddish-brown substance left behind by people spitting out a stimulant called paan. Chewing paan is common in parts of north-west London, particularly around Wembley, where a rust-coloured mix of saliva and paan can be seen spattered in many places, including on telephone boxes and in flower-beds.

Nathan Law, a former Hong Kong politician who arrived in the UK in 2020 and has a bounty on his head, said that the government should reflect on its moral obligations when enacting its increase of the standard qualifying period for permanent residence to a decade. He said the proposed change in asylum laws was creating fresh anxiety and uncertainty for Hongkongers forced to flee their homes.

would be determined by what the system looks like, and that can only really be measured after the consultation has been closed and analyzed.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has cast doubt on claims Rachel Reeves dropped plans to raise income tax in this week's budget because of rosier forecasts, pointing out she knew about these well before the change of heart. In a move likely to exacerbate tensions with the Treasury, the OBR chair, Richard Hughes, has taken what he acknowledged was the unusual step of writing to the Treasury select committee to explain how its forecast evolved, given the circumstances in this case.

Within the organisation of Merlin, his main role was transformation and making sure that the customer experience was high on his list. I see the customers as the residents of Derbyshire,

After Wednesday's Budget, the chancellor Rachel Reeves is keen to point out that she hasn't raised taxes for working people, but if you look at the figures, we're all gradually paying more tax due to the government's clever use of fiscal drag. It all began back in 2021 when the Conservative Party froze the thresholds at which you start paying basic-rate and higher-rate income tax.

But the scandal did not begin with a single programme or a single misjudgement. Close to the centre of this crisis is Robbie Gibb, a man who has spent more than a decade shaping the BBC's political coverage, zig-zagging between the BBC and the Conservative government while advancing his own partisan project that has distorted the corporation's journalism on Brexit, Trump and, eventually, Gaza.

Another stealthy freeze in the tax system is the £35,000 cut-off for entitlement to Winter Fuel Payments. This was not increased in the Budget and it seems highly like that it will remain frozen for the foreseeable future. This means that pensioners currently on incomes under £35,000 could lose their Winter Fuel Payments if inflation increases to their pensions gradually take them over the cut-off.

Anyone solely receiving the new flat-rate state pension - for those who reached state pension age after April 2016 - will get 12,547.60 next year. That is just below the income tax threshold of 12,570.

UK energy bill payers will hand over 2bn a year in subsidies to EDF, the French company building two nuclear power stations, according to government figures. EDF, owned by the French government, will be entitled to 1bn in annual payments as soon as Hinkley Point C, in Somerset, comes on to the grid in 2030. The sum is due under the contracts-for-difference system that guarantees low-carbon energy companies a fixed price for the electricity they generate.