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    Peter Mandelson ‘called Jeffrey Epstein my best pal in birthday book message’

    Peter Mandelson reportedly called Jeffrey Epstein “my best pal” in a book of messages collated for the notorious paedophile’s 50th birthday in 2003.Britain’s ambassador to Washington was reportedly included in a section titled “friends”, alongside Donald Trump and former US president Bill Clinton. A letter from Lord Mandelson included photographs of whisky and a tropical island, and called Epstein “my best pal”, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).The leather-bound album was put together before Epstein was first arrested in 2006. A spokesperson for Lord Mandelson declined to comment. Two years ago, Lord Mandelson said he “very much regrets ever having been introduced to Epstein”.Earlier this year, he reacted with a foul-mouthed rant when pressed about his friendship with the disgraced financier.Peter Mandelson says he regrets ever being introduced to Jeffrey Epstein More

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    Asylum seekers to lose housing and support if they refuse to move out of hotels

    Asylum seekers who refuse to move out of hotels into new accommodation will have financial and housing support removed from them, the government has warned.The new crackdown has been ordered by Keir Starmer’s government as it attempts to demonstrate it is taking action amid fears of a repeat of last year’s summer riots, with violence already seen in Epping in Essex after the far right fuelled protests at an asylum hotel.But the move also appears to be an attempt to get to grips with the continuing small boats crisis on the Channel, with fears of record crossings this summer.The issue has been seen as a key reason why Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is leading in the polls and taking votes away from Labour in their traditional heartlands.Police walk next to protesters in Epping (Lucy North/PA) More

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    Voices: Poll of the day: Is hosting Trump good diplomacy – or a diplomatic disaster waiting to happen?

    Donald Trump is making two visits to the UK this year – a private trip focused on his Scottish golf courses, and a full-blown state visit in September, complete with a welcome from King Charles III.The US president is spending time at his resorts in South Ayrshire and Aberdeenshire and is expected to meet Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney. He also plans to open a new course dedicated to his Scottish-born mother.While Downing Street has hailed the trip as a “historic” opportunity to strengthen UK-US ties, the invitation has sparked backlash. Protesters have accused Trump of spreading hate, accelerating climate breakdown and undermining democratic norms. A wave of demonstrations has been planned around both visits – with activists saying the UK should not be “rolling out the red carpet” for a leader with such a controversial record.In Westminster, several MPs have spoken out against the state visit, with some calling it “inappropriate” and even urging parliament to deny Trump a platform altogether. But White House sources say no parliamentary address is expected, and insist the trip is purely diplomatic.So, is Trump’s upcoming state visit a smart move to preserve international relations – or a mistake that sends the wrong message?Vote in our poll and tell us what you think in the comments below. More

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    Reeves will have to raise taxes, charge for the NHS or ditch pensions triple lock, warns IMF

    Rachel Reeves has been given her strongest warning yet that she will have to break a key party manifesto pledge by hiking taxes, introducing charges to use the NHS or drop the triple lock guarantee on the state pension.The beleaguered chancellor raised taxes by £40bn in her first Budget last year, partly to fund record new investment in the NHS.But now the world’s most important financial watchdog has warned that she will probably have to break an election promise to raise “taxes on working people” – income tax, VAT or national insurance contributions by employees to balance the books.In a report on the UK economy – Article IV Consultation with United Kingdom – the International Monetary Fund warned: “Unless the authorities revisit their commitment not to increase taxes on ‘working people’, further spending prioritisation will be required to align better the scope of public services with available resources.”Chancellor Rachel Reeves More

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    Starmer cabinet split as PM facing ‘overwhelming pressure’ to recognise Palestinian state immediately

    Speculation is mounting that Keir Starmer is close to agreeing to officially recognise a Palestinian state, with pressure from inside Labour described as “overwhelming”.The prime minister is set to hold a call with fellow E3 leaders – French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz – today to discuss the crisis in Gaza amid growing fears of mass starvation being caused by the Israeli blockade on food and aid supplies.But it has been overshadowed by France’s decision to recognise Palestine, adding to pressure from divisions within Sir Keir’s own cabinet for the UK to follow suit.It comes as Sir Keir used his strongest language yet on the worsening crisis in the embattled enclave, describing the actions by Benjamin Netanyahu as “unspeakable and indefensible”.Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who came close to losing her seat to a pro-Gaza independent MP in last year’s general election, and several other cabinet ministers want immediate recognition of Palestine as a state.Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz and Sir Keir Starmer were set to have a call about Israel/ Gaza More

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    Judge us by impact of new online safety measures for children, says regulator

    Parents and children can expect to “experience a different internet for the first time”, according to the Technology Secretary as new safety measures came into effect.Peter Kyle said he had “high expectations” for the changes, as the head of the regulator in charge of enforcement against social media platforms which do not comply urged the public to “judge us by the impact we secure”.While some campaigners have welcomed the new protections – which include age checks to prevent children accessing pornography and other harmful content – others have branded them a “sticking plaster”.Charities and other organisations working in the sector of children’s safety have agreed the key will be ensuring the measures are enforced, urging Ofcom to “show its teeth”.The changes also require platforms to ensure algorithms do not work to harm children by, for example, pushing such content on the likes of self harm and eating disorders towards them.Actions which could be taken against firms which fail to adhere to the new codes include fines of up to £18 million or 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater, and court orders potentially blocking access in the UK.Mr Kyle has said a generation of children will not be allowed to grow up “at the mercy of toxic algorithms” as he pledged the Government is laying the foundations for a safer, healthier, more humane online world and warned tech firms “will be held to account” if they fail to act in line with the changes.He told Sky News: “I have very high expectations of the change that children will experience.“And let me just say this to parents and children, you will experience a different internet really, for the first time in from today, moving forward than you’ve had in the past. And that is a big step forward.”The measures, as part of the Online Safety Act and set to be enforced by regulator Ofcom, require online platforms to have age checks – using facial age estimation or credit card checks – if they host pornography or other harmful content such as self-harm, suicide or eating disorders.Ofcom chief executive Dame Melanie Dawes said the regulator’s research had shown half a million eight to 14-year-olds have come across pornography online in the last month alone.When it was put to her by the BBC that one of their staff members testing out the new measures had been able to sign up to a well-known porn site on Friday using just an email address, she said sites will be “checking patterns of email use” behind the scenes to verify users are adults.She told Radio 4’s Today programme: “We’ve shown that we’ve got teeth and that we’re prepared to use them at Ofcom. And we have secured commitments across the porn industry and from the likes of X that no other country has secured. These things can work.“Judge us by the impact we secure. And absolutely, please do tell us if you think there’s something we need to know about that isn’t working because the law is very clear now.”She also said the Government is right to be considering limits on the amount of time children can spend on social media apps.Earlier this week, Mr Kyle said he wanted to tackle “compulsive behaviour” and ministers are reportedly considering a two-hour limit, with curfews also under discussion.Dame Melanie told LBC: “I think the Government is right to be opening up this question. I think we’re all a bit addicted to our phones, adults and children, obviously particularly a concern for young people. So, I think it’s a good thing to be moving on to.”Children’s charities the NSPCC and Barnardo’s are among those who have welcomed the new checks in place from Friday, as well as the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).The IWF warned the “safeguards put in place need to be robust and meaningful” and said there is “still more to be done”, as they urged tech platforms to to build in safeguards rather than having them as “an afterthought”.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 – said there is a “lack of ambition and accountability” in the measures, and accused the regulator of choosing to “prioritise the business needs of big tech over children’s safety”.Andy Burrows, chief executive of the foundation, told Sky News: “We’ve always had a very simple test for the Online Safety Act, will it stop further young people like Molly from dying because of the harmful design of social media platforms?“And regrettably, we just don’t think it passes that test. This is a sticking plaster, not the comprehensive solution that we really need.”Ofcom said it has also launched a monitoring and impact programme focused on some of the platforms where children spend most time including social media sites Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, gaming site Roblox and video clip website YouTube.The sites are among those which have been asked to submit, by August 7, a review of their efforts to assess risks to children and, by September 30, scrutiny of the practical actions they are taking to keep children safe. More

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    Record number of farms close in wake of ’tractor tax’ raid

    A record number of farms have closed in the wake of Rachel Reeves’s inheritance tax raid, new figures suggest. In total 6,365 agriculture, forestry and fishing businesses have closed over the past year, the highest since quarterly data was first published in 2017, according to the Office for National Statistics.The chancellor has faced a furious backlash over her decision to extend inheritance tax, which critics warn could sound the death knell for family farms in England.All the major supermarkets have backed the farmers and called on Ms Reeves to halt her controversial ‘tractor tax’ plan. But ministers have ploughed ahead even though the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has warned the policy may raise less than the Treasury hopes, with the £500m-a year-revenue forecast given a “high” uncertainty rating and likely to fall after seven years. Victoria Atkins, the shadow environment secretary, said the latest figures showed farm closures were a result of “Labour’s disastrous tax policies”. Farmers protest in Westminster over changes to inheritance tax rules (Jonathan Brady/PA) More

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    Voices: ‘A system set up to fail?’ Readers say Ofwat should go – but can’t agree on whether water should be nationalised

    The call to scrap Ofwat has struck a chord with Independent readers, who overwhelmingly agree the water regulator has failed to hold companies accountable after decades of pollution, crumbling infrastructure, and rising bills.A landmark review led by former Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe concluded that Ofwat should be dismantled and replaced with a powerful single regulator covering the entire water system. The current setup, the Independent Water Commission said, is “fragmented and overlapping” and has allowed private companies to extract billions in shareholder payouts while sewage spills surged and investment lagged behind.When we asked for your views, 86 per cent of readers said Ofwat should be scrapped entirely, with only 14 per cent favouring reform over replacement.Many also backed wider changes, including new regional authorities, stronger environmental oversight and tougher rules on company ownership and debt. But the strongest opinions focused on ownership itself: whether water, a vital natural resource, should ever have been privatised in the first place.Some readers argued that the damage is now too deep to reverse, with nationalisation legally fraught and prohibitively expensive. Others insisted that public control is the only way to fix a system that has lost public trust.Here’s what you had to say:Only reward acceptable performanceI don’t care how it is structured, as long as they are only rewarded for delivering acceptable levels of purity, availability, leakage, and pollution. Jim KitThe horse has boltedMany individuals here mistakenly think nationalisation is the answer. It isn’t. Nationalising privatised water companies would force the government (and so taxpayers) to buy them back at market value or face legal battles with domestic and foreign investors under international trade agreements.These companies carry massive debts, which would transfer to the public, burdening taxpayers with billions in liabilities. Further, compensation claims and lawsuits from investors would escalate costs, making nationalisation an expensive and legally risky process with no guarantee of improved service.Privatisation was craftily set up so as to be more or less irreversible. The horse has bolted, I’m afraid. MusilForeign ownership makes it worse”National strategic assets should never ever be in the hands of private companies” – I agree, and it’s worse if those companies are based outside the UK. They will be even more disinterested in any sort of service. Vital infrastructure should be publicly owned: rail, buses, trams, electricity, gas, water. I don’t think we’re quite there yet with broadband.But nationalising needs to be done very carefully. I don’t think anyone can claim that old BR and BT were paragons of efficiency. And local councils have their part to play by carefully scheduling road dig-ups across utilities – there’s a lot of pipework that’s been left to rot whilst dividends are paid. PremiumMismanagement should mean re-nationalisationPass a law to legislate that if privatised public utilities or services are mismanaged, they pass back into public ownership. Simple. BigDogSmallBrainNobody should own waterNobody should be the owner of water. Water should just be managed in the name of the people, and any profit should be entirely coincidental. There is zero need to have financially motivated ownership of water, along the same lines as why nobody owns air, oxygen, or sunshine. ItReallyIsNotCrumbling infrastructure is the real crisisThe elephant in the room is the increasing population/increasing housing requirements, along with combined sewers carrying sewage and rainwater. More people/homes means more sewage/rainwater run-off, and when it rains hard, any treatment works are unable to cope with the volume of water piped to them.For example, the Trafford Centre’s rainwater is kept separate from sewage and can go straight into the nearby canal, being clean water. That water is as much as 10 cubic metres per second! Now consider the tens of thousands of homes, businesses, roads, car parks, etc. that add up to a lot more area, all funnelling their rainwater into the local sewage works, and you can see what the problem is.To properly solve it would require every household and business to have expensive work done to install separate rainwater drains, and for every single road in the area to be dug up to install a parallel piping system to keep rainwater separated from sewage.Much of the main piping has been in place since before WW2, when there were far fewer people, homes, and large businesses. SteveWDriven by profitNational strategic assets should never, ever be in the hands of private companiesThey are driven by profit above all else… and when they fail… we end up footing the bill anyway. All privatisation does is make a few people very rich. captaintrippsProductivityI agree in principle, but the trouble with nationalised industries is that down the line, they will all cause problems. The issue is productivity: “Why should I work hard when I’ve got a guaranteed job for life?” Maybe not so much on the water supply side, but all other nationalised industries suffered from this communist idea. It sounds good on paper, but in practice, it doesn’t work. Now, nationalising industries without union interference or job protection, and you’ll have something. StevetheBarbarianNationalise now!There is absolutely no benefit in privatising a public utility that is also a monopoly. Privatised water companies are in competition with no one, so there is no pressure to decrease prices or improve services. They serve two masters: increased pay at the top and profit for shareholders. Nationalise it now! bloodwortBreak up regional monopoliesLike most basic utilities, privatisation provides none of the potential benefits and all of the worst drawbacks. It is difficult to innovate with a product as simple as water, while the most important features – safety, the environment, and keeping down the price – are anathema to profit-driven organisations.At the very least, the regional monopolies need to be broken up. AimeryanThey are just laughing at us allIt will never get fixed until those responsible for running the industry are properly held accountable. Until then, they are just laughing at us all – literally laughing all the way to the bank. captaintrippsIt can’t be fixedIt can’t be fixed. And there’s no way to nationalise it without spending about a trillion pounds to buy the companies and pay off the bondholders. There is no solution; it’s only going to get worse. BlueWhale Some of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity.Want to share your views? Simply register your details below. Once registered, you can comment on the day’s top stories for a chance to be featured. Alternatively, click ‘log in’ or ‘register’ in the top right corner to sign in or sign up.Make sure you adhere to our community guidelines, which can be found here. For a full guide on how to comment click here. More