£250m for new Royal Marine recruits' accommodation at Lympstone

Military bosses are set to spend £250m on new accommodation for Royal Marine recruits at a Devon base.The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the money would be spent at the Lympstone Commando Training Centre over the next couple of years.Along with the new accommodation, the MoD added there would also be a review into rest and sleep to improve learning and fitness, and drone training would be available for all recruits.First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff General Sir Gwyn Jenkins said the Commando Training Centre would continue to produce the nation's "warfighting Special Ops Force".
The announcement came ahead of the strategic defence review, which will be published on Monday.

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BBC News

37 minutes ago

• BBC News

'No budget' for assisted dying service, health secretary says

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said there is no budget for an assisted dying service, which MPs narrowly backed in a landmark vote on who was one of the most senior opponents of the legislation, posted a lengthy message on his Facebook page explaining why he voted against the other reasons, he said there was already a lack of access to high quality end-of-life care on top of tightened finances within the NHS, which could add to the pressure faced by dying patients. Streeting said he would "make sure that we do a good job with it for the country" if the legislation becomes law, but he worried MPs had made the wrong choice. The government remains neutral on the bill, which cleared the Commons with a majority of 23 votes on Friday and will now be scrutinised by the House of Lords. MPs were given a free vote on in favour of the bill say it will give terminally ill adults the choice on how they want to die and prevent painful deaths, but critics argue it risks people being coerced into seeking an assisted his post, Streeting quoted former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown's position that "there is no effective freedom to choose if the alternative option... is not available", referring to sufficient end-of-life care wrote: "The truth is that creating those conditions will take time and money. "Even with the savings that might come from assisted dying if people take up the service - and it feels uncomfortable talking about savings in this context to be honest - setting up this service will also take time and money that is in short supply. "There isn't a budget for this. Politics is about prioritising. It is a daily series of choices and trade-offs. I fear we've made the wrong one."The MP for Ilford North pledged to work "constructively" on technical aspects of the legislation as it progresses through Parliament and stressed he had enormous respect for the bill's impact assessment on the policy published in May provided a financial analysis of the costs and savings said that in the first six months, savings for the NHS could range from around £919,000 to £ figure included hospital care, primary and community care, hospice, medicines and other care costs that someone choosing an assisted death would not the time the system had been running for ten years, savings could range from £5.84m to £ assessment found there would be costs too. Staffing an assisted dying service could cost in excess of £10m a year within a decade, while training costs in the first six months alone could be over £11m. As peers prepare to examine the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, assisted dying campaigner Dame Esther Rantzen told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Saturday that Lords had a duty to perform but that it should not extend to overturning the will of the Commons."Their job is to scrutinise, to ask questions, but not to oppose," she said."So yes, people who are adamantly opposed to this Bill, and they have a perfect right to oppose it, will try and stop it going through the Lords, but the Lords themselves, their duty is to make sure that law is actually created by the elected chamber, which is the House of Commons who have voted this through."Dame Esther said she was resigned to the fact her own terminal cancer would probably progress to the point she will "buzz off to Zurich" to use the Dignitas clinic before the bill becomes Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, a Paralympian and opponent of the plans, told BBC Breakfast she hoped more safeguards could be introduced in the coming months."We're getting ready for it to come to the Lords and from my personal point of view, about amending it to make it stronger," she said."We've been told it's the strongest bill in the world, but to be honest, it's not a very high bar for other legislation, so I do think there are a lot more safeguards that could be put in."Another opponent, the Conservative peer and disability rights campaigner Lord Shinkwin, said he believed the bill needed "forensic scrutiny". "The margin yesterday was so close that many MPs would appreciate the opportunity to look at this again in respect of safeguards as they relate to those who feel vulnerable, whether that's disabled people or older people," he bill could still run out of parliamentary time if it is held up in the Lords, but the Labour MP who steered it through the Commons as a Private Member's Bill, Kim Leadbeater, said: "I would be upset to think that anybody was playing games with such an important and such an emotional issue". Sign up for our Politics Essential newsletter to read top political analysis, gain insight from across the UK and stay up to speed with the big moments. It'll be delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

Telegraph

an hour ago

• Telegraph

We need better paid and fewer MPs rather than preening power-hungry mayors

It's that most dangerous of political schemes, a legacy moment. Sir Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London since 2016, is steam-rolling through his passion project to pedestrianise a large part of Oxford Street, a mile-long section of that ancient thoroughfare known in Roman times as Via Trinobantina. Once you could travel from Fishguard in Pembrokeshire to central London. Now, for the first time in some 1,500 years, your caravan, donkey or bike must stop at Marble Arch. At which point you can join a massive queue of traffic heading down Park Lane as taxis and buses on new, permanent diversion try to figure out how the hell to get to Tottenham Court Road. Sir Sadiq's renderings, his fantasy drawings doubtless etched at vast expense by one of a dozen architect firms commissioned to consult on this project, show a vast avenue of greenery. There are young trees in enormous plant pots and the old tarmac covered in triangles of different shades of green. And along this glorious, unpolluted thoroughfare walk Khan's happy, devoted people. Needless to say, moving down the street are the diverse multitude; men holding hands, people in wheelchairs and the blind. What is not rendered is the view of the surrounding streets, where it's a technical car park of buses, taxis, juggernauts and cyclists, the fuming hot air of the riders, drivers and passengers able to power a small city district. Yet here is Sir Sadiq's legacy. Not a reduction in knife crime nor an increase in arrests for burglary, but a dreamy, long walkway. Meanwhile, Soho, the area that could be successfully pedestrianised (if you insist on such things) becomes further blocked and clogged. Soho's alleyways and narrow streets, its cafes, restaurants and clubs would make a marvellous, local economy-generating island of wandering, mooching, dining and drinking. But no, it's the one straight road, a key artery of London through which buses and taxis and bicycles can freely flow (normal traffic having been banned during daylight hours and Saturdays since the 1970s) that is kiboshed. The opposition has been vociferous. Tim Lord, the chair of the Soho Society, says nothing came from the Mayor but a shoulder shrug when he raised concerns about 'the impact of moving 16 bus routes into narrow, congested one-way streets in Marylebone and Fitzrovia'. The Labour leader of Westminster city council has said, politely, that the plan 'was not the council's preferred outcome'. Yet Sir Sadiq says he's 'proud'. Indeed, releasing the results of a local consultation, he joked that he had received 'North Korean' levels of support from London, or from those who bothered to respond to his survey, doubtless hustled by the mayor's savvy electioneering team. Because the London Mayor appears to love power, and this is manifested in the mechanism that he has used to steamroll this process through, there is a magic lever in his office, deployed sparingly, (think, 'Break glass in case of emergency'), called the Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC). Originally developed to accelerate housebuilding after the Second World War, if you can argue the need for regeneration, it gives you the power to ignore local decisionmakers and accelerate your plans. Hence it being used, obviously, to implement the HS2 Crossrail intersection at Old Oak Common (where white elephant meets gazelle). Sir Sadiq revels in his power, imagining the high-fives he'll be getting from passersby as he sips his beloved flat white on his traffic-free Oxford Street. And quite why he loves Oxford Street is beyond me for, save the likes of Selfridges, it is actually, when it comes to retail brands, one of the grottiest streets in the capital. Perhaps he has a penchant for candy, the street being littered with those dodgy American-style sweet shops as well as homogenous global retail brands, the ubiquitous vape stores, not to mention the hoards of pickpockets and that new scourge, the electric bike-driven phone thieves. And if one makes the strange choice to shop on Sir Sadiq's Oxford Street of the future, how do you cope with lugging your purchases a mile up the road to the nearest bus stop? Yet Sir Sadiq's power-hungry zeal is not unique to London. We have become a nation in thrall to the powers of over-paid council officials. Reforms to local authorities over the decades have been what Sophie Stowers, of think tank More in Common calls, 'piecemeal [and] incoherent', so much so that most voters wishing to moan about a missing bin collection have no idea whether to moan to a councillor, local mayor, police and crime commissioner, metro mayor or MP. A letter of complaint, doubtless, being passed from one to another while they, eagerly, exercise what powers they have. And, as George Jones, emeritus professor of government at the LSE, has argued, this so-called innovation of George Osborne to introduce regional mayors concentrates power in a single person, which is 'unlikely to represent the diverse complexities of a large urban, metropolitan or county region area better than collective leadership'. There was the preening mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees (2016 to 2024) who paraded his plans for an unaffordable underground mass transit system, a £132 million refit for the Colston Hall music venue, and who flew to Vancouver to deliver a 14-minute Ted Talk on the climate crisis. The people of Bristol saw sense and in 2022 voted to replace the mayoral system with a committee. Or there's the power-mad mayor of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby. He called for the abolition of the city's chief executive, flouted the Covid lockdown by visiting his girlfriend (he publicly apologised later), has been linked to accusations of bullying, intimidation and harassment (he denied knowledge of such behaviour and said he would never condone such an approach) and has faced criticism for plans to demolish a central car park and replace it with a public square. One local described the plan as 'delusional, considering that it rains 178 days a year'.

BreakingNews.ie

an hour ago

• BreakingNews.ie

Attack on Islamic Centre in Belfast abhorrent and despicable

An attack on the Islamic Centre in Belfast was 'abhorrent' and 'absolutely despicable', Justice Minister Naomi Long has said. A viable device was thrown through a window of the centre during evening prayer on Friday. Advertisement A 34-year-old man was arrested and police are investigating whether the incident was a hate crime. The Alliance Party leader said it was 'despicable' that people were afraid to go to their place of worship. Police are currently at the scene of a security alert at University Road in south Belfast. A number of cordons are in place in the vicinity. A 34 year old man has been arrested and is currently in custody. Members of the public are asked to avoid the area at this time. — Police South Belfast (@PSNIBelfastS) June 21, 2025 'I think it was an abhorrent attack on people who were at worship, and I think that for any of us, we would accept that that is just not acceptable,' she told the BBC's Sunday Politics programme. 'This is not who we want to be as society. It's not what we want to be known for around the world. Advertisement 'I think it is despicable that people are afraid to go to their place of worship, afraid to go to live in their own homes or go to their school or go to their workplace because of fear of attack because of the colour of their skin or their religion. 'That just isn't acceptable, and that needs to be condemned unequivocally by everyone in society.' Mrs Long was also asked about policing resources in the wake of riots across Northern Ireland, which have been criticised as 'racist thuggery' by police. After disorder broke out in Ballymena for several nights after an alleged sexual assault of a girl, disturbances spread to other areas of Northern Ireland including Portadown, Larne, Belfast, Carrickfergus, Londonderry and Coleraine. Advertisement The Executive pledged an extra £5 million for the PSNI to respond. Mrs Long said that most of that funding had already been spent as the disorder had been a 'drain' on resources. Ireland Politicians condemn attack on Islamic Centre while... Read More 'They need £7 million to be able to do the first year of recruitment for the PSNI to rebuild. That money could have gone towards that. 'It's hugely frustrating at a time when our justice system is so stretched that we have people not just putting pressure on the resources of the PSNI, but destroying their own communities at a cost to everyone in our society, because that will all have to be repaired and rebuilt.' Advertisement She said £200 million in funding over five years requested by PSNI chief constable Jon Boutcher was a 'potential game changer' which would 'allow us to rebuild police numbers'.