Andy Burnham is expected to unveil a new publicly owned company to invest in Britain’s electricity grid in his first Labour conference speech as Prime Minister in Liverpool on Tuesday afternoon.
The Great British Grid, known as GB Grid, is billed by the Government as the first publicly owned player in electricity networks since the grid was privatised by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1990.
The new body will sit within Great British Energy, the publicly owned green investment company Labour set up last year.
Snooker champion Graeme Dott jailed for child sex abuse
Former snooker world champion Graeme Dott has been found guilty of sexually abusing two primary school-age children.
In August, he was found guilty of two counts of lewd, indecent and libidinous behaviour and on Tuesday he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
What you need to know
The High Court in Edinburgh heard how Dott subjected a girl and a boy to multiple incidents of abuse, with the girl targeted between 1993 and 1996 and the boy between 2006 and 2010.
The jury heard Dott exposed himself in front of both children, touched them inappropriately and kissed them.
What did the victims say?
- One of Dott’s victims, now in her 40s, told the court Dott had sexually abused her on multiple occasions.
- The second victim, now in his late 20s, also said he was sexually abused on multiple occasions.
- Lord Harrower, the judge, told Dott he had “robbed the complainers of a significant part of their childhood”.
- He added the behaviour bore “the hallmarks of grooming”.
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Men feel happier than women about how they look, study finds
Researchers at the BI Norwegian Business School also found men overestimated their IQ, while British people generally rated themselves less attractive than other nationalities.
What did the study find?
- Men consistently gave themselves higher ratings for physical attractiveness than women.
- Participants scored themselves between 0 and 100.
- On average, men scored 6-8 per cent higher than women.
- How attractive the participants were considered by other people was not part of the study.
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A closer look at the study
The study also found that men and women with higher IQs tended to rate themselves as less attractive.
Britons generally rated themselves less attractive than their American, Australian, Canadian and South African counterparts. Researchers suggested this could be a symptom of British manners, with more emphasis on “modesty or understatement”.
What does this mean?
Professor Adrian Furnham, who led the study, noted men often overestimate their IQ, while women typically underestimate it.
He said the similar gap in attractiveness self-ratings could be another indication of “male hubris versus female humility”. He added that more intelligent people could be “more honest”.
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How the UK could rejoin the EU, step by step
Labour grandees have urged Andy Burnham to start preparing to reverse Brexit – but high hurdles would have to be overcome.
Why is it coming up now?
Sadiq Khan said he wants Britain to return to the customs union “almost straight away” and provision in the next Labour manifesto to reverse Brexit without a referendum.
However, experts are sceptical. Polls indicate a narrow majority of Britons support the idea of rejoining, but it may require more support before we could rejoin.
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What the process could look like
Experts warned it could also take five to 10 years to get back in.
Here’s how rejoining might look:
- A second vote is not technically necessary but leading experts think a referendum would likely be needed to provide a stable mandate to start negotiations with the EU.
- If the UK applied to rejoin, the EU would need to ensure the applicant met the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria.
- If talks then began, there would be a series of big issues to resolve.
- The EU could demand that Britain use the Euro and become part of the Schengen Area.
The expert analysis
Experts disagree on the likelihood the UK could be allowed to opt-out of either the Schengen Area or the Euro. Dr Thomas Sampson, economist and Brexit expert at LSE, suggested it is possible the EU would be willing to let Britain rejoin under the same deal.
But others suggested the EU would want to lock the UK into the Euro to “make it harder for [us] to ever leave”.
- The European Commission would need to approve any deal for the UK to rejoin. A majority of MEPs in the European Parliament would also have to vote in favour and all the bloc’s member states.
- Professor Catherine Barnard, an expert in EU law at the University of Cambridge, thinks negotiations and ratification could take as long as a decade.
- If talks did not start until after a Labour general election victory in 2029, it could be 2040 before Britain was back in the bloc.
Watch more from The i Paper
New treatment for ultra-rare ‘second skeleton’ disorder
Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) is a “devastating, irreversible” genetic condition.
What is FOP?
- According to the charity FOP Friends, there are around 70 known people with FOP in the UK.
It is one of the rarest diseases in the world, affecting around one in a million people.
FOP is a genetic condition which leads to the body creating extra bones in locations where they should not form, including inside muscles, tendons and ligaments.
What is the treatment?
A new “disease modifying” treatment has been shown to reduce new bone growth by more than 90 per cent, reduce flare-ups and potentially offer hope for new surgical options in the future.
The drug garetosmab is an antibody that blocks a protein called activin A, which has been found to be critical in the development of new abnormal growth development in people with FOP.
63 adults were involved in the trial, which saw a massive reduction in flare-ups in the groups which received the treatment.
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Writing in , the authors said they expect the drug to enable “long term preservation of mobility and function”.
Chris Bedford-Gay, FOP Friends founder, said the community “has desperately waited for a way to stop FOP in its tracks”. He added this “is the moment a life-changing treatment comes that bit closer”.
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More than half of international students are influenced by British fictional characters when deciding to study at universities here.
2,500 UK-based students from the US, China, India, Pakistan and Nigeria were surveyed for the British Council.
What are the key findings?
- It found that 83 per cent of international students said British culture was an important reason why they decided to study here.
- 59 per cent said fictional British characters were a draw, with 19 per cent citing Peppa Pig and 21 per cent Mr Bean as examples.
- British cultural icons like Princess Diana and David Beckham were also a major influence.
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Importance of soft power
A majority (62 per cent) of respondents said the UK music scene had been a major or strong influence on their decision to study here.
Among those who cited music, Ed Sheeran was the top named artist with 18 per cent, followed by Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Harry Styles.
What does this mean?
Catriona McCarthy, the British Council’s interim director for education, said the results tell us it is “crucial” that Britain remains “culturally vibrant” in order to retain its status as a global leader in higher education and attract the best students from around the world.
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How AI could help screen for type 2 diabetes
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology could be used to analyse speech to screen people for the disease, a study suggests.
What you need to know
- The tool was trained using more than 63,000 voice samples from more than 21,000 people in the UK and US.
- It was trained to detect changes in speech which have been linked to type 2 diabetes, such as increased hoarseness and an inability to control breath.
- The study found that the speech model gave a higher risk score to those who reported having type 2 diabetes 80 per cent of the time.
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How effective is it?
Giedre Cepukaityte, research scientist at tech company thymia, said the technology “opens a new route to screening for diabetes”. But she emphasised it is “not a replacement for a blood test”.
The technology performed well across different ages and genders, but its performance was lower on Black patients.
It also wasn’t as effective with recordings from people with heart disease, high blood pressure or obesity.
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AI gets a cautious welcome
Dr Lucy Chambers, head of research impact and communications at Diabetes UK, said: “AI-based technologies could help identify more people who may benefit from diagnostic blood tests, but it’s crucial that they are rigorously designed and tested to make sure no-one slips through the net.”
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How quickly triple lock could end – and possible replacement
The future of the triple lock has been thrown into question after reports Andy Burnham is being told to scrap the scheme to fund his social care plans.
Experts say that at some point, the policy will have to be replaced with a way of increasing the state pension that is “more sustainable”.
A ‘double lock’
- A double lock linked to either earnings growth or inflation has been suggested as a possible alternative.
- Tom Selby, director of public policy at AJ Bell, said the starting point for this would determine what a “reasonable value” for the state pension should be, most likely as a percentage of median earnings.
- After deciding that figure, Selby said, you put in place “a sensible plan to reach that level”.
Link to earnings
Maike Currie, vice president of personal finance at PensionBee, said the simplest replacement would be an earnings-only link. This would mean the state pension broadly maintains its value relative to working people’s incomes.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies has previously recommended introducing the “smoothed” earnings link, which means pensioners receive inflation protection if inflation exceeds earnings.
Simple link to inflation
- Former pensions minister, Steve Webb, said another approach could link the state pension to inflation.
- This approach would create “big savings”, he said.
- But it would also substantially weaken the state pension at a time when millions of retirees are coming up to state pension age with very modest private savings.
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Who will be the most affected?
Currie said the triple lock being scrapped would impact people of all ages.
“For someone close to retirement, scrapping it could have a more immediate impact on their expected income,” she said.
As for younger generations, “the effect could potentially be greater over the long term, as smaller annual increases compound over decades”.
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The goal, according to ministers, is to bring UK energy costs in line with other nations in Europe within 10 years.
UK household electricity prices were 18 per cent above the EU average in the second half of 2025, according to the House of Commons Library, although gas prices were 34 per cent below it.
Burnham will say: “We have an energy system where prices are dictated in markets miles away, while families and businesses here shoulder the costs. Once again, the British public has lost control.”
The announcement comes as bills are already rising. The Ofgem price cap is due to go up by 4 per cent next month, taking the typical annual bill to £1,723.
How would the ‘Great British Grid’ work?
The grid is the high-voltage network of cables and pylons that carries electricity from power stations and wind farms to homes and businesses.
It is currently owned by three private companies: National Grid Electricity Transmission, Scottish and Southern Energy, and Scottish Power.
GB Grid would not take these companies over. Instead, it would be a publicly owned company competing alongside them for the work of expanding and connecting the network.
The Government says this will come with “greater public oversight of network planning”, but has not yet set out what that means in practice.
The plan also targets the queue for infrastructure projects to connect to the grid. Businesses and developers that want to be plugged in currently have to wait for the network companies to build the connection.
The queue has grown significantly, according to the National Audit Office (NAO). The public spending watchdog found that the share of projects offered a requested connection fell from 64 per cent in 2019-20 to 16 per cent in 2023-24.
To speed this up, businesses will get new rights to build the connections themselves, with GB Grid able to help pay for them.
The Government says GB Grid will be funded from within Great British Energy’s existing budgets, meaning no new spending is required.
What would it mean for energy bills?
Ministers have said GB Grid will help bring energy bills down, but have not provided a figure.
However, Burnham is set to suggest in his speech that costs will be lowered by increasing competition and driving down running costs.
The argument on competition is that a public rival bidding against the three private companies for grid projects puts pressure on prices.
At the moment, the three companies largely decide what building the network costs, and Ofgem – the government energy regulator – allows them to recover that through charges on bills.
With a new rival bidding for the same work, they would have to offer lower prices to win it, which in theory means a smaller bill for households. The Government has not said how much lower GB Grid’s bids would be.
When it comes to running costs, the idea is that a better-connected grid wastes less power.
The grid was built for power stations near towns, not wind farms far away, the National Audit Office says.
When it cannot carry all the power those wind farms produce, the system operator pays them to switch off. It then pays gas plants elsewhere to switch on instead.
These payments are said to cost £1.9bn in 2025-26 and are added to bills.
Faster upgrades could cut those payments. Ofgem estimates that speeding them up would leave a typical household about £30 a year better off by 2030-31 – even after the cost of the upgrades themselves. That covers the wider grid upgrade, not GB Grid alone.
But another part of Burnham’s plan could push costs the other way. Guidance laid before Parliament this month asked Ofgem to give more weight to UK jobs and manufacturing, The i Paper revealed. This means a British firm could win a grid contract even if its bid is more expensive.
The policy document states: “The Government recognises that this may come with a short-term cost trade-off.”
The i Paper reported that ministers have not calculated the cost to bill-payers and that no full impact assessment was carried out.