BBCTerry Wiggins, a chef who leads the catering team at Westminster's Portcullis House, is retiring this month after 50 years. He reckons he has served 13 prime ministers in that time and is still dreaming up new recipes.“Can I have more pork please?”Terry bellows in the direction of the kitchen. Under the heat lamps of the serving counter his team of chefs are busy carving a chunk of crispy pork
Implementing a new law to ensure greater transparency over contaminated land has been adopted as Green Party policy.The law is named after Zane Gbangbola, a seven-year-old boy whose parents say was killed by gas from landfill when the River Thames flooded in Surrey in 2014.Zane's Law calls for measures including that councils keep public registers of contaminated sites.A motion moved by Green Party peer, Baroness Natalie Bennett, was backed at
BBCNew pet? Tick - the Starmers have a new kitten. Switching the No 10 décor? Done - the PM had a portrait of Margaret Thatcher taken down. Cancelling the family holiday? That too, after riots spread in August. Kodak moments with other world leaders? The PM’s been to the White House and hosted a fancy international summit at a palace.In two months Sir Keir Starmer has already completed numerous rites
The Green Party of England and Wales has suspended its health spokesperson on the eve its largest-ever conference for calling reports of rising LGBT+ hate crimes "mischievous".At a general election hustings in June, Pallavi Devulapalli said she had "yet to meet anyone" who denied a person’s right to "dress" and "be addressed as they please".Ms Devulapalli told the BBC "there is no trans-hate in society in general".According to government data,
Estonian governmentThe Estonian government says its Tartu prison is almost emptyEstonia’s Justice Minister Liisa Pakosta has told the BBC her country is considering whether to house foreign prisoners in one of its jails.She said she discussed prisons with UK Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood at an AI summit in Vilnius on Thursday.But she said there were no “agreements or anything like that” with the Labour government.The UK is dealing with an
The prison population in England and Wales has reached a record high, just days before the government's temporary early release scheme comes into force. According to figures released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on Friday, the number of inmates has risen by 1,159 since 2 August, the week when the UK riots began, and now stands at 88,521, the highest level on record.Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the BBC
Labour is "getting it wrong" in "so many areas" and the Greens will "hold the new government to account", the party's co-leader Adrian Ramsay has told its conference in Manchester.In his first such speech since the Greens' major advance in July's general election, when it went from a single MP to four MPs, he said the party would challenge Labour where it was "off track" and "should be doing more"
The UK will send hundreds more short-range missiles to Ukraine, it was announced ahead of a summit where Volodymyr Zelensky asked for authorisation to strike targets deep inside Russia with Western-supplied weapons.The Ukrainian president made another impassioned plea for further military support during the opening stages of the summit at the Ramstein air base in Germany on Friday.He said the eastern region of Donetsk, where Kyiv's forces are facing Russian
Getty ImagesThe political wing of the trade union movement has been elected to power for the first time in 14 years.So many delegates at next week’s Trade Union Congress (TUC) in Brighton will blend celebration with anticipation.But the Labour Party – set up by trade unions more than a century ago – now claims to be both the party of business and of the workers.This has led to suspicion from
Getty ImagesLast year then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman visited accommodation being built to house migrants in KigaliGermany could make use of facilities funded by the UK to process some asylum seekers in Rwanda, the country's migration agreements commissioner has suggested. Joachim Stamp, from the Free Democratic Party, which is a junior partner in the governing coalition, suggested accommodation originally intended for people deported from the UK could be utilised by Germany.
