Newspaper headlines: 'Stop the deaths' and Post Office plea for justice
- Published
The Times reports that Rishi Sunak is coming under pressure, external from senior Conservatives to toughen his Rwanda bill, which returns to the Commons tomorrow. The party's Deputy Chairman, Lee Anderson, is said to have threatened to quit because he believes the legislation doesn't go far enough. And the paper says the Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch has told Downing Street privately that she favours further limits on asylum seekers' ability to appeal against deportation. But the Times says Rishi Sunak has opted to keep the bill in its present version.
The i paper reports that six people from Rwanda have been granted asylum, external in the UK since 2022 - despite the British government's insistence that Rwanda is safe. Home Office figures, seen by the paper, do not reveal the reasons other than at least one was because of sexual orientation. The paper points out that more asylum seekers have arrived in Britain from Rwanda than have been sent the other way, because that figure still stands at zero.
"Tories facing 1997-style wipeout" is the headline for the Daily Telegraph, external, as it leads on the results of a YouGov survey of 14,000 voters. The paper says Labour would sweep to power with a 120-seat majority. Eleven cabinet ministers would be ousted and every "red wall" seat won by Boris Johnson from Labour in 2019 would be lost. The poll was commissioned by a group of Conservative donors, and carried out over the new year. The UK's former Brexit negotiator, Lord Frost, writes in the Telegraph that the results of the survey are "stunningly awful" and show there is no future for a Conservative Party that is purely for the rich.
The Financial Times, external reports that in the early 2010s the coalition government sought to prevent public contracts from being given to the Japanese technology firm Fujitsu, as part of a project apparently known internally as "Project Sushi". Whitehall insiders tell the FT that the push was driven by Fujitsu's performance on previous contracts. In the end, the paper says, the drive was abandoned after government lawyers raised concerns. Fujitsu UK tells the paper it would be inappropriate to comment because of the continuing inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal at the Post Office.
Pharmacists are warning that lives are in danger because of an unprecedented shortage of NHS medicines, according to the Guardian, external. The paper has seen figures showing that the number of products affected has doubled in two years. They include treatments for epileptic seizures, schizophrenia, and some cancers. The Guardian cites the lower purchasing power of the pound, after the Brexit referendum, as a possible cause.
The Daily Express says the six people arrested, external in connection with a suspected plot to disrupt the London Stock Exchange were detained after one of its reporters, working undercover, passed information to the police. The paper says it learned of plans to prevent the building from opening for trading, potentially throwing global markets into turmoil.
The Daily Mail leads on claims Elizabeth II was "infuriated", external when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex asserted that she had given her blessing for their daughter to be named Lilibet - her childhood nickname. The claims are made in a new book by the royal commentator Robert Hardman, which the Mail is serialising.
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