Prince William warns oceans are ‘diminishing before our eyes' in Monaco speech
Prince William, speaking at Monaco's Blue Economy and Finance Forum on Sunday (8 June), has warned world leaders about the oceans ' "alarming state."
In a speech delivered to the Blue Economy and Finance Forum in Monaco on Sunday (8 June), the Prince of Wales said life on the ocean floor was "diminishing before our eyes".
He stressed: 'They need our help."
' What once seemed, an abundant resource is diminishing before our eyes. We all stand to be impacted, and we are all responsible for change, both negative and positive.'
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The Independent
21 minutes ago
- The Independent
Fact check: 2025 spending review claims
This round-up of claims from the 2025 spending review has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK's largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information. On Wednesday Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves delivered the Labour Government's first spending review, outlining its spending plans for the next few years. We've taken a look at some of the key claims. How much is spending increasing by? At the start of her speech Ms Reeves announced that 'total departmental budgets will grow by 2.3% a year in real terms'. That headline figure doesn't tell the full story, however. Firstly, 2.3% is the average annual real-terms growth in total departmental budgets between 2023/24 and 2028/29. That means it includes spending changes that have already been implemented, for both the current (2025/26) and previous (2024/25) financial years. The average annual increase between this year and 2028/29 is 1.5%. Therefore, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said, 'most departments will have larger real-terms budgets at the end of the Parliament than the beginning, but in many cases much of that extra cash will have arrived by April'. Secondly, it's worth noting that the 2.3% figure includes both day-to-day (Resource DEL) and investment (Capital DEL) spending. Capital spending (which funds things like infrastructure projects) is increasing by 3.6% a year on average in real terms between 2023/24 and 2029/30, and by 1.8% between 2025/26 and 2029/30. Day-to-day departmental budgets meanwhile are seeing a smaller average annual real-terms increase – of 1.7% between 2023/24 and 2028/29 and 1.2% between 2025/26 and 2028/29. Which departments are the winners and losers? Ms Reeves touted substantial spending increases in some areas (for example, the 3% rise in day-to-day NHS spending in England), but unsurprisingly her statement did not focus on areas where spending will decrease. Changes to Government spending are not uniform across all departments, and alongside increases in spending on things like the NHS, defence and the justice system, a number of Government departments will see their budgets decrease in real terms. Departments facing real-terms reductions in overall and day-to-day spending include the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (this factors in reductions in aid spending announced earlier this year to offset increased defence spending), the Home Office (although the Government says the Home Office's budget grows in real terms if a planned reduction in asylum spending is excluded) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Did the Conservatives leave a '£22 billion black hole'? Ms Reeves made a claim we've heard a number of times since it first surfaced in July 2024 – that the previous Conservative government left a '£22 billion black hole in the public finances'. That figure comes from a Treasury audit that forecast a £22 billion overspend in departmental day-to-day spending in 2024/25, but the extent to which it was unexpected or inherited is disputed. The IFS said last year that some of the pressures the Government claimed contributed to this so-called 'black hole' could have been anticipated, but others did 'indeed seem to be greater than could be discerned from the outside'. An Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) review of its March 2024 forecast found an estimated £9.5 billion of additional spending pressures were known to the Treasury at that point in time, but were not known to the OBR as it prepared its forecast. It's true that this review didn't confirm the £22 billion figure, but it also did not necessarily prove that it was incorrect, because Labour's figure included pressures which were identified after the OBR prepared its forecast and so were beyond the scope of the OBR's review. We've written more about how the Government reached the figure of £22 billion in our explainer on this topic. How big is the increase in NHS appointments? Ms Reeves took the opportunity to congratulate Health Secretary Wes Streeting for delivering 'three-and-a-half million extra' hospital appointments in England. The Government has previously celebrated this as a 'massive increase', particularly in light of its manifesto pledge to deliver an extra two million appointments a year. Ms Reeves' claim was broadly accurate – data published last month shows there were 3.6 million additional appointments between July 2024 and February 2025 compared to the previous year. But importantly that increase is actually smaller than the 4.2 million rise that happened in the equivalent period the year before, under the Conservative government – as data obtained by Full Fact under the Freedom of Information Act and published last month revealed. What do announcements on asylum hotels, policing, nurseries and more mean for the Government's pledges? Ms Reeves made a number of announcements that appear to directly impact the delivery of several pre-existing Labour pledges, many of which we're already monitoring in our Government Tracker. (We'll be updating the tracker to reflect these announcements in due course, and reviewing how we rate progress on pledges as necessary). The Chancellor announced an average increase in 'police spending power' of 2.3% a year in real terms over the course of the review period, which she said was the equivalent of an additional £2 billion. However, as police budgets comprise a mix of central Government funding and local council tax receipts, some of this extra spending is expected to be funded by increases in council tax precepts. Ms Reeves said this funding would help the Government achieve its commitment of 'putting 13,000 additional police officers, PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood policing roles in England and Wales', a pledge we're monitoring here. The spending review also includes funding of 'almost £370 million across the next four years to support the Government's commitment to deliver school-based nurseries across England', which Ms Reeves said would help the Government deliver its pledge to have 'a record number of children being school-ready'. The Chancellor also committed to ending the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this Parliament, with an additional £200 million announced to 'accelerate the transformation of the asylum system'. When we looked last month at progress on the Government's pledge to 'end asylum hotels' we said it appeared off track, as figures showed the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels was higher at the end of March 2025 than it was when Labour came into Government.
Daily Mail
22 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
A reckless splurge we (and our children) will be paying off for years: Voters brace for tax hikes as Rachel Reeves embarks on unprecedented spending spree
Voters were last night braced for swingeing tax rises, after Rachel Reeves embarked on an unprecedented spending spree. In a return to Labour 's tax-and-spend approach, the Chancellor set out plans to 'invest' a staggering £4 trillion to fund 'the renewal of Britain'. She said the plans, which include another huge dollop of cash for the NHS, would end the 'destructive' austerity of the last government and boost economic growth. Labour strategists hope the costly gamble will pay off by cutting hospital waiting lists, improving the creaking infrastructure and pump-priming the economy. But experts warned the scale of the spending, coupled with the deteriorating public finances, will pave the way for another round of damaging tax rises this autumn. The Conservatives accused Ms Reeves of adopting a reckless 'spend now, tax later' approach. The Chancellor insisted her plans could be funded by the eye-watering tax rises she imposed last year. She refused to rule out tax rises this autumn, saying only that taxes 'won't have to go up to pay for what's in this Spending Review'. But the small print of yesterday's Treasury document already includes one significant new tax hike, with the Chancellor pencilling in council tax hikes that will add more than £350 to an average Band D bill by 2029 to help fund local services and the police. Asked to rule out further tax rises, Treasury minister Emma Reynolds said: 'I'm not ruling it in, I'm not ruling it out.' Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride said Ms Reeves had 'completely lost control' of the public finances and the Spending Review was 'not worth the paper it is written on'. He predicted that a 'Corbynist catalogue' of tax rises would follow this autumn. Mr Stride told MPs: 'This is the spend now, tax later review, because the Chancellor knows that she will need to come back here in the autumn with yet more taxes, and a cruel summer of speculation awaits.' Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the public finances were so tight that the Chancellor would need further tax rises if 'anything at all goes wrong with the current economic forecasts'. Tom Clougherty, of the Institute of Economic Affairs, said Ms Reeves had failed to address the crisis in the public finances, adding: 'We should brace ourselves for tax increases in the autumn, and a summer of speculation over exactly where they will fall.' On a day that will frame the political debate for the next election: Police chiefs warned of cuts to the front line, after Yvette Cooper emerged as one of the few losers from the spending bonanza; Ms Reeves piled further pressure on the Home Secretary by announcing a target to empty Britain's asylum hotels by the next election; The Chancellor said new funding for the health service would deliver an extra four million tests and procedures by the end of the decade; NHS chiefs said much of the extra cash would go to fund above-inflation pay rises for doctors and nurses; Ms Reeves suggested defence spending will be frozen at 2.6 per cent of GDP in the latter years of this parliament, despite Nato pressure to double it to 5 per cent; Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner secured a £39 billion boost for social housing after weeks of bruising battles with the Treasury; Ms Reeves ripped up the Treasury's value-for-money rules in order to pour cash into Red Wall seats where Labour is being challenged by Reform; She announced £15 billion for transport projects including a revamped 'Northern Powerhouse' rail project. Yesterday's Spending Review covers government plans for the next three years. Treasury sources said it totalled £4 trillion. Day-to-day spending is £190 billion higher than planned by the last Conservative government, while spending on capital projects is £113 billion higher. But the figures do not include the soaring welfare bill, or the cost of servicing the UK's debt mountain, which totals more than £100 billion a year. The review also relies on implausible plans to achieve efficiency savings of £12 billion a year. Any of these factors could tip Ms Reeves into breaking her fiscal rules later this year. She has yet to set out how she will pay for a U-turn on winter fuel payments, which is forecast to cost £1.25 billion. And she is under pressure from Labour MPs to end the two-child benefit cap at a cost of £3.5 billion and to scrap planned cuts to disability benefits totalling £5 billion. Labour's former shadow chancellor John McDonnell welcomed the spending on long-term capital investment but said Labour had to 'learn the lessons' of the winter fuel debacle and loosen the purse strings on welfare. He told Sky News: 'We cannot be seen as the austerity party by imposing cuts on the poorest in society... There will have to be tax increases – we need redistribution.' The spending package follows months of bitter Cabinet infighting over how to allocate government spending for the coming years. The Chancellor yesterday said her choices would deliver on the public's priorities. She said her 'driving purpose' was 'to make working people, in all parts of our country, better off'. But she acknowledged that many voters had yet to feel any difference from Labour's first year in office.
Daily Mail
36 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Migrant hotels to close... by 2029! Rachel Reeves vows to end use of 'costly' scheme - but Tories are quick to ask: Where are you going to put them instead?
The 'costly' use of hotels to house asylum seekers will be ended, Rachel Reeves has vowed, but the system will still cost taxpayers billions a year. The Chancellor pledged that migrants would be moved out of hotel accommodation by the time of the next general election, due in 2029. Ms Reeves also promised £1 billion of savings by speeding up the asylum system, along with £280 million investment in future years for the new Border Security Command. 'The party opposite left behind a broken system: billions of pounds of taxpayers' money spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels, leaving people in limbo and shunting the cost of failure on to local communities,' Ms Reeves told the Commons. 'We won't let that stand. So I can confirm today that, led by the work of the Home Secretary, we will be ending the costly use of hotels to house asylum seekers in this Parliament.' Latest figures show £3.1 billion was spent on housing asylum seekers in hotels in 2023-24, out of a total asylum support bill of £4.7 billion. More than 30,000 asylum seekers are housed in about 200 hotels across Britain, many of whom arrived illegally in dinghies, and ministers are looking at moving them into derelict tower blocks and student digs. But despite Ms Reeves' pledge to end the use of hotels, the Tories pointed out that the small print of her Spending Review documents revealed that £2.5 billion will still be spent each year on asylum support by the end of the decade. In 2028-29, the Treasury document showed, Home Office day-to-day running costs will total £20.6 billion with the budget amounting to £18.1 billion excluding the 'asylum forecast'. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: 'Labour have slashed the Home Office budget in the middle of a border crisis. 'Their entire budget is built on an assumption that the hotels magically empty themselves. 'Yet there are more immigrants in hotels than when they took office, and they still have no plan for where these people will go. 'The Government's own figures just released show they still plan to spend £2.5 billion a year in 2028/29 on asylum seekers – most of whom are illegal immigrants.' Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride said the Government was merely trying to shift the problem of where to house asylum seekers. He added: 'Where are the migrants going to go? 'Are they going to be put into, dispersed into, communities in a particular way? I think that's a very important question to ask.' And Tory MP Julia Lopez warned that Labour's vow to speed up asylum decisions would mean more people granted leave to remain. Ms Lopez said: 'The Home Office just wants people off their books as fast as possible – straight on to the books of local councils. 'That means more positive asylum decisions – only making it more attractive to cross. 'And so it will go on.' The Spending Review document published by the Treasury also showed that the Home Office's budget will fall by 2.2 per cent in real terms over the next few years, from £22 billion in the current financial year to just £22.3 billion in 2028-29. But the Treasury insisted: 'Excluding the reduction in the Home Office's budget that will result from the
