UK News

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, ...

Banned from all political activities in Bangladesh Awami League activists in London have launched protests in front of a hotel where Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus is residing on his trip to the United Kingdom. A group, including people from local Bangladeshi communities and supporters of Jamaat-e-Islami and some other Islamic parties, also gathered at the location in support of Yunus ...

Arrests for illegal work have surged this past year as police focus on “unscrupulous” employers who exploit undocumented migrants, the government says. Immigration officers arrested more than 6,400 people in the past year in raids at businesses across the UK, data released by the Home Office shows. It said the figure is 51% higher than the previous year. It did ...

A passenger plane from Heathrow to Detroit had to return to the London airport due to a cracked windscreen. Delta Air Lines flight 017 was carrying 188 passengers and 12 crew on board when the pilot reported the fault shortly after taking off at 11:44 BST on Saturday morning. The crew followed procedure by returning to London Heathrow, where the ...

The government is struggling to cut the amount of foreign aid it spends on hotel bills for asylum seekers in the UK, the BBC has learnt. New figures released quietly by ministers in recent days show the Home Office plans to spend £2.2bn of overseas development assistance (ODA) this financial year – that is only marginally less than the £2.3bn ...

Scottish Labour has taken Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse from the SNP in a closely fought by-election. The party’s Davy Russell won with 8,559 votes, with a majority of 602 over the SNP. The vote followed the death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie, who had represented the constituency since 2011. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said his party had “proven the ...

  Zia Yusuf has resigned as the chairman of Reform UK, saying working to get the party elected was no longer “a good use of my time”. In a post on social media, Yusuf did not expand further on his reasons for stepping down. However, it comes after he said it was “dumb” for the party’s newest MP to call ...

King Charles III received a standing ovation from Canadian lawmakers on Tuesday as he opened a new session of parliament in Ottawa, saying, “all Canadians give themselves far more than any foreign power or any continent can ever take away.” The 76-year-old king is the first leader of the British monarchy invited to deliver the speech from the throne to ...