Foreign secretary defends children as young as 13 needing digital ID
The foreign secretary has defended children as young as 13 needing digital ID, reports the PA news agency.
Asked by LBC whether she supported the Department for Science Innovation and Technology’s consultation on digital ID for young children, Yvette Cooper said:
Everybody has forms of digital ID, don’t they, now. I mean, we all have different ways of having to prove who we are.
She added:
Lots of 13-year-olds already do [have a form of digital ID], and what the department is going to be consulting on is exactly how that should be taken forward.
I do think that this is the right way forward, to have this standardised process now, and it’s something that we had been already setting out for people who come to work from abroad.
Last month, the prime minister announced plans for a digital ID system, which will become mandatory as a means of proving the right to work in the UK.
In other news, the leader of Plaid Cymru has said the party would bring “new energy” to the Senedd after 26 years of Welsh Labour in power, ahead of the party’s annual conference. The party conference will be held in Swansea until Saturday.
Leader of the Plaid Cymru party, Rhun ap Iorwerth said his party would bring ‘new energy’ to the Senedd after 26 years of Welsh Labour in power. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA
Rhun ap Iorwerth told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
Plaid Cymru is a party that now is putting forward that radical idea on health, on education, on creating better and better-paid jobs, on tackling poverty, that Labour’s failed to deal with.
We’ve had one party, as it happens, in power over 26 years and I think they’ve run out of steam, I think they’ve run out of ideas, and having a chance to put a Plaid Cymru government in place, new leadership for our country after 26 years of standing still frankly, we can put a new energy into getting to grips with health, getting to grips with education and the economy.
I’ll bring you key updates from the party conference today as they come in as well as other developments in UK politics on stories such as:
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Senior Scottish National party strategists believe a majority at next year’s Holyrood elections is “within reach” despite failing public trust in Scotland’s government as they focus in on the “battleground cohort” of independence supporters who have drifted away from the SNP. Before the party’s annual conference in Aberdeen this weekend, one senior source said the path to a majority – by winning 65 seats or more – was “more straightforward now” than it had been for a long time because of the Tory collapse and Labour’s unpopularity.
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Bridget Phillipson is pushing the prime minister and chancellor to scrap the two-child benefit cap entirely in next month’s budget, with the education secretary telling the Guardian the evidence is clear that it needs to be removed. Phillipson, who is finalising a report to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves on child poverty, said abolishing the cap was the most cost effective way to make lives better for young disadvantaged people.
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Keir Starmer has said the Gaza ceasefire deal “would not have happened without President Trump’s leadership”, but stopped short of endorsing the US president for a Nobel peace prize. Speaking on the final day of his trade visit to India, Starmer said the agreement “must now be implemented in full, without delay, and accompanied by the immediate lifting of all restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid to Gaza”.
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The leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth, has said next year’s Welsh parliament elections will be a two-horse race between his party and Reform UK. Ap Iorwerth said voters could choose to back Plaid’s vision of a progressive Wales or face the division upon which Reform thrives.
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Nigel Farage has claimed teachers would go on strike within weeks of a Reform UK election win, and accused them of “poisoning our kids” by telling them that black children are victims and white children oppressors. The Reform UK leader set out his view on British schools in an event for a private US Christian college in Michigan, claiming the “Marxist left” was “now in control of our education system”.
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Nigel Farage has described a former senior figure in his party who has been convicted of taking pro-Russian bribes as a “bad apple”, reports the PA news agency.
Nathan Gill, who led Reform UK in Wales in 2021, admitted taking bribes to make statements in favour of Vladimir Putin’s Russia while he was a member of the European parliament.
His activities were said to include making pro-Russian statements about events in Ukraine in the European parliament and in opinion pieces to news outlets.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage (second left) campaigning in Caerphilly, south Wales, with his party’s candidate, Llyr Powell (left), for the upcoming Caerphilly Senedd byelection. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
Speaking at a campaign visit in Caerphilly on Friday, Farage said he was “shocked” by Gill’s admissions. He said:
Any political party can find in their midst all sorts of terrible people.
Gill is particularly shocking because I knew him as a devout Christian, very clean-living, honest person. So I’m deeply shocked. But you know, that is a different time.
I’m the only one [in Reform] that really knew him, going back a long way.
Gill, 52, pleaded guilty last month to eight counts of bribery between 6 December 2018 and 18 July 2019.
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Updated at 15.15 CEST
Alba party loses sole MSP as Ash Regan quits to sit as independent
Libby Brooks
Ash Regan, the only MSP at Holyrood representing the late Alex Salmond’s Alba party, has quit to sit as an independent.
After Alex Salmond died suddenly last year, Regan ran to replace him but was beaten by former MP Kenny MacAskill. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Alba was launched by former first minister Salmond in 2021 as a direct rival to the SNP after his catastrophic rift with the Scottish government and then first minister Nicola Sturgeon over their handling of sexual harassment allegations made against him.
After Salmond died suddenly last year, Regan ran to replace him but was beaten by former MP Kenny MacAskill. Regan said in her resignation letter that she believed the party “had chosen a different path” and would now focus on her members’ bill to criminalise those who buy sex.
The news comes as SNP members travel to Aberdeen for the start of their annual party conference tomorrow. Alba has struggled to make any impact electorally as an alternative pro-independence party with the SNP still leading the poll
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Updated at 15.18 CEST
The Scottish government will have to make its land reform bill more radical to ensure support from the Greens, the party’s co-leader has said, according to the PA news agency.
The land reform (Scotland) bill will go before MSPs for a final vote later this month, after what is expected to be multiple marathon sessions to consider more than 400 amendments.
The legislation would give ministers the power to break up large estates being offered for sale if certain conditions are met, as well as aiming to make community buyouts easier. But the Greens have criticised the bill for not going far enough in a country where just 421 people own 50% of private rural land.
MSPs Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay were receently elected as the new co-leaders of the Scottish Greens. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
Speaking to the PA news agency on Friday, the party’s co-leader Ross Greer said the bill would need to see “substantial changes” if the Greens were to support it. He said:
We put forward dozens of proposals at the previous stage of the land reform bill in parliament and the Scottish government just knocked them back one after the other.
The message that we’re trying to get across to government ministers now is: if you expect the Greens’ support for this bill, if you want this bill to pass, then it actually needs to deliver land reform.
What they’re proposing at the moment is a bill whose title is the land reform (Scotland) bill, but that will not break up any big estates, it will not take more land away from these billionaires, these tax avoiders and aristocrats, and give it to the people of Scotland.
He added:
What we need is a land reform bill that actually takes the land of this country and puts it back in the hands of the people who live here.
It is appalling that in a country of more than five million people, there are fewer than 500 people and companies that own a majority of our private land.
The Scottish government has been contacted by the PA news agency for comment.
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In the latest from the Guardian’s Boris Files investigative series, leaked files offer a glimpse of the ex-prime minister’s relationship with Christopher Harborne.
You can read the exclusive report here:
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Lib Dems call digital ID for children as young as 13 ‘sinister’ and a ‘step towards state overreach’
Responding to reports that the government is considering rolling out mandatory digital ID children as young as 13, Victoria Collins, Liberal Democrat science, innovation and technology spokesperson:
This is proof that the Liberal Democrats were absolutely right to warn about mission creep.
The government is already plotting to drag teenagers into a mandatory digital ID scheme before it’s even off the ground. It’s frankly sinister, unnecessary, and a clear step towards state overreach.
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Updated at 14.06 CEST
The UK government has maintained its stance on Palestine Action after a former British diplomat served a petition challenging the ban on the group in Scotland.
A Home Office spokesperson said in response to the challenge:
Palestine Action has conducted an escalating campaign involving not just sustained criminal damage, including to Britain’s national security infrastructure, but also intimidation and, more recently, alleged violence and serious injuries to individuals.
That kind of activity puts the safety and security of the public at risk.
Violence and serious criminal damage has no place in lawful protests.
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Updated at 15.19 CEST
Haroon Siddique is the Guardian’s legal affairs correspondent.
A former British diplomat has served a petition challenging the ban on Palestine Action in Scotland.
The case, brought by Craig Murray, is separate to the judicial review of the proscription decision being brought at the high court in London and could lead to a situation whereby the ban is ruled unlawful in Scotland but not in England and Wales.
Defend Our Juries, which has been organising protests in support of Palestine Action, the first direct action protest group to be proscribed under the Terrorism Act, said such an outcome would herald a “constitutional crisis”.
Murray, who was the British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, served notice on the Scottish solicitor general, Ruth Charteris KC, on Friday. The next stage will be a hearing to decide whether the case can proceed to trial.
He is arguing that the proscription order contravenes the rights to freedom of speech and assembly under the European convention of human rights and that Palestine Action should have been consulted before it was imposed.
You can read the full piece from Haroon Siddique here: Former British diplomat challenges Palestine Action ban in Scotland
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Damien Gayle is an environment correspondent for the Guardian.
He never seems to tire of deriding “net stupid zero”, but Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, has a 15-year business record of support for sustainability and green energy initiatives.
The Reform party has made opposition to green energy and net zero part of its policy platform. Its founder, Nigel Farage, has called net zero policies a “lunacy”; the party has called to lift the ban on fracking for fossil gas; and one of the first Reform-led councils, Kent, rescinded last month its declaration of a climate emergency.
However, companies led by Tice since 2011 boasted of their commitments to saving energy, cutting CO2 emissions and environmental responsibility. One told investors it had introduced a “green charter” to “mitigate our impact on climate change” and later hired a “full-time sustainability manager” as part of “its focus on energy efficiency and sustainability”.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice speak to the media outside the Bank of England, after meeting with Governor of the Bank of England (BoE) Andrew Bailey, in London, Britain, on 25 September 2025. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/EPA
Another said it was “keen to play its part in reducing emissions for cleaner air” and said it had saved “hundreds of tonnes of CO2” by installing solar cells on the rooftops of its properties.
A glance at Tice’s account on X reveals contempt for warnings of climate breakdown and efforts to mitigate it. Last year he said: “We are not in climate emergency; nor is there a climate crisis.” In May he stated: “Solar farms are wrong at every level” and insisted they would “destroy food security, destroy jobs [and] destroy property values”.
You can read the full piece from Damien Gayle here: Richard Tice has 15-year record of supporting ‘net stupid zero’ initiatives
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Updated at 13.07 CEST
Paul Brown
The latest in the Weatherwatch column asks: “With most MPs ignorant of the urgency, how can the UK ever reach net zero?” Paul Brown takes a look, using a new study by the University of East Anglia:
The people you hope would be best informed about the imminent threat of climate breakdown would be members of parliament. After all, droughts and storms affecting their constituents have been a recurring news item. The need to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 requires an informed debate among parties.
The key question on which the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, in 2022, reached hard-won scientific consensus was when CO2 emissions need to peak for a realistic chance of keeping global temperature increases below 1.5C, the target set by the 2015 Paris agreement as too dangerous to exceed. The answer, given great prominence in the report and the media coverage of it, was this year, 2025.
Over to a representative sample of UK MPs (admittedly taken before the last general election), who were asked which year emissions had to peak to avoid exceeding 1.5C above preindustrial levels. Offered five-year intervals up to 2050, only 15 of the 100 surveyed answered correctly, while 30% said 2040 or later. Labour MPs were more likely to know the correct answer than Conservatives.
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Updated at 12.58 CEST
In the latest episode of Politics Weekly UK, Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey speak to the education secretary and Labour deputy leadership candidate Bridget Phillipson about the plan for a ceasefire in Gaza, as well as why she is pushing the prime minister and chancellor to get rid of the two-child limit on benefits.
Plus, she explains why she believes she is the best candidate to become the next deputy leader of the Labour party. And, we hear her thoughts on Keir Starmer’s leadership and how Labour should take on Nigel Farage and the rise of Reform. You can listen to the interview here:
ShareRichard Adams
Arif Ahmed, England’s higher education free speech regulator, says universities must distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel’s government while protecting Jewish students from harassment on campus, in an interview about student protests.
Ahmed, the Office for Students’ (OfS) director for freedom of speech, said the regulator was “deeply concerned” about antisemitism on campus. In an interview on the BBC’s Today programme, Ahmed said the OfS was “prepared to act” against any university that failed to shield Jewish students as part of its duty to promote free speech.
Ahmed said:
Freedom of speech does protect lawful ideas, including political ideas. For instance, criticisms of the government of Israel, just as much as support for it, if lawfully done, are protected.
But there’s a difference between that and how and when you express those things. Expressing those ideas in a way that’s intimidating, outside a synagogue for instance, wouldn’t be protected. Expressing them in a peaceful, lawful way, in a classroom or part of an academic debate, is much more likely to be protected.
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Senior SNP figures believe Holyrood majority ‘within reach’ at May’s election
Libby Brooks
Senior Scottish National party (SNP) strategists believe a majority at next year’s Holyrood elections is “within reach” despite failing public trust in Scotland’s government as they focus in on the “battleground cohort” of independence supporters who have drifted away from the SNP.
Before the party’s annual conference in Aberdeen this weekend, one senior source said the path to a majority – by winning 65 seats or more – was “more straightforward now” than it had been for a long time because of the Tory collapse and Labour’s unpopularity.
“The focus now is how to re-engage all independence supporters, given that independence is way more popular than the SNP currently. It’s a good place to be,” they said.
With Scottish Labour battling to end the SNP’s nearly 20-year-long domination, both parties are focused on the “soft yes” voters. These are people who were attracted by Labour’s “kick out the Tories” message during the 2024 general election, but are no longer SNP loyalists.
John Swinney, the SNP leader and the Scottish first minister, acknowledges applause after addressing party conference last year. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
“That’s the battleground cohort that Labour is battling to hold on to and the SNP is fighting to take,” said another senior source, who batted away Scottish Labour claims the nationalists were simply retreating to their core vote by putting much greater emphasis on independence. They said:
This is not a core-vote strategy. That’s the battleground vote and how that plays out is the difference between us getting 55 seats and upwards through to us getting something around 65.
Senior figures argue this strategy takes advantage of a deeply fractured opposition that is dividing the non-SNP vote, and the impact of changing dynamics at Westminster – they credit the Scottish first minister, John Swinney, for differentiating himself as pro-immigration and a progressive tax reformer.
Swinney emphasised this on Wednesday as he launched a Scottish government policy paper on independence. He said:
The prospect of Nigel Farage becoming prime minister is a very real one, but even if Farage does not make it to No 10, he is driving the agenda at Westminster ever more to the right.
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On LBC this morning, Yvette Cooper was asked whether the US president, Donald Trump, deserves a Nobel peace prize for his role in the Gaza ceasefire.
The foreign secretary responded:
I’m strongly supporting the work that President Trump is doing.
It’s an independent process. I’m not going to cut across that process.
Cooper also said there were discussions about the ceasefire coming in within 24 hours of the agreement by the Israeli cabinet and the return of hostages within 72 hours, but she said that the UK government hopes this will happen sooner.
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