Heather Stewart

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Heather Stewart

Tough rules announced in the government’s immigration white paper could jeopardise the UK’s net zero mission by causing labour shortages, a report has warned. Labour’s white paper released last month included plans to raise the minimum qualification for skilled worker visas from A-level equivalent to degree and to maintain the higher salary threshold of £38,700 introduced by the outgoing Conservative government last year.

1 week ago | msn.com | Heather Stewart

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1 week ago | theguardian.com | Heather Stewart

Rachel Reeves is considering caving in to City lobbying and softening changes to inheritance tax that affect wealthy individuals who would previously have been “non-doms”, reports suggest. In her autumn budget, the chancellor confirmed that she would scrap the non-dom tax status, which allowed wealthy individuals with connections abroad to avoid paying full UK tax on their overseas earnings. “Those that make the UK their home should pay their taxes here,” she said at the time.

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Heather Stewart

More than 80 charity leaders and campaigners have written to Keir Starmer urging him to attend a UN global development conference and back plans to reduce the debt payments made by poor countries. World leaders including the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, are expected at the Financing for Development conference – known as FfD4 - in Seville later this month.

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Heather Stewart

From helping consultants diagnose cancer, to aiding teachers in drawing up lesson plans – and flooding social media with derivative slop – generative artificial intelligence is being adopted across the economy at breakneck speed. Yet a growing number of voices are starting to question how much of an asset the technology can be to the UK’s sluggish economy. Not least because there is no escaping a persistent flaw: large language models (LLMs) remain prone to casually making things up.