Keir Starmer is stepping in to seize control of British Steel to stop its Chinese owner shutting the Scunthorpe plant in an unprecedented move that paves the way for likely nationalisation.

The prime minister was granted a recall of parliament on Saturday, with MPs set to debate emergency laws that will give the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, the power to direct the company.

When the legislation is passed, Reynolds will be able to order the company to buy the raw materials to keep two blast furnaces going at the plant and the taxpayer will take on the costs of the purchases. The company’s owner, Jingye, has said it is losing about £700,000 a day.

The issue of nationalisation will be dealt with separately and is not certain to happen, but senior sources said it was the likely outcome and the government would look at potential private sector partners for a transfer of ownership and co-investment.

The company declined to comment and it remains unclear how Jingye will respond to being directed by the UK government.

Government sources said generous offers had been made to the Chinese company that any rational actor would have accepted, and that the UK was taking action to keep the furnaces going in order to continue talks about the next steps. Once they had been allowed to stop, the furnaces would be impossible to restart.

Speaking on Friday, Starmer said the “future of British steel hangs in the balance” and he would not stand by while the last blast furnaces in the UK were closed, shutting an essential industry.

The GMB union said the move looked like “the first step in the process” of nationalisation, saying it was the only way to save the UK steel industry.

“The business secretary must be given huge praise for acting decisively to safeguard this vital industry and the thousands of jobs that rely on it,” the union said.

A No 10 spokesperson said: “The prime minister has been clear, his government will always act in the national interest. All actions we take are in the name of British industry, British jobs and for British workers.

“Tomorrow, parliament will be recalled to debate the steel industry (special measures) bill. The bill provides the government with the power to direct steel companies in England, which we will use to protect the Scunthorpe site. It enables the UK government to preserve capability and ensure public safety. It also ensures all options remain viable for the future of the plant and the livelihoods it supports.

“We have been negotiating with British Steel’s owners in good faith ever since coming to office. We have always been clear there is a bright future for steel in the UK. All options remain on the table.”

The Commons will sit at 11am, with MPs called back from Easter recess to discuss putting the assets under public control. The government will aim to get emergency legislation through the Commons and Lords in one day of sitting.

Labour MPs have been told to tell their whips where they are and to make all efforts to return to Westminster to ensure the passage of the legislation.

This week government sources said nationalising British Steel was not easy, and would be a measure of last resort.

The last time parliament was recalled during recess was in 2021, when Afghanistan had to be evacuated during the Taliban takeover. It is also the first recall of parliament on a Saturday since 1982.

One MP said the move was “going down extremely badly” with colleagues who had been given no warning about the need to return to Westminster, when it had been known for weeks that British Steel was in trouble.

Some opposition parties were also furious that other industrial plants in trouble had not been given the same treatment from the government. Plaid Cymru said “the people of Wales would not forget” that the steel plant at Port Talbot was allowed to close its blast furnaces and convert to electric arc production, while the SNP highlighted the different treatment for Grangemouth – Scotland’s only oil refinery, which could close. Government sources said those plants were facing different situations.

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said the government had “bungled” the negotiations with British Steel.

“They must have seen this coming for a while,” she said. “Instead of addressing it earlier in the week when parliament was sitting, their incompetence has led to a last-minute recall of parliament.”

British Steel makes the vast majority of UK rail track and the government has been seeking a deal to keep the plant open.

The industry will be hit by a 25% tariff on steel exports to the US imposed by Donald Trump but the government has insisted British Steel’s problems are not related to this.

Talks with Jingye’s chair, Li Ganpo, had dragged on for three days after the government offered to buy raw materials to keep the plant running for the next few weeks while trying to find a longer-term solution.

Scunthorpe is the last remaining steelworks capable of making steel from iron ore and so is seen by some people as strategically important for the UK. However, Jingye last month said it planned to close the plant’s two blast furnaces, putting 2,700 jobs at risk. It has since refused to pay for new raw materials, with coal and iron ore deliveries to Immingham port not yet paid for.

The government had offered £500m in financial support to switch the blast furnaces to cleaner electric arc furnaces, but Jingye had requested much more.

Talks this week are thought to have stalled when Jingye balked at the conditions attached to the offer to pay for new raw materials. The delays in reaching an agreement had caused increasing alarm among workers, who feared at least one blast furnace might be forced to close as soon as next week, leading to job losses.

Blast furnaces have been making steel in Britain for 300 years, ever since they helped start the Industrial Revolution. This weekend, parliament will sit for the first Saturday in decades as it tries to keep the last two furnaces running for a bit longer.

Keir Starmer has recalled MPs to discuss emergency powers to direct steel companies, including British Steel’s Scunthorpe steelworks, to “preserve capability and ensure public safety”. The move would be short of nationalisation, but it would give the government more influence on the steel industry than at any point since Margaret Thatcher.

The government is scrambling to save Scunthorpe after its Chinese owner, Jingye Steel Group, last month said it was considering closing it, with the likely loss of 2,700 jobs. Starmer and the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, hope to keep the plant running for the next few weeks while they work out the longer-term plan, with nationalisation one option.

British Steel is facing a crisis within a crisis: in the short term – the next week or so – it needs materials, including iron pellets and coking coal, or else it faces the prospect of the furnaces cooling beyond easy or affordable recovery. Customers would flee, making job losses inevitable.

People with knowledge of this week’s talks between the UK government and Jingye said it appeared that the government had run out of patience with the Chinese company’s negotiating. The government had offered to buy the raw materials to keep the blast furnaces running in the short term but that offer was not taken up. Parliament may be able to avert the short-term crisis on Saturday.

Union leaders representing steelworkers said they were relieved that the government appeared to be moving towards public ownership. Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, a former Scunthorpe steelworker and national officer for the GMB union, said nationalisation was “the only way to save the UK steel industry”, and that the ability to direct the company’s actions was “the first step in that process”.

Yet even nationalisation will not deliver Scunthorpe’s workers from the bigger questions over its long-term future. Jingye had rejected a £500m offer of support to switch to electric arc furnaces – to match aid given to Tata Steel at Port Talbot, south Wales – but Scunthorpe will need to make the switch if it is to have a future in a world of net zero carbon emissions.

The struggling Scunthorpe plant has passed between many owners since the privatisation of the UK steel industry in 1988. Its Indian former owner Tata Steel sold it to the private equity firm Greybull Capital in 2016, only for Greybull to exit in 2019. Jingye stepped in with a deal hurriedly agreed under Boris Johnson’s premiership to buy the plant out of insolvency.

Jingye’s timing appears to have been unfortunate. Since it took over, British Steel has lost a cumulative £350m, according to accounts up to the end of 2023. The company was not helped by the turbulence of the coronavirus crisis and a global glut as the vast Chinese industry, producer of more than half the world’s steel, tried to find buyers.

That was before Donald Trump’s tariffs added to the turmoil, making exports to the US more expensive and threatening a global recession.

It is not an auspicious environment for the Labour government to undertake a major nationalisation. So the steel industry has been reassured that Labour has so far appeared committed to a manifesto pledge to invest £2.5bn in the sector, which has survived deep cuts to spending on international aid and benefits.

That commitment will be tested to its limit if Labour decides to take ownership of a steelworks that is losing money and needs hundreds of millions of pounds of investment. But the chance to guide a nationalised UK steel industry into the decarbonisation revolution will also have its attractions.

Keir Starmer is stepping in to seize control of British Steel to stop its Chinese owner shutting the Scunthorpe plant in an unprecedented move that paves the way for likely nationalisation.

The prime minister was granted a recall of parliament on Saturday, with MPs set to debate emergency laws that will give the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, the power to direct the company.

When the legislation is passed, Reynolds will be able to order the company to buy the raw materials to keep two blast furnaces going at the plant and the taxpayer will take on the costs of the purchases. The company’s owner, Jingye, has said it is losing about £700,000 a day.

The issue of nationalisation will be dealt with separately and is not certain to happen, but senior sources said it was the likely outcome and the government would look at potential private sector partners for a transfer of ownership and co-investment.

The company declined to comment and it remains unclear how Jingye will respond to being directed by the UK government.

Government sources said generous offers had been made to the Chinese company that any rational actor would have accepted, and that the UK was taking action to keep the furnaces going in order to continue talks about the next steps. Once they had been allowed to stop, the furnaces would be impossible to restart.

Speaking on Friday, Starmer said the “future of British steel hangs in the balance” and he would not stand by while the last blast furnaces in the UK were closed, shutting an essential industry.

The GMB union said the move looked like “the first step in the process” of nationalisation, saying it was the only way to save the UK steel industry.

“The business secretary must be given huge praise for acting decisively to safeguard this vital industry and the thousands of jobs that rely on it,” the union said.

A No 10 spokesperson said: “The prime minister has been clear, his government will always act in the national interest. All actions we take are in the name of British industry, British jobs and for British workers.

“Tomorrow, parliament will be recalled to debate the steel industry (special measures) bill. The bill provides the government with the power to direct steel companies in England, which we will use to protect the Scunthorpe site. It enables the UK government to preserve capability and ensure public safety. It also ensures all options remain viable for the future of the plant and the livelihoods it supports.

“We have been negotiating with British Steel’s owners in good faith ever since coming to office. We have always been clear there is a bright future for steel in the UK. All options remain on the table.”

The Commons will sit at 11am, with MPs called back from Easter recess to discuss putting the assets under public control. The government will aim to get emergency legislation through the Commons and Lords in one day of sitting.

Labour MPs have been told to tell their whips where they are and to make all efforts to return to Westminster to ensure the passage of the legislation.

This week government sources said nationalising British Steel was not easy, and would be a measure of last resort.

The last time parliament was recalled during recess was in 2021, when Afghanistan had to be evacuated during the Taliban takeover. It is also the first recall of parliament on a Saturday since 1982.

One MP said the move was “going down extremely badly” with colleagues who had been given no warning about the need to return to Westminster, when it had been known for weeks that British Steel was in trouble.

Some opposition parties were also furious that other industrial plants in trouble had not been given the same treatment from the government. Plaid Cymru said “the people of Wales would not forget” that the steel plant at Port Talbot was allowed to close its blast furnaces and convert to electric arc production, while the SNP highlighted the different treatment for Grangemouth – Scotland’s only oil refinery, which could close. Government sources said those plants were facing different situations.

The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, said the government had “bungled” the negotiations with British Steel.

“They must have seen this coming for a while,” she said. “Instead of addressing it earlier in the week when parliament was sitting, their incompetence has led to a last-minute recall of parliament.”

British Steel makes the vast majority of UK rail track and the government has been seeking a deal to keep the plant open.

The industry will be hit by a 25% tariff on steel exports to the US imposed by Donald Trump but the government has insisted British Steel’s problems are not related to this.

Talks with Jingye’s chair, Li Ganpo, had dragged on for three days after the government offered to buy raw materials to keep the plant running for the next few weeks while trying to find a longer-term solution.

Scunthorpe is the last remaining steelworks capable of making steel from iron ore and so is seen by some people as strategically important for the UK. However, Jingye last month said it planned to close the plant’s two blast furnaces, putting 2,700 jobs at risk. It has since refused to pay for new raw materials, with coal and iron ore deliveries to Immingham port not yet paid for.

The government had offered £500m in financial support to switch the blast furnaces to cleaner electric arc furnaces, but Jingye had requested much more.

Talks this week are thought to have stalled when Jingye balked at the conditions attached to the offer to pay for new raw materials. The delays in reaching an agreement had caused increasing alarm among workers, who feared at least one blast furnace might be forced to close as soon as next week, leading to job losses.

Blast furnaces have been making steel in Britain for 300 years, ever since they helped start the Industrial Revolution. This weekend, parliament will sit for the first Saturday in decades as it tries to keep the last two furnaces running for a bit longer.

Keir Starmer has recalled MPs to discuss emergency powers to direct steel companies, including British Steel’s Scunthorpe steelworks, to “preserve capability and ensure public safety”. The move would be short of nationalisation, but it would give the government more influence on the steel industry than at any point since Margaret Thatcher.

The government is scrambling to save Scunthorpe after its Chinese owner, Jingye Steel Group, last month said it was considering closing it, with the likely loss of 2,700 jobs. Starmer and the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, hope to keep the plant running for the next few weeks while they work out the longer-term plan, with nationalisation one option.

British Steel is facing a crisis within a crisis: in the short term – the next week or so – it needs materials, including iron pellets and coking coal, or else it faces the prospect of the furnaces cooling beyond easy or affordable recovery. Customers would flee, making job losses inevitable.

People with knowledge of this week’s talks between the UK government and Jingye said it appeared that the government had run out of patience with the Chinese company’s negotiating. The government had offered to buy the raw materials to keep the blast furnaces running in the short term but that offer was not taken up. Parliament may be able to avert the short-term crisis on Saturday.

Union leaders representing steelworkers said they were relieved that the government appeared to be moving towards public ownership. Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, a former Scunthorpe steelworker and national officer for the GMB union, said nationalisation was “the only way to save the UK steel industry”, and that the ability to direct the company’s actions was “the first step in that process”.

Yet even nationalisation will not deliver Scunthorpe’s workers from the bigger questions over its long-term future. Jingye had rejected a £500m offer of support to switch to electric arc furnaces – to match aid given to Tata Steel at Port Talbot, south Wales – but Scunthorpe will need to make the switch if it is to have a future in a world of net zero carbon emissions.

The struggling Scunthorpe plant has passed between many owners since the privatisation of the UK steel industry in 1988. Its Indian former owner Tata Steel sold it to the private equity firm Greybull Capital in 2016, only for Greybull to exit in 2019. Jingye stepped in with a deal hurriedly agreed under Boris Johnson’s premiership to buy the plant out of insolvency.

Jingye’s timing appears to have been unfortunate. Since it took over, British Steel has lost a cumulative £350m, according to accounts up to the end of 2023. The company was not helped by the turbulence of the coronavirus crisis and a global glut as the vast Chinese industry, producer of more than half the world’s steel, tried to find buyers.

That was before Donald Trump’s tariffs added to the turmoil, making exports to the US more expensive and threatening a global recession.

It is not an auspicious environment for the Labour government to undertake a major nationalisation. So the steel industry has been reassured that Labour has so far appeared committed to a manifesto pledge to invest £2.5bn in the sector, which has survived deep cuts to spending on international aid and benefits.

That commitment will be tested to its limit if Labour decides to take ownership of a steelworks that is losing money and needs hundreds of millions of pounds of investment. But the chance to guide a nationalised UK steel industry into the decarbonisation revolution will also have its attractions.

After lighting a fuse under global financial markets, Donald Trump stepped back – all the way to a Florida golf course. A week later, having just caved to pressure to ease his trade tariffs, the US president defended the retreat while hosting racing car champions at the White House.

Trump had spent the time in between golfing, dining with donors and making insouciant declarations such as “this is a great time to get rich”, even as the US economy melted down.

It was a jolting juxtaposition that prompted comparisons with the emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned, or insane monarchs who lost touch with reality. It also provided a clear illustration of how Trump governs during his volatile and extreme second presidency: erratically, with little attention to convention, and often on the hoof from one public engagement to another surrounded by courtiers who never disagree with him.

“He’s certainly living up to the caricature of being a mad king,” said Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist. “When you’re addressing a ballroom in a tuxedo, telling people to take the painful medicine, or on your umpteenth golf vacation while economic chaos is rippling throughout this country and others, at best you’re completely out of touch.

“At worst, you’re a sociopathic narcissist who doesn’t give a crap about anyone suffering. Ultimately there will be a political price to pay for that.”

Trump had swerved past April Fools’ Day to make 2 April his so-called “liberation day”. Against a backdrop of giant US flags in the White House Rose Garden, he announced sweeping tariffs – taxes on foreign imports – on dozens of countries, using a widely discredited formula to upend the decades-old order of global trade.

Trump did not decide on the final plan until less than three hours ahead of his splashy event, according to the Washington Post newspaper, but found Vice-President JD Vance and other staff constantly deferential. The Post quoted a person close to his inner circle as saying: “He’s at the peak of just not giving a fuck any more. Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a fuck. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”

A day later, with markets suffering trillions of dollars in losses, Trump boarded Air Force One bound for Miami, Florida. He arrived at his Doral resort for a Saudi-funded LIV Golf event in a golf cart driven by his son Eric Trump.

Trump woke up on Friday at Mar-a-Lago, his gilded private club in Palm Beach, Florida, and donned a red “Make America great again” cap and white polo shirt. His limousine glided down a street lined with palm streets and cheering fans before arriving at his golf club.

He also spent the morning defending himself on his Truth Social media platform and vowing to stay the course. “TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE,” he wrote.

Trump remained in Florida during the dignified transfer of four US soldiers killed during a training exercise in Lithuania, sending Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to Dover air force base in Delaware to represent him. Instead the president attended a candlelit dinner for Maga Inc, an allied political organisation, reportedly charging $1m a plate.

Maggie Haberman, a Trump biographer and New York Times reporter, commented on CNN: “I think long ago he stopped caring about certain optics, and he’s made very clear during this presidency, he’s going to do what he wants … He is not messaging this in a way that suggests that he understands what average people might be going through right now.”

On Saturday, Trump played at another family golf course, in Jupiter, Florida, prompting an official White House announcement: “The president won his second round matchup of the senior club championship today in Jupiter, Fla., and advances to the championship round on Sunday.”

When Sunday came the president played on even as his cabinet members scrambled to political TV shows and offered conflicting signals, with some insisting that his tariffs were set in stone and others suggesting that he remained open to negotiation.

Trump returned to Washington and a growing chorus of dissent from allies, captains of industry and his own Republican loyalty, pleading with him to change course before a potential recession turned into a depression. Yet his first public event was a celebration of baseball’s World Series winners, the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he was presented with a “Trump 47” baseball shirt.

On Tuesday, in bow tie and tuxedo, Trump told a fundraising dinner in Washington: “I know what the hell I’m doing.” He claimed that the tariffs were forcing world leaders to negotiate with him, boasting: “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are. They are dying to make a deal.”

But the following day, Trump blinked. He posted on Truth Social that, while escalating tariffs on China, he would pause others for 90 days to allow space for negotiation. His bubble of wealth and power had finally been punctured.

Trump has often proved impervious to the kind of scandals or gaffes that would damage another politician, but his casual attitude even as the markets were on fire suggested a man uniquely detached from the anxieties of ordinary people, including his own voters.

Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Let them eat cake: Marie Antoinette kind of fits. He won his own golf tournament at his own club. How about that? Bill Clinton also cheated at golf a lot and people would let him win because he was president. It’s just the way they are. Rules don’t apply.”

This is not the first time that Trump, accused by critics of demanding absolute loyalty from courtiers, pursuing vengeance against perceived enemies and displaying scorn for his subjects, has been likened to a monarch.

Speaking at the Politics and Prose bookshop in Washington last weekend, Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist and author of the book Notorious, compared the president to William Shakespeare’s Richard III.

“Richard III comes up to the edge of the stage and wraps the audience into the bad thing he’s about to do,” Dowd told the Guardian during an question and answer session. “He tells them and he uses humour so that he’s supposed to be the villain, but the humour kind of counters it so you don’t think of him as badly.

“Trump does the same thing … He has this kind of wacky side so then when he does the very authoritarian stuff you get deflected by the crazy side he has. I think the SNL [Saturday Night Live] mimic captures this where he’s sort of being funny, so then when he turns authoritarian, you’re thinking: wait, is he really doing what I think he’s doing?”

Young men and boys fuelled by “strongly misogynistic” online material are hunting for vulnerable women and girls to exploit on websites such as eating disorder and suicide forums, senior officers have said.

The threat from young males wanting to carry out serious harm is so serious that counter-terrorism officers are joining the National Crime Agency (NCA) in the hunt for them, fearing they could go on to attack or kill.

Britain’s head of counter-terrorism, Matt Jukes, told the Guardian that a joint taskforce would be set up between his force and the NCA to tackle those fixated with violence online, in what he called a “decisive moment”.

Jukes, the Metropolitan police force’s assistant commissioner for specialist operations, said the new pairing would look for those consuming online material about killings or sexual abuse. Those who might go on to plot school shootings and other mass attacks, as well as those who encouraged women and girls to harm themselves, would also fall under their remit.

The new taskforce will also tackle so-called com networks (online communities), which counter-terrorism policing (CTP) and the NCA said involved hundreds of boys and young men. They will also hunt for those viewing material inciting sexual abuse.

The decision to pool the efforts of CTP and the NCA is being driven by the fear that it might be impossible to tell whether an obsession with violence and gore could turn into terrorism, a school massacre or other serious attack until it was too late.

Jukes, who is expected to be a candidate for the deputy commissionership of the Met, said: “What we’ve seen over the years is the characteristics of those cases looking increasingly similar.”

Com networks grew sixfold between 2022 and 2024 and are mainly young males joining together online to carry out hacking exercises and hunt for victims to steer into sexual abuse or worse.

James Babbage, the director general of threats for the NCA, said com networks were believed to have hundreds of people in the UK alone.

“We think they’re mostly doing it for kudos, for notoriety … within their peer group online,” he said. “In general, they are looking for victims who are already vulnerable. So they are looking at sort of suicidal ideation sites. They’re looking at eating disorders forums.”

Jukes said: “Young people who might have felt very isolated in some of their ideas and interests might never even have thought of some of the things which they’re now accessing … so people are getting both content and validation.

“We’re going to go after the com networks. We are going to go after those who appear to be administrating and facilitating them.”

The boost to the hunt for potentially violent young males comes after the Guardian revealed that the Southport attacker who murdered three girls at a dance class last July had been referred and rejected three times by the Prevent programme.

Prevent exists to identify those at risk of supporting terrorist violence. The Southport attacker had shown insufficient signs of ideological extremism but did have an interest in violence, including school massacres.

Babbage said: “The violence-fixated individuals that are coming up on the radar for terrorism policing, the tech-enabled violence against women and girls that police are seeing and the com networks that we’re seeing engaged in child sexual abuse and cybercrime – to some degree, this sort of young male community, it’s sort of the same threat.

“People are spinning up and radicalising and getting into more extreme harm, and might spin out and end up presenting as any one of those things.”

The material driving the young males to view horrific material and to potentially offend “has a very significant dose of misogyny in it”, Babbage added.

Jukes said the internet had “turbocharged” material triggering resentment among some young men: “In com networks and in terrorist networks, the idea that the interests of men and boys have been relegated, and the interests of women have been elevated, leads directly to violent misogyny.”

He said there were “technological and engineering” solutions to the crisis, and that big tech could help by stopping the algorithms pushing extreme content to youngpeople who wanted it. They could also aid police in helping to detect young people searching for violent content.

Jukes added: “The scale we’re talking about is beyond human intervention. There are too many users, too much traffic.”

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Senior UK police officers have called for the government to ban children under 16 from social media, amid claims the platforms are “fuelling and enabling” crime.

In the most recent development in the moral panic that has gripped the media since Netflix’s Adolescence was released, four of the most senior policing figures in the country told the Times that further controls on social media platforms were necessary for public safety, national security and young people’s mental health.

Sarah Crew, chief constable of Avon and Somerset and the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on rape and serious sexual offences, told the Times that social media platforms were putting children at risk of exploitation and abuse. “Young people are by their nature vulnerable, and this gives those perpetrators who would want to do harm a really direct channel,” she said.

“It’s like the American west in the 1850s – there was a lot happening, and it was expanding quickly, but there was little regulation and law enforcement and codification … It sets norms in people’s minds about what’s acceptable and what’s not.”

Crew went on to liken the situation to a crisis such as the Covid pandemic “where all parts of the state and society and the voluntary sector came together and said: ‘Right this is a real problem.’”

Maggie Blyth, acting chief constable of Gloucestershire and the national police lead for violence against women and girls, claimed that social media was “a significant threat not just to our children and young people but also to our society”. Blyth added: “We are seeing young people acting out violence and behaviour like strangulation because they see it online. There are horrific things that are being normalised.”

Blyth supported a ban alongside other measures such as improved education for children about the dangers of social media, noting that Australia “are ahead of the game”, referring to its decision to ban social media for under-16s last year.

Another chief constable, Tim De Meyer of Surrey police, said he was positive that social media is “fuelling and enabling crime”, arguing a ban for under-16s was crucial. “It just seems to me to be an absolute no-brainer that there should be much greater restrictions.”

Matt Jukes, the police head of counter-terrorism, pointed out that 20% of those arrested for terrorist offences last year were children. “Terrorist groups are now able to radicalise, to share instructions, to share their ideologies,” he told the commission. “The feature which has been driven most by the internet and by online radicalisation has been the emergence of young people in all of that casework.” Jukes added that the Online Safety Act, which has introduced additional safeguards for children and created new requirements for social media companies to actively remove illegal content from their platforms, does not provide adequate protection, saying it was necessary but “not sufficient”.

Neil Basu, a former assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan police, was also keen on banning social media for children. “I hear a lot of arguments that there is no connection between violent imagery and people committing violence. I don’t believe that for a moment after 30 years of policing … The idea that that has no effect seems utterly facile to me. So ban it, yes, and 16 seems reasonable to me.”

According to a United Nations study, the idea is not so facile. The UN found that there is “no clear evidence” that social media leads to more violent behaviour. “Violent radicalisation generally entails a number of tools and should be seen in the context of other communication platforms and significant social factors, such as the political, social, cultural, economic and psychological causes.”

When asked whether the government would consider a ban on under-16s using social media platforms, Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, told the Times’ earlier this year that “nothing can be off the table”.

The National Trust has banned coaches from one of Britain’s most popular beauty spots in an attempt to reduce the growing numbers of people visiting the site.

Up to 600,000 people a year visit Birling Gap which is part of the Seven Sisters cliffs in East Sussex on England’s south coast.

Local people hope the ban will reduce visitor numbers and in turn limit damage and coastal erosion to the site, which has featured in films including Atonement and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

The measure, said to be the first of its kind imposed by the trust, was welcomed by Philip Myerson who lives nearby, who told the Daily Mail: “Birling Gap and Seven Sisters is being ruined by a huge increase in visitors in recent years.

“It’s a tsunami and it’s having a really big impact on the small road, the verges, the grassland and the paths. Everything is being worn away.”

Dot Skeaping, a former National Trust worker who lives in a cottage close to the cliffs, said: “The National Trust wants to welcome people to Birling Gap but it wants them to see it at its best. Banning all coaches is a good idea as they are often huge, arrive in large numbers and are an eyesore.”

Visitors arriving by other means are still welcome to the beauty spot.

On the National Trust website for Birling Gap and the Seven Sisters cliffs it states: “Please note, we no longer allow coach parking or coach drop-off within our car park at this location.” It instead directs people to “alternative coach parking in the Eastbourne area”.

A National Trust spokesperson said: “At Birling Gap, we welcome over 600,000 visitors every year to this small rural clifftop location that is vulnerable to coastal erosion.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in coach visits in recent years, which the site is unable to cope with. We continue to welcome visitors by car, motorbike, minibus and bus service.”

The spokesperson said the move was not a trust-wide policy and was made in response to a specific problem in Birling Gap and Seven Sisters.

The ban follows a previous warning from East Sussex county council about people veering too close to the cliff edge.

A council spokesperson told SussexWorld: “The iconic white cliffs are very popular with visitors but they are extremely unstable and can give way at any time with no warning.”

The National Trust has banned coaches from one of Britain’s most popular beauty spots in an attempt to reduce the growing numbers of people visiting the site.

Up to 600,000 people a year visit Birling Gap which is part of the Seven Sisters cliffs in East Sussex on England’s south coast.

Local people hope the ban will reduce visitor numbers and in turn limit damage and coastal erosion to the site, which has featured in films including Atonement and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

The measure, said to be the first of its kind imposed by the trust, was welcomed by Philip Myerson who lives nearby, who told the Daily Mail: “Birling Gap and Seven Sisters is being ruined by a huge increase in visitors in recent years.

“It’s a tsunami and it’s having a really big impact on the small road, the verges, the grassland and the paths. Everything is being worn away.”

Dot Skeaping, a former National Trust worker who lives in a cottage close to the cliffs, said: “The National Trust wants to welcome people to Birling Gap but it wants them to see it at its best. Banning all coaches is a good idea as they are often huge, arrive in large numbers and are an eyesore.”

Visitors arriving by other means are still welcome to the beauty spot.

On the National Trust website for Birling Gap and the Seven Sisters cliffs it states: “Please note, we no longer allow coach parking or coach drop-off within our car park at this location.” It instead directs people to “alternative coach parking in the Eastbourne area”.

A National Trust spokesperson said: “At Birling Gap, we welcome over 600,000 visitors every year to this small rural clifftop location that is vulnerable to coastal erosion.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in coach visits in recent years, which the site is unable to cope with. We continue to welcome visitors by car, motorbike, minibus and bus service.”

The spokesperson said the move was not a trust-wide policy and was made in response to a specific problem in Birling Gap and Seven Sisters.

The ban follows a previous warning from East Sussex county council about people veering too close to the cliff edge.

A council spokesperson told SussexWorld: “The iconic white cliffs are very popular with visitors but they are extremely unstable and can give way at any time with no warning.”

A London antiquities dealer has withdrawn an ancient Greek amphora from sale after evidence arose that links it to a notorious smuggler.

The Kallos Gallery in Mayfair, London, has removed a black-figure amphora – a jar with two handles and a narrow neck made around 550BC – from sale after the Observer contacted it about concerns raised by an expert in the illegal trade of antiquities.

Dr Christos Tsirogiannis, an archaeologist and leading expert in looted antiquities and trafficking networks, found evidence that led him to conclude the amphora probably came from an illicit excavation in Italy.

He spotted the amphora when the gallery offered it last month at Tefaf Maastricht, one of the world’s foremost art and antiques fairs, and matched it to a Polaroid photograph that appears to show the same object in the hands of Giacomo Medici, who was convicted in Italy in 2004 of dealing in stolen artefacts. That photograph was part of an archive seized from him by police and was on the website of the Italian Carabinieri.

The Dutch police have been notified. The object’s value is believed to be about £50,000.

The Kallos Gallery, which specialises in ancient art, was founded in 2014 by Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza, son of the late Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen Bornemisza, the Swiss billionaire who built up what was regarded as the greatest art collection in private hands in the world.

Measuring 23.6cm in height, the amphora is decorated with sphinxes, a ram and a lion. It is attributed to the artist known only as the Phineus Painter, named after a cup he decorated with the myth of Phineus, the blind king plagued by harpies and saved by Jason and the Argonauts.

The collecting history given by the gallery online only dated back to 1986. This raised Tsirogiannis’s suspicions that the jar could have been part of an illicit excavation, he said: “These are immediate red flags.”

He added that the provenance details included a gallery that had belonged to a dealer who was himself convicted for receiving stolen antiquities from Italy in the 1970s.

Tsirogiannis, an affiliated archaeology lecturer at the University of Cambridge, heads illicit antiquities trafficking research for the Unesco chair on threats to cultural heritage at the Ionian University in Corfu. The late Paolo Giorgio Ferri, the Italian public prosecutor who pursued and prosecuted traffickers in looted antiquities, gave Tsirogiannis access to tens of thousands of images and other archival material seized in police raids from traffickers and other individuals involved in the illicit trade.

Over 19 years, Tsirogiannis has identified more than 1,700 looted antiquities, alerting police and playing a role in their repatriation to 15 countries. The finds include an ancient Greek bronze horse that Sotheby’s New York intended to auction in 2018 until Tsirogiannis notified the authorities of its links to the British antiquities dealer Robin Symes. Greece claimed the horse as its national property, and in 2020 Sotheby’s lost its legal challenge, prompting the Greek culture minister to welcome the court’s ruling as a victory for countries seeking to reclaim their antiquities.

Last year, Christie’s withdrew ancient Greek vases from auction after Tsirogiannis discovered their link to another convicted antiquities trafficker. He criticised the auctioneer’s failure to reveal that the objects could be traced to Gianfranco Becchina, who was convicted in 2011 of illegally dealing in antiquities. Christie’s said at the time that it withdrew the works once it was made aware of the connection.

Tsirogiannis has identified many other Medici objects, which have been repatriated to Italy over the years. “Medici was receiving objects looted from tombs in Italy,” he said, adding that he believes the amphora came from Etruscan tombs in Italy.

He has repeatedly argued that auction houses and dealers do not make adequate checks with Greek and Italian authorities, and has criticised their failure to disclose objects’ full collecting history.

Madeleine Perridge, director of the Kallos Gallery, said: “We make every effort to do our due diligence and publish all collection and publication history known to us … The artwork in question has been immediately removed from sale pending advice from the relevant authorities. We have absolutely no interest in handling tainted artworks and welcome an opportunity to find practical and productive solutions to these complex issues.”

The BBC had an unofficial league table of the most loved and despised accents, the war correspondent Kate Adie has revealed. And the most hated? Brummie.

Geordie was liked, she told an audience in Sunderland, but from one end of the country to the other it was Birmingham that was particularly disliked.

Adie was speaking at an event marking the cataloguing of a huge archive of material documenting her life and career. From starting out at BBC Radio Durham to covering the Troubles, numerous wars and the student uprising in Tiananmen Square, Adie was for years one of Britain’s best-known and most trusted television reporters.

Her archive of more than 2,300 objects includes dozens of notebooks as well as tapes, letters, photographs and video clips. It was donated to the University of Sunderland a number of years ago but funding to properly catalogue the items only came last year.

Adie was brought up in Sunderland but has never had a strong accent, she said. Nor did her parents, who adopted her as a baby, “or their parents”.

She said: “It is one of this country’s complex matters. Accents vary hugely and how they are received varies hugely.

“Years and years ago the BBC had an unofficial league table of the most liked and the most hated accents.

“The view was that some of them drove people nuts up and down the country. Geordie did pretty well. It’s liked.”

Adie asked the audience to guess what the most disliked accent was. A chorus of “Birmingham” followed. They were correct, Adie said.

“From one end of the country to another, it’s Birmingham! Michael Buerk, who comes from Birmingham, was once asked why he didn’t use the accent. He said, ‘I didn’t want death threats’.”

She said dissertations could be written on news programme accents, recalling her days at BBC Radio Durham when a locally accented producer would read the bulletin. “We got complaints from everywhere. The whole range of audience. They felt it wasn’t right for news. It is a curious one.”

Her big break came as duty reporter in May 1980, during the Iranian embassy siege. Her coverage was groundbreaking but did not make her an instant star, she said. “I was sent off to a pools winner the next day.”

The archive includes a bullet that grazed Adie when she was reporting from Tiananmen Square but said her worst moment was in Belfast where she thought she had been shot in the face, dropped down and assumed she was going to die.

Then she heard her cameraman shouting: “Get up! Get up! You’ve been hit in the face by a potato!”

The archive shines a light on Adie’s happy childhood – “lots of tennis” – and her time at the National Youth Theatre, which was not quite the Shakespearean study group her teacher had imagined.

It was instead a large group of “randy 17- and 18-year-olds,” she said. “We had fun.”

Adie recalled the theatre having people from all backgrounds. She remembered meeting a memorably quirky girl. “I wonder what happened to Helen Mirren?”

The University of Sunderland said the cataloguing essentially “unlocks” the Adie collection. It includes images from her first BBC job in 1968 at Durham where her annual salary was £934 a year and its first story was a pigeon race.

She went on to BBC jobs in Plymouth, Bristol and the south coast where she was tipped off about a double murder in Brighton. She and her crew captured great footage but her news editor in Southampton was unimpressed – she was meant to be covering an embroidery exhibition in Ditchling.

She was sacked, she said, but by chance a national news editor rang her to see if she was free for a shift and she told him about the murder and she joined the London newsroom.

David Bell, the university’s vice-chancellor and chief executive, said Adie was one of the most talented broadcasters of her, or any, generation and there were plans to digitise key strands of the collection.

“By unlocking the Kate Adie collection this way, the university hopes to educate and inspire audiences, both young and old, with the accomplishments of a Sunderland-raised pioneer in her field.”

Adie admitted she was something of a hoarder. “I’m just one of those people who goes to clear the attic and then never does.”

Adie is 79 but can still be heard presenting From Our Own Correspondent on BBC Radio 4.

Asked about the state of news reporting today, she said she would love to see a small radio station in every UK town providing local information.

“I think every area of this country, except London, is badly reported. I think a lot of places are neglected, seriously. I’ve seen a thing in New Zealand where the local newspaper is on the same building floor as the local TV and the local radio. They all work together and it works. It is wonderful and it is not expensive.”

Prince Harry has said he is “exhausted” by his lengthy legal battle to reinstate his police protection.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Harry believes that his UK security was removed to “force” him “back into Britain and establishment life”.

He was prompted to sue the Home Office but said he had been “overwhelmed” by the legal action, which has lasted more than three years.

The prince told the Telegraph after a two-day hearing at the court of appeal in London this week that the removal of his police protection was “difficult to swallow”, and that of all his legal cases, including his legal battles with the tabloids, “this one always mattered the most”.

Harry reportedly does not feel safe when visiting the UK with his children. Much of this week’s appeal and the original hearing about his security were heard in private because of the “highly confidential” evidence. “People would be shocked by what’s being held back,” he said, adding that his “worst fears have been confirmed by the whole legal disclosure in this case and that’s really sad”.

The prince was not required to give evidence at the hearing, but flew from his home in California to attend what has been described as the “last throw of the dice” to overturn a decision. He “comprehensively lost” his case against the Home Office in February 2024 when Mr Justice Lane ruled that the government’s decision to remove his security was not unfair.

Harry reportedly views the removal of his and Meghan’s security as “a means of trying to force them back into Britain and establishment life, by making visits to the UK as outsiders more difficult and potentially unsafe”.

The prince also believes that his father, King Charles, could have intervened to reinstate his security detail because the king’s private secretary, Sir Clive Alderton, sits on the royal and VIP executive committee, but Buckingham Palace denied it had any decision-making power.

It is understood that Alderton was not on the committee when the decision over Harry’s security was made five years ago after he and Meghan had left their royal duties.

A palace source said: “These are matters of security and government policy and, as usual, it would be inappropriate to comment or intervene on either.”

It is alleged that Harry is still not on speaking terms with his father and brother. Harry saw the king last February after Charles was diagnosed with cancer, but they have not met since.

A result of his appeal will be handed down by a panel of three judges after Easter.

One perfume smells suspiciously like a £355 bottle of Baccarat Rouge 540 eau de parfum. Another, which has notes of grapefruit, rose and Levantine spice, is reminiscent of a £215 bottle of Penhaligon’s Halfeti. But unlike those luxury brands, these “dupe scents” can cost as little as a fiver.

As many as half of UK consumers are now thought to have succumbed to the social media craze for cheap perfumes “inspired by” well-known luxury fragrances. And lawyers now say perfume brands and beauty companies need greater legal protection from rivals who imitate their products.

Intellectual property lawyers and chartered trademark attorneys told the Observer that the law must catch up to better protect the original creators of perfumes. Some said they had been contacted by companies seeking advice on how to legally dupe a perfume, while others had received enquiries from luxury brands about how to take legal action against dupe scents.

“Everybody wants to smell good and to have an affordable slice of luxury. However, it comes at the expense of proper artists, because perfume creation is an art,” Mireille Dagger, legal director at Broadfield law firm, told the Observer. “These companies are riding on the coattails of artists. It’s very unfair. It’s very hard to create a perfume brand and build it up. It requires expertise, artistic talent, time, energy and investment.”

“There have been no known cases in the UK of any perfume brands being able to trademark their scent – because under UK law, it’s a requirement that a trademark be graphically representable,” Dagger said.

While perfume manufacturers can trademark their brand names, distinctive labels and unique bottle shapes, none of the lawyers the Observer spoke to believed it would be possible, in practice, to trademark the scent of an original fragrance. A company needs to be able to clearly, precisely and objectively describe what they are protecting with a trademark.

“When it comes to scent, you just can’t do that, because scent is subjective. Different people smell different things. It’s very hard to consistently reproduce that scent on paper,” added Dagger. “You’re not able to put it in writing.”

Equally, a scent cannot usually be patented, said Eloise Harding, a partner in Mishcon de Reya’s intellectual property department, because this requires a particular perfume formulation to have an “inventive step” during its creation. “I don’t think any kind of fragrance is likely to have a sufficient level of inventive step,” she said.

A brand owner might not even want to patent its perfume formulation, said Robert Lye, legal director at Gateley. “The quid pro quo for patent protection is that the patented invention is made public, meaning that anyone would be able to copy the formulation once the patent has expired.” The maximum duration of a patent is 20 years, he added.

Some copycat perfume manufacturers are using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS) to break down the complex chemical profiles of expensive perfumes so they can emulate these scents – potentially using cheaper, “substandard” ingredients, Dagger said. The cheaper imitations are particularly popular on TikTok, where there are thousands of posts with the hashtag #perfumedupe.

With the once-inaccessible trade secrets about a perfume’s formulation now able to be deduced using GCMS, “there is no way, legally, for perfumers to protect their work,” said Dagger.

She would like to see “dupe brands being forced to pay royalties to the original brands”. As for the law, “something creative needs to happen – protection for the fragrance industry is lagging woefully behind beauty and fashion.”

The UK fragrance market was estimated to be worth £1.74bn in 2024, and is on track to surpass £2bn by 2029, according to market researchers Mintel.

In a recent survey of 1,435 fragrance buyers in the UK, 50% said they had bought a dupe perfume. A third of those surveyed said they would be prepared to buy a dupe fragrance again while 18% of those who had not yet bought one said they would be interested in doing so.

“It is almost a lost cause for perfume brands to defend themselves, if all they are saying is ‘we came up with this fragrance first’, because I don’t think consumers really care about that,” said Dionne Officer, a Mintel research analyst.

Admirers of designer perfume brands no longer think they should have to pay through the nose to have access to luxury scents: “Seeing dupe scents on social media, and knowing influencers are buying them, has made them more acceptable,” she added.

Younger consumers in particular are accustomed to seeing fast-fashion brands duplicating independent designers, and are unlikely to feel it is a taboo to openly wear a dupe scent or even give one as a gift.

“Maybe in older generations, it would have been looked down upon, to copy something,” said Officer. “But younger consumers have grown up in a time of economic instability, where you’re praised if you get a bargain – it’s seen as quite cool, now.”

Hidden from view inside a south London warehouse, a new underground movement will be fighting the international blight of misinformation this summer.

The huge immersive event – half theatrical show, half social campaign – is to involve some of Britain’s leading acting talent, including Toby Jones and Meera Syal, and has been put together by a theatre company led by a woman who learned about misinformation the hard way, at the Georgian television station Imedi.

Liana Patarkatsishvili, the founder of Sage & Jester productions, still recalls the moment when the independent newsroom was taken over on the orders of the government of Mikheil Saakashvili. Her experiences have influenced her work on the new show, which is due to take place over 9,000 sq metres in an empty building in Deptford.

“I still remember those days clearly,” she told the Observer. “Before the 2007 crackdown in Georgia, independent media faced significant challenges and mounting pressure.”

The debut show, called Storehouse, is due to run from 4 June until 20 September. The story will take place in a fictional storage facility, where humanity’s history has been archived since 1983, the dawn of the internet.

In this arena, a “battle between truth and order” will be waged, “as the powerful manipulate the truth to their own ends and critical thinking is the only effective weapon”. Syal, who will voice Dolly K Guha, one of the imagined radical founders of the movement, said: “I’m thrilled to be part of Storehouse. It is an ambitious immersive production that tackles a critical issue.”

The three other founders are played by Jones, whose performances as postmaster Alan Bates in the ITV drama about the Post Office scandal won widespread acclaim, the renowned actor Kathryn Hunter, recently seen in Netflix’s Black Doves and in the film Poor Things, and by rising star Billy Howle from the film On Chesil Beach. They will guide visitors through the warehouse and through a cast of live actors.

Patarkatsishvili is keen to show that misinformation is not just the spreading of deliberate falsehoods. “It’s also about creating uncertainty and eroding trust,” she said. “This tactic has been used globally, from casting doubt in the media to flooding the public with conflicting narratives. In today’s attention economy, news has been commodified, becoming a product that needs to be ‘sold’. It becomes paramount to be able to discern ‘sellable information’ and false narratives from facts and being properly factually informed.”

The show will run in tandem with a series of public debates, or critical conversations, that are being held through the summer on the other side of London at the Pleasance theatre. The sessions, staged in collaboration with Intelligence Squared, will be compered by the journalist Sophia Smith Galer.

The discussions are intended to help inform or “inoculate” the audience against misinformation by showing them how it can work. “We want to empower individuals by better understanding the powers at play. A key point for us is to give people a sense of agency, as this topic can make us feel apathetic and disempowered, which ultimately feeds the problem,” said Patarkatsishvili, whose late father, known as Badri, founded the Imedi radio station and television station in Georgia.

Debate, she argues, might be a more conventional way to develop critical thinking skills, but theatre can be more effective. “In its own way, this is what Storehouse aims to do; immerse audiences in a world where they decide what’s true,” she said. “The art of storytelling creates empathy and understanding in ways that facts alone cannot. When audiences step inside, they’re not just watching a story – they’re living it. They’re forced to grapple with difficult questions about truth, power, and their own complicity in shaping narratives. Entertainment has always been a powerful tool because it humanises abstract issues and makes them personal.”

Patarkatsishvili’s hope is that Storehouse will be “more than a show – it’s a call to action”.

“It asks audiences to reflect on their role in today’s information ecosystem, and challenges them to take responsibility for the stories they believe and share.”