Markus Andrews

Only around a quarter of the emergency aid the UK has promised to war-torn Ukraine has been delivered, the government has admitted.Liz Truss has been accused of a “shameful” effort to help a population under Russian assault after acknowledging that only “up to £60m” of £220m is likely to have arrived at the last count.The foreign secretary also confirmed that the package has been swiped from the shrunken international aid budget – which it means it requires cuts to other programmes.The situation was condemned by Sarah Champion, the chair of the Commons international development committee, which received a letter from Ms Truss.“I am shocked and disappointed that less than £60m of the UK’s promised £220m humanitarian aid package for Ukraine has been delivered so far,” Ms Champion said.“I am quite sure the British people, who have given so quickly and generously, will also be astounded at the news.”In her letter, Ms Truss argues the government is “working tirelessly to disburse our funding quickly and effectively” in Ukraine, “and encourage our international partners to do the same.”“The UK has led the way in our response,” she wrote, before adding: “We are on track to disburse up to £60m by the end of March.”The letter was revealed as Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, warned that the Russian offensive to seize eastern Ukraine and the “battle for Donbas” has begun.The World Health Organisation revealed it had reports of 147 attacks on healthcare facilities in the country, which have killed 73 people and injured a further 53.Keir Starmer attacked the “offensive” argument that the Ukraine crisis means Boris Johnson must stay in No 10 despite being fined for breaking Covid rules.In her letter, Ms Truss has written: “We were quick to announce £220m humanitarian funding as part of a wider £394m package of support for Ukraine.”But Ms Champion added: “On 9 March, I urged the prime minister to make sure the UK’s pledges for Ukraine are disbursed quickly. Today, more than a month later, it is shameful that I have to repeat that urgent appeal.“More than 12 million people in Ukraine are in need of humanitarian support, as well as 4 million people who have fled the country. These people need our help now – not at some vague future date.”Some £4.6bn was slashed from the aid budget in 2021 because of the manifesto-busting decision to cut spending from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent of national income.Ms Champion called the inclusion of Ukraine aid within that shrivelled pot “disappointing”, adding: “We know that this reduced budget means cruel cuts to aid programmes around the world.” More

Boris Johnson today faces MPs for the first time since he was fined by the Metropolitan Police for breaking Covid laws.The Prime Minister will address the House of Commons this afternoon, after Parliament returns from the Easter holiday.It comes after Mr Johnson, his wife Carrie, and Chancellor Rishi Sunak were all issued with – and paid – fines for attending a birthday bash held for the Prime Minister in June 2020.Mr Johnson is understood to have been present at at least six of the 12 events being investigated by the Metropolitan Police for breaking Covid rules, and is braced for more fines potentially to come.Over the Easter bank holiday there were also fresh allegations that the PM led celebrations at a Downing Street leaving do. Mr Johnson is reportedly due to issue an apology for breaking Covid laws when he delivers his statement to MPs at around 3.30pm on Tuesday. According to the Telegraph, he will stop short of going into detail about the gathering for which he was hit with a fixed penalty notice and any other “Partygate” events.In his statement, Mr Johnson is also set to give an update on Britain’s response to the war in Ukraine, and comment on the government’s energy security strategy, published last week, which aims to make the country less dependent on other states for its oil and gas. More

Former Brexit minister David Davis has accused Boris Johnson of “moral delinquency” over the government’s decision to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.The senior Conservative MP condemned the prime minister for using Brexit to justify the plan to fly cross-channel migrants to east Africa.Mr Johnson has invoked his pledge of “taking back control” of borders, claiming that offshore processing is an “innovative approach made possible by Brexit freedoms”.But Mr Davis said: “The freedoms of Brexit should be about innovations justifying British exceptionalism on the basis of moral leadership – not moral delinquency.”Writing in The Times, the Brexiteer added: “Outsourcing our international obligations are certainly not the freedoms that Brexit was about winning.”Mr Davis said the plan was “beset by moral dilemmas” and “hamstrung by extortionate costs”, adding: “We are better than this. Or at least, we used to be.”Former Tory minister Andrew Mitchell also condemned the plan on Tuesday – calling it “impractical, likely to be ineffective and, above all, extremely expensive”.It comes as cabinet minister Brandon Lewis dedended the Rwanda immigration plan as the “humanitarian thing to do”, claiming it would “break” people-trafficking networks.The Northern Ireland Secretary told BBC Breakfast: “It is ensuring that we are deterring people from taking a treacherous as well as illegal journey to the UK.”Asked about civil servants reportedly having raised objections to the scheme over its possible cost, Mr Lewis said: “I do think it will work.”Home secretary Priti Patel overruled reservations from officials about her plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, documents published by the government on Tuesday showed.The plan, unveiled by Mr Johnson last week, seeks to act as a deterrent to migrants who make illegal boat crossings, but has drawn heavy criticism from the opposition and campaigners.In an exchange of letters with Ms Patel, the top official in the Home Office highlighted uncertainty over the scheme’s value to the taxpayer.“I do not believe sufficient evidence can be obtained to demonstrate that the policy will have a deterrent effect significant enough to make the policy value for money,” Home Office permanent secretary Matthew Rycroft said.Ms Patel acknowledged the concerns – but stated her belief that without taking action to stop the crossings, both the costs and the loss of life among those who attempt to navigate the busy shipping channel would rise.The government has said it would contribute an initial £120m for a pilot scheme, but the Home Office has declined to say how much it could cost per person relocated.The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said the UK is “subcontracting out our responsibilities” by sending migrants to east Africa, which he claimed is “the opposite of the nature of God”.The UK anti-slavery commissioner has slammed the “lack of humanity” of the government’s plan, warning trafficking victims sent there are likely to be deprived of support.Dame Sara Thornton told The Independent she had “significant concerns” – citing evidence the African country has detained thousands of potential trafficking victims without providing them with proper care. More

Vladimir Putin’s assault on the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine could last for “several months”, a senior national security official has warned Boris Johnson and his cabinet.The prime minister told the regular weekly cabinet meeting at Downing Street that Ukraine’s position was “perilous”, as the Russian president was thought to want to be able to declare a victory of some sort “regardless of the human cost”.Following reports that Mr Johnson has promised Stormer mobile missile launchers to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, defence secretary Ben Wallace confirmed that he will announce new UK military aid later this week.The 13-ton armoured vehicles could be used to fire Starstreak missiles at Russian jets and helicopters.Mr Johnson was taking part on Tuesday afternoon in an international conference call with US president Joe Biden and leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, Poland, Romania and the EU to discuss further assistance to the Kyiv administration on its 55th day of resistance to the Russian invasion.The PM told cabinet it was “more vital than ever to increase global support” for Ukraine, and said he would use the call to push for addiational support and further toughening of sanctions.Mr Johnson told cabinet that “Ukraine’s position remains perilous, with Putin angered by defeats, but determined to claim some sort of victory regardless of the human cost”, said the PM’s official spokesperson. The meeting was briefed by a senior national security official, who confirmed Putin was focusing his attention on the Donbas region, hwere pro-Russian separatists have been fighting official Ukrainian forces since 2014.The official said the next phase of the war was likely to be “an attritional conflict, which could last several months”.Russia would aim to exploit its troop numbers advantage but Ukraine had already shown that this was unlikely to be decisive on its own, cabinet was told. The official reported “some signs that Russia had not learned lessons from previous setbacks in northern Ukraine, and evidence of troops being committed to the fight in a piecemeal fashion”. There were continued reports of poor Russian morale, with claims of some soldiers and even units refusing to fight, the official said.Chief of defence stuff Admiral Sir Tony Radakin told cabinet that the UK continues to play “a leading role” in military support to Ukraine, including in sourcing suitable equipment from other countries as other countries.Foreign secretary Liz Truss told the meeting the UK would continue to push for further coordinated action on sanctions and for other countries to allow Ukraine access to tariff free trade. More

Conservative and Brexit supporters want the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen to become president of France in this weekend’s election, a poll shows.The National Rally (RN) – formerly National Front – leader is backed by 37 per cent of Tory voters at the last election, while just 24 per cent support the centrist Emmanuel Macron.The margin is even greater among Leave voters at the 2016 Brexit referendum, who prefer Ms Le Pen over the current president by 35 per cent to 19 per cent.The two will go head-to-head in a critical run-off on Sunday, with polls putting Mr Macron as little as six points ahead of his rival.The RN leader has sought to soften her public image compared with their last clash five years ago, but the party is widely criticised as still racist and xenophobic.Ms Le Pen has vowed to ban the Muslim headscarf from public spaces, calling it a “uniform of totalitarian ideology”, while saying it is not the “most urgent element” of her programme.She has promised a referendum on immigration, to create a “France for the French” –where native people would be prioritised over non-French people for benefits, housing, jobs and healthcare.And she would remove the right of children born in France to foreign parents to get French nationality in their teenage years.Ms Le Pen has dropped previous pledges to take France – a founder member of the EU and its second biggest economy – out of the Euro and the EU itself.But observers say her policies on the economy, social policy and immigration imply breaking the rules of the 27-member bloc, in effect destroying it from within.The strong correlation between support for Ms Le Pen and for the Conservatives is seen as evidence of how Boris Johnson has tapped similar “populist’ sentiment.Across the UK population as a whole, Mr Macron is by far the preferred candidate, the Pollsters YouGov found, by 37 per cent to the RN leader’s 19 per cent.However, no less than 44 per cent of the public replied “don’t know”, suggesting widespread ignorance about politics across the Channel.Remain and Labour voters overwhelmingly back the sitting president, by 62 per cent to 7 per cent and 53 per cent to 8 per cent, respectively.Ms Le Pen is making her third attempt to become president, having taken over the anti-immigration, far-right Front National from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.In 2018, she renamed it the National Rally and has focused this year’s campaign on the cost of living crisis, which is French voters’ top concern.She has vowed to lower VAT on fuel and energy from 20 per cent to 5.5 per cent, would scrap income tax for everyone under the age of 30 and privatise public service broadcasting. More

Tory ministers are being urged to put British clocks forward an extra hour to help alleviate the pressures caused by the cost of living crisis.The Liberal Democrat peer John Lee said moving to Central European Time would help reduce household bills as it would maximise daylight in the evenings. Inflation has reached the highest level in 30 years and energy bills continue to rise.“It’s a serious, long-term issue for a sizeable proportion of the population and I think the government should look very seriously at it,” he said.“Double summer time would be relatively cheap, it wouldn’t really cost the government anything of significance as far as I’m aware.”Lord Lee said he would call on the government to consider its position on double summer time when the House of Lords returns from recess later this month.Extending daylight hours would save households 152 hours’ worth of electricity annually, it is claimed. A 1993 study by the Policy Studies Institute estimated that the change would save more than £260m in electricity bills, but according to the government, the effects were “likely to be small in magnitude” and potentially “uncertain in direction”.The potential change would adjust British clocks two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time during the summer and one hour ahead in winter. This means people would enjoy an extra hour of light for an additional 11 months of the year, but there would be an extra hour of darkness during the winter months.Clocks were last changed to save energy during the Second World War but went back to normal after the war.British Summer Time first came about in 1916 after a campaign led by William Willett, who after riding his horse in the early hours of one summer morning noticed that many people slept through a large proportion of a summer’s day. More

Keir Starmer has ridiculed Tory claims that Boris Johnson’s Partygate fine is as minor as a speeding offence and said Tory MPs should be “ashamed” of defending him.The Labour leader hit out after a cabinet minister insisted it is possible for the a “lawmaker to be a lawbreaker”, because Tony Blair was once issued with a parking ticket.Sir Keir – who also called it “offensive” to argue the Ukraine crisis should keep Mr Johnson in No 10 – said: “It isn’t like a speeding fine at all.“In all of my days, I’ve had never had anybody break down in front of me because they couldn’t drive at 35mph in a 30-mile zone.“I’ve had no end of people in tears, in little bits, about complying with [Covid] rules that really, really hurt. them. And I don’t think that the public are going to accept this.“I also think that the pathetic display of Tory MPs going out to defend the indefensible is something that they will be ashamed of,” he told ITV’s Lorraine programme.Sir Keir was speaking ahead of the prime minister facing MPs for the first time since the police fined him for breaking his own lockdown rules.Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, claimed he was saying “what he believed to be the truth” when he denied there were any law-breaking No 10 parties – despite attending at least one of them.He also hinted that Mr Johnson will only accept the police’s verdict grudgingly – referring to the Met force having “taken the view that a fine should be issued”.In the Commons, Mr Johnson will deny he knowingly misled parliament, something that would require him to quit, under the ministerial code.The claim will become more difficult to mount if the prime minister, as expected, is fined again for other social gatherings during lockdown – including one allegedly held in his own Downing Street flat.Sir Keir dismissed the argument, saying: “The prime minister makes the laws, tells the country to obey the laws, then breaks them and then – in my view – lies to parliament about it.”And he added: “I don’t really buy into this idea, by the way, that Johnson is the only person of any importance in the Ukraine crisis.“In parliament, there is no difference of approach in relation to standing up for Ukraine across the Conservative Party or across all political parties by the way.”“So if this prime minister went, it wouldn’t make any difference,” Sir Keir said, adding: “He is using that as a shield and I think that’s pretty offensive.”The Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, will decide today whether to allow a vote on whether Mr Johnson has brought parliament into contempt – or should be investigated by a committee of MPs. More

Cabinet minister Grant Shapps has welcomed a Ukrainian refugee family and their dog fleeing the war into his home. The transport secretary took to Twitter to share the news over the bank holiday weekend: “Today we’re delighted to welcome a three-generation Ukrainian family, along with their dog Max, to live with us in our home. “Whilst their country goes through the turmoil of Putin’s war, our country stands resolutely with the people of Ukraine.”The transport secretary said earlier this month he was registering his interest in the Homes for Ukraine scheme — set up amid criticism of the government’s existing refugee policy — which allows those with no family ties to come to the UK.Those offering sanctuary to families fleeing Russia’s brutal invasion must be able to offer accommodation for at least six months, and as of Wednesday 25,100 visas have been issued from 55,600 applications.Following discussions with his family, Mr Shapps told The Times he will soon be hosting a six-year-old boy, his mother and 75-year-old grandmother, alongside their dog, Max.The cabinet minister said he was able to use a room in house — 20 miles from London — due to his son currently being away at university and said he was in daily contact with the Ukrainian family. He lives n Hertfordshire with his wife Belinda and they have three children.“These people are literally fleeing their lives, they don’t know if their home will be there when they get back,” he said. More