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Three rail operators will be renationalised by Labour next year, but the move is not expected to bring down fares for passengers travelling on these lines.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she recognised that "affordability is really important to people" but that people were "willing to pay for a good service".

It comes as the government confirmed South Western Railway will be renationalised in May 2025, C2C in July 2025, and Greater Anglia in autumn 2025, after Labour passed a law allowing it to do so.

But some have criticised the plans, arguing that public ownership will not make much difference unless it is paired with fresh investment in the railways.
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Rail fares are due to rise by 4.6% from March as set out in the recent Budget, a figure that the transport secretary repeated when asked if tickets will get cheaper with public ownership.

She described this as "the lowest absolute increase for the last three years".

Ms Alexander added that it while people may be willing to pay more for a "really good" service, including at evenings and weekends, performance had to improve.

The transport department said that renationalisation would improve reliability, boost economic growth, and save £150m per year in fees.

"We need to bring these train companies into public ownership, and so we want to turn the page on 30 years of failure," Ms Alexander told BBC Breakfast.

"The primary aim of this is to improve reliability and clamp down on the delays, the cancellation, the waste and the inefficiency that we've seen," she said.

Giving the example of LNER, she said that the department has "reduced the number of trains that are cancelled due to staff shortages to basically zero".

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Sir Keir Starmer will be invited to meet EU leaders to discuss European security as Brussels seeks closer ties with the UK, in a significant post-Brexit move.

The British prime minister will be asked to dine with the leaders of the 27 member states at an informal retreat in Belgium on February 3 by António Costa, incoming president of the European Council, two EU officials said.

Nick Thomas-Symonds, the UK minister in charge of negotiations for a post-Brexit “reset” of relations with the EU, met Costa this week in Brussels.

No British premier has attended such a gathering since the country left the bloc in 2020. The invite is a milestone as Starmer attempts to “reset” Britain’s relations with the EU after years of strained ties.

Starmer wants a security pact with Brussels, covering defence, energy and irregular migration, as a key element of his attempt to improve on the post-Brexit framework agreed by former Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson.

[…] Starmer’s invitation to discuss defence with the EU27 is a reflection of the fact that the UK has one of the most advanced military and intelligence capabilities in Europe.

The February meeting also comes as European capitals come to terms with a potential change to the continent’s security framework, with the return of Donald Trump to the White House in January.

Upgrading to 0.19.7, should be a couple hours at most.

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Joint opinion piece by British and French Foreign Secretaries David Lammy and Jean-Noël Barrot:

By launching his illegal and unprovoked full-scale war of aggression in Ukraine 1,000 days ago this week, not only did Vladimir Putin accelerate the largest war on the European continent since the Second World War, he also sought to rewrite the international order.

The annihilation of the global architecture that has been the cornerstone of international peace and security for generations. All to justify his illegal and intolerable aggression against a sovereign European country.

The UK and France will not let him do so. Together with our allies, we will do everything that is necessary to put Ukraine in the best position to achieve a just and lasting peace.

Indeed, what has happened in Ukraine is nothing short of the largest violation of territorial integrity of our time. From the bombing of civilians to the abduction and deportation of children, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has violated international law in countless ways.

The risks are not only to European security, but the world at large. Putin’s aim is to set a new precedent that upends the rules-based international system, whereby countries feel they can invade their neighbours with total impunity.

That brutality risks becoming the new norm and threatening peace everywhere. And as the war in Ukraine is spreading beyond Europe, we see the consequences of this attempted “Putinisation” for the world.

North Korea is leveraging its relationship with Russia to flex its muscles on the battlefield in an attempt to strengthen its hand and further destabilise Asia, starting with its immediate neighbour.

Iran is also toughening its stance by providing Russia with drones and missiles, while refraining from rolling back its nuclear programme and destabilising the entire Middle East via its proxies.

As two founding nations of the UN and permanent members of the Security Council, the UK and France will relentlessly fight this campaign of “Putinisation”.

Learning from history, we believe that international relations should be grounded in justice. Any just and durable peace cannot be achieved through violence nor maintained by force.

This is why we have condemned the barbaric terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas and other terrorist groups on 7 October, 2023, and why we have sanctioned the perpetrators.

This is also why we continue to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, the release of all hostages, the massive scale-up of humanitarian assistance, and the cessation of violent settlers’ activities in the West Bank in the interests of both Israelis and Palestinians.

We know the Palestinian issue will not go away until a two-state solution is implemented, with mutual recognition and security guarantees.

Similarly, we are no doubt that diplomacy, not violence, is the only way to achieve peace and security for Israel and Lebanon. We need an immediate ceasefire and a political solution consistent with the principles of UN Security Council resolution 1701.

We reiterate our full support to UNIFIL and the important work it does every day. Further violence leading to civil casualties and population displacements risks forcing the country into chaos, fuelling even greater instability in the region.

In all crises around the world, the UK and France stand united on the side of humanitarian law. We’ve demonstrated it once again this week by championing a UN Security Council resolution for the protection of civilians in Sudan where the worst crisis in the world is unravelling – an effort shamelessly opposed by Putin’s Russia, who stood alone in casting a veto.
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In the face of major crises and huge challenges, more than a century after the signing of the “Entente Cordiale”, the UK and France stand united in the same spirit.

We are strengthening our bilateral relationship, and working toward enhanced relations between the UK and the European Union. We are offering a credible alternative to the world’s “Putinisation” and fragmentation.

An alternative grounded in technological progress, international law and multilateral action. The world can count on the UK and France to advocate these principles in the years ahead.

According to the estimates provided by the government, in the years ending March 2025, March 2026 and March 2028 there will be an additional 50,000 pensioners in relative poverty after housing costs.

In the years ending March 2027, March 2029 and March 2030 an additional 100,000 pensioners would be in relative poverty after housing costs.

The annual figures are rounded to the nearest 50,000. [Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall] said this meant "small variations in the underlying numbers impacted can lead to much larger changes in the rounded headline numbers".

The cumulative total over the years does not necessarily refer to individual pensioners, who could move in and out of relative poverty over time depending on their personal circumstances.

Currently the government estimates 1.9 million pensioners - around 15% - are in relative poverty.

The new estimates, published on Tuesday, suggest the cuts to the winter fuel payment would increase pensioner poverty by 0.5 percentage points.

A person is considered to be living in relative poverty if they have less than 60% of the median income.

In her letter, Kendall said the work and pensions department had written to 120,000 pensioners to encourage them to claim the pension credit to which they may be entitled.

MPs are to summon Elon Musk to testify about [Twitter's] role in spreading disinformation, in a parliamentary inquiry into the UK riots and the rise of false and harmful AI content, the Guardian has learned.

Senior executives from Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok are also expected to be called for questioning as part of a Commons science and technology select committee social media inquiry.

The first hearings will take place in the new year, amid rising concern that UK online safety laws risk being outpaced by rapidly advancing technology and the politicisation of platforms such as [Twitter].

The MPs will investigate the consequences of generative AI, which was used in widely shared images posted on Facebook and [Twitter] inciting people to join Islamophobic protests after the killing of three schoolgirls in Southport in August. They will also investigate Silicon Valley business models that “encourage the spread of content that can mislead and harm”.
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[Twitter] did not respond when asked if Musk would testify in the UK, although it appears unlikely. The world’s richest man is preparing to take on a senior role in the Trump White House and has been highly critical of the Labour government, including weighing in on changes to inheritance tax on farms by saying on Monday that “Britain is going full Stalin”. During the riots that followed the Southport killings he said: “Civil war is inevitable.”
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[Chi Onwurah, Labour chair of the Commons science and technology select committee social media inquiry,] said the inquiry would attempt to “get to the bottom of the links between social media algorithms, generative AI, and the spread of harmful or false content”.

It will also look at the use of AI to supplement search engines such as Google, which was found recently to be regurgitating false and racist claims about people in African countries having low average IQs. Google said the AI overviews containing the claims had violated its policies and had been removed.