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4 days ago | 
morningstaronline.co.uk | Elizabeth Short
PRIVATE renters in England have saved nearly a billion pounds since letting-agent fees were effectively abolished six years ago, according to research published today. Before the ban came into force under the 2019 Tenant Fees Act, 45 per cent of tenants who moved into their new homes were charged the fees, at an average of £269 per household. Generation Rent estimated that if the fees had continued at this rate, new tenants would have been collectively charged £889 million.
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4 days ago | 
morningstaronline.co.uk | Elizabeth Short
THE Water Commission’s interim review is a “sham” and “reads more like a sales pitch” to investors, campaigners warned today.
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5 days ago | 
morningstaronline.co.uk | Elizabeth Short
THE government’s £1 billion investment in battlefield AI could make violence “more opaque, less accountable, and increasingly automated,” campaigners warned today. Ahead of its strategic defence review, the government announced that it would pour substantial funds into AI-powered targeting systems.
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5 days ago | 
morningstaronline.co.uk | Elizabeth Short
MOST MPs represent areas where at least a quarter of children are in poverty, shocking stats have revealed, piling further pressure on the Labour government to scrap the two-child benefit cap. The analysis by Loughborough University published today shows that in two-thirds of UK constituencies, at least one in four children live in relative poverty after housing costs.
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1 week ago | 
morningstaronline.co.uk | Elizabeth Short
A RAID by counter-terrorism police on the home of journalist Asa Winstanley has been ruled unlawful, in what has been described as a "decisive victory for press freedom."Police raided the north London home of the pro-Palestine journalist last October. The journalist, who writes for the Electronic Intifada and publishes a Substack called Palestine is Still the Issue, was neither arrested nor charged with an offence.
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1 week ago | 
morningstaronline.co.uk | Elizabeth Short
INFLICTING welfare cuts will push more people onto the streets, homelessness charities warned today. Disability groups also accused the government, which aims to cut £5 billion a year from welfare spending by 2030, of “playing with fire by risking the lives of disabled people to meet arbitrary fiscal goals.”Central to Labour’s welfare cuts is the tightening of eligibility criteria for personal independence payments (PIP) — a key disability benefit for working-age adults both in and out of work.
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1 week ago | 
morningstaronline.co.uk | Elizabeth Short
BUILDING new infrastructure must not mean wrecking ecosystems, campaigners warned today following the government’s announcement that new reservoirs are to be built for the first time in 30 years. The government announced that it had “seized control of the planning process” with the aim of having two major reservoirs constructed, in East Anglia and Lincolnshire. Labour said they would provide water for 750,000 homes in some of the driest areas of Britain.
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1 week ago | 
morningstaronline.co.uk | Elizabeth Short
ISRAEL has used mass displacement and relentless military assaults to confine civilians to less than a fifth of the Gaza Strip, a new Oxfam analysis found today. Since breaking the ceasefire on March 18, Israel has issued over 30 forced displacement orders — nearly one every two days — covering 68 out of 79 neighbourhoods, some multiple times, the charity said. These, together with the expanding “no-go” Israeli military zones, make up over 80 per cent of the Gaza Strip.
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1 week ago | 
morningstaronline.co.uk | Elizabeth Short
CUTTING higher-level apprenticeships is a false economy, Unison has warned. On Tuesday, the government unveiled plans to create 120,000 new apprenticeship and training opportunities in England ahead of the next general election. But as part of the plans, it announced that funding will be shifted away from level seven (master’s level) apprenticeships from 2025 onwards and be “rebalanced” towards training at lower levels.
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1 week ago | 
morningstaronline.co.uk | Elizabeth Short
POLICE faced serious questions today about how a car managed to access a packed road during a Liverpool FC parade before it ploughed into a crowd of people. Four children were among the 47 people injured in the incident on Monday evening.
