Every secondary school in the UK set to learn new AI skills
The UK government is launching a £187m 'TechFirst' scheme to equip secondary school pupils with AI skills for future jobs, aiming to reach one million students with learning resources.
Research indicates that AI will influence the roles of approximately 10 million workers by 2035, prompting the government to invest in AI education.
The TechFirst program includes a £24m TechYouth initiative to provide AI skills training in every secondary school across the UK over three years.
Sir Keir Starmer is initiating a government partnership to train 7.5 million UK workers in essential AI skills by 2030, with tech giants like Google and Microsoft providing free training materials.
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle acknowledged that AI is not flawless and can produce unreliable information, emphasising the need for understanding how it works and the importance of future AI legislation.
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The Independent
32 minutes ago
- The Independent
EU seeks to lower a price cap on Russian oil and discourage Nord Stream pipeline investors
The European Union wants to lower a cap on the price of Russian oil to deprive the Kremlin of extra profits to fund its war in Ukraine as part of a new raft of sanctions aimed at forcing Moscow to the negotiating table, senior officials said on Tuesday. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc is 'proposing to lower the oil price cap from $60 to $45, which is lower than the market price, and lowering the oil price cap will hit Russia's revenues hard.' Kallas said the EU also wants to impose 'sanctions on the Nord Stream pipelines to prevent Russia generating any revenue in the future. In this way, it sends a clear signal we are not going back to business as usual.' All 27 EU member countries must all agree for the sanctions to enter force. In 2023, Ukraine's Western allies limited sales of Russian oil to $60 per barrel but the price cap was largely symbolic as most of Moscow's crude — its main moneymaker — cost less than that. Still, the cap was there in case oil prices rose. Oil income is the linchpin of Russia's economy, allowing President Vladimir Putin to pour money into the armed forces while avoiding worsening inflation for everyday people and a currency collapse. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she assumed that the price cap would be discussed and agreed among the leaders of the Group of Seven major world economic powers when they meet in Canada on June 15-17. She said the United States and its G7 partners realize 'that the oil price has lowered so much that the effectiveness of the cap is to be questioned, and therefore we all want to lower the oil price from $60 per barrel down to $45 per barrel.' The Nord Stream gas pipelines were built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany but are not in operation. They were sabotaged in 2022, but the source of the underwater explosions has remained a major international mystery. The Commission has said that it wants to impose sanctions on the operating consortium to discourage investors from trying to use the pipelines in future. The blasts happened as Europe attempted to wean itself off Russian energy sources following the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and contributed to tensions that followed the start of the war. Von der Leyen noted on Tuesday that at the beginning of the war in 2022, 'Russia had 12 billion euros ($14 billion) of energy revenues from fossil fuels" from Europe per month. "And now we're down to 1.8 billion (euros).' The new EU sanctions would also target Russia's banking sector, with the aim of limiting the Kremlin's ability to raise funds or carry out financial transactions. A further 22 Russian banks will be hit with measures, von der Leyen said. An export ban worth some 2.5 billion euros would also be imposed, and the assets frozen of more than 20 Russian and foreign companies alleged to be providing support to the Kremlin's war machine. Von der Leyen said the sanctions are aimed at forcing Russia into serious talks about peace with Ukraine. 'We need a real ceasefire, and Russia has to come to the negotiating table with a serious proposal,' she told reporters. The EU has imposed several rounds of sanctions on Russia since Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine in February 2022. Around 2,400 officials and 'entities' – often government agencies, banks and organizations – have been hit. It's last raft of sanctions, imposed on May 20, targeted almost 200 ships in Russia's sanction-busting shadow fleet of tankers, and tightened trade restrictions to stop produce that could be used for military purposes from reaching Russia's armed forces.
The Independent
33 minutes ago
- The Independent
HMRC failure to notify MPs sooner about £47m phishing scam ‘unacceptable'
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has been warned by a committee of MPs that its failure to report details of a breach affecting around 100,000 taxpayers is 'unacceptable'. The Treasury Committee said it was only alerted to the information when a notification was published on the HMRC website on the same day as a live session. On June 4, it emerged that HMRC had lost £47 million after a phishing scam breached tens of thousands of tax accounts. Senior civil servants at HMRC told the Treasury Committee that 100,000 people have been contacted, or are in the process of being contacted, after their accounts were locked down in what they said was an 'organised crime' incident which started last year. On Tuesday, the committee published a letter from the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) stipulating that it had not discussed the phishing incident with HMRC and was not aware of it prior to the hearing on June 4. The committee also published a letter sent via email from its chairwoman Dame Meg Hillier to John-Paul Marks, chief executive, HMRC. The letter said: 'I am alarmed that it was never deemed necessary to inform Parliament about an issue which affected such a vast number of taxpayers and led to the loss of £47 million of public money. 'To discover this information during a session from press reports and without adequate time for the committee to review the information in detail is unacceptable.' The letter said the committee is seeking responses from HMRC as to 'why was Parliament not notified earlier about the loss of £47 million of taxpayers' money, whether through a written ministerial statement and/or public or confidential letters to the Treasury Committee and the Public Accounts Committee?' The committee is also seeking responses over why the update was published on the day of the committee hearing on the work of HMRC and who else in Government was told about the incident and when. It also wants to receive a timeline of how the incident unfolded and find out what measures HMRC has put in place to ensure that such incidents do not happen in future. The letter asked for a reply by June 24 2025. Meanwhile, the letter from Glenn Collins, head of technical and strategic engagement, ACCA, to Dame Meg, dated June 5, said: 'While we regularly engage with HMRC, including earlier in the year about issues relating to agent account access, we have not received any communication from HMRC on the issue of taxpayer account breaches until yesterday. 'We have highlighted to HMRC our frustration that HMRC has not been transparent or timely in its communication over this important issue.'
BBC News
36 minutes ago
- BBC News
Family visa income threshold should be lower, review says
The minimum income threshold for family visas should be relaxed, a government-commissioned review has recommended.A report by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has suggested a reduction from the current level of £29, warned against previous proposals to raise the threshold to the same level as for skilled workers - £38,700 a year - saying it could breach the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).The Conservatives said that the UK should leave the ECHR if it "stops us from setting our own visa rules". Article 8 of the ECHR enshrines the right to family threshold is the minimum income a British citizen or settled resident must earn to bring their partner to join them in the UK. If the partner is already in the UK on a valid visa, their income also counts towards the minimum applications are made by people not already living in the UK. The MAC suggested a range of possible new thresholds. It said a level between £23,000 to £25,000 would enable families to support themselves.A threshold of between £24,000 to £28,000 meanwhile would put more emphasis on economic wellbeing - both of the families themselves and for said it did "not understand the rationale" for setting the family visa threshold at the £38,700 level for skilled workers, as the two visas have "completely different objective[s]".A £38,700 level would be the "most likely to conflict with international law and obligations".It is the government's decision whether to accept any of the MAC's recommendations. Prof Brian Bell, chairman of the MAC, said that balancing family life and economic wellbeing was a "real trade-off"."There is a cost to the UK economy and UK taxpayers of having this route, and we should just be honest about that and say there is a trade-off," he said."But similarly, on the other side, people who say 'we should set it at very high numbers to make sure that we don't lose any money' ignore the massive impact that has on families and the destruction of some relationships and the harm it causes to children." A higher threshold would also have a "negative impact on the family life of a larger number of people", the MAC said. It noted many families with lower incomes still earn enough to support themselves even if they do not make a net positive fiscal impact on the said an adult would need to earn £27,800 to have a neutral impact on the public finances - and £40,400 for a couple to have no impact in the first year a spouse arrived in the MAC did not recommend a higher threshold for families with children, saying the impacts on family life for them would be "particularly significant". In 2023 the previous Conservative government announced plans to raise the salary threshold to £38,700, as part of plans to cut the level of they backed down following criticism that this would keep families apart, settling on a £29,000 threshold with plans to gradually increase it did not implement those further rises when the party came into government and asked the MAC to review the committee said the threshold of £29,000 was already high compared to other high-income countries it had looked at. The MAC said it "was not possible to predict with any confidence" the impact different thresholds would have on the level of net migration - the difference between those entering and leaving the did suggest lowering the threshold from £29,000 to roughly £24,000 may increase net migration by up to 8,000 migration in 2024 was an estimated 431,000 people, down almost 50% on the previous followed record high levels in recent years, with the government under political pressure to get numbers down further. The MAC also criticised the Home Office for its data collection, saying insufficient data "greatly hindered" their review.A Home Office spokesperson said the government was considering the review's findings and would respond in due course. Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said migration figures remain too high and that the government "must urgently re-instate the Conservative plan to further increase the salary threshold"."If the ECHR stops us from setting our own visa rules, from deporting foreign criminals or from putting Britain's interests first, then we should leave the ECHR," he ECHR, which was established in 1950, sets out the rights and freedoms people are entitled to in the 46 signatory countries and is a central part of UK human rights month, the government said it would bring forward legislation to clarify how aspects of the ECHR should apply in immigration cases.
