Day: September 29, 2016

    The British Union Flag, also known as the Union Jack, is displayed on wall Turf wars by ministers seeking to control the Brexit negotiations are wasting valuable time and may cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds in additional civil servants, a report by the respected Institute for Government claims. In the first detailed examination of how Whitehall is being restructured to cope with the Brexit talks, the report says the cost is approaching £65m, largely due to the need to hire 500 extra civil servants. It adds that the triple departmental structure of splitting responsibility “risks creating fragmentation and incoherence. A lack of clarity about roles and responsibility of the new departments has caused distractions and delayed work on Brexit”. The report, called ...

    A former cabinet minister Nicky Morgan said the Prime Minister has the perfect chance at Conservative conference to set out a broad plan. Nicky Morgan has warned Theresa May she is allowing others to set the terms of Brexit and said the Prime Minister must be clearer on what she wants from any deal. Former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan said that instead of leaving it to cabinet Brexiteers, Ms May should herself lead policy on the European Union and set out a broad plan as early as next week. It comes as former Chancellor Ken Clarke claimed that “nobody in the Government has the first idea” what to do about Brexit. Ms Morgan said: “There is a danger. At the moment, there has been a lack of a plan from our Government about the negotiating, the process, what’s going to hap...

    A former Royal Household official who accepted more than £100,000 in bribes to award contracts for work at royal residences including Buckingham Palace was today jailed for five years. Ronald Harper, of Sudbury, Suffolk, was deputy property manager responsible for maintaining the Queen's main London home, plus St James's Palace, Clarence House and Windsor Castle, from 1994 until his suspension in 2012. The 64-year-old grandfather accepted payments or gifts from the directors of companies who were then given large contracts for maintenance of the historic buildings paid for by the then Civil List, now called the Sovereign Grant. He was found guilty of two counts of conspiracy to make corrupt payments after two trials at Southwark Crown Court in June and August. The corrupt ...