Wes Streeting orders review of mental health diagnoses as benefit claims soar
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has ordered a clinical review of the diagnosis of mental health condition, Nadeem Badshah reports.
Share
Home Office launches consultation as it sets to expand use of facial recognition technology by police
Ministers are seeking to ramp up police use of facial recognition to fight crime and are asking people how it should be used to form new laws, PA Media reports. PA says:
A 10-week consultation is being launched that will ask for views on how the technology should be regulated and how to protect people’s privacy.
The government is also proposing to create a regulator to oversee police use of facial recognition, biometrics and other tools and is collecting opinions on what powers it should have.
Policing minister Sarah Jones described facial recognition as the “biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching” saying that it has already helped catch thousands of criminals.
“We will expand its use so that forces can put more criminals behind bars and tackle crime in their communities,” she said.
According to the Home Office, the Metropolitan police made 1,300 arrests using facial recognition over the last two years, and found more than 100 registered sex offenders breaching their licence conditions.
But the technology has faced criticism, with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) describing the Met police’s policy on use of live facial recognition technology as “unlawful”, earlier this year.
The equalities watchdog said the rules and safeguards around the UK’s biggest police force’s use of the technology “fall short” and could have a “chilling effect” on individuals’ rights when used at protests.
Share
No 10 to delay four England mayoral elections amid accusations of ‘cancelling democracy’
Ministers are to postpone elections for new mayors in four parts of England, triggering accusations from opposition parties that Downing Street is “cancelling democracy”, Eleni Courea reports.
Share
Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice says racism claims about Nigel Farage from fellow pupils are ‘made-up twaddle’
Good morning. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has given different responses, at different times, to the accounts of him being racist and antisemitic when he was a teenager given by some of his contempories at Dulwich College in south London. They have ranged from saying he may have engaged in “banter” using language that, 50 years later, may be regarded as offensive, to saying the claims were entirely without foundation. There is a good summary here.
But today Richard Tice, Reform UK’s deputy leader, has gone much further, accusing at least one of Farage’s critics of lying and describing the recollections as “made-up twaddle” motivated by political bias.
Tice was being interviewed on the Today programme by Emma Barnett about the decision to delay some mayoral elections in England. Tice described the decision more than once as “dictatorial” and, after a decent discussion about the elections, Barnett (who is Jewish) used the reference to dictators as a cue to ask about Nigel Farage and Hitler. She summed up some of the stories about Farage highighted in the recent Guardian investigation, including Farage telling a Jewish pupil “Hitler was right”, and asked if language like this would amount to racist abuse.
Tice said it would be. But he went on:
I can’t believe anybody would have said that.
Barnett asked: “Including your leader?” And Tice went on:
Yes. This is all made-up twaddle by people who don’t want Nigel to be prime minister of the country. It’s funny how they didn’t remember this three years ago, six years ago, 10 years ago.
Barnett pointed out that Peter Ettedgui, the former pupil who remembers Farage telling him “Hitler was right”, did remember this years ago. He spoke about it to people like Michael Crick, who first reported on some of these allegations more than a decade ago, she said. Barnett said that people who do suffer racist abuse don’t forget it because “it gets etched on your memory”.
But Tice doubled down. He said:
This is this is this is made-up nonsense by someone who’s got a politically biased motive.
And let me tell you; no one has stood up against antisemitism more than Nigel and I. We were the ones who, immediately after October 7, said we were very worried about the protests, the pro-Palestine protest, that were inciting hatred, antsemitism and violence.
Barnett said Tice was accusing Ettedgui of lying. “Yes,” Tice replied.
Barnett went on: “But you don’t know that?”
And Tice replied:
I think this is made-up twaddle by a whole bunch of people with … a political axe to grind.
And every week the voters are going out in byelections and they are voting for Reform because they are not buying into this leftwing, anti-Nigel narrative.
‘Brave’ would be one word that might Tice’s approach in this interview. Readers can probably think of others. It is certainly not the strategy that would have been adopted by anyone taking advice from a libel lawyer beforehand.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Darren Jones, the Cabinet Office minister and cheif secretary to the PM, takes questions in the Commons.
Morning: Kemi Badenoch is on a visit in west London.
Morning: Keir Starmer meets Jonas Gahr Støre, the Norwegian prime minister, in Downing Street.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
Noon: The final report from the inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who was killed in the Salisbury novichok Russian nerve agent attack, is published. Dan Jarvis, the security minister, is due to make a statement on it to MPs.
Afternoon: Starmer and Støre visit RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland where they will announce measures to deal with Russian submarine incursions.
Late afternoon: Starmer visits Glasgow for an event with Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, where they will highlight budget measures that will benefit Scotland.
At at some point today Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president, is giving a speech in parliament to MPs and peers as part of his state visit.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Share
Updated at 10.46 CET
