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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has announced that inflation hit 9.1 per cent in the year to April – the highest rate in 40 years.The Bank of England (BoE) has the mandate to keep Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation below 2 per cent. But governor Andrew Bailey said the bank is “helpless” in the face of global issues exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine, including runaway energy costs and higher food prices.The consumer crisis has also been made worse by inconsistent wage growth that has failed to keep up with rising costs of living. Mr Bailey’s warning of rising unemployment has also triggered fears of “stagflation” – a combination of a stagnant economy and rising inflation.Chancellor Rishi Sunak is being urged to help people with their bills, amid warnings that the situation is set to get worse. The BoE expects the annual rate will peak at 10.25 per cent – more than five times its target – during the final quarter of the year, which could lead to the tightest squeeze on incomes since records began in the 1950s.CPI inflation reached 9.1 per cent in April, the highest rate since 1982.Between February – the month Russia invaded Ukraine – and March, inflation had risen by just 0.8 per cent. Then there was a jump of 2 per cent between March and April.April’s 9.1 per cent rate is more than quadruple the BoE’s 2 per cent target, that was last reported less than a year ago in July 2021.For three years, between 2019 and 2021, the rate of inflation largely stayed below 2 per cent.While the cost-of-living is increasing, people have not enjoyed similar boosts in their incomes to keep up with inflation. In terms of wages, growth of total pay – which means regular earnings or base salary, plus overtime and bonuses – had risen to 7 per cent as of April, after it had reached a high of 9 per cent in June last year.Growth of regular pay on its own has risen by just 4 per cent, after a high of 7 per cent last June.This leaves workers worse-off overall as they have to cope with the double-whammy of lower wages and inflation leaving them with less buying power.Fuel cap:
In April, Ofcom increased the energy price cap by 54 per cent – representing an average rise of about £700 – to £1,971.PM Boris Johnson has suggested that part of the rise in energy prices was because of the “tough” decision to sanction Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.As well as high gas and energy costs, fuel pump prices have reached new records, of 167.64p for petrol and 180.88p for diesel. The chancellor has been called on to do more to help people cope with the cost-of-living crisis.In response, Mr Sunak has claimed that the government is helping people by “saving the average worker £330 a year through reducing National Insurance contributions, changing Universal Credit to save over a million families around £1,000 a year, and providing millions of families with £350 each this year to help with their energy bills.”Measures including increasing the warm home discount by up to £600 – to help vulnerable people and pensioners pay rising energy bills – are reportedly under consideration.It comes after the government has dodged calls from opposition parties to impose a one-off windfall tax on energy and oil companies. Labour, Liberal Democrats, and SNP have said that the tax could fund financial aid for those struggling to pay bills.Cost of living: how to get helpThe cost of living crisis has touched every corner of the UK, pushing families to the brink with rising food and fuel prices.The Independent has asked experts to explain small ways you can stretch your money, including managing debt and obtaining items for free. If you need to access a food bank, find your local council’s website using gov.uk, and then use the local authority’s site to locate your nearest centre. The Trussell Trust, which runs many foodbanks, has a similar tool. Citizens Advice provides free help to people in need. The organisation can help you find grants or benefits, or advise on rent, debt and budgeting.If you are experiencing feelings of distress and isolation, or are struggling to cope, The Samaritans offers support; you can speak to someone for free over the phone, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. More

Serving police officers are using food banks because their pay is too low to support their families amid the cost of living crisis, the home secretary has been told.The chair of the Police Federation, which represents almost 140,000 rank-and-file officers in England and Wales, said praise for their actions during the Covid pandemic had “amounted to nothing”.“Over the last decade, we have seen a real term pay cut of around 20 per cent and other costs haven’t stood still – gas, electric and fuel costs all continue to rise, and national insurance contributions increased,” Steve Hartshorn told a conference in Manchester.“Our members are told they are brave; they are told they do a unique job. They were thanked for putting themselves and their families in danger as Covid gripped the country, and yet that acknowledgement amounted to nothing.“It’s frustrating to see and hear from colleagues who are struggling to feed their families and going to food banks.”Mr Hartshorn addressed the home secretary directly during his speech, which received long and loud applause from police officers gathered from across the country.“Home secretary, what has gone wrong?” he asked. “Why are my colleagues one of the only groups of frontline public sector workers being penalised in their pockets?”He said he was “angered” to hear of experienced officers leaving policing “not because they want to, but because they can’t afford not to”, adding: “This cannot go on.”The Police Federation withdrew from the official police pay review body last year, saying it “no longer has confidence” in the home secretary following a pay freeze for officers earning more than £24,000.Ms Patel said the body paid an important role advising the government and urged the body to engage with it, but Mr Hartshorn said its “hands were tied by the government” and called it “anything other than independent”.He said that because police are unable to strike in law, they were being “denied the employment rights” of other public sector workers, adding: “The government cannot continue to treat the police as the poor relation of the public sector.”Police Federation delegates at the Manchester Central Convention Complex clapped and cheered an officer who asked why MPs’ pay had risen from £64,000 to £84,000 a year since 2009, while new police recruits had gone from £22,000 to £24,000.“Each sector has an independent pay review body, why is yours better than ours?” the officer asked.Another officer told the home secretary: “It’s about time you and your colleagues put your money where your mouth is and do something about the terrible state that our colleagues find themselves in.”One female officer challenged the home secretary on whether her family could survive on £1,400 a month but did not receive a direct answer.Another female officer, who said she had 23 years’ service, gave an emotional speech about her struggle with pay and told how she had to borrow £40 from her mother last weekend for petrol and her children’s school lunches.“We are desperately struggling to do the job we love and to make ends meet at home,” she added.Ms Patel said that the police and politics pay panels were separate and had “different” considerations, including the fact that police can take their pension at a lower age.The Police Federation chair called for the relationship between officers and the government to be reset, adding: “We mean no more gimmicks.”Ahead of the conference, the home secretary had announced that she would allow special constables to be armed with Tasers, but it was not among the federation’s priorities for change.They included increases in pay and annual leave provision, better psychological support for officers and the tackling of delays in misconduct investigations.In her speech to the Police Federation conference, Ms Patel said she was a home secretary who “champions many of [officers’] calls in government”.She highlighted the government’s push to recruit 20,000 more police officers, although the figure does not replace those lost in austerity since 2010 or the detectives, experienced officers or specialists who left.Ms Patel also hailed moves to extend the use of suspicionless stop and search and Tasers, saying she wanted to give police the “confidence to use their powers fairly, appropriately and in the right places”.But she also said police need to work to “create a better culture and higher standards” following the murder of Sarah Everard and a wave of scandals involving sexual offending by officers and allegations of misogyny and racism.“The public are in urgent need of reassurance,” the home secretary said. “I am unequivocal that unacceptable behaviour must be rooted out and called out. Lessons must be learned, and every necessary change must be made, without fear or favour.”A public inquiry, led by Dame Elish Angiolini QC, is underway and will look aqt issues including vetting and counter-corruption. More

Priti Patel has repeatedly overridden Home Office legal advice on immigration and asylum cases, adding to record costs for the taxpayer, The Independent can reveal.The department spent £35.2m on legal bills for lost cases and paid out a further £9.3m to people wrongly held in immigration detention in 2020-21.The figures stand at their highest level since the Conservatives came to power, having rocketed from £17.1m and £2.2m respectively in five years.Home Office sources told The Independent that Ms Patel and other Home Office ministers had rejected legal advice in individual cases on numerous occasions. Legal experts had shown clear instances where “immediately settling cases offered best value to the taxpayer, and set best precedent for presenting future cases to the courts”, a Home Office source said.The revelation comes as the government prepares to spend an undisclosed amount on sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, following a £120m up-front payment for the deal, and follows an official warning from the Home Office’s top civil servant, Matthew Rycroft, who said that the department was “uncertain” whether the scheme offered “value for money”.According to Home Office sources, lawyers acting for the government had clearly advised when the department was likely to lose an asylum case in several instances. Such advice has been “overridden on several occasions”, they added.The overriding of advice by the home secretary came late at night, the Home Office sources said, with clear expectations of a swift response. One former official said Ms Patel would become “fixated on individual cases”, adding that she “regarded the need for legal processes or adhering to protocols as an inconvenience”.Interventions by Ms Patel and her ministers had slowed down cases, wasted taxpayers’ money and resulted in more court decisions against the government, they added.The claims came as figures released by the Home Office in its annual report showed a sharp increase in adverse legal costs, which are incurred when cases are not found in the government’s favour. Asylum and immigration decisions are made in the home secretary’s name, but the vast majority are delegated to officials, working from detailed guidance set out by the government according to its policies and the law.Civil servants and lawyers can choose to alert Ms Patel to cases that are particularly sensitive or high-profile, but sources say it is unusual for ministers to intervene themselves. The home secretary is entitled to override legal advice and order cases to proceed even if it is considered likely that the Home Office will lose in court. More

Asylum seekers could be sent to Rwanda for “spending a couple of weeks in Brussels staying with friends” while journeying to the UK, or for being found with foreign receipts and train tickets in their pockets.Home Office guidance – made public following threats of legal action by refugee charities – includes examples of reasons that people can be selected for removal under Priti Patel’s new scheme.Ukrainian refugees have not been excluded, according to official documents that suggest that anyone who “travelled through safe third countries” like Poland or France can be considered.They state that asylum seekers may be sent to Rwanda if their claim is deemed “inadmissible” under government policy, and they arrived by a small boat or another “dangerous” method after 1 January.A document on what constitutes “inadmissibility” says it includes people deemed to have a connection to a safe country that is not the UK or their home nation.That means that they have been recognised as a refugee in, travelled through, made an asylum application to or could have made an application to that country “on the balance of probabilities”. Guidance for Home Office staff gives examples, saying that an asylum seeker who “passed through Belgium” before arriving in the UK could be declared inadmissible.“An admission from the claimant that they had spent a couple of weeks in Brussels staying with friends while trying to find an agent to bring them illegally to the UK would likely constitute evidence that they had been in that particular country,” it states. “The decision would also need to consider whether the claimant has provided any exceptional circumstances as to what they could not have made an application for protection in that particular country.”The document states that even if asylum seekers deny having stayed in a safe country previously, “material in their belongings such as receipts and tickets from Belgian shops, services and transport showing time and freedom of movement in Belgium would likely meet the standard of proof required”.Staff must weigh up any evidence that the receipts did not belong to that person or that “exceptional circumstances” meant they could not stay in Belgium, the guidance adds. It says that removal to Rwanda should be considered if it “stands a greater chance” than removal to the country they are deemed to have a connection to.Before Brexit, the UK was part of an EU-wide regulation that allowed the transfer of asylum seekers to countries they had previously stayed in.It saw Britain send thousands of people to France, Belgium and other countries deemed responsible for them, but the deal has not been replaced by the EU and individual nations have told The Independent they will not negotiate the bilateral “returns agreements” originally promised by the government.Stay in France if you don’t want to go to Rwanda, minister tells asylum seekersThe UN Refugee Agency (UNHRC)has vocally opposed the Rwanda deal, saying it “evades international obligations and is contrary to the letter and spirit of the Refugee Convention”.Officials have said that there is no international legal obligation requiring refugees to seek asylum in the “first safe country they reach”, which is a key assertion underpinning the government’s policies.“If all refugees were obliged to remain in the first safe country they encountered, the whole system would probably collapse,” the UNHCR added. “The countries closer to zones of conflict and displacement would be totally overwhelmed, while countries further removed would share little or none of the responsibility. This would hardly be fair, or workable, and runs against the spirit of the convention.”Under British law, asylum can only be claimed inside the UK and there is no visa for people wanting to reach the country specifically for that purpose.It means that people who are not eligible for limited resettlement schemes must travel independently to the country.Refugee charities have repeatedly called for the government to set up alternative routes that remove the need for English Channel crossings rather than pursuing increasingly punitive “deterrents”.The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said the government was “not interested in taking the practical steps needed”.“They could easily issue humanitarian visas and new pathways for people to re-join family here, but instead they continue to forge ahead with cruel and senseless asylum plans,” said interim chief executive Paola Uccellari.“It’s time Priti Patel stopped dreaming up diabolical ways to treat people seeking safety here – whether that’s deporting people to Rwanda, or opening up prison-like asylum camps in rural Yorkshire. What we need are fair and effective asylum rules, which give people the chance to come here safely and build their lives in our communities.”Clare Moseley, founder of Care4Calais, said: “If this government truly wished to shut down people smugglers, they would allow all refugees in Calais to apply for visas, as they have done for Ukrainians. “The question is, why has this cheaper, easier and more humane option not been considered?”The home secretary rebuffed a Conservative MP’s call for asylum processing in France earlier this year, telling parliament’s Home Affairs Committee that it would “make France a big magnet for more migrants to come”.Amid a series of potential legal challenges against the Rwanda policy and the removal of individuals notified that they have been selected for it, the Home Office insisted that the plans were lawful and that it would defend any case “robustly”. More

Charities have said they will “see the government in court” after it published official guidance for selecting asylum seekers to send to Rwanda.A flurry of legal letters in recent weeks had demanded details of who will be eligible for removal under Priti Patel’s new scheme.The Home Office has made guidance for individual cases public but refused to confirm if specific groups of people are affected, saying the information could be used by people smugglers. More

The first group of migrants will this week be informed of plans to deport them to Rwanda, the Home Office has confirmed.The UK government’s controversial new policy will see asylum seekers – who arrived via illegal routes from January this year – be sent to the east African nation while their immigration applications are processed.First flights are expected to take place in the coming months, the Home Office said on Monday night, adding that the government “has the power to detain individuals pending their removal from the UK”.Lawyers for some of those affected will almost certainly lodge claims to stop their removal – there are a number of legal challenges brought by charities that are protesting against the move.If the migrants’ applications are approved, they will be granted asylum or given refugee status in the UK.Those with failed applications will be offered the chance to apply for visas under other immigration routes if they wish to remain in Rwanda – but could still face deportation to their country of origin.Tens of thousands of people could end up being sent to Rwanda while they await news of their future, Boris Johnson has said.When the plan was announced last month, Priti Patel – who visited Rwanda to strike the deal with the country’s foreign minister Vincent Biruta – hailed it as a “world first” agreement.The home secretary has also said: “Britain’s asylum system is broken as criminals exploit and smuggle people into our country at huge costs to UK taxpayers.“The world-leading migration partnership with Rwanda means those making dangerous, unnecessary and illegal journeys to the UK may be relocated to Rwanda to have their claims for asylum considered and to rebuild their lives there, helping break the people smugglers’ business model and prevent loss of life.“This is just the first stage of the process and we know it will take time as some will seek to frustrate the process and delay removals.“I will not be deterred from acting to deliver on the changes the British people voted for to take back control of our money, laws and borders.”This year so far, at least 7,739 people have arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel, according to an analysis of government figures by the PA news agency. The number is more than triple that of the same period in 2021 (2,439). More

After the vote and the count, the eternal existential question: what does it all mean anyway?Commentators have spent the last 36 hours wrestling with local election results that have, somehow, been a disaster for Boris Johnson without being much good for Sir Keir Starmer either.The facts are simple enough. The Tories lost almost 500 councillors, while Labour and the Lib Dems both made big gains: 261 and 189 respectively. The Greens won 82 and the Scottish National Party 61.Yet what exactly this tells us about the state of British public opinion – and how a general election might go – remains as contested as the campaigning itself.In the run up to voting day on Thursday, The Independent identified eight key council areas that may offer key clues to the direction of politics over the next two years. Now, we look at the results in those places and the lessons they (possibly) offer…Derby City CouncilWhen commentators suggest that Labour endured a difficult election despite picking up some 261 council seats, it is places like Derby they are thinking of.The city authority is historically red but has been led by a minority Tory administration since 2018 – a shift that preceded the fall of the Red Wall at the following year’s general election.If Labour is to triumph the next time the country goes to the polls, it is exactly such Midlands (and Northern) cities and towns they need to win back. Yet, despite picking up two seats in Derby on Thursday, they remain behind the Tories here with just 16 councillors compared to the blues’ 18.In a swathe of other former heartland areas – including Bolton, Dudley and Walsall – the same thing happened. Modest gains were overshadowed by the fact the Tories remained the larget party. In several areas, Labour lost seats: Newcastle-under-Lyme, Barnsley and South Shields among them.The conclusion? It may be some time yet before the Red Wall reverts back to Labour. More

Dozens of the UK’s leading animal charities have written to Boris Johnson asking him to include in the Queen’s speech an earlier promise to ban imports of hunting trophies, fur, foie gras and shark fins.The measures were in the Animals Abroad Bill, which the government dropped earlier this year in a dramatic U-turn to the anger of campaigners who have devoted years fighting for the changes.The bill also included a ban on the advertising of cruel tourism activities abroad, such as elephant rides and elephant entertainment venues.The heads of 38 organisations have joined forces to back the letter, including the RSPCA, the Born Free Foundation, Peta, World Animal Protection, World Horse Welfare, Compassion in World Farming and Whale & Dolphin Conservation.The sister of a woman killed at an elephant theme park in Thailand last month told The Independent of her bitter disappointment that the government was shying away from a ban, instead stating it expected tourists to do their own research.“How do holidaymakers know if you don’t tell them?” asked Helen Costigan.The Independent previously reported that the various measures were agreed at cabinet level, before Jacob Rees-Mogg, Brandon Lewis and Mark Spencer are thought to have vetoed them – even though the changes were promised in the government’s action plan for animal welfare published last year.Every year, hunters from the UK travel abroad, often to southern Africa, and pay thousands of pounds to legally shoot animals, such as lions, elephants and even baboons.They are allowed to bring back body parts such as stuffed heads, paws and horns in a grisly trade that critics say is driving wildlife populations towards extinction.The last Conservative Party election manifesto included a pledge to ban trophy hunt imports. But according to The Times, Mr Johnson has indeed dropped plans to ban the import and sale of foie gras and fur.Conservationists have made repeated trips to Westminster to hand in petitions and have meetings with government representatives over the issues of the imports and adverts.The charities’ latest letter tells the prime minister: “We would welcome the opportunity to meet with your office and discuss the government’s plans and ambitions for animals in the next session and look forward to hearing from you.”Claire Bass, executive director of Humane Society International/UK, said: “Boris Johnson made a promise to the people that after Brexit, Britain would become world leaders in animal welfare.“He can keep that promise by ensuring that the Animals Abroad Bill with proposed bans on cruel fur, foie gras, shark fins and other horrors, is in the Queen’s speech next week. More