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4 days ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Joe Barnes |Daniel Martin
Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of "smoke and mirrors" over a new £40 billion defence pledge. The Prime Minister will on Wednesday approve a new Nato defence spending target of 5 per cent of GDP by 2035, at the alliance's annual leaders' summit in The Hague. By signing off the agreement, Sir Keir will effectively commit Britain to spending some £40 billion extra on defence each year. However, the Prime Minister will not announce any new money when he sets out his plans to meet the Nato demands.
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1 week ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Daniel Martin
JK Rowling has claimed that the BBC can no longer be trusted to report trans issues. The Harry Potter author attacked the broadcaster after it failed to report that a women-only housing development would be open to biological men. The BBC published an online report about the women-only tower block, opening in west London next summer.
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1 week ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Daniel Martin
Trump: Khamenei is an easy targetMr Trump is reported to be considering whether to deploy American forces in support of Israel's operations against Iran. The US president met with top military advisers on Tuesday night to discuss the situation, shortly after a series of social media posts in which he described Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as an "easy target".
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1 week ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Daniel Martin
Britain's under-fire chief statistician has been condemned for wearing the "flag of transgender activism" during her first address to staff. Emma Rourke wore a badge depicting the trans-inclusive Pride banner as she spoke to workers at the Office for National Statistics (ONS). In 2023, the ONS was humiliated after it was forced to withdraw official statistics which massively inflated the number of trans people in the country.
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1 week ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Daniel Martin
Angela Rayner has led the Cabinet for the first time as Sir Keir Starmer attends the G7 summit in Canada. The Deputy Prime Minister presided over the meeting of ministers, which discussed issues in the Middle East and last week's plane crash in India, on Tuesday morning. She became the first deputy to oversee a Cabinet meeting since 2020, when Dominic Raab stood in for Boris Johnson while the then-prime minister was in intensive care during the Covid-19 pandemic.
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1 week ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Charles Hymas |Daniel Martin
The inquiry will last about three years, although this is much shorter than other probes such as that into Covid lockdowns. It comes 10 years after Lady Casey wrote a damning report into the culture of denial at Rotherham, South Yorkshire, where at least 1,400 children were sexually abused by grooming gangs between 1997 and 2013. In her latest audit, she accused public bodies of having used flawed data to dismiss claims about Asian grooming gangs as "sensationalised, biased or untrue".
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2 weeks ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Daniel Martin
The number of cases reaching tribunals rose from 285 to 829 over the same period. But over the whole period, just 5 per cent of claims were successful - and this figure has remained relatively static. Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert, the campaign group's director, and lead author of the report, said the Equality Act undermined English case law and contributed to a grievance culture in which people resorted to "lawfare" to resolve petty disputes and imagined slights.
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2 weeks ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Daniel Martin
The equalities watchdog has told trans activists that personal attacks on her and her staff have "got to stop". Baroness Falkner of Margravine, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), appeared emotional as she revealed to MPs that she had to cancel one meeting after police warned of a " serious risk " of violence.
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2 weeks ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Daniel Martin
Lord Hermer has emerged as one of the big winners from Rachel Reeves's spending review. The budget for the Government's law officers will soar by 5.3 per cent between 2025-26 and 2028-29, at a time when many of his colleagues are facing real-terms cuts. It comes despite the Home Office facing a cut of 1.4 per cent over the same period, putting plans to increase the number of police on the streets at risk.
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2 weeks ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Daniel Martin
Ms Reeves said that despite this, police spending power would increase by 2.3 per cent in the coming years. Spending review documents suggested that this could include more money from council tax, but did not say how much would be raised. The documents said: "This includes projected spending from additional income, including estimated funding from the police council tax precept."Details will be set out in a separate police funding settlement, which is expected in autumn.
