Foreign Office cuts will weaken oversight of international law, MPs warn
MPs have expressed alarm at the closure of the Foreign Office’s international humanitarian law unit, warning it “will impair the UK’s ability to anticipate, assess and respond to serious violations of international law across multiple contexts”.News of the closure, revealed by the Guardian, was raised with Keir Starmer at prime minister’s questions this week by the independent MP for Dewsbury and Batley, Iqbal Mohamed.Starmer said the work would be undertaken by another team as part of a restructuring.However, he made no reference to the ending of the Foreign Office contract with the Conflict and Security Monitoring Project, run by the Centre forInformation Resilience, which monitors incidents of concern in Gaza, the West Bank and, more recently, Lebanon.In a letter to the foreign secretary, Yvettte Cooper, the cross-party group of MPs asked how the closure aligned with the government’s stated commitment to upholding international law and ensuring rigorous compliance with the UK’s arms export licensing criteria.
The letter is signed by Labour, Green, independent and Scottish National MPs.They also questioned what steps the Foreign Office would take to retain access to the database of 26,000 incidents dating to 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched its attack on Israel, prompting Israel’s military response in Gaza.Mohamed said: “This looks to me less like routine restructuring and more like a deliberate weakening of scrutiny.It could also be seen as the deliberate destruction of evidence of war crimes and genocide.”The MPs asked what other data sources the department intended to use to monitor breaches of international humanitarian law.
The cuts come as part of a restructuring programme, known as FCDO 2030, overseen by the now-dismissed permanent secretary, Olly Robbins,The trade union representing Foreign Office staff, the PCS, also challenged Starmer’s claim that the work of the unit could be absorbed elsewhere, stating that senior leadership had predicted job cuts of 15-20%,The union said it “has not been provided with detailed plans setting out what work will continue, what will cease or how the remaining staff could absorb highly specialised areas”,It added that it had seen no evidence that ministers fully understood the impact of the cuts or whether they aligned with the priorities of the public,Polling published on Friday by Medical Aid for Palestinians and conducted by YouGov found that 54% of the public would like to see the UK end all arms exports to Israel, compared with 22% who supported weapons sales.
Robbins had been overseeing the restructuring of the Foreign Office, and in effect had required some diplomats to prove their suitability for their job after the decision in February 2025 to reduce Official Development Assistance spending,Estimates published by the Foreign Office this week show projected spending of £6,28bn in 2026-27, a £2,39bn (27%) reduction on the previous year,Robbins’s cuts included a requirement that Foreign Office staff write essays outlining the skills they possessed that made them useful to the department.
One aim was to tilt the Foreign Office expertise towards economics.The restructuring programme has been taken on by Nick Dyer, the department’s other permanent secretary.He told a select committee last week that the Foreign Office was too bureaucratic, too big, too slow and insufficiently nimble.
Zack Polanski apologises for sharing tweet criticising police at Golders Green stabbings
Zack Polanski has apologised for sharing a social media post critical of police following the Golders Green stabbings after the head of the Metropolitan police said the Green leader risked undermining public confidence in his officers.Polanski, who leads the Greens in England and Wales, said he was sorry for having shared someone else’s post “in haste”.Keir Starmer, speaking to the BBC before the apology, described Polanski’s actions as “disgraceful” and unfair on police faced with making split-second decisions.Police were filmed detaining the suspect after two Jewish people were stabbed in the north-west London suburb on Wednesday. Footage of the arrest shared on social media shows two officers appearing to kick the man on or near his head
Zack Polanski apologises for sharing criticism of police response to Golders Green attack – UK politics live
Zack Polanski, leader of the Green party, has apologised for sharing a social media post about the police officers who arrested the suspect in the Golders Green attack.‘Everyone in leadership has a responsibility for lowering the temperature at a time of such tension, and I apologise for sharing a tweet in haste,” Polanski said in a statement.He continued: “Police responses to emergency situations such as these do need later reflection in the right forums, but I accept that social media is not the appropriate channel for doing so.“I have invited Mark Rowley to meet with me to discuss the police response and the wider issues raised in his letter.”Polanski had reshared a post on X that alleged that the officers who arrested the Golders Green attack suspect “were repeatedly and violently kicking a mentally ill man in the head when he was already incapacitated by Taser
End of Trump tariffs on whisky sparks row between Scottish parties over claiming credit
Donald Trump’s announcement that he will lift punishing US tariffs on scotch whisky has been overshadowed by a row between rival Scottish party leaders over claiming credit for the decision.The whisky industry and business leaders were delighted by the US president’s announcement on his Truth Social network on Thursday that he would end the tariffs to mark the visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla.“The King and Queen got me to do something nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking!” Trump said.The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) estimates the 10% tariff imposed by Trump last year has cost producers about £150m in lost sales and led to hundreds of job losses. Shares in Diageo, the drinks multinational that produces Johnnie Walker, rose sharply on the news
Watchdog weighs investigation into Farage’s undisclosed £5m gift
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Where does Starmer’s leadership stand – and who are his potential challengers?
As the May elections creep closer, the leadership speculation at Westminster grows more intense. Is Keir Starmer safe and, if so, for how long?When will Angela Rayner’s tax affairs be resolved, and will she return to the cabinet? Who has Andy Burnham done a deal with to get back to Westminster, and would MPs support him if he did? Why has Wes Streeting gone so quiet?To the frustration of many – not least the prime minister himself – discussions about who is up and who is down have long been a staple of Westminster life. But as the security of Starmer’s position has ebbed and flowed in recent months, it has intensified. So where do Starmer – and his putative rivals for No 10 – stand?Despite feverish leadership speculation, and Starmer’s rock-bottom public approval ratings, the most likely scenario remains that he stumbles on. The quiet, loyal majority of the parliamentary Labour party may feel deeply despondent about their predicament, but many feel that ousting him remains the nuclear option
Starmer restores powers to ousted hereditary peers in Lords shake-up
Dozens of hereditary peers whose seats have been abolished have had their lawmaking powers restored as Keir Starmer seeks to accelerate changes to the House of Lords.It is understood that 15 Conservative hereditary peers, two Labour and nine crossbenchers have been handed life peerages, enabling their return to the red benches.The apparent concession was made in a bid to end a long battle over Starmer’s plans to remove the right of the last remaining hereditary peers to sit in the Lords, a commitment made in Labour’s 2024 manifesto.A government source described the parliamentary session that has just ended as “tortuous” given that every stage of the bill to abolish hereditary peers has resulted in considerable disruption in the Lords, as well as demands in private meetings for compensation for removed peers.The peers have already been subject to a due diligence process run by the House of Lords appointment commission, which includes a check by HM Revenue and Customs
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