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A tax cut for wealthy pensioners will bring down NHS waiting lists, Rishi Sunak has insisted – but he did not say how many doctors would stay in their jobs because of it.

Criticism has mounted over the move to scrap the lifetime allowance in the spring budget, which Labour has branded a “tax giveaway to the wealthiest 1%”.

Under the plans, people will be allowed to put aside as much as they can in their private pension scheme without being taxed – removing the £1.07m limit.

Ministers have insisted that it will encourage senior doctors to stay in the workforce for longer, but doubts have been raised after the government’s own data suggested only 105 of them left the NHS due to early retirement last year.

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When it was put to the prime minister only hundreds of doctors might stay on he told BBC Breakfast: “It’s not just about whether they leave or stay; it’s about whether they’re doing the extra shifts, because that’s what’s going to help us get the backlog down.”

Mr Sunak said “thousands of doctors” leave the NHS every year, and “about two-thirds to three-quarters of them have said that they don’t provide extra hours” due to the pension rules.

“The key thing is I want to get the waiting lists down. I think everyone watching who has a family member waiting on NHS waiting lists will want that person – grandmother, grandparent, aunt, uncle – to get that treatment as quickly as possible. Because of this change we’re going to be able to do that.”

However, he did not say how many doctors removing the £1m tax-free threshold could entice back, only that “overall we think about 12,000 people will be working more in the workforce”.

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In response to a written question from Labour last November, health minister Will Quince provided statistics showing 105 doctors left the NHS due to early retirement in 2021/2022.

However, there were warnings of a mass exodus after a survey from the British Medical Association (BMA) last year showed 44% of consultants were threatening to leave in the next 12 months, blaming “a decade of pay erosion and punitive pension taxation”.

The union has welcomed changes to the pension rules, with Committee chair Vish Sharma saying: “The scrapping of the lifetime allowance will be potentially transformative for the NHS as [the majority of] senior doctors will no longer be forced to retire early and can continue to work within the NHS, providing vital patient care.”

He added that the changes will also “reduce the perverse incentive to reduce hours due to pension tax”.

In the spring budget it was also announced that the annual tax-free pension savings allowance would increase by 50% to £60,000.

The department of health suggested 22,000 senior NHS clinicians could have exceed the previous £40,000 allowance, while around 31,000 clinicians had reached at least 75% of the £1.073 million lifetime allowance

How will the NHS pay offer be funded?

During his interview, Mr Sunak was also unable to say how the revised NHS pay offer announced last week will be funded.

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The government has put forward a revised 5% pay offer to NHS staff

Unions reached the deal with the government in a major breakthrough that saw NHS staff offered a one-off payment of 2% of their salary plus a COVID recovery bonus of 4% for the current financial year 2022/23, and a 5% pay increase for 2023/24.

Asked if this is new money, Mr Sunak said: “The NHS does have new money, yes.”

Pressed further, he said: “We’re just about to start the financial year and the NHS and social care will have £14bn more over the next couple of years.”

Mr Sunak was then quizzed on whether the money would come out of that existing budget.

He replied: “People want to know the NHS is well-funded, but what’s also important is how we use that money.”

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The deal with health unions came after months of ministers saying there was no cash to meet their demands, arguing the money would have to come out of frontline services.

Downing Street has insisted the offer – which will require the government to find £4bn in spare cashwill not impact frontline services, saying “areas of underspend” had been identified.

Rwanda deportations ‘will begin once court proceedings have concluded’

Mr Sunak was also grilled on targets for his “stop the boats” plan.

He said “no illegal immigration is acceptable” and his new bill – to ban people claiming asylum if they come to the UK through unauthorised means – “is about fairness”.

Asked whether that means stopping all boats, he said: “That’s what we’re trying to do. I don’t think anyone would sit here and say to you that they tolerate any illegal migration.”

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The home secretary toured Rwanda at the weekend

On whether he could get the number of Channel crossings to zero, he said: “People will be able to judge me by my actions at the next election – I’m perfectly confident about that.”

The prime minister said deporting migrants to Rwanda will begin once court proceedings have concluded.

When it was put to him that Home Secretary Suella Braverman has suggested flights will start this summer, Mr Sunak said: “No, that’s not what she said, and what she said actually was that when the court process has concluded, then we’ll be able to start flights as quickly as we can.

“But ultimately we have to go through the court process, policies being challenged. We won the first battle of those and we’ll continue to defend the policy.”

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Donald Trump says Vladimir Putin wants to meet – and that he and Barack Obama ‘probably’ like each other

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Donald Trump says Vladimir Putin wants to meet - and that he and Barack Obama 'probably' like each other

Donald Trump says a meeting is being set up between himself and Vladimir Putin – and that he and Barack Obama “probably” like each other.

Republican US president-elect Mr Trump spoke to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Thursday, saying Russian president Mr Putin “wants to meet, and we are setting it up”.

“He has said that even publicly and we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess,” Mr Trump said.

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Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday there was a “mutual desire” to set up a meeting – but added no details had been confirmed yet and that there may be progress once Mr Trump is inaugurated on 20 January.

“Moscow has repeatedly declared its openness to contacts with international leaders, including the US president, including Donald Trump,” Mr Peskov added.

“What is required is a mutual desire and political will to conduct dialogue and resolve existing problems through dialogue. We see that Mr Trump also declares his readiness to resolve problems through dialogue. We welcome this. There are still no specifics, we proceed from the mutual readiness for the meeting.”

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Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in July 2017. Pic: AP
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Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in July 2017. Pic: AP

Trump on Obama: ‘We just got along’

Mr Trump also made some lighter remarks regarding a viral exchange between himself and former Democrat President Barack Obama at Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday.

The pair sat together for the late president’s service in Washington DC on Thursday, and could be seen speaking for several minutes as the remaining mourners filed in before it began.

Mr Obama was seen nodding as his successor spoke before breaking into a grin.

Asked about the exchange, Mr Trump said: “I didn’t realise how friendly it looked.

“I said, ‘boy, they look like two people that like each other’. And we probably do.

“We have a little different philosophies, right? But we probably do. I don’t know. We just got along. But I got along with just about everybody.”

The amicable exchange comes after years of criticising each other in the public eye; it was Mr Trump who spread the so-called “birther” conspiracy theory about Mr Obama in 2011, falsely asserting that he was not born in the United States.

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Insults continued for years, with Mr Obama famously dedicating much of his final White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech in 2016 to jokes at his political rival’s expense.

Mr Trump has repeatedly attacked the Obamas, saying the former president was “ineffective” and “terrible” and calling former first lady Michelle Obama “nasty” as recently as October last year.

On Kamala Harris’s campaign trail last year, Mr Obama said Mr Trump was a “78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago”, while the former first lady said that “the consequences of him ever being president again are brutally serious.”

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‘The future is in our hands’ scientists say, as 2024 becomes first year to pass 1.5C global warming threshold

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'The future is in our hands' scientists say, as 2024 becomes first year to pass 1.5C global warming threshold

Last year was the warmest on record, the first to breach a symbolic threshold, and brought with it deadly impacts like flooding and drought, scientists have said.

Two new datasets found 2024 was the first calendar year when average global temperatures exceeded 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – before humans started burning fossil fuels at scale.

The record heat has not only has real-world implications, as it contributed to deadly flooding in Spain and vicious drought in places like Zambia in southern Africa.

It is also highly symbolic.

Countries agreed in the landmark Paris Agreement to limit warming ideally to 1.5C, because after that the impacts would be much more dangerous.

The news arrives as California battles “hell on earth” wildfires, suspected to have been exacerbated by climate change.

And it comes as experts warn support for the Paris goals is “more fragile than ever” – with Donald Trump and the Argentinian president poised to row back on climate action.

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What caused 2024 record heat – and is it here to stay?

Friends of the Earth called today’s findings from both the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change service and the Met Office “deeply disturbing”.

The “primary driver” of heat in the last two years was climate change from human activity, but the temporary El Nino weather phenomenon also contributed, they said.

The breach in 2024 does not mean the world has forever passed 1.5C of warming – as that would only be declared after several years of doing so, and warming may slightly ease this year as El Nino has faded.

But the world is “teetering on the edge” of doing so, Copernicus said.

Prof Piers Forster, chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee, called it a “foretaste of life at 1.5C”.

Dr Gabriel Pollen, Zambia’s national coordinator for disasters, said “no area of life and the economy is untouched” by the country’s worst drought in more than 100 years.

Six million people face starvation, critical hydropower has plummeted, blackouts are frequent, industry is “decimated”, and growth has halved, he said.

Paris goal ‘not obsolete’

Scientists were at pains to point out it is not too late to curb worse climate change, urging leaders to maintain and step up climate action.

Professor Forster said temporarily breaching 1.5C “does not mean the goal is obsolete”, but that we should “double down” on slashing greenhouse gas emissions and on adapting to a hotter world.

The Met Office said “every fraction of a degree” still makes a difference to the severity of extreme weather.

Firefighters battle the Palisades fire as it burns during a windstorm on the west side of Los Angeles.
Pic: Reuters
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The California fires were whipped up by strong, dry winds and likely worsened by climate change. Pic: Reuters

Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo added: “The future is in our hands: swift and decisive action can still alter the trajectory of our future climate”.

Climate action is ‘economic opportunity’

Copernicus found that global temperatures in 2024 averaged 15.10°C, the hottest in records going back to 1850, making it 1.60°C above the pre-industrial level during 1850-1900.

The Met Office’s data found 2024 was 1.53C above pre-industrial levels.

The figures are global averages, which smooth out extremes from around the world into one number. That is why it still might have felt cold in some parts of the world last year.

Greenpeace campaigner Philip Evans said as “the world’s most powerful climate denier” Donald Trump returns to the White House, others must “take up the mantle of global climate leadership”.

The UK’s climate minister Kerry McCarthy said the UK has been working with other countries to cut global emissions, as well as greening the economy at home.

“Not only is this crucial for our planet, it is the economic opportunity of the 21st century… tackling the climate crisis while creating new jobs, delivering energy security and attracting new investment into the UK.”

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Picture shows baby girl moments after birth on packed migrant dinghy heading for Canary Islands

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Picture shows baby girl moments after birth on packed migrant dinghy heading for Canary Islands

Photographs have captured the moments after a baby girl was born on a packed migrant dinghy heading for the Canary Islands.

The small boat was carrying 60 people and had embarked from Tan-Tan – a Moroccan province 135 nautical miles (250km) away.

One image shows the baby lying on her mother’s lap as other passengers help the pair.

The boat’s passengers – a total of 60 people, including 14 women and four children – were rescued by a Spanish coastguard ship.

Coastguard captain Domingo Trujillo said: “The baby was crying, which indicated to us that it was alive and there were no problems, and we asked the woman’s permission to undress her and clean her.

“The umbilical cord had already been cut by one of her fellow passengers. The only thing we did was to check the child, give her to her mother and wrap them up for the trip.”

Pic: Salvmento Maritimo/Reuters

Spanish coast guards wearing white suits work on a rescue operation as they tow a rubber boat carrying migrants, including a newborn baby, off the island off the Canary Island of Lanzarote, in Spain, in this handout picture obtained on January 8, 2025. SALVAMENTO MARITIMO/Handout via REUTERS THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. MANDATORY CREDIT
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Coastguards rescued all 60 people aboard the boat. Pic: Salvmento Maritimo/Reuters


The mother and baby were taken for medical checks and treated with antibiotics, medical authorities said.

Dr Maria Sabalich, an emergency coordinator of the Molina Orosa University Hospital in Lanzarote, said: “They are still in the hospital, but they are doing well.”

When they are discharged from hospital, the pair will be moved to a humanitarian centre for migrants, a government official said.

They will then most likely be relocated to a reception centre for mothers and children on another of the Canary Islands, they added.

Thousands of migrants board boats attempting to make the perilous journey from the African coast to the Spanish Canaries each year.

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In 2024, a total of 9,757 people died on the route, according to Spanish migration charity Walking Borders.

Mr Trujillo said: “Almost every night we leave at dawn and arrive back late.

“This case is very positive, because it was with a newborn, but in all the services we do, even if we are tired, we know we are helping people in distress.”

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