UK News

New soldiers should be offered a £10,000 bonus to rapidly boost troop numbers to deal with an increasingly unpredictable world, the Lib Dems have said. The government should also distribute pamphlets to make sure every British home is “war-ready” and able to deal with blackouts and chaos caused by the outbreak of conflict or cyber-attacks, Lib Dem Leader Sir Ed ...

A British man has been arrested on suspicion of espionage and terrorism offences in Cyprus. He allegedly surveilled the RAF Akrotiri base on the island and is suspected of having links with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, local media reported. RAF Akrotiri is the UK’s most important airbase for operations in the Middle East. The Philenews website said the man was arrested ...

Dame Esther Rantzen has appealed to the House of Lords not to block a bill giving terminally ill adults in England and Wales the right to an assisted death, after it was backed by MPs on Friday. The Terminally Ill Adults Bill was passed by 314 votes to 291 in the House of Commons – but will need to go ...

A security review has been launched across UK military bases after pro-Palestinian activists broke into RAF Brize Norton and sprayed two military planes with red paint. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer condemned the action as “disgraceful”, saying it was an “act of vandalism”. Footage posted online by Palestine Action on Friday showed two people inside the Oxfordshire airbase in darkness, ...

Sir Keir Starmer has hit back at potential rebels in the Labour Party over his plans to cut the benefits bill, insisting “we have got to get the reforms through.” MPs will vote in the coming weeks on a package of measures aiming to cut the benefits bill by £5bn by 2030 – including making it harder for disabled people ...

MI6 will be led by a woman for the first time in the foreign intelligence service’s 116-year history. Blaise Metreweli, who joined the Secret Intelligence Service in 1999, will become the 18th chief of the organisation and take over from Sir Richard Moore later this year. She is currently responsible for technology and innovation at the service and said she ...

A project to build the UK’s largest road tunnel has been granted £590m by the government. Constructing the Lower Thames Crossing, linking Tilbury in Essex and Gravesend in Kent, will cost an estimated £10bn. Plans for the 14.5-mile (23km) route were approved in March after a 16-year process that has already cost £1.2bn. Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the crossing would ...

Rachel Reeves has announced an extra £29bn per year for the NHS in England, along with funding boosts for defence and housing, as she set out the government’s spending plans until the end of the decade. The chancellor also promised more money for artificial intelligence and transport projects, saying “renewing Britain” was at the heart of her plans. But the ...

The government has set out plans to end the use of hotels to hold asylum seekers by 2029, a move Rachel Reeves says will save £1bn a year. Unveiling her Spending Review on Wednesday, the chancellor pledged £200m to “cut the asylum backlog, hear more appeal cases and return people who have no right to be here”. Ministers say hotels ...

Sir Keir Starmer has defended the UK’s £3.4bn deal to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while retaining control of a UK-US military base on Diego Garcia. At prime minister’s questions, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called it a “terrible” deal and asked “why on earth” British taxpayers should be paying for tax cuts in Mauritius. Last week, ...