Downing Street says EU’s suggestion of UK joining agreement would not cross its ‘red lines’ for closer ties

Here is Downing Street news release on the government’s plans to limit the extent to which judicial review can be used to hold up infrastructure projects. The plans will cover England and Wales.

The RSPB, which describes itself as the UK’s largest nature conversation charity, has accused Labour of going back on its pre-election promises to protect nature. Beccy Speight, the RSPB chief executive, said:

The PM claims to ‘clear a path’ for building, but this move runs the risk of bulldozing through our chances for a future where nature, people, and the economy all thrive. We know people want bold action on the climate and nature crises, which was Labour’s election platform, and this rhetoric has them veering wildly off course.

We all know that nature underpins economic growth - that is why government and the environment sector has been actively working together, to try and unlock better outcomes for both planning and nature - yet this rhetoric flies in the face of that collaborative spirit.

If we want to grow the economy and fund vital public services, then we have to better balance environmental and community interests with the benefits of development, and do so in a clear and timely way. Reducing the scope for vexatious and unmerited legal challenges, whilst retaining a right to appeal, is a very positive step in achieving this.

For the children of the Nigerian diaspora, displaced by war and split between two worlds, footballers from John Fashanu to Jay-Jay Okocha were a first glimpse of themselves in Britain’s mainstream

They arrived in 80s London with small intentions: to study, to work, to outrun what they had come from, and then maybe, one day, return back home. A people who came en masse from Nigeria, working the dark hours, balancing two jobs with part-time education, rolling in a ceaseless loop of morning shifts into lectures into night work again, until maybe a qualification came good, and they could move into some kind of steady career or profession.

Many of us grew up with these stories, parents who worked quiet jobs for decades, who cleaned offices in the glass Canary Wharf skyscrapers before first light and then, in the summer evenings, waited on tables at Soho and Knightsbridge restaurants. Aunts and uncles and elders who earned their first wages in London at local bowling alleys and bingo halls, at cinemas and hospitals and care homes, moving anonymously through a looming city.

Exclusive: Treasury analysis shows ticket prices expected to go up across board with no plans for frequent flyers to shoulder more of the cost

Rachel Reeves’s bid to expand Heathrow airport could add £40 to the cost of an airline ticket, according to the Treasury’s own analysis.

The chancellor’s proposal to minimise the carbon emissions of a bigger Heathrow include the use of sustainable aviation fuels, which experts say are expensive and unlikely to reach the scale needed for aviation expansion.