The home secretary is planning to introduce a 20-year wait for permanent stay to end a ‘golden ticket’ for asylum seekers

Exclusive: thinktank report finds health secretary has failed to improve productivity, with the health service unlikely to meet its targets Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG). The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes Continue reading...

Six months after taking office, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is struggling to fulfill pledges to revive Europe's largest economy and fend off the far right, with only a fifth of Germans wanting to see him run for office again.

Reform UK leader expected to promise deregulation and spending cuts as Labour and Conservatives attack policies The prospect of looming tax rises and a fall in business investment will restrict the UK’s economic growth rate next year to less than 1%, according to a health check of the economy by a leading consultancy. Phillip Inman has the story. Good morning. Even though Reform UK has had a clear lead over all other parties in opinion polls for much of the year, it has multiple vulnerabilities. One of them is that immigration is the only potential winning issue it has got, because on all almost other subjects its policy offer is flimsy and its credibility is minimal. And nowhere is this more obvious than on the economy, where the party has already had to admit that the £90bn tax cuts it was proposing in its manifesto last year are now being ditched because they are unacheiveable. Continue reading...

Eurovision Song Contest organisers will no longer meet online in November to vote on Israel's participation in the competition, following Middle East "developments", the European Broadcasting Union sa...

Get the benefits you're entitled to: help with personal independence payment (PIP), universal credit (UC), employment and support allowance (ESA),disability living allowance (DLA). Claims, assessments...