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Sir Keir Starmer has defended Labour’s decision to rebrand their package of workers’ rights after a union said the plans had “more holes than Swiss cheese”.

Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, accused the party of watering down its policies after it rebranded “Labour’s new deal for working people” as “Labour’s plan to make work pay”.

However another union, UNISON, backed Sir Keir’s workers’ rights package.

Reports suggest it would go through a formal consultation process with businesses, potentially delaying or toning down pledges on areas like zero-hours contracts, parental leave and sick pay.

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Ms Graham said: “The again revised New Deal for Working People has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. The number of caveats and get-outs means it is in danger of becoming a bad bosses’ charter.

“Working people expect Labour to be their voice. They need to know that Labour will not back down to corporate profiteers determined to maintain the status quo of colossal profits at the expense of everyone else.

“The country desperately needs a Labour government, but the party must show it will stick to its guns on improving workers’ rights.”

Unite union general secretary Sharon Graham, joins ambulance workers on the picket line outside ambulance headquarters in Coventry
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Sharon Graham urged Labour to ‘stick to its guns on improving workers’ rights’. Pic: PA

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Asked about the comments during a visit to Staffordshire, Sir Keir said: “We have come to an agreement with the unions.

“At the heart of this is something really important to me and that’s dignity and respect at work and I think everybody should be treated with dignity and respect at work.

“There’s another really important angle on this, which is the number one mission for an incoming government is to grow the economy to make sure our economy ensures living standards are improved everywhere across the country.

“I don’t think you can do that if you don’t treat your workforce properly.”

Elements of Labour’s plan include a “right to switch off”, a proposed ban on zero hours contracts and stronger employment rights from day one of a new job.

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Starmer wants voting age lowered

The party has also said it wants to empower adult social care professionals and trade unions that represent them to negotiate a sector-wide agreement for pay, terms and conditions.

A Labour spokesperson said: “Labour’s new deal for working people is our plan to make work pay. It’s how we’ll boost wages, deliver secure work and support working people to thrive – delivering a genuine living wage, banning exploitative zero hours contracts, and ending fire and rehire.

“The new deal is a core part of our mission to grow Britain’s economy and raise living standards in every part of the country. Labour will make Britain work for working people.”

UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea also commented on Sir Keir’s plans.

She said: “There will be a clear choice in July. A vote for a party that understands the huge struggles employees and their families have been facing. Or one that’s persistently let working people down these past 14 years.

“Labour’s new deal best illustrates that choice. It will make work fairer and boost the economy too.”

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Conservatives call for Labour’s Lucy Powell to resign over grooming gang remarks

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Conservatives call for Labour's Lucy Powell to resign over grooming gang remarks

The Conservatives are calling for Lucy Powell to resign after the Labour MP’s exchange with a commentator about grooming gangs.

The comment was made by Ms Powell, the leader of the House of Commons, after Conservative political commentator Tim Montgomerie started to ask a question on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions.

“I don’t know if you saw the documentary on Channel 4 about rape gangs,” he started, in relation to the recent programme Groomed: A National Scandal, which centred around five girls who were sexually abused by rape gangs.

Ms Powell, who is MP for Manchester Central, responded: “Oh, we want to blow that little trumpet now, do we? Yeah, OK, let’s get that dog whistle out.”

Sir Keir Starmer and the government have been under sustained pressure from political opponents over the handling of historical sex abuse cases in the UK.

ConservativeHome founder Mr Montgomerie, who will be appearing on Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, continued: “There is a real issue where… There were so many people in local government, in the authorities, who, for good reason, were worried about upsetting community tensions, that those girls went undefended.”

The conversation moved on, but politicians criticised Ms Powell’s comment, with some calling for her to resign.

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Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said in a statement: “This shocking outburst from a Labour cabinet minister belittles the thousands of girls and women who were raped by grooming gangs over decades.

“We have consistently called for a national enquiry in parliament, which has been blocked by Labour ministers who don’t seem to know or care about the disgusting crimes which have been perpetrated.

“Anyone who has seen the shocking Channel 4 documentary will know that it is clearer than ever that this is not a ‘dog whistle’.

“To dismiss thousands of victims who were raped and the cover up that followed is sickening. She should resign.”

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Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said: “Labour’s Lucy Powell thinks it’s a ‘dog whistle’ to demand arrests and accountability for the rape gangs. What a disgusting betrayal of the victims. They are part of the cover-up.”

Ousted Reform MP Rupert Lowe, now an independent, shared a letter he wrote to Ms Powell demanding she apologise, calling her comments “deeply, deeply offensive”.

On X on Saturday night, Ms Powell said: “In the heat of a discussion on AQ, I would like to clarify that I regard issues of child exploitation and grooming with the utmost seriousness. I’m sorry if this was unclear.

“I was challenging the political point scoring around it, not the issue itself. As a constituency MP I’ve dealt with horrendous cases. This Gvt is acting to get to the truth, and deliver justice.”

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Sky News has contacted the office for the Leader of the House of Commons for comment.

The long-running row over grooming cases has continued after Labour promised five local inquiries into grooming gangs in January.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk had accused Sir Keir of being “complicit” in the failure of authorities to protect victims and prosecute abusers while the PM was director of public prosecutions from 2008-2013.

The prime minister has repeatedly defended his record, saying it shows he tackled the issue head-on.

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Reform’s mission to ‘remoralise’ young people, says party chairman

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Reform's mission to 'remoralise' young people, says party chairman

Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf says his party’s mission is to “remoralise” young people.

Speaking off the back of his party’s massive gains in the local elections, Mr Yusuf said young people were being taught to “hate their country” and that Reform’s mission was to change their morals.

“There has been an industrial-scale demoralisation, particularly of young people in this country, who are basically being taught quite deliberately that they should hate their country; they should be deeply ashamed of their country’s history; that the United Kingdom had a brutal empire,” he told The Times.

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“Look, of course, you know, the British Empire was not perfect, but I actually think overall the British Empire did much more good for the world than it did bad.”

He said the party’s mission was to “remoralise” the youth and that within a couple of months of gaining power, Reform would erect statues of great British figures and end “all this woke nonsense”.

He continued: “How many young people know who Isambard Kingdom Brunel is? Look at the character assassination that has occurred on the legacy of Sir Winston Churchill.

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“The fact that they have to cover up his statue because they don’t want to provoke protesters. I mean that’s the sort of utterly indefensible so-called leadership that we’ve had and young people feel that in their bones.”

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He said he believes Reform leader Nigel Farage’s message is “resonating” with young people and added: “I think that a lot of young people we speak to feel very smothered by a finger-wagging sort of teaching class.

“They feel very restricted, they feel a huge lack of opportunity … You’re going to hear from us over the next couple of years more and more of a policy platform for young people, for Gen Z and for millennials.”

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Voters turn to Reform UK

Mr Farage has been more focused on what his party’s trajectory is doing to the Conservatives, saying in his column for The Telegraph that Kemi Badenoch’s party had been “hollowed out” and is experiencing a “strange death” due to the rising popularity of Reform.

He said the UK had reached a “new political age”, reiterating earlier claims that two-party politics “is finished”.

Reform chairman Zia Yusuf will be appearing on Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips from 8.30am this morning.

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OKX fires back at Tron’s Justin Sun over mysterious ‘freeze notice’

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<div>OKX fires back at Tron's Justin Sun over mysterious 'freeze notice'</div>

<div>OKX fires back at Tron's Justin Sun over mysterious 'freeze notice'</div>

OKX founder and CEO Star Xu has publicly defended the crypto exchange after Tron founder Justin Sun accused it of failing to act on a law enforcement request to freeze stolen funds following a recent hack of Tron’s official X account.

ā€œOKX also has consumers protection policy according to law, we can’t freeze a customer’s funds according to your personal X post or an oral communication. I think you should understand it as the CEO of HTX,ā€ Xu said in an X post.

OKX says there is no communication in the spam box, either

Xu said that the crypto exchange had not received any related correspondence through OKX’s official channels. ā€œOur LE cooperation team just checked the email, including the spam box; we haven’t received any request related with this case,ā€ Xu said.

Cryptocurrencies, Tron, OKX
Source: Star Xu

In what is now an unavailable X post, but was screenshotted by Xu, Sun had earlier claimed that OKX has not responded to a ā€œfreeze noticeā€ sent to its official email address from a ā€œrelevant law enforcement agency.ā€ Sun said that he had no other way to contact OKX’s compliance department.

ā€œThese stolen funds do not belong to me; I’m acting to protect the community,ā€ Sun said. On May 3, Tron DAO told its 1.7 million X followers that its account had been compromised. Tron explained that during the breach, an unauthorized party posted a malicious contract address, sent direct messages, and followed unfamiliar accounts.

ā€œIf you received a DM from our account on May 2, please delete it and consider it the work of the attacker.ā€

In response to Sun’s claims of inaction, Xu publicly called on him to provide a screenshot showing when and where the law enforcement request was made.

The Tron incident is one of several recent security breaches involving high-profile crypto accounts on X.

Related: Over 14,500 Tron addresses at risk of silent hijacking

Kaito AI, an artificial intelligence-powered platform that aggregates crypto data to provide market analysis for users, and its founder, Yu Hu, were the victims of an X social media hack on March 15. The hackers opened up a short position on KAITO tokens before posting that the Kaito wallets were compromised and advised users that their funds were not safe.

The Pump.fun X account was compromised on Feb. 26 to promote a fake governance token called ā€œPUMPā€ and other fraudulent coins.

Meanwhile, the X account of UK member of Parliament and Leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell, was hacked to promote a scam crypto token.

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