UK

A contentious plan to build a new royal yacht has been scrapped, the defence secretary has confirmed. The successor to the Royal Yacht Britannia, which was expected to cost around £200m, was announced by Boris Johnson in May 2021. Mr Johnson, the prime minister at the time, said it would reflect “the UK’s burgeoning status

Millions of Britons on low incomes will start receiving £324 into their bank accounts today to help them through the cost of living crisis. The payments are the second part of a £650 sum being paid out to people receiving benefits such as Universal Credit, income-based jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), income-related employment and support allowance (ESA),

Business Secretary Grant Shapps has hinted that the government may extend the windfall tax on oil and gas companies in this month’s autumn budget as it tries to stabilise the UK’s public finances. Speaking to Sky News with just 10 days to go before the government’s fiscal plans are unveiled, Mr Shapps said: “I mean,

A farmer from Eritrea who was in the Manston processing centre in Kent has told Sky News he slept on cardboard and was given cold hot dogs for lunch. The 29-year-old, who asked to be referred to as Samuel, said it wasn’t what he was expecting after crossing the Channel by small boat in September

Ed Miliband has called for an “urgent independent investigation” into Sir Gavin Williamson’s reappointment after it was alleged that the cabinet minister sent abusive text messages to former chief whip Wendy Morton complaining that he and other colleagues had been excluded from the Queen’s funeral for political reasons. Speaking on Sky News’ Sophy Ridge on

The chief constable of South Yorkshire Police has offered to meet a young woman who was groomed and abused by a gang of paedophiles in Sheffield 10 years ago – after she alleged to Sky News that a police officer was one of her abusers. Leona Whitworth, 28, has waived her anonymity to tell her

A group of people at a west London immigration removal centre caused “disturbance” on Saturday morning, the Home Office has claimed. No one was injured during the incident at Harmondsworth detention centre near Heathrow Airport, but the power was still out just before 9am on Saturday, the department said. The Home Office initially claimed that

Boat passengers, including British tourists, are understood to have been released after being held by a community group in the Peruvian Amazon. The group, thought to be from an indigenous community, said they had detained them in protest over a lack of government action to tackle oil spills in a river, according to RPP Noticias.

Children as young as nine are getting sucked into drug dealing and violence – with thousands of young people in England “groomed, harmed and even killed”, a new report warns. The Commission on Young Lives is calling for urgent action and investment to tackle the “national threat to our country’s prosperity and security” – and

The Bank of England has raised the base rate of interest by 0.75 percentage points to 3% – the single biggest increase in more than three decades – and said that the UK is already in recession. The Bank warned that the UK could face a protracted contraction in the coming years, with high inflation

The Bank of England is expected to unveil the biggest interest rate rise in decades today. A rise of 0.75 percentage points is anticipated, the biggest since 1992 – pushing the base rate to 3%, a level not seen since 2008. If confirmed, this could push up mortgage bills for millions of people in the

The Home Office is facing a judicial review over the conditions at the migrant Manston processing centre, the immigration minister has told Sky News. Robert Jenrick said the legal action has begun after reports of severe overcrowding at the centre in Kent, which is meant to hold 1,600 people but has been housing about 4,000

Hundreds – if not thousands – of police officers who should have failed vetting checks may be serving in England and Wales, a watchdog has warned. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services found cases where criminal behaviour was dismissed as a “one off”; applicants with links to “extensive criminality” in their families

Boris Johnson has told Sky News that he does not think Vladimir Putin will use a tactical nuclear weapon in his war in Ukraine. There have been suggestions that the Russian president could carry out such a military strike as his forces continue to lose territory which they captured earlier in the invasion. But in

Immigration minister Robert Jenrick has rejected language used by the home secretary describing the increase of asylum seekers to the UK as an “invasion”. Suella Braverman told MPs yesterday that the public needs to know which party is serious about “stopping the invasion” of migrants on the southern coast of the UK. Mr Jenrick, when

Suella Braverman has said she “never ignored legal advice” about sending migrants to hotels from an overcrowded processing centre. The home secretary said she knew “the importance of taking legal advice into account” and never tried to stop migrants from the Manston processing centre from being sent to hotels. “At every point, I’ve worked hard

As new PM Rishi Sunak begins his first full week in office, pressure is already mounting on him over his Home Secretary’s handling of the growing migrant issue – and over his own snub of the upcoming climate summit. It emerged on Monday that more than 110 refugee charities have signed an open, and pointed,

Petrol bombs have been thrown at a Border Force migrant centre in Dover. Emergency crews were called to the site in Kent shortly after 11.20am after Reuters news agency – who had a photographer at the scene – reported that a man had thrown petrol bombs attached with fireworks at the centre. The photographer captured

Labour is urging the government to publish its assessments of Suella Braverman’s security breach following her controversial reappointment as home secretary just six days after she was forced out. New Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under growing pressure over reinstating Ms Braverman as home secretary after a former party chair claimed she had committed “multiple

Britain has denied Russian claims that Royal Navy personnel blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines last month, saying the story is “invented”. A Ministry of Defence tweet said: “To detract from their disastrous handling of the illegal invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence is resorting to peddling false claims of an epic