UK will go further to stop ‘abusive’ Slapps lawsuits, Lammy says

David Lammy has said the UK will go further to tackle abusive and spurious lawsuits aimed at silencing whistleblowers and journalists, raising the prospect of further legislation next year.The deputy prime minister told campaigners and officials at the launch of the government’s anti-corruption strategy that he was determined to crack down on the practice known as Slapps – strategic lawsuits against public participation.Excessive legal threats have been used in several cases in an attempt to silence reporting on Russian oligarchs, as well those who tried to expose the Post Office Horizon scandal and allegations against Mohamed Al Fayed.The Ministry of Justice said the first priority would be to action the limited provisions in the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which tackle Slapps that relate to economic crimes.It also said it was a “priority commitment” in the strategy to consider the future approach for comprehensively tackling all Slapps

‘It’s Scotland’s energy’: SNP to focus on renewables in Holyrood election

The future of Scottish renewables will underpin the Scottish National party’s Holyrood election campaign, the party leader, John Swinney, has said, as he claimed independence could cut household energy bills by a third in the long term.At what was billed as the first campaign event before next May’s elections to the Scottish parliament, Swinney declared: “It’s Scotland’s energy” – mirroring the famous 1970s slogan “It’s Scotland’s oil”, which bolstered the SNP’s first Westminster breakthrough.Contrasting how the UK and Norway managed their oil wealth, the campaign argues that “Westminster handed control of our oil to private companies and funnelled the profits south”, while Norway “kept their oil in public hands, built a national energy company and invested the profits for the long term”.In his speech, Swinney told supporters: “Just like oil and renewables-rich Norway, Scotland has been blessed twice. We may have missed out on the full benefit of our oil and gas bonanza, but with our vast, low-cost renewable energy resource, Scotland has a second chance to get it right

No 10 declines to comment on White House claim that Europe facing ‘civilisational erasure’ – as it happened

Downing Street has defended Britain’s record on freedom of speech – while declining to comment on a White House policy document saying Europe is at risk of “civilisational erasure”.At the No 10 lobby briefing, the PM’s spokesperson said that he would not comment on the national security strategy published by the White House on Friday because it was as US document.As Jon Henley reports, the document does not just relate to US policy because it says the American government should be “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations”.Referring to Europe as a whole, the document says that it does not spend enough on defence and that it suffers from economic stagnation. But it goes on:This economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure

Lord Maxton obituary

John Maxton, Lord Maxton, belonged to a generation of able Labour MPs who sustained the party through 18 hard years of opposition before its electoral success in 1997.He retired from the Commons at the following general election and became a respected working peer, serving on the science and technology committee, which reflected longstanding interests and expertise.His friend George Foulkes, with whom he shared a Westminster office for many years, is “pretty sure he was the first MP with a mobile phone”. Maxton maintained an enthusiasm for new technologies, alongside a conviction that the Palace of Westminster should be turned into a museum and replaced with a modern parliamentary home. He advocated electronic voting and supported ID cards as a means to that end

Nigel Farage is wrong – victims don’t forget bullying and abuse | Letters

Regarding Nigel Farage’s difficulty believing that people can remember schoolboy “banter” of more than four decades ago (Former Dulwich pupil says Farage told him: ‘That’s the way back to Africa’, 5 December), perhaps I can helpfully direct him to an African proverb: “The axe forgets, the tree never does.” This succinctly summarises the disparity in recollections of interactions between victims and perpetrators.Juliet WinstoneDorking, Surrey “Farage has suggested that it is simply inconceivable that anyone could recall such events of over four decades ago,” says Yinka Bankole in your article. Such events that hurt children or young people, whether words or actions, are remembered for the whole of a lifetime. I remember a similarly unpleasant event that happened to me at the age of 13 on 14 February 1964

Labour has ignored the ‘squeezed middle’ to its peril | Letters

John Harris’s stimulating article on the “squeezed middle” missed one area of concern for those of us trapped in it (The ‘squeezed middle’ is back – and this time it could be Labour’s undoing, 30 November). We knew that even if we’d paid our cheap mortgages off (lucky us), we would either have to downsize or have taken out our own pensions. We knew the state pension would never be enough.So we did. And if we were lucky, it covered the cracks