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Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, was the last minister to agree funding in the government spending review. Once the NHS and defence were settled there wasn’t enough to go round. The police wanted more. Everyone over the state pension age in England and Wales with an income of £35,000 or less will receive the winter fuel payment after all, at a cost of £1.25 billion, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced. Capital spending included £39 billion on social housing over the next ten years. The government also committed £14.2 billion for the new Sizewell C nuclear power station, but did not say where the money was coming from. Rolls-Royce was selected as the preferred bidder to build the country’s first small modular reactors. Unemployment rose to 4.6 per cent, its highest level since 2021, up from 4.5 per cent. Any child in England whose parents receive Universal Credit will be eligible for free school meals from September 2026, adding 500,000 to the scheme. Teachers in England can use artificial intelligence to mark homework, under government guidance. The NHS said that a blood shortage required an increase of donors from 800,000 to a million.
David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, announced sanctions against two Israeli ministers over comments which ‘incited extremist violence’, banning them from entering Britain. Zia Yusuf resigned as the chairman of Reform UK. He had criticised Sarah Pochin, the party’s new MP, for urging Sir Keir Starmer to back a burqa ban, saying: ‘I do think it’s dumb for a party to ask the PM if they would do something the party itself wouldn’t do.’ Two days later he returned to the party in a role with the so-called Doge UK team, seeking savings in council spending. Labour won the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election for the Scottish parliament with 8,559 votes, ahead of the SNP’s 7,957 and Reform’s 7,088. There was rioting in Ballymena after an alleged sexual assault by two teenage Romanian-speaking boys.
An audit commissioned by the secretary general of Unite found that there had been a ‘pervasive fraud environment’ in the union, which spent £112 million on building a hotel in Birmingham, losing £53.8 million. Last week Unite members voted to continue the dustmen’s strike in Birmingham, which began on 11 March. Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, agreed with US warnings against a new Chinese embassy at the former Royal Mint site on Tower Hill, fearing espionage. Marks and Spencer began taking online orders for home delivery again, six weeks after a cyber attack. Peter Easterby, the only racehorse trainer to have sent out more than 1,000 winners both over jumps and on the flat, died aged 95. Novelist Frederick Forsyth died aged 86.
Abroad
About 2,000 National Guard troops were deployed in Los Angeles by the federal government, against the wishes of Governor Gavin Newsom of California, to confront violent protests against the migrant deportation policy of President Donald Trump. A curfew was imposed and 700 Marines and 2,000 more National Guard were sent in. Mr Trump said he was ‘disappointed’ that Elon Musk had called his ‘big, beautiful’ budget bill a ‘disgusting abomination’; Mr Musk complained of the President’s ‘ingratitude’, declaring: ‘Without me, Trump would have lost the election.’ He then tweeted: ‘Time to drop the really big bomb: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.’ He later deleted it. Mr Trump signed a proclamation banning entry for people from 12 countries: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen; a partial ban extended to Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
Russia launched an attack with cruise missiles and hundreds of drones on Kyiv and other places in Ukraine; the next night Karkhiv was the target; on another night Kyiv and Odessa. Russia and Ukraine exchanged sick and badly wounded prisoners of war, those aged under 25, and bodies of 12,000 soldiers. Russia’s mercenary group Wagner announced it was withdrawing from Mali after four years. A 75ft statue of Lenin in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, was quietly taken down.
Eleven were killed in a shooting at a secondary school in the city of Graz in Austria, including the suspect. A yacht carrying Greta Thunberg and 11 others trying to bring aid to Gaza was towed to the port of Ashdod, after being seized by Israel, and she was put on a plane to Paris. CSH
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