Featured

    When Sally came round from the anaesthetic her cheeks were already wet with tears. She had been fully sedated while the doctors terminated her four-month pregnancy, a pregnancy she had desperately wanted to continue. I was crying when wheeled me in, she says. They kept asking ‘are you sure you want to do this? and I couldn’t even answer, I just had to nod my head. Sally is not her real name but she says she could not bear for family and friends to know what she went through. She and her partner discovered, almost halfway through the pregnancy, that the government no longer paid out child tax credit and the child element of universal credit for more than two children. The rule applies to babies born after 6th April 2017 and it’s been widely condemned by women’s rig...

    Household wet wipes will be banished in the UK as part of Michael Gove’s drive to crack down on plastic being thrown away and damaging ecosystems, the government has said. If they are outlawed, shoppers will no longer be able to buy the wipes, which are mostly made of polyester and contain millions of microfibres impregnated with chemicals. Tens of thousands of wet wipes are sold in Britain each year, and despite public awareness campaigns, many are still flushed into lavatories, where they end up clogging mains sewers, and go on to kill fish in rivers and other marine life as the fibres are released. We are continuing to work with manufacturers and retailers of wet wipes to make sure labelling on packaging is clear and people know how to dispose of them properly a...

    A customs partnership with the European Union is still on the table, the business secretary has said, despite fierce opposition from some Tory Brexiteers. Thousands of British jobs depend on frictionless trade with Europe, Greg Clark stressed as he continued to push for the controversial arrangement. He also opened the door to extending a transition period on customs with the EU until a new arrangement was in place. Outspoken Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed the suggestion of job losses as Project Fear. Mr Clark was part of the Brexit "war cabinet" which this week failed to reach an agreement on whether to back the customs partnership. The arrangement would see the UK collect import duties on behalf of the EU for goods arriving via British ports and airports. ...

    The government’s energy policy is under renewed pressure after the prolonged closure of one of Britain’s oldest nuclear reactors due to cracks in its graphite core raised questions over the future of six other plants built in the 1970s and 1980s. The temporary shutdown of reactor three at Hunterston B in Scotland is also expected to burn an estimated £120m hole in the revenues of its owner, EDF Energy. EDF said this week it was taking the reactor offline for six months, after inspections found more cracks than expected in the graphite bricks at the reactor’s core. However, while safety fears have been quashed, the potential impact on wider energy strategy has alarmed experts who warn the reactor may never restart. Peter Atherton, an analyst at the consultancy Corn...

    At least 1,000 highly skilled migrants seeking indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in the UK are wrongly facing deportation under a section of the Immigration Act designed in part to tackle terrorists and individuals judged to be a threat to national security, MPs and experts have said. In the latest scandal to hit the Home Office after the Windrush crisis, a range of MPs and immigration experts have criticised the use of the controversial section 322(5) of the act, with two saying the crisis-hit department is truly wicked and abusing its power. Experts say the highly skilled workers including teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers and IT professionals are being refused ILR after being accused of lying in their applications either for making minor and legal amendments t...