Acquitted 'China spy': I was fall guy for security services

Kemi Badenoch attacked reforms but is not being clear about how party would meet costs, Torsten Bell claims Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives would have to raise the state pension age above 70 to meet the cost of keeping the triple lock, Treasury minister Torsten Bell has claimed. Labour has announced reforms to the triple-lock promise to come into force in the next parliament – with the initial proceeds earmarked for Andy Burnham’s national care service. Continue reading...

Antonia Romeo pledges to ‘rewire’ civil service by incentivising and rewarding top performers Whitehall is too “tame, reactive and risk-averse”, the cabinet secretary has said, as she set out a “completely new approach” to managing the performance of civil servants. With Andy Burnham and his deputy, Louise Haigh, in the audience, the UK’s most senior civil servant, Antonia Romeo, gave a lecture saying she would bring radical change to Whitehall as it deals with uncertainty caused by AI and globa

The transition to electric vehicles should be moving apace, but it is not. And why? Incompetence, expedience and cowardice This is how it works. An industry puts tremendous effort into resisting change: lobbying governments, mobilising the media, pouring money into junktanks. It argues that a transition would threaten jobs, or damage the national interest, or harm poor people, while what it really fears is the cost of retooling its plants or developing new protocols. Then, when the inevitable cl

Exclusive: Reindustrialisation Research Group to meet with Cabinet Office to discuss worries over PM’s long-term strategy Labour MPs have sounded the alarm over Andy Burnham’s 10-year plan for government, raising concerns that it will not be radical or detailed enough. MPs in the Reindustrialisation Research Group (ReRG), many of whom represent “red wall” seats that helped Labour win the last election, are meeting Sally Jameson, the Cabinet Office minister, on Wednesday to share their concerns a