Brexit

Express
Dumping EU rules will stimulate growth and make Britain’s economy leaner and more efficient, the Government hopes.
Britain is targeting “outdated and burdensome” EU red tape, with today’s Brexit Freedoms Bill aimed at repealing, amending or replacing all rules previously imposed by Brussels. The Government will submit legislation to end the special legal status of all retained EU laws by the end of next year. It hopes the move will give the UK the chance to develop new laws to fit the needs of the country.
Business Secretary Jacob Rees Mogg said: “Now that the UK has regained its independence, we have a fantastic opportunity to do away with outdated and burdensome EU laws, and to bring forward our own regulations that are tailor-made to our country’s needs.
“The Brexit Freedoms Bill will remove needless bureaucracy that prevents businesses from investing and innovating in the UK, cementing our position as a world class place to start and grow a business.”

Mini budget

Mail
The Chancellor will pledge ‘a new era’ of growth today as he unveils a mini-budget with the biggest tax giveaway in 30 years to spark a growth surge.
Government sources suggested there might be a further ‘rabbit out of the hat’ announcement – possibly a 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax next year as rumours abound about rolling out daylight savings all year-round.
Vowing to break a ‘cycle of stagnation’ that has lumbered Britain with a massive tax burden, Kwasi Kwarteng will outline action to support families and boost business.
His ‘growth plan’ has 30 measures to drive down taxation, tackle high energy bills and curb inflation.
It includes cutting stamp duty, reversing the national insurance rise and scrapping a planned increase in corporation tax.
Meanwhile energy analyst and military strategist Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of the Economic Affairs, with links to the treasury, also hinted on Twitter on Thursday about other new announcements.
He wrote: ‘[I’m] hearing rumours that there will be a big announcement about rolling out British Summertime all year round tomorrow. With the cost of energy, sources tell me that it’s a “done deal”.
Every year in the UK, the clocks go forward by one hour at 2am on the last Sunday in March, and back one hour at 2am on the last Sunday in October – this year it will be October 30.

Express
Kwasi Kwarteng will herald “a new era for Britain” with an emergency budget designed to end the cycle of stagnation.
The Chancellor is launching an economic blitz that promises to drive down inflation and push up growth. He will unleash tax cuts to fuel business investment and help hard-pressed workers keep more of their own cash.
Mr Kwarteng will vow to be “bold and unashamed” in pursuing growth even if it means taking difficult decisions.
He will say: “Growth is not as high as it needs to be, which has made it harder to pay for public services, requiring taxes to rise.
“This cycle of stagnation has led to the tax burden being forecast to reach the highest levels since the late 1940s. We are determined to break that cycle. We need a new approach for a new era focused on growth.

Sun
CHANCELLOR Kwasi Kwarteng will today light a bonfire of taxes to boost the economy and make families better off within six weeks.
Promising a “new era” for Britain, he will announce 38 low-tax zones to get business booming.
He will also speed up 100 major infrastructure projects as he and PM Liz Truss spearhead the largest package of tax cuts since Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s to achieve their mission of 2.5 per cent growth.
Ahead of today’s mini-Budget, Mr Kwarteng confirmed last April’s 1.25 percentage point rise in National Insurance will be axed from November 6.
It will save 28 million people an average of £135 this year — and £330 next year.
The planned rise in Corporation Tax from 19 to 25 per cent will also be scrapped. Stamp duty is set to be cut to help home buyers.

ITV News
Kwasi Kwarteng will pledge to “turn the vicious cycle of stagnation into a virtuous cycle of growth” as he sets out the new government’s approach to the UK economy.
The chancellor will announce tens of billions of pounds both of increased spending and of tax cuts in his mini-budget, officially known as a “fiscal event”, at around 9.30am on Friday.
The statement is expected to include details of how the government will fund the energy price cap for households and businesses, and put into practice many of Prime Minister Liz Truss’s tax-slashing promises.
The government is dubbing it a “growth plan” of some 30 measures, which comes at a time when the UK faces a cost-of-living crisis, recession, soaring inflation and climbing interest rates.

Evening Standard
Kwasi Kwarteng will take to the despatch box on Friday morning to unveil a mini-budget expected to include billions of pounds of tax cuts.
The Chancellor will announce sweeping moves intended to rev up the economy in the “fiscal event” at around 9.30am.
The Government is dubbing it a “growth plan” at a time when the UK faces a cost-of-living crisis, recession, soaring inflation and climbing interest rates.
Mr Kwarteng is expected to tell the House of Commons: “Growth is not as high as it needs to be, which has made it harder to pay for public services, requiring taxes to rise.
“This cycle of stagnation has led to the tax burden being forecast to reach the highest levels since the late 1940s.

Independent
The chancellor is set to announce tens of billions of pounds’ worth of extra spending and tax cuts today in a mini-budget, officially known as a “fiscal event”.
Kwasi Kwarteng will pledge to “turn the vicious cycle of stagnation into a virtuous cycle of growth” as he sets out the new government’s approach to the economy.
His statement is expected to set out how the government will fund the energy price cap for households and businesses as well as details of many of Liz Truss’s tax-slashing promises.
The government is dubbing it a “growth plan” as the UK faces a cost-of-living crisis, recession, soaring inflation and climbing interest rates.
Mr Kwarteng announced yesterday he was cancelling Rishi Sunak’s 1.25 percentage-point rise in National Insurance from 6 November – but Treasury figures revealed the change would benefit higher earners vastly more than the poorest.

Telegraph
Kwasi Kwarteng has issued a warning to the Governor of the Bank of England, as he vows in Friday’s mini-Budget to break the “cycle of stagnation”.
The Chancellor told Andrew Bailey that claims that near double-digit inflation was mainly driven by the war in Ukraine were less credible now that the Government had taken action to hold down energy bills, a swipe at the Bank’s record on controlling inflation.
In a letter to Mr Bailey that marked a change in tone compared with Rishi Sunak, Mr Kwarteng said: “Current high inflation is making it hard for households to pay their energy bills and meet their other living costs, whilst placing further costs on businesses and reducing the certainty they need to grow.
“Inflationary pressures are becoming more domestically driven”.

Illegal migrants

Mail
The cost of housing Channel migrants and other asylum seekers in hotels has rocketed to £1.3billion a year, according to an analysis.
Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for tougher border controls, said the accommodation was costing almost £4,300 per head each month – equivalent to one and a half times the average NHS nurse’s monthly wage.
The £1.3billion figure was calculated from official figures released in February which showed 25,000 migrants were in hotels on full board.
However, the true cost to the taxpayer is now likely to be far higher because more than 28,000 additional migrants have since arrived in the UK by small boat from northern France.
The figure is more than £1billion above a £70million-a-year forecast issued by the Home Office 18 months ago, the report said.
Hotels are being used as a stop-gap for migrants due to a shortage of other accommodation such as social or privately rented housing.

Times
The number of migrants who have crossed the Channel in small boats has reached 30,000 in a single year for the first time.
Figures published by the Ministry of Defence today showed that 667 migrants crossed the Channel yesterday in 15 boats. The French authorities only prevented 45 crossings, rescuing a couple of boats off Calais overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday after they got into difficulty.
It brought the total for the year to 30,515 migrants crossing in 775 boats — higher than last year’s record-breaking 28,526.
Wednesday’s crossings took the total for September to 5,475 people in 131 boats, which is the third-highest monthly figure on record. With eight days remaining, this month could break last month’s record-breaking 8,482.

Social care

Times
Social care has been handed a £500 million “downpayment” on Liz Truss’s plans to shift money from the NHS, but the health service has been told that the current budgets will not be cut.
Thérèse Coffey, the health secretary, said the money would get people out of hospital quicker and promised a “national recruitment campaign” to tempt workers into care homes.
Yet there was no pay rise for social care staff, despite a request by her predecessor, Steve Barclay. Truss has promised to prioritise social care to ease pressure on hospitals and suggested during the Conservative leadership campaign that she would take billions of pounds from the NHS to pay for it.

House of Lords

Mail
Labour is considering abolishing the House of Lords if it wins the next election, a leaked report has revealed.
A constitutional review led by former prime minister Gordon Brown has recommended replacing the Upper House with a new assembly of regions and nations, it was reported last night.
Mr Brown was asked to undertake the review – which has been seen by MPs and shadow cabinet members – by Sir Keir Starmer in September 2021.
The Labour leader promised at the time it would be ‘the boldest project Labour has embarked on for a generation’. Under the plans, the House of Lords’ economic powers would be devolved and new independent councils of the nations would be created, The Guardian reported.
Mr Brown has also suggested giving new tax powers – potentially including stamp duty – to some devolved governments, allowing mayors to control funding on education, transport and research, and letting local people promote bills in Parliament via elected bodies.

Ukraine war

Star
Vladimir Putin is secretly planning to mobilise one million Russian conscripts, after he and his defence minister Sergei Shoigu yesterday announced 300,000 would be called up.
The reason for the secrecy is that the Kremlin chief is scared to reveal the truth to Russians amid fears there would be an even greater exodus from refuseniks, typically Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate.
A secret seventh article in his “partial mobilisation” presidential decree allows him to call up a total of one million, a source told independent investigative media outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe.
Videos circulating the world shows hordes of men being rounded up for enlistment today (September 22) as Putin primes an army to further decimate Ukraine.

Evening Standard
Four areas of Ukraine controlled by Russian separatists have begun voting in so-called “referendums” to join Russia.
The ballots, announced on Tuesday by Russia-installed leaders in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces, are widely seen as a precursor to the illegal annexation of about 15 percent of Ukraine’s territory.
The votes are to be held from Friday to Tuesday. They come after Ukraine launched a successful counteroffensive this month which recaptured large swathes of territory from Russia.
Russia, which announced a partial mobilisation of its army reservists this week, claims the referendums are an opportunity for people in the region to express their view.

Cancer

Mail
A genetically-engineered herpes virus is the new hope to beat cancer after scientists found tumours in terminally ill patients were eradicated or shrunk using the groundbreaking new therapy.
An early trial at the Institute for Cancer Research (ICR) in London revealed that a modified version of the herpes simplex virus showed signs of effectiveness in a quarter of patients with end-of-life cancer.
The infection – which also causes mouth and sexually transmitted sores – works on cancer by producing molecules to spark an immune system response and infecting and destroying the cancer.
It was tested on 39 patients with cancers including people suffering from skin, oesophageal and head and neck tumours.
A patient from West London has hailed it as a ‘true miracle’ after he was able to go back to work as a builder.
Krzysztof Wojkowski, 39, was diagnosed with Mucoepidermoid carcinoma, a type of salivary gland cancer, in May 2017 and after multiple surgeries, he was told that there were no treatment options left.
‘I had injections every two weeks for five weeks which completely eradicated my cancer,’ he said.  ‘I’ve been cancer free for two years now, it’s a true miracle, there is no other word to describe it.

BBC News
A new type of cancer therapy that uses a common virus to infect and destroy harmful cells is showing big promise in early human trials, say UK scientists.
One patient’s cancer vanished, while others saw their tumours shrink.
The drug is a weakened form of the cold sore virus – herpes simplex – that has been modified to kill tumours.
Larger and longer studies will be needed, but experts say the injection might ultimately offer a lifeline to more people with advanced cancers.
Krzysztof Wojkowski, a 39-year-old builder from west London, is one of the patients who took part in the ongoing phase one safety trial, run by the Institute of Cancer Research at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
He was diagnosed in 2017 with cancer of the salivary glands, near the mouth. Despite surgery and other treatments at the time, his cancer continued to grow.

Covid

Telegraph
Hospital admissions with Covid in England have jumped 17 per cent in a week and are rising significantly for the first time since July amid fears of a new wave.
The latest NHS statistics show that 718 people were admitted to English hospitals on Sep 19 – a large increase compared to the previous week, when daily admissions did not rise above 586 and fell as low as 476.
It is the first time there has been a significant rise in admissions since numbers began to fall at the beginning of July.
The Covid-19 Actuaries Response Group calculated that the seven-day average has risen by 17 per cent and said it was clear that the R-number – the average number of people an infected individual can expect to pass the virus on to – was now above one.
Dr Kit Yates, a member of Independent Sage, warned: “All the early indicators are pointing towards the beginning of another wave.”
Experts said the increase was likely to be due to a back to school effect, as well as more workers returning from the summer holidays. Cooler weather means more people are meeting indoors, while many have not had a vaccination for nine months, meaning immunity is waning.

Independent
While it may be widely known that common symptoms of Covid include fatigue, a sore throat, and headaches, there is another widespread symptom being cited among sufferers.
According to data gathered by the ZOE Health Study app, diarrhoea is a common symptom of Covid for vaccinated Britons.
Data shows that there was a rise in people reporting this symptom in January 2022, and that some of this was related to the Omicron variant of Covid-19.
However, the ZOE team pointed out that there seemed to be a “wave of other non-Covid tummy bugs going around too”.
The team said that diarrhoea can be an early symptom of the virus, starting on the first day of infection and getting worse throughout the week.
“It usually lasts for an average of two to three days, but can last up to seven days in adults,” the ZOE team said.

999 workers

Morning Star
THE “goodwill of workers at the BT Group has run dry,” their union warned yesterday as it announced 999 emergency workers are set to join the latest wave of strikes at the privatised firm.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) confirmed that more than 500 emergency call operators will join 30,000 Openreach engineers and 10,000 BT call centre employees when they down tools on October 6, 10, 20 and 24.
An agreement between the union and BT had seen the 999 workers excluded from the first four 24-hour strikes held in July and August, which followed bosses imposing a below-inflation flat rate of £1,500 pay boost without consultation in April.
But after “widespread outrage at the company’s refusal to negotiate with union representatives,” these staff will now be striking alongside their colleagues at the profitable firm, the CWU said.

Statue

Independent
MPs in the House of Commons have expressed their support for Queen Elizabeth II to be honoured with a statue on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth.
Former minister and Tory MP Sir John Hayes’s idea to commemorate the Queen’s 70-year reign with a statue was met with choruses of “hear, hear” at the Commons on Thursday.
Sir John said the Queen, who died on 8 September at Balmoral, Scotland, at the age of 96, deserved a “fitting national memorial”.
“Since the death of Queen Elizabeth II we have witnessed an extraordinary nationwide, indeed kingdom-wide, response – a moving mix of sorrow at our loss and celebration of a life of remarkable service,” the Tory politician said.
“So that mood is marked forever and remembrance can last for generations to come, a fitting national memorial needs to be established.
“Will the Leader of the House, therefore, agree with me that a statement is brought to this House on what form that memorial might take?” Sir John asked.
“For me, a statue on the final plinth on Trafalgar Square would be ideal,” he added.