UK

The UK is preparing to deploy troops to Ukraine as part of a “reassurance force” if a peace deal is reached with Russia, Downing Street has said. It comes after Sir Keir Starmer co-chaired a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” on Tuesday morning, attended by more than 30 international leaders, after Monday’s talks in Washington. The meeting saw leaders discuss possible further sanctions on Russia to pile pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war, as well as plans to meet with their US counterparts in the coming days to put in place security guarantees for Ukraine to deter future Russian aggression. Emmanuel Macron speaks to Sir Keir Starmer during a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing More

Rachel Reeves’ plans for a new property tax on homes worth over £500,000 have been slammed as a “tax on ordinary Londoners” that will hit families hardest. The chancellor is reportedly considering a shake-up that will see homeowners taxed on the sale of properties over the £500,000 threshold, with buyers then forced to pay a yearly tax on their value. It would replace the current stamp duty regime for first homes, which sees buyers pay a tax on the value of properties over £125,000, or £300,000 for first-time buyers. Rachel Reeves said that any decisions on taxation would have to wait to be made in the autumn Budget (Yui Mok/PA) More

England’s children’s commissioner has demanded that the government stop children from using virtual private networks (VPNs) to get around age verification on porn sites.Calling for change, Dame Rachel de Souza warned it is “absolutely a loophole that needs closing” as she released a new report, which found the proportion of children saying they have seen pornography online has risen in the past two years, with most likely to have stumbled upon it accidentally.VPNs are tools that connect internet users to websites via remote servers, enabling them to hide their real IP address and location, which includes allowing them to look as if they are online but in another country. This means the Online Safety Act, which now forces platforms to check users’ ages if attempting to access some adult content, can be dodged.A government spokesperson told The Independent that VPNs are legal tools for adults and there are no plans to ban them.The age-restriction warning on the porn site PornHub on a screen in London, on 16 January, 2025, before the latest age verification checks came into force More

Sir Keir Starmer has hailed a “breakthrough” in efforts to end Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as Donald Trump said he would broker a meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian presidents.The PM joined Voldymyr Zelensky, French president Emmanuel Macron and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte for crunch talks in the White House on Monday.And, following the meeting, Sir Keir said the UK and US would begin work on the specifics of security guarantees with the US as soon as Tuesday. Keir Starmer said there was a ‘sense of unity’ between the US and Ukrainian leaders More

The proportion of children saying they have seen pornography online has risen in the past two years, according to a report, which also found most are likely to have stumbled upon it accidentally.Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza said her research is evidence that harmful content is being presented to children through dangerous algorithms, rather than them seeking it out.She described the content young people are seeing as “violent, extreme and degrading” and often illegal, and said her office’s findings must be seen as a “snapshot of what rock bottom looks like”.More than half (58%) of respondents to the survey said that, as children, they had seen pornography involving strangulation, while 44% reported seeing a depiction of rape – specifically someone who was asleep.Made up of responses from 1,020 people aged between 16 and 21 years old, the report also found that while children were on average aged 13 when they first saw pornography, more than a quarter (27%) said they were 11, and some reported being aged “six or younger”.The research suggested four in 10 respondents felt girls can be “persuaded” to have sex even if they say no at first, and that young people who had watched pornography were more likely to think this way.The report, a follow-on from research by the Children’s Commissioner’s office in 2023, found a higher proportion (70%) of people saying they had seen online pornography before turning 18, up from 64% of respondents two years ago.Boys (73%) were more likely than girls (65%) to report seeing online pornography.A majority (59%) of children and young people said they had seen pornography online by accident – a rise from 38% in 2023.The X platform, formerly Twitter, remained the most common source of pornography for children, with 45% saying they had seen it there compared with 35% seeing it on dedicated pornography sites – a gap which has widened in the past two years.Dame Rachel said: “This report must act as a line in the sand. The findings set out the extent to which the technology industry will need to change for their platforms to ever keep children safe.“Take, for example, the vast number of children seeing pornography by accident. This tells us how much of the problem is about the design of platforms, algorithms and recommendation systems that put harmful content in front of children who never sought it out.”The research was done in May, ahead of new online safety measures coming into effect last month including age checks to prevent children accessing pornography and other harmful content.Dame Rachel said the measures “provide a real opportunity to make children’s safety online a non-negotiable priority for everyone: policymakers, big tech giants and smaller tech developers”.Some 44% of respondents agreed with the statement “girls may say no at first but then can be persuaded to have sex”, while a third (33%) agreed with the statement “some girls are teases and pretend they don’t want sex when they really do”.For each statement, young people who had seen pornography were more likely to agree.The commissioner’s report comes as a separate piece of research suggested dangerous online algorithms were continuing to recommend suicide, self-harm and depression content to young people “at scale” just weeks before the new online safety measures came into effect.The Molly Rose Foundation – set up by bereaved father Ian Russell after his 14-year-old daughter Molly took her own life having viewed harmful content on social media – analysed content on Instagram and TikTok from November until June this year on accounts registered as a 15 year-old girl based in the UK.The charity said its research found that, on teenage accounts which had engaged with suicide, self-harm and depression posts, algorithms continued to “bombard young people with a tsunami of harmful content on Instagram Reels and TikTok’s For You page”.Mr Russell, the foundation’s chairman, said: “It is staggering that, eight years after Molly’s death, incredibly harmful suicide, self-harm and depression content like she saw is still pervasive across social media.”The foundation has previously been critical of the regulator Ofcom’s child safety codes for not being strong enough and said its research showed they “do not match the sheer scale of harm being suggested to vulnerable users and ultimately do little to prevent more deaths like Molly’s”.Mr Russell added: “For over a year, this entirely preventable harm has been happening on the Prime Minister’s watch and where Ofcom have been timid it is time for him to be strong and bring forward strengthened, life-saving legislation without delay.”A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram, said: “We disagree with the assertions of this report and the limited methodology behind it.“Tens of millions of teens are now in Instagram Teen Accounts, which offer built-in protections that limit who can contact them, the content they see, and the time they spend on Instagram.“We continue to use automated technology to remove content encouraging suicide and self-injury, with 99% proactively actioned before being reported to us.“We developed Teen Accounts to help protect teens online and continue to work tirelessly to do just that.”A TikTok spokesperson said: “Teen accounts on TikTok have 50-plus features and settings designed to help them safely express themselves, discover and learn, and parents can further customise 20-plus content and privacy settings through family pairing.“With over 99% of violative content proactively removed by TikTok, the findings don’t reflect the real experience of people on our platform which the report admits.” More

Jeremy Corbyn has been accused by the co-leader of his new party of “capitulating” over antisemitism. Zarah Sultana said the former Labour leader was wrong to accept the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and said he alienated voters by “triangulating” on Brexit. In an extraordinary attack just weeks after the pair announced the formation of Your Party, a left-wing challenger to Labour, Ms Sultana said Labour under Mr Corbyn “capitulated to the IHRA definition of antisemitism”. Zarah Sultana launched an attack on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour More

Sir Keir Starmer is prepared to support a peace deal in Ukraine without a ceasefire being in place, No 10 has indicated, as the prime minister reiterated that he is prepared to put “boots on the ground” to ensure security in the event of an agreement being struck.Downing Street on Monday called for “an end to the killing in Ukraine” but stopped short of reiterating the government’s previous position, that a ceasefire was needed before peace talks could take place. Vladimir Putin has resisted calls to accept an unconditional ceasefire before entering talks about a long-term peace deal with Volodymyr Zelensky. And, following a summit between Putin and Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday, the US president dropped his demands for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict. Sir Keir Starmer is travelling to Washington DC More