Families in one of England’s most deprived areas are being asked to pay as much as £12,000 to dedicate a memorial bench to a loved one, the highest charge in the country. Torbay Council has been criticised for introducing the steep new fees without public consultation or a council vote. Under the scheme, families can sponsor a bench for either five or 25 years, with the most expensive prices reserved…

Migrants will enter Britain more quickly despite Labour’s new asylum reforms, the Conservatives have claimed. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced plans for a fast-track appeals system to reduce long delays in asylum cases, arguing that it will speed up deportations and ease pressure on the asylum system. For Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said the reforms would have the opposite effect, with judges still using human rights laws…

Members of the parliament (MPs) have warned of a sharp rise in online harassment and threats linked to debates over immigration, with some saying the level of abuse is now worse than during the Brexit years. The concerns follow a weekend of protests at hotels housing asylum seekers, where 15 arrests were made. Demonstrations continued on Sunday, including at the Castle Bromwich Holiday Inn in Birmingham and outside the Britannia…

Labour will abolish most prison sentences of under 12 months and bring in tougher community punishments under plans to ease the overcrowding crisis in England and Wales. A sentencing bill due next month will mark the biggest shake-up in three decades, with Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood warning prisons could run out of space again by summer. Thousands of inmates were released early after Labour took office last year to free…

Protests over the use of hotels to house asylum seekers have continued, as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced reforms aimed at clearing a huge backlog of appeals. Demonstrations took place on Sunday in Birmingham and London, a day after nationwide protests led to at least 15 arrests. Read also: Anti-migrant protests erupt across UK over asylum hotels Outside the Castle Bromwich Holiday Inn in Birmingham, protesters draped in St George’s…

Dame Annette Brooke, who has died aged 78, was the Liberal Democrat MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole from 2001 to 2015, becoming the party’s longest-serving female parliamentarian. A quietly effective figure at Westminster, she built her reputation on persistence rather than showmanship. In 2003, she helped secure recognition for veterans of the Suez campaign, leading a delegation that persuaded the Ministry of Defence to award them a medal.…

The United Kingdom (UK0 government has announced sweeping new sentencing powers that will see criminals banned from pubs, concerts, and sporting events as part of its Plan for Change to cut crime and boost public safety. Under the reforms, judges will gain expanded authority to impose driving limits, travel bans, and restriction zones that confine offenders to specific areas. The government said the aim is to toughen community punishments, deter…

A Labour MP has reported receiving death threats and online abuse after a Conservative colleague shared a video questioning her stance on a proposed inquiry into grooming gangs. Anna Dixon, Labour MP for Shipley in West Yorkshire, said police were investigating after she was targeted with violent and misogynistic messages. She accused Robbie Moore, the Conservative MP for Keighley and Ilkley, of spreading misinformation about her position on the issue.…

Nigel Farage has set out radical plans to withdraw Britain from key human rights treaties and carry out the mass deportation of migrants arriving in small boats, declaring immigration to be a “national emergency” and warning that public anger over asylum has reached breaking point. In an interview with The Times, the Reform UK leader outlined a programme that would see the country leave the European Convention on Human Rights…

More than 200,000 workers in the UK have moved to a four-day week since before the pandemic, signalling a significant shift in working patterns. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that between October and December 2024, nearly 1.4 million people reported working full-time across four days up by more than 100,000 from the same period in 2019, when 1.29 million did so. Another 100,000 said they worked…

Angela Rayner has unveiled plans to prevent Sir Sadiq Khan from re-entering Parliament while serving as London Mayor, fuelling speculation she is seeking to sideline potential rivals for the Labour leadership. The Deputy Prime Minister is introducing legislation that would bar anyone from holding both a mayoralty and a parliamentary seat simultaneously. The change, contained in her forthcoming English Devolution Bill, would rewrite parts of the 1999 Greater London Authority…

Former Labour home secretary Lord Blunkett has called on Sir Keir Starmer’s government to consider temporarily suspending parts of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in order to accelerate the deportation of rejected asylum seekers. Speaking on BBC Radio 4, Blunkett said a radical step may be required to address growing public anger over the use of hotels to house more than 32,000 asylum seekers. He argued that suspending…