Young people who were on the path to permanent residency have warned proposed changes to indefinite leave to remain (ILR) would be “financially devastating”. 

For some young professionals, the changes to ILR, including extending the qualifying period, have left them unable to settle and plan their lives in the UK.

“The visa system is crippling,” said 25-year-old Kennedy Randall.

Randall added that “it already takes so much forward planning, both logistically and financially, so it’s incredibly stressful when the Government is constantly proposing that the rules will change”. 

“It just feels like they play with our visas and our futures for political currency,” she told The i Paper. “I don’t think that politicians have any consideration for the human, or the financial, cost associated with what they are saying.

Read the full story here.

Kemi Badenoch has said that the bulk of government savings should come from the welfare budget, in an interview with the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show.

The Tory leader says there are six million working age adults on “out of work benefits”, adding “that cannot be right” and it’s where cuts must come from.

“Right now the government has just turned into the welfare party,” she continued.

The leader of the Conservative Party refuted that the Tories are the party for just the wealthy: “what we are doing is making sure there’s something for everybody”, she said.

Former Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has said that the UK should pay reparations for its role in the historic slave trade.

Speaking on Sky News this morning, she said it is “an issue that’s been sitting there festering and has to be dealt with”.

As a “middle-ranking nation”, she says the UK has to “build friendships around the world”, which she claims paying reparations would help us to do in a world of “Trump and Putin lining up together”. 

Rather than slavery being an issue of the past, Bennett says that “we have to deal with the past to find a place in the future”, as places in the Caribbean that were historically victims of slavery are also those “extremely vulnerable to rising instability in the climate”.

The proportion of Britons who back returning to the EU has risen to 48 per cent, with rejoiners now holding a 13-point lead over the 35 per cent who think we should stay out.

It comes after Andy Burnham reignited the Brexit debate by putting a closer relationship to the EU at the heart of his premiership, with the Prime Minister leaving open the possibility that he could campaign to reverse the referendum entirely with a full return to the bloc.

Polling by BMG for The i Paper shows that support for rejoining has increased three percentage points to 48 per cent since last month, with support for staying out dropping by three points to 35 per cent. Seventeen per cent meanwhile answered “don’t know” when asked whether the UK should join the EU or stay out.

The 13-point lead for rejoin matches a figure achieved in April and is second only to the record 14-point lead recorded by BMG in March, with the pollster tracking the question since May 2023.

Read the full story here.

The UK should rejoin the EU’s single market and customs union, and adopt a “free movement of labour,” said Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey.

Speaking on Sky News this morning, he said that since the UK left the EU, immigration has got “completely out of control”, and that “if we work with our European partners” immigration would be better controlled.

He said rejoining the single market and customs union would “boost our economy and our economy needs some growth now”.

“I think we could benefit from a much closer trade and defence relationship with Europe.”

More than 300 demonstrators were arrested yesterday after gathering outside the US embassy in London in support of proscribed group Palestine Action.

Hundreds of people took part in the protest in Nine Elms, south-west London, on Saturday, with many holding signs reading: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”

In a post on X on Sunday, the Metropolitan Police said it had arrested 325 people, with the majority (320) detained for expressing support for a proscribed organisation under the Terrorism Act.

Expressing support for the group is an offence under the Terrorism Act after it was proscribed in June 2025.

The former chief of the defence staff Tony Radakin says the government is in danger “of being in a slight pickle” on defence spending, adding that Labour has had to make cuts to “balance the budget”, such as retiring jets and scrapping ships.

He refuted that the Government will meet it’s targets by 2030, saying the 3 per cent spending commitment will not be “turned around” in 1,000 days.

Radakin added that “we can avoid our sons and daughters having to fight by being really strong on defence”.

John Healey has refused to say whether Labour will meet its manifesto pledge to ensure younger workers on the minimum wage are paid the same as others by the next electi

The Chancellor said the Government would “take it one step at a time” and signalled the promise to end “discriminatory age bands” might be delayed, in an interview with the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg show.

In 2024, Labour committed to closing the gap between adult minimum wage and pay for 18 to 20-year-olds.

In last week’s Budget, the Chancellor increased national minimum wage and national living wage by 3.9% across the board, in line with the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission.

When asked if Labour might breaks its manifesto commitment to remove discriminatory age bands, he replied: “There’s no question about whether or if. It’s a question of when.

“It’s a question of how fast. And I want to make sure that we can look hard at those trade-offs that inevitably are there between jobs and wages.

“I want to take business, I want to take trade unions with me, and with the Government, because together we have to get into what at the moment is a moral shame on this nation, a million youngsters written off, without any prospect of being helped into work and making a contribution to this country for the future.”

The Chancellor ruled out slavery reparations saying British people today shouldn’t have the “financial liability” for something that happened hundreds of years ago.

His comments come after Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he is “open” to the possibility of the UK formally apologising for its role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Healey echoes the PM’s comments, saying that the government is open to an apology “particularly ahead of the Commonwealth leaders conference”.

The Chancellor John Healey has pledged that the UK will reduce its deficit ‘faster than any G7 country’, after being questioned about how the Government plans to combat the UK’s high debt.

The UK’s debt is currently more than 97 per cent of the whole economy.

Healy said “fiscal discipline” was at the heart of his budge. When questioned if the Government was willing to make cuts of up to six per cent in some departments, the Chancellor said he is prepared “to take hard decisions”.

He also said Labour is introducing “radical” devolution that will help the country cut the costs of double running between central and local government.

The Chancellor John Healey has committed to reducing welfare spending by the time of the next election.

“The overall bill must come down,” the chancellor said on the BBC this morning. “There’s nothing progressive in a bigger and bigger benefits bill. That’s an economic duty, but it’s also a moral duty.”

Healey went on to say that changes to the social security system will be made “in a way that reflects our values”, with the support of businesses and trade unions to get people into work.

It is a “national scandal”, he added, that a million young people are not in employment, education or training.

The Chancellor also said: “Since the election, we’ve already slowed down the rate of increase in the benefits bill, which was – the numbers were booming under the Tories.

“This is a system which is not working. We have to make big changes. We will.”

The Chancellor John Healey has said that, for the first time, the defence investment plan has been “fully funded”.

In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg, the Chancellor said the current government has raised defence spending “by a record amount since the Cold War” and is planning to set a 3 per cent defence spending target for 2030.

He said that his autumn Budget, announced on Wednesday, has demonstrated that he is willing to make hard decisions about priorities and promised the government will set out its longer-term spending plans next year, which will include plans to meet Nato spending targets.

Andy Burnham risks putting “pressure” on the King with his latest comments about the UK apologising for slavery, Kemi Badenoch tells Fraser Nelson.

Speaking on Sky News, the Tory leader says Burnham “has been putting his foot in his mouth since he became prime minister”.

Asked whether Burnham is embarrassing the King, she says: “If he starts going in to do things which the sovereign is not doing, I think that he could create pressure. 

“I don’t think that this is what our prime minister should be doing.”

The Conservative Party leader said the British Empire “was a force for good” and The Commonwealth “could” be the same, so long as it is not “being used as a way to rip Britain off”.

Her comments come as the King and the PM prepare to speak at the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meeting in Antigua this week, with calls for the UK to pay reparations for its role in the historic slave trade once again making headlines.

Hackers working for hostile states like Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Iran could switch off British water and energy supplies in AI-driven cyber attacks, a former security chief of the National Grid has warned.

Increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence tools are now able to direct hackers towards digitally controlled pumps in water stations or gas networks to attempt to interfere with supplies, experts say.

At a US Senate hearing on last month, industrial cyber security firm Dragos revealed that an AI agent operating inside a water utility had independently sought out computers controlling water pumps. The agent had attempted around 2,800 passwords to access them, all of which failed.

There are now fears that similar situations could arise in the UK unless firms take greater steps to prevent them.

Phil Tonkin, field chief technology officer for Dragos, who spent five years overseeing security for the National Grid, told The i Paper that too many firms have yet to put adequate defences in place.

Read the full story here.

Labour will not cross “red lines” on EU, and will not “return to membership of the European Union or the customs union, the single market or free movement”, cabinet minister Emma Reynolds has said.

This comes after Andy Burnham has said he wants a closer relationship with the EU, and former chancellor Rachel Reeves had written that Brexit has damaged Britain in this morning.

Reynolds told Sky News that while it’s “right that we open up a conversation with the British people about what the options are”, the red lines remain “for the entirety of this parliament”.

Reynolds said that ministers would have to “make sure that we take the British people with us” before any changes are made to the UK’s relationship with Europe.

She said the focus should instead be on the UK-EU leaders summit later this month, where she said ministers “are going to improve the botched Brexit deal”.

Speaking on Sky News this morning, Cabinet minister Emma Reynolds said that any potential formal apology from the UK over its role in the historic slave trade would not lead to any financial reparations.

The chief secretary to the Treasury told Fraser Nelson that the government “is open to issuing a formal apology for the wrongs of the past… but let me be very clear that will not involve financial reparations, because the British people today shouldn’t be held liable for historic wrongs, wrongs that they had no part in.”

Former chancellor Rachel Reeves has backed the Prime Minister’s stance on potentially deepening ties with the EU, saying Brexit had made the UK “poorer, weaker and less secure”.

Reeves helped draft the Labour 2024 manifesto which ruled out a return to the EU, but writing in this morning, Reeves said: “I am proud of the progress we have already made in strengthening our relationship with the European Union.

“Brexit has made us poorer, weaker and less secure.

“There is a debate to be had about our future relationship with Europe, and I welcome Andy Burnham’s leadership in facing up to this. No one in the Treasury ever doubted where my instincts were.”

Although Ms Reeves said she believed “Britain’s future lies in the European Union”, she stressed it was “incumbent on supporters of our re-entry to make the argument, demonstrate tangible benefits and to get the next steps right”.

Ms Reeves was sacked as chancellor by Andy Burnham when he took office, and is expected to further make her case for rejoining the EU in lecture at the Harvard Kennedy School on Monday.

In the this morning, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has accused the government of making unfunded spending promises that will need to be paid for through tax rises.

She said proposals including setting up a National Care Service have left a “colossal” black hole in the public finances after the budget.

The Treasury told the the budget met fiscal rules and set borrowing on a downward path.

Ministers have raised the cap on the number of young people who can live and work in the UK, in a major olive branch to unlock talks with the EU ahead of a summit this month, it has been reported.

The two sides have long discussed a youth mobility scheme which would allow 18 to 30-year-olds to work and study in the UK in exchange for removing border checks on food and drink exports.

According to , ministers will now allow up to 75-80,000 young people to travel across for up to three years under the youth mobility scheme.

Previously, the UK had set a limit of 50,000 although the EU had pushed for a higher figure towards 100,000. The two sides are expected to reach an agreement before a UK-EU summit on 20 November.