Angela Rayner's council overhaul will cost taxpayer billions
Ministers aim to get rid of more than 100 councils within the next four years to make local government more efficient.
But officials in Rayner's department are concerned there will be 'substantial' extra costs because of the generous structure of local government pension scheme, under which councils must pay long-serving officials hundreds of thousands of pounds each for being made redundant.
Lord Fuller, the Tory peer and former chair of the District Councils Network, said there would be 'multi-billion pound implications', although there is not thought to be a centrally- held estimate of the costs.
England has 21 county councils, with 164
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The Independent
2 minutes ago
- The Independent
Paul Weller sues former accountants after being dropped over Gaza statements
Musician Paul Weller is suing his former accountants after they stopped working with the singer after public statements alleging Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, according to a legal letter. The former frontman of The Jam has filed a discrimination claim against Harris and Trotter after the firm ended their professional relationship after more than 30 years. In a pre-action letter seen by the PA news agency, lawyers for Weller say the singer-songwriter was told in March that the accountants and tax advisers would no longer work with the 67-year-old or his companies. According to the letter, a WhatsApp message from a partner at the firm included: 'It's well known what your political views are in relation to Israel, the Palestinians and Gaza, but we as a firm are offended at the assertions that Israel is committing any type of genocide. 'Everyone is entitled to their own views, but you are alleging such anti-Israel views that we as a firm with Jewish roots and many Jewish partners are not prepared to work with someone who holds these views.' Lawyers for Weller claim that by ending their services, the firm unlawfully discriminated against the singer's protected philosophical beliefs including that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and that Palestine should be recognised as a nation state. Weller said: 'I've always spoken out against injustice, whether it's apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. What's happening to the Palestinian people in Gaza is a humanitarian catastrophe. 'I believe they have the right to self-determination, dignity, and protection under international law, and I believe Israel is committing genocide against them. That must be called out. 'Silencing those who speak this truth is not just censorship – it's complicity. 'I'm taking legal action not just for myself, but to help ensure that others are not similarly punished for expressing their beliefs about the rights of the Palestinian people.' Weller will donate any damages he receives to humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza, the legal letter also states. Cormac McDonough, a lawyer at Hodge Jones and Allen, representing Weller, said that his case 'reflects a wider pattern of attempts to silence artists and public figures who speak out in support of Palestinian rights'. Mr McDonough added: 'Within the music industry especially, we are seeing increasing efforts to marginalise those who express solidarity with the people of Gaza.'
Daily Mail
32 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
The real difficulty ministers face is that the Epping hotel judgment is a clean and fair application of the law: ANDREW TETTENBORN
There's a beautiful irony in the Epping hotel injunction. The Government's immigration policy of putting asylum seekers in hotels in some of the less well-off parts of the country has received a major blow from the legal class that Keir Starmer, Lord Hermer and many of their learned friends themselves inhabit. And it's a blow that sees the long-term viability of the Government's immigration policy unravel, as councils up and down the country will seek to use this ruling to shut down their own troublesome migrant hotels. The difficulty for the Government is that Mr Justice Eyre's decision is a clean, fair, straightforward application of the law. He has ruled that, if planning permission exists for a hotel, it's a blatant breach of planning law to use the premises as a long-term asylum reception centre. Who'd have thought it? At bottom, it's no different from a convoy of travellers breaking planning law by parking caravans on a public recreation ground, or a farmer building a holiday camp on an arable field. The courts regularly issue stiff injunctions in cases like these, and rightly so. But Starmer and the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, were surprisingly complacent, imagining that somehow this didn't apply to their own activities. When the penny dropped at the last minute, they scrambled to influence the result, sending barrister Edward Brown KC to argue that the local authority 'should, in fact, have given some consideration to the wider public interest in this application'. In other words, that an injunction should not be allowed because it would make life very difficult for the Government. Counsel for the hotelier took much the same line, effectively ignoring the concerns of the local people who had been protesting outside The Bell ever since an Ethiopian asylum seeker lodging there was charged with sexual assault against a 14-year-old schoolgirl. 'Fears as to an increase of crime associated with asylum seekers or a danger to schools are common,' he said. 'But that does not make them well founded.' The hotelier's barrister was, of course, doing his job. Nevertheless, such legal arguments blithely take no notice of local problems caused by uncontrolled immigration and the small boats crisis, which has seen more than 50,000 undocumented illegal migrants crossing the Channel to Britain in the 13 months since Labour came to power. Until now, the Home Office has seemed content to dump the problem on councils such as Epping, where voters traditionally mistrust Labour. Now those voters have rightly dumped it back on the Government. What seriously spooks the Home Office is that Epping will not be a lone case. Across the kingdom we could now see multiple injunctions, forcing the Home Secretary in short order to relocate tens of thousands of asylum seekers currently in hotels – there are more than 32,000 according to figures released in March. And it is urgent: The High Court has given the Government only three weeks, until September 12, to vacate The Bell. The Government must act, and fast. One option might be to set up more dedicated reception centres, as in Germany and France. Another is to deter small-boat crossings by making it more difficult for illegal migrants to enter the black economy. The ball is firmly, and legally, in its court.
The Guardian
32 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Ukraine war briefing: Squeeze on Putin to accept direct peace talks with Zelenskyy
The Russian leadership continued to obfuscate on Wednesday, after European leaders and Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin had agreed to a one-on-one meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy to kickstart peace talks. Sergei Lavrov said Moscow did not reject any format for Ukraine peace talks but the Russian foreign minister appeared to apply the brakes, saying any leaders' meeting 'must be prepared with utmost thoroughness'. On Tuesday, a Kremlin aide said only that Putin was open to the 'idea' of 'raising the level of representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian sides' at a future meeting. The White House also announced that Viktor Orbán, the pro-Putin Hungarian prime minister, and Trump had discussed the possibility of talks being held in Budapest. As with the Kremlin, there was no apparent confirmation of this conversation from the Hungarian side. A war crimes warrant could oblige Hungarian authorities to arrest a visiting Putin, but Hungary is withdrawing from the international criminal court. Orbán explicitly committing to play host could place unwanted pressure on the Russian ruler from one of his few allies to accept the meeting as an inevitability. Austria and Switzerland also said they would be ready to host the meeting. Switzerland said that during Putin's visit it could set aside its international criminal court obligations. 'This has to do with our diplomatic role, with international Geneva as [the European] headquarters of the United Nations,' said Ignazio Cassis, the Swiss foreign minister. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said Geneva was a potential location for the talks. The Austrian chancellor, Christian Stocker, said his country supported any initiative leading to a just and lasting peace protecting Ukrainian and European security. Donald Trump has ruled out sending US troops to Ukraine to enforce a potential peace deal, tempering a promise to provide Kyiv with security guarantees in conjunction with European allies, write Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer. In a phone interview with Fox News, Trump did however say that Washington may be willing to provide air support to Ukraine in order to backstop a deal, in what would still be a remarkable shift in his administration's policy on the conflict. Putin opposes Ukraine joining Nato – Trump told Fox that 'there'll be some form of security. It can't be Nato. They're willing to put people on the ground. We're willing to help them with things, especially, probably, if you could talk about by air.' Trump conceded that Putin might not want to make a deal after all, saying: 'We're going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks.' Nato military leaders are expected to meet on Wednesday to discuss Ukraine and the way forward, a US official and Nato official have told the Reuters news agency. The US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Gen Dan Caine, chair of the US joint chiefs of staff, was expected to teleconference in, but plans could still change. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Another Nato official said the alliance's top military commander, Alexus Grynkewich, would brief the leaders on the results of the Alaska meeting between Trump and Putin last week. Following Monday's meeting in Washington, Russia launched its biggest air assault in more than a month on Ukraine, with 270 drones and 10 missiles fired, the Ukrainian air force said. The energy ministry said the strikes caused big fires at energy facilities in the central Poltava region, home to Ukraine's only oil refinery. The governor of Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, Serhiy Lysak, said Russian shelling killed a resident of Nikopol, a frequent target of Moscow's attacks. A Ukrainian drone attack late on Tuesday knocked out power to Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region, said the Moscow-installed governor, Yevgeny Balitsky. Kyiv maintains control of the region's main administrative centre and its attacks have periodically knocked out electricity in Russian-held areas. The illegally occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station was unaffected, the plant's director told Russia's RIA news agency. The plant produces no electricity but needs power for cooling and monitoring systems to maintain safety. Russia and Ukraine exchanged more bodies of their war dead, the Moscow-run Tass news agency reported on Tuesday, citing a source. Moscow handed over the bodies of 1,000 Ukrainian soldiers and had received 19 bodies of its own fallen soldiers in return, it was reported. Ukraine appeared to confirm the exchange.
