The amount of time off and pay new parents can get after the birth of a child will be looked at in a “landmark” review, the government says. Ministers said they wanted to modernise the system across paternity, maternity and shared parental leave, which campaigners said had been “overlooked for years”. Campaign group The Dad...
Henry Zeffman Chief Political Correspondent PA Media “What an absolute bloody shambles!” When we tell you that this is the unvarnished view of a Labour MP now willing to back the Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s benefits plans, you get a sense of how much anger this row has provoked and is still provoking. And there...
A growing number of Labour MPs are supporting a bid to block the government’s planned welfare changes, despite ministers phoning backbenchers to persuade them to back down. More than 130 MPs, including 122 Labour MPs, have signed an amendment that would give them the opportunity to vote on a proposal to reject plans to cut...
Large asylum seeker sites like Wethersfield air base in Essex are set to be expanded under plans to end the use of asylum hotels, the BBC can reveal. Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged to stop using taxpayer-funded hotels by 2029 in her Spending Review, saying this would save £1bn. One of the ways the Home Office...
BBC The UK has sanctioned two Israeli far-right ministers over comments they made on Gaza. Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich will both face a travel ban and have their assess frozen as part of the measures announced by the UK foreign secretary. David Lammy said the ministers had “incited extremist violence and serious abuses of...
Kate Whannel Political reporter PA Media Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has said the government is looking at scrapping the two-child benefit cap but warned it would “cost a lot of money”. Speaking to the BBC, the minister said the policy – which prevents most families from claiming means-tested benefits for any third or additional children...
Henry Zeffman Chief Political Correspondent Sam Francis Political reporter PA Media Millions of public sector workers should be given pay rises of as much as 4%, pay review bodies have told ministers – significantly higher than ministers wanted. The pay review body for teachers in England has recommended a pay rise of about 4% this...
PA Media The prime minister met steelworkers in Lincolnshire shortly after the hearing in House of Commons There was a moment where all they could do was wait. Government officials were holed up in a Premier Inn down the road from British Steel’s steelworks in Scunthorpe and parliament’s work to change the law to allow...
Cherylann Mollan BBC News, Mumbai Getty Images India’s commerce minister said Indian start-ups should focus more on the high-tech sector India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s recent comments about the country’s start-up ecosystem have sparked a massive debate on social media and evoked strong reactions from some entrepreneurs. At the second edition of Startup Mahakumbh, a...