Former minister Jim McMahon has urged the Government to order HMRC to finally update mileage rates to ‘show working people that they have a government on their side’

The self-assessment tax deadline passed last month, and HMRC will be busy checking that taxpayers have submitted accurate and timely tax returns.

That’s fair enough. But it’s time the tax office took its own advice and updated its inaccurate mileage rates, which have been frozen for 15 years and are now firmly out of date. Over that time, the cost of living has soared. Food, energy, rent and mortgages are all up, and so is the cost of running a car. For millions of people who rely on their vehicle for work, these costs are unavoidable.

Since 2010, petrol prices have risen by 15%. Car insurance is up 56%. Road tax is up 39%, while repairs and maintenance are up 40%. But HMRC’s mileage rate has stood still at a direct cost to working people. This does not just affect the self-employed. It also hits employees who are reimbursed for mileage by their employer.

READ MORE: Labour must fix outdated HMRC rate hitting low-paid frontline workers, MP demands

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The very workers keeping our economy going are effectively paying to do their jobs, dragging real wages below the National Living Wage and deeper into the cost-of-living crisis. This is nothing short of a stealth tax on those doing the right thing and playing by the rules, sometimes leaving working people out of pocket by thousands of pounds.

The Government knows this. Health unions have successfully secured fairer reimbursement for NHS staff like community midwives and occupational therapists, currently at 56p per mile, compared with the HMRC rate of 45p. They are rightly continuing to campaign for rates that reflect the real cost of running a car.

For workers outside the NHS, such as home care staff, the situation is even worse. Many earn at or just above the National Living Wage, yet they are reimbursed around a quarter less than NHS staff and around a third less than the true cost of driving.

Research by Unison and the RAC Foundation shows the real cost of driving for work is now closer to 67p a mile. HMRC says taxpayers can calculate their own costs, but nine in ten employers rely on the official rate, meaning millions lose out.

For 14 years, the Conservatives allowed this injustice to continue. Working people are not asking for special treatment, just fairness.

Labour is the party of working people. That is why I’m calling for Government to instruct HMRC to finally refresh the mileage rate and show working people that they have a government on their side.

Majuba, on Station Road, announced on Saturday (February 15) that it had made the decision to close its doors. 

The beach-style bar has been praised online for being a “lively little bar” with “amazing” staff and a “fantastic” atmosphere.

In a post online, the owners said they had “given it everything we had” and will “always be proud of what we built together”.

The statement said: “This is one of the hardest things we’ve had to write. Majuba is now closed. Majuba was never just a bar. It was people. 

“It was laughter across the room, dancing on a Saturday night, quiet chats at the bar, birthdays, live music and that feeling that summer never really left.

“We gave it everything we had. Every detail mattered. Every night mattered. But most of all, every single one of you mattered.

“Thank you for walking through the doors, for supporting us, for believing in the vision and for making it what it was.

“We will always be proud of what we built together. Thank you for the memories.”

The reason behind the bar’s closure remains unknown at this time.

Betting giant William Hill has shut its Swinegate shop and called time on trading in York city centre.

The bookies has been emptied out, leaving behind only its fixtures, and a sign in the front window directs customers to their closest locations, which are in Burton Stone Lane and Acomb’s Front Street.

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It is not known exactly when or why the shop closed, however, when speaking to the Press Association last month, the betting giant confirmed in January that it had closed a number of stores across the UK after November’s budget.

Evoke, the brand behind William Hill, said last year that changes to online gaming duties and a new online sports betting tax would see its duty costs rise by up to £135 million a year from 2027.

The inside of the shop (Image: Alice Kavanagh)

When approached by The Press to confirm Swinegate’s closure, a spokesperson for Evoke said: “In line with our retail optimisation strategy we have made the decision to close our William Hill shop in Swinegate.

“We would like to thank local customers and the community for playing with us, and hope to see them at one of our nearby stores – or online at WilliamHill.com – soon.”

Sir Keir Starmer has insisted he will lead Labour into the next general election as he argued for closer links with EU, saying Britain is “turning our back” on the Brexit years.

The prime minister warned that the split with the EU had left the UK unable to use its influence internationally.

In an interview after the worst week of his tenure in No 10, he added: “We are not reversing Brexit but we are turning our back on the Britain of the Brexit years that we’ve had for the last decade.

“That has seen a Britain that has turned inward, a Britain that has not been able to assert itself and influence others on the world stage or the European stage.”

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He also admitted that appointing Lord Peter Mandelson as US ambassador was a “mistake”, two weeks after the scandal surrounding the Labour grandee first engulfed the government.

Sir Keir has faced calls to resign as the controversy has rocked Downing Street.

But, speaking to the Sun on Sunday at the Munich Security Conference, he came out fighting against suggestions he should quit.

He said: “I won the leadership of the Labour Party when people said I wouldn’t. I changed the Labour Party when people said I couldn’t. I won an election when people said we wouldn’t.

“And now I intend to change the country – whatever other people say.”

Sir Keir also insisted he would “absolutely” lead the Labour party into the next election. He said he would not list his mistakes “in rank order” but appointing Lord Mandelson was one of them.

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Speaking at the conference, Sir Keir had earlier insisted he “ended the week much stronger” than he started it after a period of political turbulence.

He also said the UK should more closely align with the EU economically as well as on defence.

He argued the UK should “move closer to the single market” in certain markets, where it was in the interest of both sides, just months before the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum result which ultimately took the Britain out of the EU.

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Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar had said on Monday that the prime minister should quit in the wake of the scandal around Lord Mandelson’s links to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

But the attempt to oust Sir Keir failed, with members of the cabinet publicly backing the PM in the hours after Mr Sarwar’s statement.

But fresh questions about Sir Keir’s judgment emerged later in the week in a row over the appointment of his former spin doctor Lord Doyle to the House of Lords – after the aide hit the headlines for campaigning for a paedophile councillor.

The departure of the head of the civil service Sir Chris Wormald also prompted criticism of negative briefings in Government, while senior Labour women suggested the string of scandals had exposed a “boys’ club” within Downing Street.

Sir Chris was the third senior figure to quit the Government in the past week, following Sir Keir’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and communications director Tim Allan.

Former pop legend Martin Kemp revealed an emergency that meant he had to be rescued by the emergency services just before a DJ gig in Falkirk

Martin Kemp was involved in an emergency rescue just moments before he was set to entertain a big crowd. The former EastEnders star and 80s pop legend was getting ready for his latest gig when he found himself stranded in a lift.

The 64-year-old star shared his stricken state on an Instagram post, saying he had been stuck for an hour before being rescued by emergency services. He found himself holed up in the small space before his performance in Falkirk.

Thankfully, Martin seemed to see the funny side of it and shared a snap with the fire brigade on his Instagram. They were all seen cheering and giving the thumbs up at the successful evacuation.

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Alongside his post, Martin wrote: “Stuck in a lift for an hour!! Before tonight’s gig at City Falkirk… but I still had fun. Thank you so much Falkirk Fire Brigade for rescuing all of us!!!!”

It comes as Martin continues his UK tour as he plays DJ to some of his favourite tunes. A day earlier, he had entertained crowds in North Shields, near Newcastle.

He is also set to embark on a tour of Ireland with his son Roman in a brand new TV series. The father-and-son duo are ready to hit the roads of the Emerald Isle to explore their heritage.

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It was revealed in December the pair had signed a deal with Channel 4 following their success on Celebrity Gogglebox. And Martin’s TV stock rose further after his appearance on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! this year, alongside the likes of Aitch, Shona McGarty, Jack Osbourne and AngryGinge.

Roman’s TV credentials, meanwhile, are also increasing. Following a successful stint on Capital FM’s Breakfast Show on the radio, he has impressed on The One Show. And now he also fronts a segment on Sky Sports talking about football.

And he also recently won Race Across The World with his sister Harleymoon. The duo embarked on a 33-day, 5,900km (3,600-mile) journey across Central America, armed with a budget of just £950 per person and without mobile phone.

But now, the dad and son will hit the screens as a duo again. “We’re used to seeing Martin and Roman on TV together, whether it’s on adverts or on Celebrity Gogglebox,” a source told The Sun at the end of the year.

“But this will be a real departure for the Kemps to be hitting the road together with their first full, standalone series for Channel 4.

“Particularly as these days Roman is more closely associated with The One Show on the BBC.” The programme, which is said to be called Kemps in Ireland, is being made by Rock Oyster Media, who are the creators behind shows including Taste of Ireland with Dermot O’Leary.

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The Russian state has long been accused of using exotic poisons to murder its opponents – whether the nerve agent Novichok or radioactive plutonium isotopes. Could Alexei Navalny have been killed by the toxin of a poisonous frog?

“I can imagine that these kinds of poisons are interesting [to Russia] because they are quite difficult to detect,” says Dr Eric Franssen, doctor in clinical toxicology and pharmacology at the Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Onze Lieve Vrouwe Gasthuis hospital in the Netherlands.

Dr Franssen said: “Because in hospitals, we will not detect them in a routine toxicology screen. So perhaps this is a way to disguise intoxications.”

The UK and its allies say the toxin was derived from an Ecuadorian dart frog. These are produced naturally to ward off predators.

Sky News understands it is likely the toxin was manufactured in a laboratory rather than actually taken from the frogs. In humans, the effects are deadly.

Dr Franssen added: “We do not know very much of these toxins in humans because you cannot experiment, of course, with this kind of toxins in real life, only in animals.

“But there have been reports that people may die after 10 to 20 minutes of intake of this when you have a certain amount of these toxins.”

“This can be done by ingestion or injection in the bloodstream. I suppose then it has a direct effect on the muscles and the heart.

“And it paralyses the muscles, also your respiratory muscles. And then you become very low in your oxygen in blood. And also by cardiac failure, your brain does not receive any oxygen anymore and this may cause death.”

“Nausea and vomiting are side effects of these kinds of toxins.”

Dr Franssen’s description tallies with photos, published by Navalny’s foundation, of the prison cell where he was taken ill: vomit is clearly visible.

Read more:
Tests show Navalny was poisoned in jail, widow says
Russian journalists accused of working with Navalny jailed

Navalny was a political dissident who challenged Putin. He survived being poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent.

When he returned to Russia in 2021, he was imprisoned and convicted on trumped-up charges.

In December 2023 Navalny was transferred from a prison outside Moscow to a penal colony in Russia’s Far North, in Kharp: the Polar Wolf colony, known for its brutal conditions, capable of holding around 1,000 prisoners.

Despite those conditions, Navalny seemed in good health – and good spirits – in a court appearance on 15 February, 2025, before his death.

Navalny died the next day.

The initial Russian explanation was that he lost consciousness after a walk.

His body was only returned to his family eight days after his death.

And the official state post mortem concluded the official cause of death was high blood pressure brought about by a chronic abnormal heart rhythm.

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Only Russia could poison Navalny – Yvette Cooper

In September last year, Navany’s widow, Yulia Navalniya, made a dramatic revelation. She posted on social media: “In February 2024 we were able to obtain samples of Alexei’s biological material and securely smuggle them abroad. Labs in at least two countries examined these samples independently of each other and these labs in 2 diff countries reached the same conclusion Alexei was killed, more specifically he was poisoned.”

Dr Franssen said this sort of testing was feasible.

He said: “Normally, when people die, you may have autopsies, then you cool the body because you do not want that the toxins degrade in the human body after death [in order to] detect them. So it may be possible to measure toxin levels in tissue.

“That can be the lung, that can be the heart, it can be blood and urine also. But it can also be possible to detect not the native drugs but also the metabolites of these toxins. So these can stay longer in the body.”

That lab work has now been revealed by Britain and its allies.

Russian authorities insist Navalny’s death was natural.

The US military has said it attacked more than 30 Islamic State targets in Syria earlier this month in retaliation for the deaths of two US soldiers and an American civilian interpreter in an IS ambush two months ago.

Weapons storage facilities and other IS infrastructure were targeted in 10 strikes between 3 February and Thursday, US Central Command said, in its campaign to maintain “relentless military pressure” on what remains of the terrorist network.

“Precision munitions [were] delivered by fixed-wing, rotary-wing, and unmanned aircraft [drones],” CENTCOM said in a statement on Saturday.

It follows five strikes on a communication site, part of a critical logistics network and weapons storage facilities between 27 January and 2 February.

The military action is part of Operation Hawkeye Strike, which was launched after Islamic State fighters attacked US and Syrian forces in Palmyra, in southern Syria, on 13 December, in which the three Americans were killed.

Two sergeants, Edgar Brian Torres-Tovar and William Nathaniel Howard, died, along with interpreter Ayad Mansoor Sakat.

More than 50 IS terrorists have been killed or captured and more than 100 IS targets have been hit “during two months of targeted operations,” Central Command said.

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The news comes a day after the US military said it had finished transferring thousands of IS prisoners from Syria to Iraq, where they are expected to stand trial.

Authorities in Baghdad had asked for them to be sent to Iraq, in a move welcomed by the US-led coalition that had fought IS for years.

Pictures were published of IS prisoners in the Al-Karkh Central Prison in Baghdad.

On Thursday, Syria’s defence ministry said the Al-Tanf military base in the east of the country, which was run for years by US troops as part of the fight against IS, was now under its control.

IS declared a caliphate in large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014, imposing a brutal regime of strict Sharia law before it was destroyed by US-led allied forces.

Jade Thirlwall was on the verge of tears as she performed her song about ex-bandmate Jesy Nelson, days after her docuseries.

Jesy, 34, spoke for the first time about the pressures she felt while in Little Mix and the huge rift that has formed between the women since she left.

Her mum, Jan, accused Jade, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Perrie Edwards of ‘not being there’ for Jesy in her moment of need.

While performing on her That’s Showbiz Baby! tour in Pittsburgh, Jade’s voice became shaky as she struggled through the final lines of Natural at Disaster.

She put her hand on her heart as the crowd rallied around her during the song, which is said to be about her former bandmate.

‘It’s hard to love you when you hate yourself/ Can’t be there for you without negatively impacting my mental health,’ she softly sang.

Jade has not explicitly said the song is penned about the Boyz singer, but it discusses the topics of mental health and ‘burnt bridges’.

In November 2020, it was announced that Jesy would be taking a break from the band, then months later, she confirmed she did not plan to return.

She claimed in her docuseries that she ‘felt like no one cared’ despite calling the other three women ‘sisters’.

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This sadly led to Jesy attempting to take her own life after sitting down and telling the band how she was feeling.

‘I just felt like no-one cared… And I remember one of their responses being like “are you done now, is that it?”‘ she claimed in the documentary.

In the years since the split, Jesy has not spoken to her bandmates and even gone so far as to unfollow the trio on social media.

After being embroiled in a blackfishing scandal, she was criticised for appearing in a video with Nicki Minaj, who appeared to call Leigh-Anne a ‘f**king clown’ as Jesy laughed in the background.

As Jesy struggled with her mental health, her former bandmates were left feeling hurt as a lawyer informed them of her exit, which she explained in the docuseries.

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The trio were happy to speak to Jesy about it, but wanted a ‘therapist’ in the room, with Perrie previously acknowledging the fallout felt like a ‘dagger to the heart’.

‘We talk about it a lot, but I think in the moment we did everything we could, so some things just happen,’ Perrie previously told Alison Hammond.

She spoke candidly when admitting she ‘grieved’ the loss of Jesy, adding: ‘It is really sad; we haven’t spoken since she left.’

On Ferne Cotton’s podcast, she shared: ‘When you’ve been in that person’s life for many years and you’ve been through highs and lows, everything, all these experiences. And then poof, they’re gone…I struggled a lot with that.

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‘It’s really sad but sometimes these things happen. It’s a really horrible dynamic but you can’t force someone to be friends with you.’

On The Louis Theroux podcast, Jade shared she is ‘still getting over’ the ‘traumatic experience’.

Since the news of Jesy’s newborn twins suffering from SMA, it’s been reported that all the girls reached out to her.

In the docuseries, she shared that ‘it needs to be put to bed now’ and that with time away, they’ve been able to heal.

‘Things happen in life. It doesn’t always go how you think it’s going to,’ she said on This Morning. ‘But I think, three of us are mums now, we’ve all had time to heal, it’s been nearly six years, and it’s just one of those things that takes time.’

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Bangladesh’s newly-elected government will call on the UK to extradite Labour MP Tulip Siddiq over alleged corruption, according to a senior aide to prime minister-in-waiting Tarique Rahman.

The former minister and Hampstead and Highgate MP was tried in absentia and sentenced to up to four years in prison by a Bangladeshi court, although the UK government has said it does not recognise the judgement.

Ms Siddiq was convicted along with her aunt, the ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, and other members of their family over a deal to acquire a plot of land in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. She denied any wrongdoing and said she was never told the details of the charges against her, calling it a “trial by media”.

But Humayun Kabir, the man tipped to be chosen by Mr Rahman as Bangladesh’s next foreign minister, said the new BNP government elected this week would not give up trying to pursue justice for the corruption case against Ms Siddiq or Ms Hasina, who has separately been sentenced to death for committing crimes against humanity. Ms Hasina fled into exile in India after her government was toppled in 2024.

“They’re both convicted criminals now,” Mr Kabir told The Independent. “So the judicial process is transparently pursuing them.”

The UK has no extradition treaty with Bangladesh, making it highly unlikely that Ms Siddiq would be sent to Bangladesh to serve any sentence. And the Labour Party has strongly criticised the process under which Ms Siddiq was found guilty, saying it “cannot recognise this judgment”.

“Tulip Siddiq has not had access to a fair legal process in this case and has never been informed of the details of the charges against her,” the party said in a statement earlier this month when an additional corruption conviction was added to one handed down late last year.

“This is despite repeated requests made to the Bangladeshi authorities through her legal team. Anyone facing any charge should always be afforded the right to make legal representations when allegations are made against them. Given that has not happened in this case, we cannot recognise this judgment.”

Nonetheless, the case is likely to have major implications for relations between the UK and Bangladesh going fowards if Mr Kabir does become foreign minister. Mr Rahman is expected to take the oath as prime minister of Bangladesh on 17 February.

“We will not interfere. We will let the judicial process decide their fate,” Mr Kabir, who is currently foreign affairs adviser to Mr Rahman, said when asked whether the new government would drop the cases against Ms Siddiq and Ms Hasina.

He called Ms Siddiq an “embarrassment” for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government, adding that the UK government “needs to be clear” on its stance about criminals. “So we expect the UK government will sternly deal with all those Awami League (Ms Hasina’s party) criminals and terrorists on UK soil who try to terrorise and destabilise Bangladesh using money laundering activities. And we will provide a list to the British government.”

“We want them back,” he added. “And in terms of extradition, we would want the UK to track these criminals. If we are going to be a strong partner with the UK on dealing with illegal migration, why can’t the UK be any different in dealing with criminals that have fled to the UK territory from Bangladesh?”

Mr Kabir said the UK National Crime Agency freezing over £170m in assets, including nearly 300 properties, linked to former Bangladeshi minister Saifuzzaman Chowdhury, was a welcome move. “But more needs to be done,” he said.

The Independent has reached out to Ms Siddiq for comment. She has previously called the trial “flawed and farcical from the beginning to the end”.

“The outcome of this kangaroo court is as predictable as it is unjustified. I hope this so-called ‘verdict’ will be treated with the contempt it deserves. My focus has always been my constituents in Hampstead and Highgate and I refuse to be distracted by the dirty politics of Bangladesh,” she said.