Rishi Sunak under pressure to protect pension triple lock – with a growing backlash over Braverman’s return
Rishi Sunak is facing pressure to protect the triple lock on state pensions – and a growing backlash over his decision to reappoint Suella Braverman as home secretary.
The new prime minister has confirmed that a planned Halloween budget will be delayed until 17 November so the latest economic forecasts can be taken into account.
But Downing Street has refused to confirm whether pensions will increase in line with inflation come April, which is running above 10%.
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Conservative MP Maria Caulfield has told Sky News that the lack of a confirmation worries her.
“When the government doesn’t confirm one way or another, the speculation mounts and vacuums are created and people start to worry. I’ve got pensioners who are worried,” she said.
Earlier this month, Ms Caulfield had warned she would not vote to end the triple lock. It means pensions must rise by average earnings, inflation or 2.5% – whichever is highest.
She had tweeted: “Pensioners should not be paying the price for the cost of living crisis whether caused by the war in Ukraine or mini-budgets.”
Speaking to Sophy Ridge, Ms Caulfield expressed hope that the triple lock would be preserved given how Mr Sunak had told PMQs he was standing on the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto.
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Mr Sunak’s press secretary has said no comment will be made “ahead of any fiscal statements or budgets”, but added: “What I can say is he has shown through his record as chancellor that he will do what’s right and compassionate for the most vulnerable.”
In other developments, former Tory chairman Sir Jake Berry has claimed that Suella Braverman committed “multiple breaches of the ministerial code”.
She was controversially reinstated as home secretary during the PM’s reshuffle – six days after resigning for sending an official document from a personal email account.
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Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has described these allegations as “extraordinary and very serious”, asking the new PM on Twitter: “What security warnings did you ignore when you reappointed the home secretary?”
When asked about Ms Braverman’s return to the Home Office, Maria Caulfield defended her – and told Sky News she had been “very open and honest about it and very quick to react”.
Ms Caulfield went on to argue that it “wasn’t in her gift to be reappointed”.
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Sunak’s busy first day as PM
During PMQs yesterday, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused Mr Sunak of having done a “grubby deal” with Ms Braverman – a figure popular on the right of the party – in order to secure the keys to Number 10.
In separate developments, the new PM also confirmed that he was reinstating the ban on fracking that Liz Truss had controversially lifted during her brief premiership.
Speaking at the London Press Club Awards last night, newly reappointed Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove declared that “boring is back” following “12 months of turbulence”.
Meanwhile, government appointments continued late into the evening – with the most notable change seeing former transport secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan demoted to Foreign Office minister.
Mr Sunak also found time to attend a Diwali celebration at 10 Downing Street last night after the Hindu festival of lights earlier this week.
“I will do everything I can in this job to build a Britain where our children and our grandchildren can light their Diyas and look to the future with hope,” he posted on social media afterwards.
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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