Labour MPs call on Rachel Reeves to scrap council tax

More than a dozen Labour MPs have written to Rachel Reeves calling on her to scrap council tax, as the chancellor faces mounting pressure to overhaul Great Britain’s property taxes in next month’s budget.Thirteen MPs, mainly from seats in northern England, wrote to Reeves last month asking her to abolish the tax and replace it with another system that better accounts for the steep rise in house prices in London and the south-east over the last 35 years.The chancellor is looking for ways to close what could be a £30bn shortfall in the public finances, with experts warning that doing so could require a shake-up of the entire tax system.The Labour MPs wrote: “If we are to succeed in our mission to transform Britain and fight back against Reform, we must be bold and embrace new ideas that put more money back into the pockets of working people.“One place we can start is by looking at ways we can abolish the outdated, deeply regressive, and increasingly indefensible council tax system

Muddle over semantics or pressure from China? Collapsed spying case remains baffling

There is a baffling contradiction at the heart of the efforts of Dan Jarvis, the security minister, to explain why the prosecution of two Britons accused of spying for China collapsed last month. The problem, he insisted in front of MPs on Monday, was that “it was not the policy of a Conservative government to classify China as a threat to national security”.Except there is plenty of evidence to suggest that China was recognised as a threat by the previous governments in documents and public statements by ministers and officials. All this makes the failure of the government witness – Matthew Collins, the deputy national security adviser – to set this out in three separate witness statements given to the prosecution even more surprising.The context here is the ongoing fallout from the collapse of the prosecution of Christopher Cash, a parliamentary researcher, who was working for the Conservative MP Alicia Kearns at the time of his arrest, and his friend Christopher Berry, a researcher based in China

Farage criticises ‘disgraceful’ rhetoric after alleged attack on Reform council leader

The Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, has criticised “disgraceful” rhetoric from the Labour and Green parties after the UK’s youngest council leader was allegedly assaulted.George Finch, 19, the Reform leader of Warwickshire county council,said he was called a “racist” and a “fascist” before being allegedly assaulted on Friday.The alleged attacker “was wound up and sent into battle by the dangerous rhetoric of Labour and the Greens”, Finch told the Daily Mail. He said the attack didn’t cause any lasting injury.Farage said he was “deeply upset” about the incident and “the words used against him echo the prime minister’s disgraceful attack on Reform during Labour conference week and wholly irresponsible comments from the leader of the Green party”

Government made ‘every effort’ to support China spying trial, says minister

The government made “every effort” to support the trial of two men accused of spying for China, a minister has said, as he accused the Tories of claiming the case was deliberately abandoned “without a shred of evidence”.Dan Jarvis, the security minister, issued a robust defence of Jonathan Powell in the Commons after reports that Keir Starmer’s national security adviser played a role in the collapse of the case.His intervention prolongs an extraordinary blame game between ministers and prosecutors over the abandonment of charges against two men, including a former parliamentary researcher, who were accused of spying for Beijing.Charges were dropped against Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry, who had always maintained their innocence, last month after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it could no longer meet the evidential threshold needed to proceed.Jarvis said that since the charges against Cash and Berry were brought in April 2024, the deputy national security adviser, Matthew Collins, provided three witness statements to support the trial in December 2023, February 2025 and July 2025

Badenoch accuses Labour of prioritising economic ties with China over national security – as it happened

At the Downing Street lobby briefing this morning the PM’s spokesperson took questions for about 45 minutes on the collapse of the China spying prosecution. The briefing did not provide answers to all the questions raised by Kemi Badenoch (see 10.20am) and others, but it did move things on a bit. Here are the main points.The PM’s spokesperson said it was “entirely false” to claim the government played a role in getting the CPS to drop the prosection

Why Britain’s climate and defence strategies need to be better integrated | Letter

Your article (National security threatened by climate crisis, UK intelligence chiefs due to warn, 8 October) exposed the dangerous disconnect between climate policy and defence. It raises vital questions about Britain’s – and the world’s – readiness to face the security threats posed by the climate crisis, none of which can be met if leaders keep treating climate and defence as separate issues.This summer, wildfires linked to climate change brought Europe to its knees, wreaking economic havoc, overwhelming health systems and draining military resources. All over the world, climate breakdown is fuelling instability, conflict and displacement. The EU’s failure to break free from Moscow’s pipelines is jeopardising its energy sovereignty