United Kingdom

A senior Tory MP has been asked to step back from his public activities with St John Ambulance after he allegedly confused two senior Asian ministers at a reception in Parliament. James Gray, the member for North Wiltshire, is said to have mixed up Nadhim Zahawi with Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, when introducing the former at the event, before reportedly stating: They all look the same to me. Mr Zahawi, who was at the time the UK’s vaccine minister, is said to have confronted the MP about the remark afterwards. Mr Gray has denied making the remark or that he was spoken to by Mr Zahawi afterwards. The incident is said to have occurred on September 8 in front of 50 guests, including the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, with Mr Gray hosting the reception to thank St John Ambulance v...

The UK faces a competitive battle with EU countries to attract more lorry drivers and ease the fuel and food supply crisis, a cabinet minister has admitted. It comes as the government announced a U-turn on its emergency visa scheme, relenting to pressure from food and fuel industry chiefs by extending its temporary visa schemes beyond Christmas Eve. The visa scheme for nearly 5,000 foreign food haulage drivers – who can arrive from late October – will now be extended to the end of February in a desperate bid to avoid chaos over the festive period. Some 300 of the haulage drivers will be encouraged to come to Britain immediately and allowed to stay until the end of March. Health secretary Sajid Javid said he was confident the scheme would encourage more EU drivers to work in the UK. Of...

Wayne Couzens seized Everard, 33, from a London street on 3 March, keeping her captive using his police handcuffs before strangling her with his police belt and then burning her body. On Wednesday, the first day of Couzens’s sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey in central London, Everard’s parents and sister described the multiple agonies they endured, first not knowing where she was when she disappeared, and then waiting to find out how she had died and being unable to say goodbye because her body had been burned. Everard’s mother, Susan, said: “In her last hours she was faced with brutality and terror, alone with someone intent on doing her harm. The thought of it is unbearable. I am haunted by the horror of it. I am repulsed by the thought of Wayne Couzens and what he did to Sarah....

The transport secretary Grant Shapps said the sooner people returned to their normal habits and stopped panic buying petrol and diesel, the sooner the fuel shortage crisis would ease. The first very tentative signs of stabilisation are being seen on petrol forecourts, Grant Shapps has said, following days of long queues and closed pumps at some filling stations across the country. A lot of petrol is now being transferred into people's cars and there are now the first very tentative signs of stabilisation in the forecourt storage which won't be reflected in the queues as yet, but it's the first time we've seen more petrol in the petrol stations itself, he said. I think as the industry said yesterday the sooner we can all return to our normal buying habits, the sooner the situation will...

Virtually any child aged between 12 and 15 who doesn’t get vaccinated will catch Covid at some point, England’s Chief Medical Officer said on Wednesday. Professor Chris Whitty said unvaccinated children are likely to get an infection at some point between 12 and 15. He was facing questions from MPs on the Education Committee about the inclusion of children in the Government’s Covid-19 vaccination programme. Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jonathan Van-Tam added that because the Delta variant is at least 60 per cent more infectious than the Alpha variant we are not looking at a theoretical risk of children 12-17 becoming infected. I think it is really quite inevitable that they will be so at some point. He said they may be infected at a point in their educational careers, such as during GC...

Travelling is set to be made cheaper and more straightforward for doubled-jabbed holidaymakers under a shake-up of coronavirus rules. The green and amber lists are expected to be merged to form one category of low-risk countries while the number of destinations on the red list will be reduced. There is also speculation that fully vaccinated arrivals will no longer need to take a pre-departure lateral flow test or a post-arrival PCR test. This would save travellers around £100 per trip. But while rules may be eased for fully vaccinated travellers, those who have not been jabbed could face tougher restrictions. Currently, travellers who have not had both doses of a coronavirus vaccine must take one PCR test and are not required to self-isolate after arriving from a green list destinatio...

The Home Office is negotiating to help pay for the centres across France to accommodate migrants intercepted before crossing the Channel in order to prevent them making further attempts to reach the UK in small boats. Britain is to help fund a network of asylum reception centres in France as part of the £54 million aid package offered by the Government to counter the record surge in Channel migrants. The centres will enable the French to transport migrants away from the north coast beaches to apply for asylum in France or a “safe” third European country through which they have previously passed. Migrants are known to make multiple bids to cross the channel as smuggling gangs tell them it will take three or four attempts before they get to the UK. MPs complain that the French tend to rel...

The number of people in England waiting for hospital treatment has reached a new record level and patients have been warned it will go even higher. A total of 5.6 million people were waiting to start treatment at the end of July, according to new figures from NHS England. This is the highest number since records began in August 2007 and includes those waiting for hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery. Health Secretary Sajid Javid warned the number of people on waiting lists will continue to increase before the billions of pounds being pumped into the NHS starts to address the problem. The number having to wait more than 52 weeks to start treatment stood at 293,102 in July 2021, down from 304,803 in the previous month, but more than three times the number waiting a year earlie...

Priti Patel has been accused by France’s interior minister of plotting financial blackmail and a violation of international maritime law in a deepening diplomatic row over efforts to prevent migrants from crossing the Channel by boat. Gérald Darmanin said that UK plans, released on Wednesday night, to send back boats of vulnerable people into French waters would not be accepted by his government. France will not accept any practice that breaks maritime law, nor any financial blackmail, Darmanin wrote on Twitter. Britain’s commitments must be respected. I said this clearly to my counterpart” during a meeting on Wednesday, he added. Johnson’s official spokesman rejected the claims of financial blackmail and said the government had provided our French counterparts significant sums of mon...

Social care leaders are warning that Boris Johnson’s £12bn-a-year tax raid will fail to end the crisis that has left 1.6 million elderly and disabled people without help, after most of the cash was diverted to the NHS. Even as the prime minister’s manifesto-busting plan appeared to win over Tory MPs who are expected to back it in a rushed vote on Wednesday it was met with an angry backlash from councils and charities. They warned local authorities would continue to be starved of the billions needed to provide adequate care for people in their own homes, a verdict backed by the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). It is clear that the extra funding will not be sufficient to reverse the cuts in the numbers receiving care seen during the 2010s, the think-tank said. The package i...