Scrapped

PM tells Commons extending the temporary 5p cut is a necessary response to cost-of-living pressuresUK politics live – latest updatesKeir Starmer has announced an extension to the temporary 5p cut in fuel duty, as widely expected, telling the Commons it was a necessary response to cost-of-living pressures.Before a wider package of measures due to be announced by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, on Thursday, Starmer used prime minister’s questions to announce the extended freeze and a vehicle tax break for the haulage industry. Continue reading...

Project organisers say high costs and the energy crisis have scuppered planned green route from Camden to King’s CrossThe Camden Highline, a multimillion-pound effort to transform a disused rail line into a greenery-filled walking and cycling paradise, has been all but scrapped.Nearly a decade since it was conceived as London’s answer to New York’s fabled High Line, the project has fallen victim to high costs and the energy crisis. Continue reading...

The spytech company and founder Peter Thiel should ‘have their hands ripped off our NHS’, say MPs during impassioned Westminster debateMPs have queued up to demand the government scraps its £330m NHS contract with the spytech company Palantir, calling it “dreadful” and “shameful” in a debate on Thursday, after which the government said it was “no fan” of the US company’s politics.Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs led the calls for Palantir, which also works for Donald Trump’s ICE immigration crackdown and the Israeli military, to be removed as a supplier to the NHS federated data platform (FDP), with one Labour backbencher, Samantha Niblett, questioning whether it could be “trusted as a custodian of the intimate health records of tens of millions of British citizens”. Continue reading...