RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Children are being killed because we are too scared of being called racist. When will this dangerous madness end?
We've been here before and we'll be here again. Twenty-five years ago, a tragic eight-year-old girl called Victoria Climbie was tortured, starved and beaten to death while the authorities who could have saved her did nothing.
Victoria was born in the Cote d'Ivoire, what we used to call the Ivory Coast, and brought to Britain by her great-aunt.
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Times
an hour ago
- Times
Reeves considers energy bill subsidy for manufacturers
Rachel Reeves is scrutinising proposals to provide a £1 billion annual subsidy to manufacturers after being warned that Britain faces rapid deindustrialisation if she fails to reduce energy costs. The chancellor is considering lowering energy costs for industry amid fears that they are holding back investment and the country's competitiveness. The plans include a scheme by which taxpayers would compensate manufacturers when the price of electricity rises above a fixed level and the companies would pay the government when the price falls below the agreed level. Several European countries have adopted a similar model, including France, Denmark, Greece and Hungary. The proposal has been seen by Sir Keir Starmer, Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, and Reeves. A source close to Reynolds said industrial energy prices were a 'live issue', while a No 10 source confirmed that measures to lower costs were under 'serious consideration'. Reeves is preparing for Wednesday's spending review and the subsequent publication of the industrial strategy for eight key areas of the economy that the government has promised to promote to bolster economic growth. Industry argues that the price it pays for energy is double that paid by European competitors and four times that of America, which is leaving Britain at a disadvantage. It affects not just the country's existing steelmakers, ceramic industry and chemical businesses but also attempts by the government to attract new technologies, such as energy-hungry data centres. In a document seen by The Sunday Times, the industry lobby group Make UK warned the government: 'If we do not address the issue of high industrial energy costs in the UK as a priority we risk the security of our country. We will fail to attract investment in the manufacturing sector and will rapidly enter a phase of deindustrialisation.' Rain Newton-Smith, chief executive of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), warned the chancellor last week that high energy prices were an 'anchor on our ambition, a crack in our economic security and must be fixed'. The plan being drawn up by Make UK, which it calls a contract for difference, would cost £1.1 billion a year for five years from 2027 to provide a guaranteed energy price. But the organisation argues this 'upfront cost' should be considered in the context of its estimates that it would generate a medium-term boost for the economy of about £3 billion a year — or 0.1 per cent of gross domestic product — and also provide more tax revenue. It claims the policy is politically expedient for the government as it would help the red wall constituencies in the Midlands and northern England where Labour is vulnerable to the threat posed by Reform. The biggest energy-intensive companies already receive a subsidy through the British Industry Supercharger scheme, which was set up by the Conservatives in 2024 and which the Financial Times reported last week could become more generous under plans being considered by ministers. But this does not benefit many industrial companies, which still say they are struggling with high energy prices. When she appeared at an event hosted by the CBI last week, Reeves told the audience of business leaders: 'We know that one of the questions that we need to answer is how we're going to make energy more affordable, particularly for some of our most intensive energy-using businesses where the price differential with other countries is just too acute for many to be competitive. That's a question we know we need to answer and we will answer in the industrial strategy in a few weeks.' Other ideas being presented to the government include stepping up drilling in the North Sea, which is likely to create tensions with Miliband. Solving the energy situation is regarded as a crucial plank of the industrial strategy, which the business secretary put out for consultation six months ago to look at eight sectors: advanced manufacturing; clean energy; the creative industries; defence; digital; financial services; life sciences and professional and business services. The result of the consultation had widely been expected to be published alongside Reeves's spending review but it is not now expected for another two weeks. It is understood that the delay has been caused by a desire to resolve the issue of industry energy costs. Stephen Phipson, chief executive of Make UK, said: 'If we don't want to lose the big corporates we have to get competitive and the government is going to have to make tough choices.' Jakob Sigurdsson, chief executive of the FTSE 250 Lancashire chemical business Victrex, said the industry was not 'asking for handouts' but needed a government policy to ensure it was viable. His energy bill is £12 million — double what it was before Russia's invasion of Ukraine pushed up oil prices — while profits are £60 million. 'When you look at it from a global perspective, for the price of power we're paying four to five times the price for electricity that a Chinese company would be paying,' he said, with a similar situation compared to the US. 'It's a cost disadvantage for us so a sound energy policy and how we deal with pricing mechanisms is paramount,' he said. 'This is not going to be solved through incremental changes. There needs to be a bold energy shift.'
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
From creating the NHS to investing in people, Labour are innovators – next week we'll do it again… with £86b for hi-tech
IT has been almost a year since Labour came to power – and in that time we have made tough choices to steady our economy. This government will never forget that the decisions we make impact your family's finances. 4 4 You know what it means to work hard and make sacrifices when times are tough. And while that has not been easy, the tide is beginning to turn. Interest rates have been cut four times — a boost for everyone with a mortgage. We raised the pay of millions of working people by up to £1,400 a year by increasing the national minimum wage. In the last week, we have increased the number of children eligible for free school meals by half a million and announced £15billion to upgrade trains and buses outside London. Now is the time to invest in Britain's future, and that means doing things differently. We are building a new economic model that puts working people first. By investing in the industries of tomorrow, we will create good jobs, boost wages and put more money into people's pockets. Too often, governments get caught firefighting today's problems, neglecting the opportunities of tomorrow. But history shows us a different path. Inside robotic surgery that is revolutionising outcomes on the NHS After a post-war election victory in 1945, a Labour government created the NHS. In the 1960s, we backed science and technology in the age of the 'white heat'. In the 1990s, we invested in people and public services, transforming lives. Today, we must do the same, by backing British ideas and innovation. Next week, the Chancellor will set out our plan to renew Britain's economy by investing in your priorities: health, security and good jobs. As part of that, we are announcing an £86billion investment in the UK's fastest-growing sectors — tech, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and defence. This money will fund cutting-edge medical research to tackle hard-to-treat diseases to help keep families together for longer. It will support defence innovation to keep Britain safe in an increasingly volatile world. 'Foundations for change' And it will power advances in engineering biology that could revolutionise how we produce food, fuel, materials. These investments will more than pay for themselves and will create thousands of well-paid jobs across the country. And the decisions over where to spend the cash will not be made in Whitehall, but in the communities that will benefit, because we know every corner of Great Britain has a part to play. We want to see Liverpool leveraging its expertise in life sciences to accelerate drug discovery; Northern Ireland harnessing its reputation for cutting-edge defence equipment to shore up our national security; and South Wales making the most of its expertise in designing cutting-edge semiconductors that power the devices like mobile phones and electric cars we rely on every day. 4 4 We know the legacy of the past 14 years can't be reversed overnight. But the tough decisions we have made are laying the foundations for lasting change. Now, we are entering a new phase, focused on long-term renewal and economic strength. The principle is simple: invest through tough times to grow stronger. We see this in the business world constantly. Like the American tech company that, in the 1990s, was 90 days from bankruptcy before doubling down on innovation. That company was Apple, and today many of you are reading this on one of their products. Britain has always led the world when we bet on ourselves. Led the world James Watt's steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution. Work at Bletchley Park laid the foundations for modern computing. Tim Berners-Lee invented the worldwide web. Today, we are global leaders in life sciences and among the top three countries for AI development. These strengths are not just academic — they represent opportunity. Industries that generate billions, improve lives and offer quality jobs for the next generation. We believe Britain's best days are still ahead. That's why we are investing in our people, in innovation, in the future. The road won't always be easy, but we are building a stronger, fairer economy that works for everyone.
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
KEMI BADENOCH: A simple way to deter migrants? Make them wait for ten years before they can claim any benefits
The issue of immigration is a simple one for the Conservative Party: we need to crack down on it in every form, both legal and illegal. For me, this is about basic fairness. Britain today seems to work more favourably for those who jump the queue, who break the rules, who get into our country illegally but then denigrate our customs and our culture. And those of us who work hard and do the right thing, hoping one day to leave a better life for our children, are left footing the bill. The billions of pounds of taxpayers' money we are spending to put asylum seekers up in hotels, for example, is well known. Less well known, however, is the fact that low-paid immigrants and refugees who stay here for five years qualify for 'indefinite leave to remain'. This allows them to claim the same benefits British citizens are entitled to, such as social housing and Universal Credit. They become automatically entitled to make such claims regardless of whether they've paid taxes or have simply lived off the state throughout those five years. To my mind, that is fundamentally unfair to all the hard-working Brits who have dutifully paid into the system – and I'm determined to stop it. But it's likely to come as no surprise that the Labour Government has no such interest. It voted against our Deportation Bill last month, which would have introduced a strict cap on the number of newcomers to these shores, as well as doubling the time it takes for immigrants to be able to claim benefits from five to ten years. The same ten-year rule would also apply to people seeking the privilege of British citizenship, up from the current five years. And, to make sure those who come here are serious about contributing to our society, rather than just ripping it off, the Bill would have barred anyone who'd claimed benefits from getting indefinite leave to remain. It would also have given the government the power to remove settled status from those who commit any crime – preventing them from claiming that precious British passport. All in all, that Bill was designed to protect our borders and uphold fairness in our benefits system. But thanks to Labour, it was shot down. To be honest, many – if not all – of the measures it contained would probably have ended up going the same way as the former government's abandoned scheme to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda. That became bogged down in our courts and frustrated by unnamed foreign judges interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Mel Stride (pictured), when he was Work and Pensions Secretary, came up with reforms to the welfare system that would have saved £5billion, but those, too, got stuck in the courts – giving Labour all the excuses they needed to quietly ditch them I have asked distinguished barrister and shadow attorney general Lord Wolfson KC (pictured), and the shadow solicitor general Helen Grant, to lead a commission to establish, once and for all, if the things that we need to do can be done if we remain a member of the European Convention on Human Rights Other potentially transformative policies of ours have floundered in similar ways. Mel Stride, when he was Work and Pensions Secretary, came up with reforms to the welfare system that would have saved £5billion, but those, too, got stuck in the courts – giving Labour all the excuses they needed to quietly ditch them. I call this lawfare – the use of litigation as a political weapon. Even if these legal activists aren't successful, the costs and delays they incur are crippling to democracy. It is turning us into a country afraid of its own shadow. This must change. I have asked distinguished barrister and shadow attorney general Lord Wolfson KC, and the shadow solicitor general Helen Grant, to lead a commission to establish, once and for all, if the things that we need to do – get control of our borders, protect our welfare system and restore fairness – can be done if we remain a member of the European Convention on Human Rights. They will get to the bottom of how we got into this legal quagmire, and the challenges to getting us out. If their conclusions are that we cannot enact reasonable policies to put British citizens first when it comes to social housing and scarce public services, then I will know that we need to leave. The commission's findings will also help me make a workable plan to get us out of the ECHR, while taking into account the need to ensure essential human rights remain protected. The greatest danger we now face is allowing lawfare to make this country less fair, less safe and less democratic. But I'm determined that, under my leadership, the Conservative Party will protect our values, our democracy, our country – and, ultimately, our people.
