United Kingdom

    Two double decker buses have crashed injuring 14 people in Manchester city centre. Police, ambulances and the fire service rushed to the scene just after 7.30am. It is understood one of the bus doors was jammed shut and some passengers were trapped inside for a brief period. The two vehicles were involved in a smash at the junction of Aytoun Street and Minshull Street, outside the Holiday Inn hotel. The fire service said 14 people are being treated at the scene for minor injuries, the Manchester Evening News reports. Part of the junction has been taped off while an investigation takes place and drivers are being warned of delays. We are assisting the North West Ambulance Service and treating a number of casualties, as well as making the scene safe. There is a co...

    The Government will keep spending money on contingency plans for a no deal Brexit until shortly before the planned withdrawal date of March 29 2019, in case a proposed transition deal falls through, David Davis has said. Even if political agreement on the transition is reached at this month’s European Council summit, Mr Davis said that preparations for a no-deal outcome must continue until the plan is formally ratified probably in the final weeks of this year. His comment appears to put him at odds with Chancellor Philip Hammond, who told the Commons European Scrutiny Committee on Monday he expected to be able to stand down preparations for a no deal Brexit once the transition deal is agreed. Crashing out without a deal in March 2019 would probably require signific...

    Theresa May is heading toward an inevitable capitulation with the EU and a soft Brexit that would keep Britain inside the European customs union, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics analyst Samuel Tombs. The prime minister has no choice, Tombs believes, because she cannot get any other type of deal through parliament, and because the EU has a stronger negotiating position than Britain. Staying inside the customs union is also the only way to solve the problem of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, Tombs wrote in a note to clients last week. On Friday, May repeated that she believes the UK must leave the EU's borderless custom union. She is being pushed by the right-wing of her party to extract Britain from the EU's single market, its customs rules, an...

    St Mungo’s is one of the largest providers of homelessness outreach services in the UK, with 17 outreach teams across the south and south-west. On its website it says it is “here for every step of the journey away from homelessness” and says its outreach teams work to gradually build up trusting relationships with people who are sleeping rough. But St Mungo’s has admitted to the Guardian that it has cooperated with Home Office immigration, compliance and enforcement (Ice) teams when they go looking for rough sleepers who are in the UK illegally. A September 2016 Home Office training document obtained by the Guardian, which features the St Mungo’s logo, states: This teamwork which sees both the charity referring eligible people to immigration enforcement [IE] for he...

    Energy firms will be banned from back billing customers for inaccurate meter readings which are over a year old under new Ofgem rules. Under the change, which is being introduced in May, retrospective billing for gas and electricity customers will be limited only to those taken during the past 12 months. At present there is no limit meaning the he average back-bill was £1,160 last year, with extreme cases seeing customers receive bills in excess of £10,000, according to Citizens Advice. Many suppliers are already part of a voluntary agreement not to back-bill customers past 12 months, but this does not include all companies and those that have signed up do not always stick to it, Ofgem said. The new rule will come into effect at the beginning of May for domestic c...

    Try as they might, politicians have found little public support for raising taxes over the years. Think of the poll tax riots, the furore over Ed Miliband’s mansion tax or George Osborne’s omnishambles budget and the pickle he was in over the humble pasty. Usually the most resistance is reserved for wealth taxes, not least for their doom laden names given by the media: no voter wants to pay for death or dementia. Denis Healey, the Labour chancellor misquoted for wanting to squeeze the rich until the pips squeak, came closest, with a 1974 election wealth tax pledge but was forced to backtrack. The pips would have squeaked a little too loud for comfort. Fast forward and the time has come to make the case for greater wealth taxes, given our emerging economic realities,...

    Theresa May told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday: We can’t just accept rules that are made elsewhere. Theresa May has said that signing up to passporting for the City of London after Brexit would leave the UK as just a rule-taker, insisting that financial services will instead be covered through a free trade deal. In an interview broadcast on Sunday morning, the prime minister also rebuffed the suggestion that the foreign secretary had raised the spectre of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic in an internal government report. No. Boris is absolutely clear that there won’t be a hard border, she told the BBC’s Andrew Marr, amid reports of tensions between Johnson and Downing Street over claims that May’s chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, leaked the...

    Pub licensing hours across England and Wales will be relaxed on the weekend of the Royal Wedding, the Home Office has announced. Pubs will be able to stay open until 1am on the nights of Friday 18 May and Saturday 19 May, the weekend when the FA Cup final will also take place. The Government made the decision after it won support from the general public and stakeholders, including the hospitality sector and residents’ groups, during a four week consultation. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said the Royal Wedding was an opportunity for the country to join together and celebrate. As shown by the support for the proposal to extend licensing hours, it’s clear that the public back the idea of having more time to raise a glass to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on a day of nat...

    Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech about her vision for Brexit, at Mansion House London on 2nd March 18. Theresa May has insisted her Brexit vision in which Britain will align with European Union rules to get frictionless trade but retain the freedom to diverge from them is ambitious and credible. The details of her Brexit strategy, laid out in her high-profile speech at London's Mansion House on Friday,  appeared to unite warring Remain and Leave factions of the Conservative Party. But cracks remained within the Tories, as former deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine dismissed her latest speech as just more “phrases, generalisations and platitudes”. Downing Street and Boris Johnson also denied reports that Mrs May's chief of staff Gavin Barw...

    The Tidespring, which provides key support to Britain's most This dramatic picture captures the moment a Royal Navy battleship was battered by the Beast From the East off the coast of Plymouth. In scenes reminiscent of disaster movie The Perfect Storm, Royal Fleet Auxiliary Tidespring was rocked from side-to-side as hurricane conditions smashed into it yesterday. The Tidespring, which provides key support to Britain's most powerful warship HMS Queen Elizabeth, powered through the thunderous waves and Baltic temperatures. Footprints in the snow can be seen on the ship as it powers through choppy waters on its way home to Devon. RFA Tidespring was not accompanying Queen Elizabeth when the photo was taken as she had already docked in Portsmouth. The tanker is one of...