Markus Andrews

Watch as David Lammy speaks at a conference on Sudan on Tuesday, 15 April, as the UK government announces a £120m food and aid package for the country.The foreign secretary addressed a gathering at the London Sudan Conference.The UK co-hosted the gathering alongside the 55-member African Union bloc, the European Union, France and Germany, attended by representatives from other states including South Sudan, Saudi Arabia and the US.Mr Lammy has described the war in Sudan, which is in its second year, as “brutal.”Fighting started in April 2023 with armed clashes between the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary organisation and the Sudanese Armed Forces.More than 12.7 million people have been forcibly displaced in the war, with 1.1 million moving into South Sudan and 1.5 million into Egypt, according to United Nations (UN) agencies.The new £120m funding is for the 2025/26 financial year and aims to reach more than 600,000 people.Money will go towards supplying people, including vulnerable children, with pulses, oils, salts and cereals.Funding will also help provide emergency support for survivors of sexual violence.It comes after a separate £113m aid package announced last November, before Labour’s decision to cut UK development spending from 0.5 per cent of GNI (gross national income) to 0.3 per cent by 2027. More

The government has awarded a contract which allows for hotels and barges to house asylum seekers up until September 2027, despite Labour vowing to end the practice.The wide ranging agreement – which covers transport, accommodation and venue bookings for the public sector – includes services for asylum seekers, released prisoners and rough sleepers. The transparency document, seen by The Independent, says it includes the provision of commercial accommodation including hotels, serviced apartments, holiday parks, staff blocks, halls of residence, barges and cruise vessels. There were 38,079 people being accommodated in hotels by the Home Office at the end of 2024, figures show (Gareth Fuller/PA) More

Ministers have secured raw materials needed to keep British Steel furnaces in Scunthorpe alive amid accusations that the plant’s Chinese owners were poised to let it fail.The materials – which have arrived by ship from the United States – are enough to keep the furnaces running for the coming weeks while the government scrambles to secure the long-term future of the Jingye-owned site.A row is now raging over whether China should be banned from investing in critical British infrastructure, with senior ex-ministers saying the crisis over the plant should be a “wake-up call” over Beijing’s reach.But China hit back on Monday, urging Britain to “avoid politicising trade cooperation or linking it to security issues” or risk losing the confidence of firms investing in the UK.Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds More

The UK government has intervened to take back British Steel from its Chinese owners, in an unprecedented move which could amount to the most significant nationalisation this century. Government ministers have accused the company’s owners, Jingye, of attempting to sabotage the Scunthorpe plant by allowing it to“It is an explicit strategy of the Chinese Communist Party to undermine the industrial base of foreign countries,” said Luke de Pulford, director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.The government is meeting with Jingye representatives today in a bid to save the steelmaking plant from closure.Meanwhile, China is warning the UK against “politicising” British Steel, according to reports from AFP, in the midst of criticisms over Chinese ownership by business secretary Jonathan Reynolds. Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, urged the British government to “avoid politicising trade cooperation or linking it to security issues, so as not to impact the confidence of Chinese enterprises in going to the UK”.The drastic action taken on British Steel adds pressure to the UK’s relationship with China, in particular since both invest in each others economies. The current Trump trade war shows that China is willing to retaliate when pushed, with current tariffs on US goods escalating to 125 per cent. British Steel and Chinese investment In the wake of Britain’s emergency takeover, Mr Reynolds confirmed that there must now be a “high trust bar” when dealing with firms from China.“I think we have got to be clear about what is the sort of sector where, actually, we can promote and co-operate, and ones frankly where we can’t,” he told Sky News hosts on Sunday.He added: “I wouldn’t personally bring a Chinese company into our steel sector.”Overall, Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) into the UK stood at £4.2 billion in 2023, according to government figures. But British investment into China was actually twice as high, at £8.8 billion in the same year.However, both economies’ mutual investment have gone down significantly since Covid, dropping by around a third on either end. Earlier this month, shadow home secretary Chris Philp asked why the government is “silent” on China, saying there is “no question” that the country should be on an enhanced tier of the new foreign influence registration scheme. More

An anti- Brexit activist who has spent years mounting a one-man protest outside Britain’s Parliament won a court victory on Monday against a police attempt to pull the plug on his musical activities.A judge in London cleared Steve Bray, known as “Stop Brexit Man,” of failing to comply with a police order to stop playing amplified music in Parliament Square on March 20, 2024.Bray, 56, came to prominence in the years after Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union by bellowing “Stop Brexit” near television reporters during live broadcasts while wearing a top hat in the blue and yellow of the EU flag.More recently he has taken to playing satirically tinged songs before Parliament’s weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session, including the theme from “The Muppet Show” and Darth Vader’s theme from “Star Wars.” He blasted “Things Can Only Get Better” outside 10 Downing St. while then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called an election in May 2024.Bray, who represented himself during his trial, argued that the music was part of his “fundamental right to protest,” and Deputy District Judge Anthony Woodcock agreed.Handing down a not-guilty verdict at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, the judge said Bray believes he has “an important message to disseminate.”“How he chooses to express those views is a matter for him,” the judge said, noting that “lampooning the government through satire is a long tradition in this country.”After the verdict, Bray said that “today is a very important day, not just for us as protesters, but for everybody’s freedom of expression and their right to protest.”“Regardless what side of the fence you’re on, whatever your protest is, this is a victory for you,” he said. More

One of Britain’s top economists has urged Rachel Reeves to hike the basic rate of income tax for the first time since 1975 in response to Donald Trump’s global trade war. Paul Johnson, director of the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), has warned the chancellor’s “iron-clad” fiscal rules mean she will face economically damaging choices ahead of her Budget this autumn. He said Mr Trump’s tariffs are “buffeting the economy so badly” and “there is a good chance she will need more money to meet those rules”. “It would not be daft to think about doing something that no one has done for the last 50 years, and that is to increase the basic rate of income tax, which is probably less economically damaging than an awful lot of other things she might think about doing,” he told Times Radio. Rachel Reeves has ruled out pursuing another major tax-hiking Budget More

An activist known as “Stop Brexit Man” has been cleared of flouting a police ban after playing anti-Conservative and anti-Brexit edits of The Muppet Show and Darth Vader’s theme music outside parliament.Steve Bray, 56, was playing music on 20 March last year before the then prime minister Rishi Sunak arrived for Prime Minister’s Questions. Police had approached Mr Bray when he was stood on a traffic island at around 11.20am, and handed him a map to warn him he wasn’t allowed to use his speakers in the controlled area under a by-law, the court heard.He resumed playing the music intermittently and, over an hour later, officers seized the speakers.The activist is known for playing music in protest around Westminster. He famously played D:Ream’s “Things Can Only Get Better” at the gates of Downing Street when Mr Sunak announced a general election in the pouring rain last May.Mr Bray was found not guilty of failing without reasonable excuse to comply with a direction given under the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 “re prohibited activities in Parliament Square” at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.Steve Bray admitted to being ‘anti-Tory’ as he plays music in protest around Westminster More