United Kingdom

    The government has pledged to fast-track passport applications to save the holidays of potentially millions of Britons this summer. Renewals will be guaranteed within within five working days but only if travellers can prove they applied a month ago and need to go abroad within the next fortnight. Two million passports are believed to have expired during lockdown and there are waits of 10 weeks or more for renewals. Earlier Boris Johnson announced he wanted to tackle backlog Britain and to encourage people to stop thinking of coronavirus as something that makes it impossible to do things. At the start of lockdown, passport offices were reduced to a skeleton service prioritising urgent and compassionate cases. The Home Office said more than 6,500 passports have bee...

    Supermarkets and police are already at loggerheads over enforcing new mandatory face covering rules in England shops, which came into effect today and carry a penalty of a £100 fine. Major chains like Sainsbury's, Costa Coffee and Co-op said they will not impose the laws on customers, with Asda insisting: It is the responsibility of the relevant authorities to police and enforce the new rules. But the national chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales John Apter has now urged shops to refuse entry to anyone not wearing a face mask and that police intervention should be a last resort. He said: It is our members who are expected to police what is a new way of living and I would urge retail outlets to play their part in making the rules crystal clear; if ...

    The UK must face the possibility that it will not agree a deal on its future relationship with the EU by the end of the year. Chief negotiator David Frost said that with less than six months to go until the end of the transition period, the UK must continue preparing for all possible scenarios for once that deadline passes. In a statement after the latest round of talks in London, Mr Frost said considerable gaps remain in the most difficult areas the so-called level playing field and fisheries. We have always been clear that our principles in these areas are not simple negotiating positions but expressions of the reality that we will be a fully independent country at the end of the transition period, he said. That is why we continue to look for a deal with, at its...

    The Russia report controversy is a Remainer plot to undermine the Brexit referendum, Boris Johnson has claimed. In fierce Commons clashes, the prime minister dismissed accusations that his government was asleep at the wheel in countering the Kremlin threat as absolutely absurd. Instead, he turned on Keir Starmer, claiming: These criticisms are motivated by a desire to undermine the referendum on the European Union that took place in 2016. He urged MPs to recognise what the damning study by the independent intelligence and security committee was all about, That was pressure from Islington Remainers who have seized on this report to try to give the impression that Russian interference was somehow responsible for Brexit. Later, the prime minister condemned the rage ...

    Boris Johnson's Cabinet met in person on Tuesday for the first time in four months as the Government continues efforts to secure millions of doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine. Senior ministers attended the first in-person meeting since March 17 in Parliament's larger Foreign and Commonwealth Office to allow for proper social distancing. Figures published on Tuesday by the ONS show that 56,100 deaths involving Covid-19 have now been registered in the UK. It comes as the Government figures on the UK death toll were "paused" after Health Secretary Matt Hancock ordered an "urgent review" into the data. Meanwhile, Mr Hancock will be quizzed on the vaccines and the latest NHS Test and Trace results when he appears before the Commons Science and Technology Committe...

    The UK’s airlines have renewed calls for a 12-month waiver from paying Air Passenger Duty (APD) in a bid to protect the industry from damage from the coronavirus crisis. A new survey from industry body Airlines UK has found that without such a waiver, 600 air routes will be lost in the short-term, as well as 8,000 jobs. In 12 months time, the survey, which was carried about by York Aviation, said that 130 routes would be lost if airlines had to continue paying APD, 80 per cent of which would be in the UK. However, if they are exempted from the tax for a year, 56 of these could be saved, it found. Two weeks ago a group of 24 Tory MPs wrote to chancellor Rishi Sunak to ask for the exemption from the passenger tax. The UK’s aviation industry has already been devastat...

    The government is reviewing legal aid eligibility rules following the decision to allow Shamima Begum to return to the UK to face trial, Boris Johnson has said. Earlier this week the Court of Appeal ruled that Begum, who travelled to Syria to join ISIS in 2015, should be allowed to fight the decision to strip her of her citizenship in person in a British court. The court decided that the 20-year-old, who is currently in refugee Camp Roj in northern Syria, could only mount a "fair and effective appeal" if she was in the UK. But the prime minister called the decision “odd and peverse” on Sunday, adding that the government would be reviewing the legal aid rules. "It seems to me to be at least odd and perverse that somebody can be entitled to legal aid when they are n...

    Captain Sir Tom Moore has said being knighted by the Queen was something very special. The national hero was personally thanked by the Queen for raising an amazing amount of money for the NHS when she bestowed him during a unique ceremony at Windsor Castle. Sir Tom appeared humbled following his audience with the monarch and said he was “absolutely overawed” to receive the investiture on Friday. The centenarian had set out to raise £1,000 for the health service by walking 100 laps of his garden in the village of Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, before his 100th birthday on April 30. ut his efforts struck a chord with national mood and he went on to raise almost £33 million. He said being knighted had been a marvellous day and the Queen was an absolute dream of a ...

    British Airways is to retire its fleet of Boeing 747s with immediate effect. Britain's flag carrier has announced this morning that its 31 Boeing 747s are to be retired due to falling demand in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. The company said: It is with great sadness that we can confirm we are proposing to retire our entire 747 fleet with immediate effect. It is unlikely our magnificent 'queen of the skies will ever operate commercial services for British Airways again due to the downturn in travel caused by the Covid-19 global pandemic. While the aircraft will always have a special place in our heart, as we head into the future we will be operating more flights on modern, fuel-efficient aircraft such as our new A350s and 787s, to help us achieve net-zero carb...

    An urgent review has been ordered into how daily coronavirus death figures are calculated after it was claimed the current method did not account for people recovering from COVID-19. Health Secretary Matt Hancock has asked for the examination of Public Health England's data, which states there have so far been 45,119 COVID-19 associated deaths. A government source confirmed that PHE's current method of calculation means if a person was previously diagnosed with COVID-19 but subsequently died of unrelated causes, their death would still be counted as part of the PHE coronavirus death tally. The review ordered by Mr Hancock aims to sort out the issue and establish the impact on the overall death tally.