Tory peer’s punishment for fiddling expenses criticised as too lenient

Campaigners have criticised as too lenient the punishment handed to a Conservative hereditary peer found to have broken the House of Lords rules for the second time.In a report published on Wednesday, the House of Lords concluded that the Earl of Shrewsbury had fiddled his expenses and had done so in an “unacceptably casual” way. The lords’ authorities are intending to suspend him from the upper chamber for two weeks.His misconduct occurred just three months after returning to the Lords from a nine-month suspension for lobbying for a commercial company that he was working for. It was one of the biggest punishments ever imposed on a peer

Centrist ideas no longer wanted in Conservative party, says Kemi Badenoch

Centrist ideas are no longer wanted in the Conservative party, Kemi Badenoch has said, arguing that one nation-type Tories or others who have qualms about her rightward direction for the party “need to get out of the way”.Making a speech in Westminster intended to set out her vision for the party after a spate of recent defections to Reform UK, the Conservative leader hit out at what she called the “tantrum” of Robert Jenrick and others.She explicitly rejected the approach of Andy Street, the former West Midlands mayor, and Ruth Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, who have launched a new group within the party for what they call “politically homeless” centrist and centre-right voters.While Badenoch said she welcomed any help that could win her party an election, she said this did not involve any policies that were not based around her right-leaning ideas. “They need to recognise the agenda which I’m setting,” she said, when asked about the efforts by Street and Davidson under their Prosper UK banner

England planning proposals fail to mention safety of women and girls, say critics

Government proposals to overhaul England’s planning system fail to mention women or girls and ignore official recommendations to keep women safe made after the death of Sarah Everard, experts have told the Guardian.Draft planning proposals – published two days before the government’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) – are likely to “embed risk and inequality” despite the strategy’s insistence that “design and planning are critical tools” in keeping women safe, MPs campaigners and urban planners have said.The VAWG strategy and part 2 of the Angiolini inquiry, commissioned after the murder of Everard – both published in the same month as the planning proposals – call for women’s safety to be embedded into the planning of public spaces.But the draft National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), which sets out the government’s intent to massively increase housebuilding, has “no references whatsoever to women, girls, gendered safety, or violence against women in the built environment”, the Liberal Democrat MPs Anna Sabine and Gideon Amos said.In a letter to the housing minister Matthew Pennycook and the safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, as first reported in the Planner, they wrote: “Planning policy is one of the most powerful structural tools the state has to prevent harm before it occurs

Starmer vows to raise issues ‘that need to be raised’ with Xi amid push to free Jimmy Lai

Keir Starmer has said he will “raise the issues that need to be raised” on human rights with China’s president, Xi Jinping, as he arrived in Beijing for the first trip to the country by a UK leader in eight years.The prime minister has come under pressure from rights groups to try to secure the release of Jimmy Lai, the jailed former media tycoon and one of Hong Kong’s most significant pro-democracy voices.Lai, a British citizen, faces spending the rest of his life in prison after he was found guilty by a Hong Kong court of national security offences in a case that the UK sees as politically motivated.Starmer told reporters on the flight to China: “In the past on all the trips I’ve done, I’ve always raised issues that need to be raised. But part of the reason for engaging with China is so that issues where we disagree can be discussed

Starmer vows to remain ‘clear-eyed’ over national security as he flies to China

Keir Starmer has said the UK government will remain “clear-eyed and realistic” on the national security threat posed by China as he travelled to Beijing in an effort to improve relations with the economic powerhouse.The prime minister promised “stability and clarity” in his approach to Beijing after years of what he described as “inconsistency” under the Tories, as western powers turn to China in their search for economic stability amid concerns the US may no longer be a reliable partner.Starmer’s trip comes amid tensions between Britain and its close ally, the US, over Donald Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland and his criticism of the Chagos Islands deal.Downing Street said that at a time of growing global instability, where events abroad continued to rebound on people at home, he would act in the UK’s national interest. He will meet China’s president, Xi Jinping, and the premier, Li Qiang, in Beijing on Thursday for talks

Reform byelection candidate refuses to disown claim that people born in UK not necessarily British

The Reform UK candidate in the Gorton and Denton byelection has refused to disown his claim that UK-born people from minority ethnic backgrounds are not necessarily British.Matthew Goodwin, a hard-right activist, was presented on Tuesday as the party’s candidate in the demographically diverse seat in south-east Manchester.Goodwin has been criticised for claiming recently that people from black, Asian or other immigrant backgrounds were not always British, saying: “It takes more than a piece of paper to make somebody ‘British’.”Speaking at an event in Denton, the GB News presenter twice declined to answer when asked by the Guardian whether he stood by those views – described by the Liberal Democrats as “racist” and “abhorrent”.Nearly half of the Gorton and Denton population – 44% – identifies as coming from a minority ethnic background, while 79% of the constituency identifies as British, according to the latest census