Lead News

The UK is to start processing Syrian asylum claims again, more than seven months after decisions were paused following the fall of the Assad regime. Asylum minister Dame Angela Eagle said the Home Office had “worked to lift the pause as soon as there was sufficient information to make accurate and well-evidenced determinations”. She said claims could now be processed, ...

Sir Keir Starmer will meet Donald Trump when the US president visits Scotland ahead of his second state visit to the UK. Mr Trump is expected to travel to Scotland in July before the state visit in September. A Downing Street spokesman said: “The White House has confirmed that President Trump will be making a private visit to Scotland later ...

A Palestinian family of six who are stuck in Gaza despite having permission to join a relative in Britain asked London’s High Court on Wednesday to make officials reconsider their refusal to ask Israel for help to leave the enclave, reports Reuters. Lawyers representing a Palestinian couple and their four children said the family were given leave to enter the ...

The names of the 52 people killed in London’s 7/7 bombings were read out at a memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral 20 years since the attacks. Saba Edwards, the daughter of Behnaz Mozakka who died when one of the bombs detonated on the London Underground, began to cry as she read out her mother’s name among the list of ...

“I’ve not had as much quality time with my colleagues since the Brexit wars,” a minister told me with a wry smile. A remark that gets to the heart of the row over changes to the benefits system within the Labour Party: this is a government with a big majority, that has already performed a big U-turn and yet is ...

Temperatures are continuing to soar in parts of England, with the heat on course to potentially hit 34C or 35C in the south. Tuesday could officially become the hottest day of the year so far, topping the 33.2C recorded in Surrey 10 days ago. The Midlands will also see above-average temperatures – but there is a stark contrast in conditions ...

Sir Keir Starmer has said the UK’s benefits system is broken and fixing it is a “moral imperative”, a day after a backbench Labour revolt saw him forced into a U-turn on welfare cuts. The prime minister told the Welsh Labour Party conference in Llandudno that the government would not take away the welfare “safety net that vulnerable people rely ...

“What an absolute bloody shambles!” When we tell you that this is the unvarnished view of a Labour MP now willing to back 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 are still plenty who are not happy and still either pushing for further ...

A national investigation into “systemic” failures in NHS maternity care has been launched by the Government after families were “gaslit” in their search for the truth, the Health Secretary has said. Wes Streeting said that “up and down” the country “maternity units are failing, hospitals are failing, trusts are failing, regulators are failing” and there was “too much passing the ...

Sir Keir Starmer has warned of a “risk of escalation” to the Middle East and beyond the region, as he calls for a return to the negotiating table after the US bombed Iranian nuclear sites overnight. The prime minister said he wanted to “reassure the British public that we’re doing everything we can to stabilise the situation” and find a ...