Human rights ‘worsened' in UK over the past year, says US
'The government sometimes took credible steps to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses, but prosecution and punishment for such abuses was inconsistent,' the report read.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy welcomes US vice president JD Vance (Suzanne Plunkett/PA)
The report specifically said laws limiting speech around abortion clinics, pointing to 'safe access zones' curbed expression, including silent protests and prayer.
'These restrictions on freedom of speech could include prohibitions on efforts to influence others when inside a restricted area, even through prayer or silent protests,' the report read.
In the wake of the 2024 Southport attack, the report said government officials 'repeatedly intervened to chill speech'.
Criticism over the handling of free speech was also directed at the governments of Germany and France.
A UK government spokesperson told the BBC: 'Free speech is vital for democracy around the world, including here in the UK and we are proud to uphold freedoms whilst keeping our citizens safe.'
Sentiments echoed those previously made by vice president JD Vance.
In February, Mr Vance criticised the UK over a legal case in which a former serviceman who silently prayed outside an abortion clinic was convicted of breaching the safe zone around the centre.
In a wider attack on what he suggested is a shift away from democratic values across Europe, Mr Vance claimed the 'basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular' are under threat.
He referred to the conviction of Adam Smith-Connor, 51, who had denied doing so but was found guilty last year of failing to comply with a public space protection order at the centre in Bournemouth in November 2022.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Mr Vance said that the US' 'very dear friends the United Kingdom' appeared to have seen a 'backslide in conscience rights'.
'A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own,' he said.
The report also said the Government 'effectively' enforced laws around freedom of association and the rights of workers.
The UK Government has been contacted for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
2 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Ukraine war briefing: Putin says US making ‘sincere efforts' to end war as Russian troops make gains
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that the US was making 'sincere efforts' to halt the war in Ukraine and suggested Moscow and Washington could agree a nuclear arms deal as part of a wider effort to strengthen peace during his meeting with Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday. Speaking to his most senior ministers and security officials in televised comments he said that the US was 'making, in my opinion, quite energetic and sincere efforts to stop the hostilities, stop the crisis and reach agreements that are of interest to all parties involved in this conflict'. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov however warned that it would be a big mistake to predict the outcome of the upcoming summit, the Interfax news agency reported. Peskov said there were no plans to sign any documents after the summit in the Alaska city of Anchorage, Interfax said. Trump said he believed Putin was ready to make a deal on Ukraine, but his suggestion the Russian leader and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could 'divvy things up' was likely to have caused alarm some in Kyiv. The US president implied there was a 75% chance of the Alaska meeting succeeding, and that the threat of economic sanctions may have made Putin more willing to seek an end to the war. Trump insisted that he would not let Putin get the better of him in Friday's meeting, telling reporters: 'I am president, and he's not going to mess around with me. 'I'll know within the first two minutes, three minutes, four minutes or five minutes … whether or not we're going to have a good meeting or a bad meeting. The Russian president will set out to woo his US counterpart and dangle financial incentives for siding with Moscow over Ukraine at their summit on Friday, Pjotr Sauer reports. On Thursday, Putin's adviser Yuri Ushakov said the leaders would discuss the 'huge untapped potential' in Russia-US economic relations. 'An exchange of views is expected on further developing bilateral cooperation, including in the trade and economic sphere,' Ushakov said. 'This cooperation has huge and, unfortunately so far, untapped potential.' European leaders praised Trump on Thursday for agreeing to allow US military support for a force they are mustering to police any future peace in Ukraine – a move that vastly improves the chances of success for an operation that could prove essential for the country's security. The leaders said Trump offered American military backup for the European 'reassurance force' during a call they held with him ahead of his planned summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. They did not say what the assistance might involve, and Trump himself has not publicly confirmed any support. UK prime minister Keir Starmer welcomed Zelenskyy to London on Thursday in a show of British support for Ukraine ahead of the Alaska summit. The two embraced warmly outside Starmer's offices at 10 Downing Street without making any comments. Around an hour later, Starmer walked Zelenskyy back to his waiting car, and the two leaders shared another embrace as the Ukrainian president departed. Donetsk governor Vadym Filashkin said that Ukrainian troops had stabilised the battlefield in an area of eastern Ukraine where Russian forces had made a sudden push this week to pierce Ukrainian defences. Ukraine said small groups of Russian infantry had thrust 10 kilometres (six miles) toward its main defensive line near the town of Dobropillia, raising fears of a wider breakthrough that would further threaten key cities. The advance appeared aimed at pressuring Kyiv to give up land in pursuit of peace three-and-a-half years into Russia's invasion of its neighbour. 'The situation in the Dobropillia sector has stabilised,' Filashkin wrote the Telegram messaging app. 'Thanks to the heroic efforts of our Defence Forces, the frontline is reliably holding.' However Ukraine on Thursday ordered more evacuations in the east, from a town close to where Moscow made its breakthrough. 'We began the mandatory evacuation of families with children from the town of Druzhkivka,' said Donetsk regional military administration head Vadym Filashkin, adding that four more villages near the town were also ordered to evacuate. He added that 1,879 children were remaining in the settlements. Earlier on Thursday, Russian forces claimed to have captured the village of Iskra and the small town of Shcherbynivka in Ukraine's Donetsk region, which the Kremlin claimed to have annexed in September 2022. The US Agency for International Development did not monitor the uses of 5,175 Starlink terminals sent to Ukraine, with nearly half of the operational units ending up in areas fully or partly held by Moscow, according to a report by the agency's internal watchdog. USAID's inspector general found that the agency failed to keep track of the terminals of Elon Musk's satellite internet service because it had accepted a higher risk of misuse due to 'the complex wartime environment' and Ukraine's urgent need for them. The report did not say how those terminals ended up in those areas, who had them or the purposes for which they were used. Russia and Ukraine exchanged 84 prisoners each on Thursday, both sides said, the latest in a series of swaps that has seen hundreds of PoW released so far this year. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media that among the exchanged prisoners were 'both military personnel and civilians', some of whom had been 'held by the Russians since 2014, 2016, and 2017'. He said 'defenders of Mariupol' were also part of the swap, referring to a Ukrainian port city that fell to Russian forces in 2022 after a nearly three-month siege. Russia has put Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on its list of 'undesirable' organisations, effectively banning the media watchdog from operating in the country, Moscow's justice ministry register showed on Thursday. Under a controversial law passed in 2015, but rarely used before its offensive on Ukraine, Russia can ban overseas organisations deemed a threat to national security. Russian State Duma chair Vyacheslav Volodin met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during an official visit to Pyongyang, the Russian parliament said on Thursday. Volodin, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, conveyed greetings from the Russian leader and thanked Kim for North Korea's support of Russia's military campaign in Ukraine.
Daily Mail
4 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
TOM UTLEY: I was once fiercely proud of being a Londoner born and bred. But as Sturgeon seeks greener pastures and after nine years of the Khan Terror, Mrs U and I are thinking the unthinkable...
Blow me down, who would have thought it? Nicola Sturgeon, the nationalist former First Minister of Scotland, who has spent her entire political life fighting for Scottish independence and slagging off evil England, now says she's thinking of leaving her native land. And where does she plan to move to? Unbelievably, her destination of choice appears to be... evil England! More specifically, she hints strongly this week that the ideal place she would like to escape to, at least for a 'wee while', is my own native London – capital of the kingdom she has tirelessly campaigned to leave. 'This may shock many people to hear,' she says, 'but I love London... So, yeah, maybe a bit of time down there. Who knows?' But will she really find the capital as pleasant a place to live as she seems to imagine? Or will she find that in moving from her own party's Scotland to mayor Sir Sadiq Khan 's Labour London, she'll just be swapping one nightmare terror for another? I'll come back to that question in a moment. But first, I'll let Ms Sturgeon explain why she's tempted to move. In an interview to promote her self-justifying, self-pitying new memoir, she tells the BBC: 'I belong to Scotland, it's my home. But I think being physically out of Scotland for a period might just help to reset my perspective and, to be more selfish about it, just remove me a little bit from that goldfish bowl scrutiny that I still live under in Scotland. 'I don't mean that as a complaint, it's just the reality that Scotland's quite a small country, it's quite a small body politic . . . Suffocating is maybe putting it too strongly, but I sometimes feel I can't breathe freely in Scotland.' Of course, Ms Sturgeon will hardly be the first Scot to head south in the hope of breathing more freely. Indeed, my own Scottish mother-in-law made that same move more than six decades ago, taking her five Ayrshire-born daughters with her, including the future Mrs U, who was then only five years old. Like Ms Sturgeon, she had recently separated from her husband – and like her, too, no doubt, she wanted to escape from her tight-knit, gossipy local community, where all her neighbours and relations knew or wanted to know everything that was going on in her life. Mind you, I suspect that the number of Scots who yearn to move south has grown ever greater since Ms Sturgeon's SNP came to power in 2007, and set about turning the country into an oppressive socialist stronghold, in thrall to mad, woke ideas. Thanks largely to England's generosity, we learned this week, every year Scotland now receives nearly £2,700 a head more in public funding than the UK average – an extraordinary £21,192 per person, compared with £18,523 in the kingdom as a whole. Yet in spite of this, Ms Sturgeon's party has managed to wreck Scotland's public services, including an education system that was once the envy of the rest of the UK. In 2006, for example, the nation achieved by far the UK's best results in maths, as measured by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's rankings. By 2022, it had plunged to second worst, a long way behind England and ahead only of Wales. Meanwhile, the number of NHS patients who have to wait more than two years for treatment north of the border is almost 100 times higher than in England, while Scotland still holds the unenviable record of having the highest number of drug deaths in Europe. Indeed, Ms Sturgeon and her party appear to have tested to destruction the theory that the way to solve social problems is to hurl ever greater quantities of other people's money at them. Then there was the debacle over the former First Minister's crazy plan for gender self-recognition, which would have allowed male rapists to serve their time in women's prisons. Add Ms Sturgeon's little local difficulties with her husband and the police, and perhaps it's no wonder that she wants to make herself scarce for a while, away from the scene of all the destruction and chaos her party has wrought. But back to that question: will she really find London any better? If you'd asked me that a few years ago, I would have had no hesitation in saying it was the best place to live on the planet. I was fiercely proud of being one of the few London residents I know who was born and brought up in the capital, while most of my neighbours and colleagues were drawn to it by its job opportunities, innumerable amenities and other attractions. In the words of the wartime song, I used to 'get a funny feeling inside of me/ Just walking up and down/ Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner/ That I love London town.' But I can't say the same any longer. After nine years under Sir Sadiq Khan, in cahoots with my disastrous Labour council, shoplifters and fare dodgers abound, the streets reek of cannabis and deliveries left on my neighbours' doorsteps are stolen within minutes. Yet there's never a copper to be seen, except for those flashing past in their cars, with sirens blaring (perhaps to arrest someone suspected of tweeting something disobliging about Hamas). At the same time, driving and parking in London have become all but impossible for the rest of us, as Khan and his party's councillors carry on their war against motorists, with their Ultra Low Emission Zones, cycle lanes, Controlled Parking Zones, Low Traffic Neighbourhoods – hated by all except eco-zealots. Then there are the endless road closures for minority religious festivals, celebrations of LGBTQ+ Pride, and the like. Since Tony Blair threw open our borders, it has also becoming increasingly rare to hear an English voice on the bus or the Tube, in a city where already 60 per cent of live births are to mothers born outside the UK. Meanwhile, many London schools have become battlegrounds, where teachers face a daily struggle simply to keep their pupils from each other's throats. No, the fact is that the London where I live today has become almost unrecognisable as the city I used to love. Sadly, two of our four London-born sons have already moved to the West Country, driven away from their birthplace by the hope of a better life and the impossibility of finding an affordable home in the capital. A third speaks of moving to Liverpool, and I don't suppose the fourth will remain in London for much longer. Now, for the first time in all these decades, my wife and I are seriously tempted to follow their example. The only question that remains is where, in this benighted kingdom, is the best place for an ageing couple to settle, most untouched by the blight of woke socialism? One thing's for sure. After Ms Sturgeon's long stint in power, not even the beauties of the scenery will tempt us to move to the land of Mrs U's birth.
North Wales Chronicle
16 minutes ago
- North Wales Chronicle
King and Queen to honour veterans on 80th anniversary of VJ Day
Royal British Legion (RBL) guests of honour at a service of remembrance at the National Memorial Arboretum on Friday include 33 veterans aged from 96 to 105 who served in the Far East and Pacific. Charles, patron of the RBL, Camilla, and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will attend the event which honours British, Commonwealth and Allied veterans who served in the Far East theatres of war including Myanmar and the Pacific and Indian Ocean territories. Ahead of the service, the King, in an pre-recorded audio address to the nation, will vow that the sacrifice of heroes who fought and died in the campaigns 'shall never be forgotten'. He will reflect on the horrors experienced by prisoners of war and innocent civilians of occupied lands in the region 'whose suffering reminds us that war's true cost extends beyond battlefields, touching every aspect of life'. Charles will describe how the collaboration of countries demonstrated 'in times of war and in times of peace, the greatest weapons of all are not the arms you bear but the arms you link'. Around 1,500 guests at the national commemoration will hear first-hand testimony from veterans who experienced conflict in the Far East before the war ended when atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to Japan's surrender and VJ Day on August 15 1945. The service will begin with a national two-minute silence and include flypasts by the Red Arrows and the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight's Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster – with military bagpipers playing at dawn in the Far East section of the Arboretum. The Prime Minister held a special reception at Downing Street for veterans on Thursday, at which he described the Government as one of 'service'. He added: 'I sat on this terrace this very morning with President Zelensky, who is fighting for the same values as we were fighting for. 'And so when we say never forget, we must pass on the stories of those who have gone before us.' On 15 August, we will mark VJ Day 80 with a National Commemorative Event at the @Nat_Mem_Arb. Please join us for the national two-minute silence, and help us pay tribute to all those who fought and died during WW2 in the Far East. Find out more ⬇️ — Royal British Legion (@PoppyLegion) July 15, 2025 During Thursday's garden party, veteran Stanley Elliss, aged 103, and his daughter, could be seen showing the Prime Minister pictures he had taken during the war. Sir Keir said: 'Eighty years since our victory in the Second World War, we pay our respects to the many who fought, were captured, and made the ultimate sacrifice in the Far East. 'Our country owes a great debt to those who fought for a better future, so we could have the freedoms and the life we enjoy today. We must honour that sacrifice with every new generation.' Many of the veterans at the Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire, have never told their story before registering with the RBL to be part of commemorations to mark the 80th anniversary of Victory Over Japan. Veterans attending the event on Friday served in the British Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, with roles ranging from those deployed on submarines, minesweepers and destroyers, to a Spitfire pilot and a combat cameraman. The oldest veterans are Yavar Abbas and Owen Filer, aged 105, and other attendees include two of the last surviving Chindits – Charlie Richards, 104, and Sid Machin, 101 – who served in the elite Special Forces unit known for their deep jungle warfare tactics as part of Operation Thursday. Mr Richards, from Northamptonshire – who served in the 7th Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment, spent months behind enemy lines ambushing Japanese supplies and communications, all while pulling along reluctant mules and heavy equipment. The 104-year-old said: 'I am so proud to attend the RBL's national event, and I think it will be a really poignant moment for those of us left. 'I want to represent all those who saw action in the Far East and remember those who never made it home, including my best friend and comrade, Son Johnson, who was killed in action in Burma. It will be such a special day for me and my family.' Joseph Hammond, 100, whose testimony will be shared during the service, will be watching the live broadcast from his home in Ghana 3,000 miles away. Mr Hammond fought in Burma in the 82nd Division in brutal conditions near the Irrawaddy River and suffered a serious eye injury and remained in hospital until the war ended. In 2020, he walked 14 miles over seven days to raise £500,000 for frontline workers and veterans during the Covid pandemic. Mr Hammond said: 'Why should such a thing happen? Man killing his fellow man. Humanity, destroying humanity. Never allow your country to go that way. It's no good. I know how it feels, so I have to advise everybody to keep away from war. Let us continue to enjoy our peace.' The service will be broadcast live on BBC One from 11.30am and will be hosted by actress and author Celia Imrie. Ms Imrie said: 'It is an honour to be hosting this momentous occasion with The Royal British Legion, to pay tribute to these courageous and inspiring veterans who are able to join us at the National Memorial Arboretum on VJ Day, and to remember those who never made it home.' Mark Atkinson, Director General of the Royal British Legion, said: 'It is an enormous privilege for the RBL to be leading the nation on the 80th anniversary of VJ Day with our service of remembrance at National Memorial Arboretum broadcast live on BBC One. 'Victory over Japan would not have been possible without the diverse contribution of Allied Forces from Britain, the Commonwealth and beyond, and this is one of our last chances to thank veterans who fought in the Far East and Pacific for their service and sacrifice. 'Their contribution brought an end to the Second World War and this is a moment for the country to come together and commemorate this momentous anniversary and pay tribute to their courage and bravery.' Around five million men and women served in the British Armed Forces during the Second World War, with millions more mobilised from countries including pre-partition India, Australia, Canada, and across the Commonwealth including African and Caribbean nations. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: 'We must never forget this vital part of our national story. By coming together to hear the stories of our brave VJ Day veterans first-hand, we can ensure that the legacy of our British Armed Forces and those from across the Commonwealth is passed on to future generations.' From 9pm on Friday evening, hundreds of buildings across the country will be lit up to mark VJ 80, including Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London, Tower42, The Shard, Blackpool Tower, Gateshead Millennium Bridge, Durham Cathedral, Cardiff Castle, the Cenotaph, the Kranji War Memorial in Singapore and the White Cliffs of Dover.
