Rachel Reeves ‘could extend fuel duty freeze in autumn Budget’

Rachel Reeves will freeze fuel duty again this autumn in a boost to drivers still struggling with the cost of living, it has eben reported.

The chancellor reportedly feels vindicated by a freeze on the levy last October, despite calls from campaigners and economists to hike the tax.

As she seeks to fill a multi-billion pound black hole in the public finances, she has faced fresh calls to end the long-running freeze on fuel duty, which has been in place since 2011.

Maintaining the freeze, and keeping in place a 5p cut brought in by Rishi Sunak as chancellor in 2022, is expected to cost around £5bn per year – the same as Labour’s U-turn on planned benefit cuts.

But The i reported a hike in fuel duty in line with inflation will not form part of Ms Reeves’ Autumn Budget as she seeks to balance the books.

Treasury sources told the newspaper the freeze is an example of the Treasury being “front-footed” in tackling the cost of living pressures facing households.

The headline rate on standard petrol and diesel is 52.95 pence per litre, a level which would ordinarily rise in line with inflation. But the repeated freezing of the measure means that, since George Osborne first made the move, the rate has fallen by more than a third in real terms.

The Social Market Foundation, a think tank, said freezes and cuts since 2012 will have cost the government more than £200bn in total by 2028, more than the budget for the NHS.

After Ms Reeves kept the rate of fuel duty flat last October, former Institute for Fiscal Studies director Paul Johnson said: “Almost unbelievably this Government has followed the practice of its predecessor in freezing rates of fuel duties and not allowing the ‘temporary’ 5p cut to expire, while raising other taxes dramatically and claiming to be focused on tackling climate change.”

But Ms Reeves said hiking fuel duty would be the “wrong choice” as she unveiled what she called “very difficult decisions” on tax elsewhere.

Ms Reeves said: “To retain the 5p cut and to freeze fuel duty again would cost over £3 billion next year.

“At a time when the fiscal position is so difficult, I have to be frank with the House that this is a substantial commitment to make.

“I have concluded that in these difficult circumstances – while the cost of living remains high and with a backdrop of global uncertainty – increasing fuel duty next year would be the wrong choice for working people.

“It would mean fuel duty rising by 7p per litre. So, I have today decided to freeze fuel duty next year and I will maintain the existing 5p cut for another year, too.

“There will be no higher taxes at the petrol pumps next year.”

A Treasury source said they would not comment on speculation ahead of the Budget.

Doctor concerned mother influenced daughter’s cancer treatment, inquest hears

An NHS doctor has told an inquest into the death of 23-year-old Paloma Shemirani – who died months after refusing treatment for cancer – that she was concerned her mother could have influenced the decision.

The Cambridge graduate refused chemotherapy after being diagnosed in December 2023, and died just seven months later in July – despite a doctor telling her she had an 80 per cent chance of survival if she underwent treatment.

Paloma’s brothers have spoken out publicly in recent weeks, accusing their mother Kate Shemirani of influencing Paloma into refusing treatment that could have saved her life.

Kate is a former nurse who was struck off in 2021 for sharing anti-vaxx misinformation during the Covid-19 pandemic. She has a large following across social media, where she shares anti-medicine conspiracy theories to millions of people online.

Arunodaya Mohan, a consultant haematologist at Maidstone Hospital told the inquest on Friday at Oakwood House in Maidstone, Kent, that Kate had raised concerns with experts about the treatment plan seven months before Paloma’s death.

Dr Mohan met Paloma on December 22 2023 to set out the treatment plan after her diagnosis. She told the inquest she recommended steroids and a PET (positron emission tomography) scan, adding that Paloma “nodded in agreement”.

But soon after that, Paloma told Ms Mohan that she had not made her mind up about the treatment and wished to explore other options.

Dr Mohan said that she spoke on the phone with Paloma’s mother, saying that she expressed “concerns” about the side-effects of steroids.

Dr Mohan told the inquest: “I didn’t want to discuss with mum because I didn’t think it would be helpful to her.”

Alison Hewitt, counsel to the inquest, later asked: “Were there concerns that Ms Shemirani was influencing Paloma?”

Dr Mohan replied: “That’s right.”

Paloma declined to have the treatment, and when Dr Mohan asked why, there did not seem to be a specific reason, the inquest heard.

Ms Hewitt asked Dr Mohan if she questioned Paloma on whether her decision was influenced by anyone.

Dr Mohan said: “She was very confident that it was her own decision and she was not influenced.”

Kate advocates for the use of “natural medicine” to cure diseases, and credits alternative therapies for being cancer free after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, although her tumour was removed through surgery.

It is these kinds of conspiracy theories that Paloma’s brothers, Gabriel and Sebastian Shemirani, believe led their sister to refuse treatment for cancer.

Kate and her husband Faramarz Shemirani have denied responsibility and claimed that “Paloma died as a result of medical interventions” since her sons made the accusations, the BBC reported.

“My sister has passed away as a direct consequence of my mum’s actions and beliefs,” Paloma’s brother Sebastian told the BBC.

“And I don’t want anyone else to go through the same pain or loss that I have.”

Paloma began suffering chest pains after she graduated from the University of Cambridge and was later diagnosed with cancers after doctors found a mass in her lung.

She was told the cancer could be fatal if left untreated, but that she had an 80 per cent chance of recovery with treatment.

Her mother then spent two days with her as an inpatient at Maidstone Hospital, which Paloma’s boyfriend claimed could have influenced her decision to reject chemotherapy.

Her brother, Gabriel, then began a legal case arguing that Paloma should have an assessment of the appropriate medical treatment for her.

However, Paloma died before the case reached its conclusion in July 2024.

The Independent has approached Kate Shemirani for comment.

Ukraine war latest: Russian drone attack kills one in Odesa

A mass drone attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Odesa has killed one person overnight, officials said.

Mayor Hennady Trukhanov said at least 20 drones converged on the city early on Saturday, setting ablaze at least one multi-storey apartment building and killing one resident.

Pictures posted online showed a fire engulfing floors near the top of one building as president Volodymyr Zelensky said six people were injured – including a child – in the attack.

Zelensky added over 300 drones and 30 missiles had been launched at Ukraine overnight overall, with several regions affected.

Moscow’s mayor also said 13 drones had been downed or destroyed by Russian air defences overnight near the city. In a separate post, Russia’s Defence Ministry said it had downed 87 Ukrainian drones in different areas across Russia in a period of nearly five hours.

Meanwhile, Kyiv’s European allies have welcomed the EU’s 18th sanctions package targeting Moscow’s oil and gas industry.

French president Emmanuel Macron said the package was “unprecedented”.

When asked about the sanctions, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia had built a certain immunity to Western sanctions and adapted to them.

Ofwat ‘to be abolished and replaced with new water regulator’

The water regulator is expected to be scrapped next week as a government review concludes it is not fit for purpose.

Ofwat is reportedly to be abolished on Monday under recommendations from the review led by former Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe.

Environment secretary Steve Reed is expected to pledge a “root and branch” reform of the water industry, saying that “regulation has failed customers and the environment”.

He will promise that “hardworking British families will never again face huge shock hikes to their bills like we saw last year”, according to The Times.

Multiple reports suggest the review has concluded and that Ofwat should be abolished as ministers look to replace it with a new regulator for the beleaguered industry. The regulator employs about 300 people.

Sir Jon’s independent review has focused on the water sector and its regulation, with no limits on the scope of its potential recommendations.

Launching the review in October, Mr Reed left getting rid of Ofwat altogether on the table.

“I don’t rule that out. What I’ve asked Sir Jon to do is a root-and-branch review of the entire sector – that includes looking at regulation and the regulator,” he told Sky News at the time.

It followed years of underinvestment, during which a growing population and extreme weather caused by climate change have led to intense pressure on England’s ageing water system, causing widespread flooding, supply issues, sewage pollution and leakages.

Public fury has swelled over the degraded state of the country’s rivers, lakes and coastal waters, while a lack of investment in water infrastructure has highlighted rising bills, high dividends, debt, executive pay and bonuses at privatised water firms.

The Environment Agency (EA) this week said serious water pollution incidents rose by 60 per cent last year, with three companies responsible for the majority of them.

The latest data from across England showed that Thames Water, Southern Water and Yorkshire Water were behind 81 per cent of cases, but added that there had been “consistently poor performance” across all nine water companies.

Meanwhile, just two companies – Northumbrian Water and Wessex Water – had no serious incidents last year, meeting the EA’s expectations to see a trend to zero pollution incidents by 2025.

Thames Water accounted for 33 of 75 serious incidents recorded by the EA, 44 per cent of the total.

Overall, the watchdog said all pollution incidents increased by 29 per cent, with water companies recording 2,801, up from 2,174 in 2023.

The EA blamed the spike on persistent underinvestment in new infrastructure, poor asset maintenance, and reduced resilience due to the impacts of climate change.

Labour’s Clive Lewis said abolishing Ofwat “would not clean up rivers or lower bills”.

“Blaming Ofwat alone is like blaming the satnav for driving off a cliff when the road was built that way,” the MP for Norwich South said.

Mr Lewis called for water to be brought into public ownership, adding: “The real problem is a privatised, extractive model prioritising shareholder payouts over public good.”

When asked if there were plans to scrap Ofwat as the regulator, Downing Street said the government will wait for a final report on the water industry due next week.

A No 10 spokesman said: “We are waiting for Sir Jon Cunliffe’s final report next week – you can expect us to set out our response after that on what more we will do to turn the sector around.”

Sir Jon’s interim report warned of “deep-rooted, systemic” failures in the water sector and said Ofwat had largely lost the public’s trust.

It comes as Britain’s biggest water firm, Thames Water, faces the prospect of nationalisation, after private equity firm KKR pulled out of a planned £3bn bailout.

Thames Water is about £19bn in debt, with MPs having been warned that it has just weeks’ worth of cash in hand as it seeks to avoid going bust.

At least 20 injured after vehicle ‘plows into crowd’ in Los Angeles

At least 20 people have been injured in Los Angeles after a vehicle plowed into a crowd outside an East Hollywood nightclub.

Authorities said three people are fighting to for their lives in a critical condition, with a further six seriously hurt after a car hit bystanders on Santa Monica Boulevard, near the intersection with Vermont Avenue.

A total of 19 others are believed to have suffered more minor injuries and have been described as in a “fair condition”.

An alert from the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) said 124 fire personnel responded, adding: “LAFD is coordinating patient triage and transport at this time.”

The vehicle is understood to have hit a taco cart and ploughed into pedestrians at around 2am local time after a driver lost consciousness. Many of those injured were said to be standing in line to get into the nightclub or getting food from the taco truck.

Speaking from the scene, LA Fire Department captain Adam Van Gerpen said “approximately 31 patients” are being treated.

He added: “This morning, about 2am, firefighters were dispatched out to a traffic accident.

“On arrival, they found that we had a multi-casualty incident with a number of victims on scene. Our firefighters quickly realised we had a large number of patients so we called for additional resources.

“Apparently somebody that lost consciousness inside the vehicle and drove into a taco cart and then ultimately ran into a large number of people that were outside a club in East Hollywood.

“Right now we have a total of approximately 31 patients. All of those patients are in the process of being treated and transported and evaluated.”

Live footage from the scene showed dozens of emergency responders treating victims on the road.

More follows on this breaking news story…

When my friends were facing cancer, a community of people stepped up

When I was younger, I used to worry incessantly about my parents getting cancer. I’d lay awake at night, ruminating on what would happen to my brother and I if they did. Who would support us? Thankfully, both are still cancer-free, well into their seventies.

However, now that I’m a parent myself, I worry about my children. Many people believe that cancer only really happens to people in old age, but that’s just not true. One beloved friend’s daughter died of leukaemia in 2020, aged just five; an unthinkable horror that changed the lives of everyone who knew her and her family.

And with Macmillan Cancer Support reporting that almost 3.5 million people in the UK are living with cancer, I also worry about my friends – parents themselves, their lives touched by cancer. One friend sat me down in our favourite local café, our toddlers playing at our feet, to break the news that she was about to undergo a double mastectomy. We cried together.

Another friend, Sarah, a single parent to two teenage girls, was diagnosed with breast cancer the day before we heard that King Charles had cancer, and a month before the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, announced her own diagnosis in March last year. It seemed like cancer was everywhere.

As a result, Sarah put 2024 on hold – she missed her daughter’s last sports day and last concert at primary school and had to find a whole new way of co-ordinating family life.

“I’m lucky in some ways that my children are teenagers, so they are able to look after themselves to some degree – but I’m also a single parent, so there are some things that they can’t do, or struggle with, due to their age,” she tells me.

“I have even set up multiple alarms on our Alexa reminding them to put their packed lunches in their bags or leave for school, just in case I can’t get up.”

Sarah says she thought she knew quite a lot about cancer prior to her diagnosis, but now admits she “really didn’t”. She explains: “There are so many terms and procedures to understand – stages and grades, not to mention over 100 different chemotherapy drugs.”

Sarah tells me about the exhausting cumulative effect of chemotherapy, which she endured every three weeks during her cancer treatment: “After the very first lot, I slept for a few hours and felt much better pretty quickly. For my last rounds, I slept for 48 hours solid and even days later, I needed to have a nap in the middle of the day and was in bed by 8pm.”

Sarah’s now finished chemotherapy and, a year on from her diagnosis, is turning 50. She’s throwing a huge party to celebrate not only the birthday milestone, but getting over this “annus horriblis” – a year she couldn’t have gotten through without the people around her.

“People can do so much for us when we are unwell – and I am forever grateful,” she says. “I’ve been really overwhelmed by the support that my friends have given me; from ferrying around my children to and from after-school events and sleepovers when things get bad, to my 75-year-old neighbour mowing the lawn. One friend popped round with a huge pot of pasta sauce and I even had a gift box from a recruiter at work.”

What talking to my strong, resilient friends about their cancer journeys has made me realise most, is the power of community: for when we receive the worst news imaginable, what we need is people around us to see us through. A community of other women: friends, school mums, neighbours.

They had people willing to make them food, pick up their children, go shopping for them or to just sit with them and listen. They had support when they decided to raise money for cancer support charities, when they did fundraisers such as hosting a Macmillan Coffee Morning.

It takes a village to raise a child – and that village will be with you every step of the way when you need them most.

Find out how you can help raise vital funds by hosting a Macmillan Coffee Morning. Sign up now on the Macmillan website

Macmillan Cancer Support, registered charity in England and Wales (261017), Scotland (SC039907) and the Isle of Man (604). Also operating in Northern Ireland.

Who will benefit the most from new rules about voter ID?

The announcement about giving the vote to 16- and 17-year-olds in all UK elections has obviously caused huge excitement, and some controversy. However, the experts say that the number of new voters will in practice be very small, and that it will make only a marginal difference to the result of a general election – because some won’t vote, and there’s no God-given law about them all voting Labour.

Much more significant are the new rules on voter ID. The range of acceptable documents will be widened to include, for example, bank cards. Whatever the advantage it might bestow on any particular party at an election, proponents say it will boost turnout, and engagement with the democratic process…

The government says its elections bill will allow people to use UK-issued bank cards as proof of identity, and of course, these do not usually carry an image of the user. In addition, there will be “more digital options to support voters and polling station staff, including allowing accepted IDs such as the Veteran Card and UK driving licence to be used at polling stations when they become available in digital format”.

The cynics say it is because it will benefit Labour disproportionately. Others say that, true or not, that’s less important than allowing people to vote, and that the threat of electoral fraud has been greatly exaggerated.

Historically, according to the Electoral Commission and the academics, there’s been little in Great Britain even in local elections, and it is virtually unknown in general elections. Where it has cropped up, such as in Tower Hamlets, it has been dealt with.

The counterclaim is that photo ID was brought in by the Conservatives in the last parliament in order to help them and to suppress the Labour vote. A point lost to history is that the 2019 Conservative manifesto did not specify “photo” ID as the preferred option. (Northern Ireland has needed photo ID for far longer, because of much more voter “personation”. Hence the local slogan “Vote early, vote often”.)

Probably in the hundreds of thousands, and maybe more. The polling company More in Common say that, on the basis of polling after the last election, more than 850,000 would have been turned away at the polling station for lack of ID, and – given that some returned – perhaps 400,000 lost their vote.

It affected voters from ethnic minority groups disproportionately: the poll suggested that 6.5 per cent of voters of colour were turned away from a polling booth at least once, compared with 2.5 per cent of white voters.

But of course, no one really has any idea how many voters didn’t even bother to go to the polls who wished to, because they knew they didn’t have the necessary ID – or they did but it had some minor discrepancy, such as a variation in their first name or the precise spelling of their surname.

Local council “greeters” posted outside polling stations may also have stopped people from entering the premises, and thus these would-be voters would have gone unnoticed by the local election officials or the Electoral Commission.

The government says that an increasingly automated voter registration system will also make it easier for people to register to vote, and will reduce the need for them to fill out their details across different government services on multiple occasions.

On balance, Labour, because of its relatively high vote among some ethnic minorities; but also, for that same reason, the Corbynite independents who took seats from Labour in strongly Muslim areas even in a strong year such as 2024. Reform UK might also see some benefit, because their vote is skewed towards more disadvantaged places, where turnouts are traditionally low. Automated registration among disaffected non-voters might give them a bit of a boost.

No. As with votes at 16, the numbers aren’t going to make that much of a difference, and in our present confused four- or five-party system, it’s hard to see anyone gaining a decisive advantage. And voting allegiances by age, class and ethnicity, for example, can shift over time anyway. But in a very close contest, who knows?

This seems to be another problem for turnout. The government says of last July: “Overall, 8 per cent of non-voters mentioned they did not vote because of an issue related to their postal vote (such as missing the deadline to apply, forms arriving late and forgetting to send their postal vote) – with this figure rising to 13 per cent in Scotland and Wales.”

The deterioration in the postal system has added fresh challenges to a method of voting many find essential, or more convenient. So the proposal is to change the deadline in Great Britain to apply for a postal vote, moving it from 11 to 14 working days before a poll, thereby providing more time between the application deadline and polling day.

This only became much of an issue in Britain after the contested 2020 US presidential election, and Donald Trump’s unfounded allegations that it was rigged. Nigel Farage and Reform UK make a big deal of it, and Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, has raised it again in the Commons this week, stating: “I have seen people carrying bag-loads of postal votes to a polling station on election day.” The relevant minister, Rushanara Ali, told him to tell the police.

Our failing water firms are a damning reflection of Broken Britain

The latest report from the Environment Agency on the state of Britain’s rivers is a veritable shower of euphemism and shame. “Serious pollution incidents”, the bland bureaucratic term preferred by the agency, are up by 60 per cent just in the last year.

We all know what that means: lumpy sewage in streams and on seashores that turns the stomach of anyone nearby, asphyxiates fish, and generally decimates the environment. “Wastewater” leaking out while being carried uphill is apparently a particular problem, one “impacting” swimmers.

Around 80 per cent of the most serious “incidents” were down to three companies – Thames Water (33 spillages), Southern Water (15) and Yorkshire Water (13).

There is no suggestion that the situation is likely to improve; indeed, all the talk is of Thames Water, the largest company of its kind in the country, collapsing under the weight of its own debt rather than its scandalous record on pollution.

It’s a damning reflection of “Broken Britain”. Why has a supposedly civilised G7 economy grown so easily accustomed to such an appalling state of affairs? It may be true that de-industrialisation has cleaned up some of the larger rivers and estuaries in recent decades, but the water companies, the regulators and successive governments can hardly take credit for that.

What they are responsible for is what is in their control – maintaining a sewage system that does what it is expected of it in the modern world. It is one of the most basic services – and yet in parts of the UK, it feels little more than a hopeless aspiration.

This river of excrement has been rolling for years, and, while the details can be complex, the principal streams of blame that feed into the scandal can be easily identified. Incomprehensibly weak regulation is the strongest of the currents, either because Ofwat was never given sufficient powers or a wide enough remit, or because it was incompetent, or all three.

There has never been a shortage of official bodies nominally overseeing matters – the Environment Agency and various iterations of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as well as local authorities – but always a huge deficit of effective democratic control.

There is, of course, a fundamental contradiction at the heart of this particular privatised industry: the provision of clean running water and efficient sewage disposal may not align with the commercial imperatives of the companies denationalised in 1989 in England and Wales (Scotland and Northern Ireland were spared the experiment). Profit and public service can co-exist and even flourish – but not always, and not everywhere.

Even if the industry had been regulated better, the privatised model combined with zero competition and regulated tariffs was poorly prepared for the task of investing the vast sums needed to renew the crumbling Victorian infrastructure, let alone build the reservoirs and pipework required to cater for a population that was to expand by some 12 million in the ensuing decades. Some public services ought not to be expected, let alone forced, to turn a profit.

But from early on, the major weakness in the regulatory regime was becoming apparent – that while the need to monitor charges and water quality was recognised, there was no oversight of the financial health of the companies.

Once the shares had been acquired from the small shareholders in the initial public offerings and placed in the hands of private equity firms, the companies were free to load themselves with as much debt as they fancied – which paid for bumper dividends for the new shareholders. It left a vital public service hopelessly over-mortgaged.

The chance was taken for some lucrative asset stripping, even certain reservoirs were sold off, and the companies were left so enfeebled that if Ofwat tried to fine them, they could plausibly claim that they would go bust. They contrived to make themselves too big to fail. Or so they hoped.

On Monday, the government will publish a review of the industry by Sir Jon Cunliffe, the head of the Independent Water Commission, and its own proposals will follow. As we reported on Friday, the government is expected to scrap Ofwat. It must use the power of parliament to chart a new course for the industry.

Despite the pollution crisis, the Treasury cannot afford immediately to renationalise the most distressed of the operators, Thames Water, because of its enormous debts – more than £16bn.

It seems inevitable that Thames will fall into the special procedure that will ensure continuing water and sewage services to 15 million customers in southern England and London while the government takes control.

This is a far cheaper remedy for the taxpayer, but it does still mean that the considerable cost of cleaning up the rivers, keeping the taps on and the loos flushing will, to some extent, fall to the taxpayers as well as the bill payers. Either that, or we just get used to having the dirtiest rivers and beaches in Europe.