Spending even more on defence won’t buy us peace | Letters

We are told to spend even more, and more quickly, on the armed forces, whose current budget for this year is expected to amount to more than £60bn (‘Britain ‘needs to go faster’ on defence spending, Starmer says, 16 February). The Ministry of Defence must surely first show it can put its house in order.The government is considering whether to scrap Ajax, the army’s planned new armoured vehicle, even though more than £6bn of taxpayers’ money has already been spent on the project. Ajax is eight years late, its defects so serious that vibration and noise have made soldiers training on it sick, with some suffering hearing loss.It is the latest and most egregious example of the huge waste caused by the MoD’s incompetence and profligacy over recent years

Global Counsel calls in administrators, blaming Peter Mandelson ‘maelstrom’

Global Counsel, the advisory firm co-founded by Peter Mandelson, is to collapse into administration, blaming the “maelstrom” caused by revelations about the former peer’s relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.Companies including Barclays, Tesco and the Premier League have all deserted Global Counsel, despite the company’s efforts to sever ties with Mandelson and the company’s co-founder Benjamin Wegg-Prosser.The crisis engulfed Global Counsel after it emerged that Mandelson had sought Epstein’s advice on setting up the business in 2010, shortly after leaving office when Labour lost the general election.On Thursday, the Financial Times reported that staff at Global Counsel had been told that the “Peter Mandelson legacy” had effectively capsized the business.In a statement posted on the professional social networking site LinkedIn, Global Counsel confirmed that it had asked a court to appoint Interpath as administrator “to take control of and realise the assets of the company”

Dual nationals could use expired UK passports to prove they are British, Home Office says

British dual nationals may be able to use expired UK passports to prove to airlines they are British when controversial new immigration rules come into force, the Home Office has said.The new rules, coming into force next Wednesday, require anyone coming into the UK with British dual nationality to present a British passport when boarding a plane, ferry or train or to have a “certificate of entitlement” costing £589 attached to their foreign passport.Airlines and other transport operators risk being fined if they board passengers who do not have the right to enter the destination country.The rules have caused stress, disgust and bafflement among Britons with imminent travel plans whose passports have expired or who do not have a British passport, including children born abroad.The Liberal Democrats have called for a grace period to allow people affected by the change to get new passports, a process that could take many weeks

Starmer appoints Antonia Romeo as head of civil service

Keir Starmer has appointed Antonia Romeo as the cabinet secretary, the UK’s most senior civil servant, and praised her drive and professionalism.The appointment comes after high-profile criticism of Romeo from a former permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, Simon McDonald. Romeo has been highly praised by other previous secretaries of state as well as the current home secretary, Shabana Mahmood.Romeo, the longest-serving permanent secretary in the civil service, has a reputation as a reformer and has been a more prominent public figure than many of her contemporaries.She has previously faced accusations of bullying related to her time as consul general in New York in 2017 but was cleared by the Cabinet Office

Ministers must end ‘barking mad’ restraints on civil service pay, union leader warns

Ministers must end “barking mad” restraints on civil service pay or risk being unable to recruit the technical and digital specialists it needs to keep pace, a union leader has warned.Mike Clancy, the Prospect general secretary, said the government should end the “rightwing trope” that restrained the pay of highly skilled civil servants and left government unable to compete with the private sector. He said it should be realistic for senior specialists in competitive fields to be paid more than the prime minister.His intervention comes after the prime minister’s chief secretary, Darren Jones, said he wanted more risk-takers and delivery experts to create a civil service that “moves fast and fixes things”, saying hiring criteria would be changed to “promote the doers, not just the talkers”.Clancy said the civil service had significant issues retaining technical experts because of the low pay and lack of progression

Countries that do not embrace AI could be left behind, says OpenAI’s George Osborne

The former chancellor George Osborne has said countries that do not embrace the kind of powerful AI systems made by his new employer, OpenAI, risk “Fomo” and could be left weaker and poorer.Osborne, who is two months into a job as head of the $500bn San Francisco AI company’s “for countries” programme, told leaders gathered for the AI Impact summit in Delhi: “Don’t be left behind.” He said that without AI rollouts they could end up with a workforce “less willing to stay put” because they might want to seek AI-enabled fortunes elsewhere.Osborne framed the choice facing countries as one between adopting AI systems produced either in the US – such as Open AI’s – or China. The two superpowers have so far developed the most powerful AI systems