PM rejects ‘far-fetched’ scepticism about Morgan McSweeney phone theft
Keir Starmer has said it is “far-fetched” to suggest that the theft of his former chief of staff’s mobile phone is somehow connected to a subsequent push for the release of documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador,Downing Street has come under pressure to say whether key messages between Morgan McSweeney and the former ambassador were lost after it emerged that the government-issue phone was stolen last year,Kemi Badenoch had “raised an eyebrow” in relation to accounts about the theft, a spokesperson for the Conservative leader said on Wednesday,The Labour MP Karl Turner, who has clashed with the government over jury trial legislation and was a critic of McSweeney’s role, said on X on Wednesday night that he did not believe the phone was stolen,The prime minister responded to the claims on Thursday morning, saying: “The phone was stolen.
It was reported to the police.There’s a transcript of the call in which Morgan McSweeney gives his name, his date of birth, the details of the phone, and the police confirm that it was reported.“Unfortunately, there are thefts like this.It was stolen.It was reported at the time, the police have acknowledged and confirmed that.
That is what happened.”Starmer added: “The idea that somehow everybody could have seen that sometime in the future there’d be a request over the phone is, to my mind, a little bit far-fetched.”Later on Thursday the shadow business secretary, Andrew Griffith, also questioned the circumstances surrounding the loss of the phone.“The whole thing is as smelly as a fish market on a hot summer’s afternoon,” he told GB News.“I worked in No 10.
Briefly, I had a No 10 phone.There was a paranoia about devices like that falling into other people’s hands.”MPs moved in February to force the publication of tens of thousands of documents amid questions over what was known about Mandelson’s links to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before he was handed the Washington job.McSweeney quit Downing Street last month, with many having blamed him for pushing the appointment.Concerns have been raised over the fact that the phone of the prime minister’s then top aide was not backed up, leading to the loss of the correspondence.
Police have taken the unusual step of releasing a transcript of McSweeney’s 999 call reporting the phone theft,According to McSweeney, in an account backed up by the transcript of his call to the Metropolitan police at the time, he was using his government-issued phone on a street in Pimlico, central London, just before 10,30pm on 20 October last year when a young man on a bike snatched the iPhone and pedalled off,McSweeney also had a personal phone with him, which he used to dial 999,He told the Met police handler that he had called his “office” to get the phone tracked before phoning them.
He said it was a “government phone”, but did not set out his job or where he worked, and the call handler did not appear to recognise his name.Helen MacNamara, a former deputy cabinet secretary in the Cabinet Office, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that McSweeney had done the right thing in terms of the steps he took, which included calling the government first to ask for the phone to be wiped.But she said it was surprising that Downing Street had not got in touch with the police to flag the significance of the phone, adding that paranoia and scepticism about the theft had been fuelled by the reluctance of the government to release documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador more swiftly.“It is allowing for a lot of speculation about ‘what are they hiding?’ … ‘what are they not hiding?’,” she said.“The surprising thing to me about the documents that were released was what was not there.
There is not an enormous amount of paperwork or correspondence or the sort of paperwork that you would expect.”Meanwhile, Starmer has said “I beat myself up” over his decision to make Mandelson US ambassador.The prime minister acknowledged he “dwells” on the appointment in 2024, after government documents showed he had been warned of a “general reputational risk” over the peer’s association with Epstein before approving the former Labour grandee for the role.The Labour leader told Sky News’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast: “Nobody has been harder on me in relation to the mistake I made there than me.And I’ll tell you why, I’ve spent years trying to deal with violence against women and girls.
“And as I look back at it now and the mistake I made, I’ve been really hard on myself.In the immediate days after this all came out, I was particularly hard on myself.So yeah, everybody else was criticising, I get all that.“But nobody was criticising me more than myself.I’m not trying to, you know, make that a mitigation or an excuse, but, I know I made a mistake.
”
More than 6m vapes and pods discarded weekly in UK despite single-use ban, study finds
More than 6m vapes and vape pods are still being discarded every week in the UK, with waste management companies warning the sheer volume continues to strain recycling systems despite the ban on disposable e-cigarettes.According to research by the recycling campaign group Material Focus, the 6.3m vapes and pods thrown away each week in 2025 represented a 23% reduction from the previous year.This suggests the ban on sales of single-use vapes that came into effect on 1 June 2025 has had an impact on levels of waste, alongside a 31% drop in the number of vapes bought each week.However, the volume of waste is still creating problems
UK government must urgently apologise for forced adoption, MPs say
The UK government must urgently issue a formal apology for the state’s role in forced adoption as many victims are nearing the end of their lives, a cross-party group of MPs has said.A report from the education select committee said ministers should provide an initial commitment to an apology and begin working with survivor groups as quickly as possible on its wording.It said a formal and public apology was essential to correct the public record and reduce the burdens felt by many mothers and adoptees.Between 1949 and 1976, an estimated 185,000 babies were taken from unmarried mothers and placed for adoption in England and Wales owing to a culture of shame surrounding pregnancy outside marriage. Religious organisations ran most of the mother and baby homes where pregnant women were sent to give birth, while charities and local authorities were also involved in funding the placements and finding adoptive parents
NHS bosses say resident doctors’ strike will cause ‘maximum harm’
NHS bosses have accused resident doctors of seeking to cause “maximum harm” to patients by striking for six days next month over pay and jobs.Wes Streeting has given resident – formerly junior – doctors in England until 2 April to reconsider their rejection on Wednesday of his “generous” offer to end the dispute. It would have given them £700m in extra pay over the next three years.The British Medical Association’s decision to withdraw from talks with the government and NHS chiefs aimed at settling the long-running dispute has sparked a war of words.Glen Burley, NHS England’s financial reset and accountability director, said during NHS England’s board meeting on Thursday that the BMA’s decision was “really disappointing for patients
Spanish woman who won legal battle for right to euthanasia has assisted death
A Spanish woman who spent months fighting her father for the right to euthanasia after being sexually assaulted and becoming paraplegic has finally ended her life on her own terms by means of an assisted death.Noelia Castillo, 25, had struggled with psychiatric illness since she was a teenager and tried to kill herself in October 2022 after being sexually assaulted. The attempt left her in constant pain and using a wheelchair. Eighteen months later, she used Spain’s euthanasia law, which was introduced in 2021, to secure permission to end her life.But her attempts to obtain euthanasia had been opposed by her father and by Christian Lawyers, an ultra‑conservative advocacy group that had supported him
London has England’s highest levels of child poverty, data shows
London has England’s highest levels of child poverty and most extreme concentrations of hardship, data has revealed. In two boroughs more than half of children live below the breadline.In Britain, child poverty rates flatlined in 2024-25 compared with the previous year. About 4 million youngsters (27%) live in households earning less than 60% of the national median income after housing costs are taken into account.The figures in effect set a benchmark for the government’s child poverty reduction strategy, which starts in earnest next month with the abolition of the two-child benefit limit
Man who murdered pregnant girlfriend has 42-year term increased to whole-life order
A man who murdered his pregnant girlfriend after being released from prison on licence must spend the rest of his life in jail, the court of appeal has ruled after finding that the original 42-year sentence was “too lenient”.Alana Odysseos, 32, was in the early stages of pregnancy with her third child when Shaine March, now 48, killed her at her home in Walthamstow, east London, in July last year. She died at the scene from 23 slash and stab wounds.March had been released from prison on a life licence in 2013 after fatally stabbing Andre Drummond, 17, in the neck at a McDonald’s restaurant in south London in January 2000.He was jailed for life in October last year with a minimum term of 42 years, but after calls from Conservative MPs, the solicitor general referred the sentence to the court of appeal
Human rights groups cheer ‘watershed’ verdict in social media addiction trial
Brussels opens investigation into Snapchat amid concern over children’s safety
Google warns quantum computers could hack encrypted systems by 2029
Starmer vows to tackle social media’s ‘addictive features’ to protect children
Creator of AI actor Tilly Norwood says she received death threats over project
Charity Commission warns Alan Turing Institute of its legal duties after complaints