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Jackie Long
Today the National Audit Office released a report heavily critical of the Government’s flagship benefit programme Universal Credit – saying it is failing to deliver financial savings or employment benefits, all the while leaving some vulnerable benefit claimants struggling to make ends meet. This is a damning report but mostly because it’s on the back…
Share prices across Europe have slumped over the latest political turmoil in Italy – with more elections expected within months. Attempts by the populist Five Star and League parties to form a governing coalition collapsed after the Italian president rejected the choice of a leading euro-sceptic as economy minister. The technocrat Carlo Cottarelli has…
Knife crime is up. Firearms offences are up. And the number of burglaries have soared. New official statistics show that across England and Wales there’s been a worrying rise in police recorded violence – even though a separate survey says the overall level of crime has remained broadly stable. Labour have accused the Conservatives of…
As many as 60 people have lost their lives in severe weather across Europe, where heavy blizzards and icy temperatures have cut off roads and forced hundreds of rail services and flights to be cancelled. Poland and Ukraine were hit by heavy snowstorms – and the Siberian conditions spread as far south as Italy, from…
Entire train services stopped running. Major stations were closed. Thousands of flights have been cancelled. The advice, say experts, is not to travel at all. Snow, ice and freezing rain are causing yet more misery around the country, while heavy rain and thawing snow have triggered flood alerts for many areas too. Six people have…
Across the country, the extreme weather has been causing yet more chaos. In Cornwall, police urged drivers to stay at home after a seven year old girl was killed in an accident. The National Grid said there may not be enough gas to meet the demands of both domestic and industrial users, although it emphasised that…
A national safeguarding report in Wales has called for all home-educated children to be registered and regularly assessed. There have been growing calls across the UK for the law on home education to be changed, amidst a sharp growth in the number of children thought to be schooled at home. But regulation remains hugely contentious among…
Jeremy Corbyn talked about universal credit and its effects on tenant evictions and child poverty. We take a look at his claims.
Gary Gibbon
And we had a weekend of “Get Boris” before Tory Conference, a flurry of “Get Theresa” just afterwards. You can already hear a bit of “Get Phil” around Westminster.
A river of mud came out of nowhere and swallowed entire communities, an aid worker said today, after devastating mudslides hit the Sierra Leone capital Freetown. The Red Cross said3,000 people are homeless and almost 400 are now confirmed to have died, but that figure is expected to rise as rescue workers desperately search for people beneath the rubble…
It’s been ten years since the financial crisis began. FactCheck looks at three ways millennials are feeling the effects of the crash.
Hundreds of people have been arrested across Russia in one of the biggest anti-Kremlin demonstrations in recent years. Opposition leader and presidential hopeful Alexei Navalny had called for nationwide protests against what he called Vladimir Putin’s corrupt rule.
In the last few minutes we’ve heard reports that a vigil in Birmingham has been interrupted after a man apparently armed with a large knife and a baseball bat was detained nearby. In Manchester, the injured from last night’s attack have been taken to eight hospitals across the city.
In a deliberate echo of presidential phrases, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah today issued a joint statement condemning the US missile strike on Syria as having crossed “a red line”.
Victoria Macdonald
The pressures on health and social care this winter have been hard to ignore.