Pelosi questioned, highlighting Trump’s history of bigoted remarks targeting women, the LGBTQ+ community, and people of colour.
The former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has slammed former prime ministers Liz Truss and Boris Johnson for their endorsements of Donald Trump, in a stinging rebuke.
Pelosi made the comments during an interview with BBC One’s Laura Kuenssberg, where she took apart the arguments of the likes of Truss and Johnson who claim that the world would be safer under a Trump presidency.
Earlier this month, Truss claimed that the world would be safer under a Trump presidency. She also told the BBC: “I do agree that under Donald Trump when he was president of the United States, the world was safer.
An Israeli F-15 takes off from RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire on Exercise Cobra Warrior in 2019. (Photo: John Lambeth / Alamy)
The UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) is refusing to give parliament any information about the Israeli military personnel currently being trained in Britain.
In February, the government admitted that “there are currently six Israeli Armed Forces officers posted in the UK”. It added that “Israel is represented by Armed Forces personnel in its Embassy in the UK, and as participants in UK defence-led training courses”.
Yet when asked this week by Alba MP Kenny MacAskill about the ranks of these personnel and where they are posted, defence minister Leo Docherty, Grant Shapps’ deputy, refused to say.
He replied in a written answer to parliament: “This information is being withheld in order to protect personal information and to avoid prejudicing relations between the United Kingdom and another State”.
The MoD also refused to say how many British military personnel are currently stationed in Israel.
Docherty again replied evasively, writing: “The UK has a number of Armed Forces personnel across the Middle East, working closely with partners to carry out defence engagement and to uphold regional stability. I cannot go into specifics for operational security purposes.”
The UK government is clearly imposing a blackout on providing much information to the public about its support for Israel as it continues its mass attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.
Personal data rights are at risk in the UK. | pixinoo / Getty
Asylum seekers and trafficking victims among individuals hit by failures to provide copies of personal data
Basic legal rights are being undermined by public authorities in the UK, by failing to disclose what personal data they hold on individuals, including victims of human trafficking and the Windrush scandal, openDemocracy can reveal.
People requesting copies of their private information, such as police or immigration records, have faced long delays or had their requests ignored entirely. Others have been given folders with key documents missing.
This is having a knock-on effect in the justice system, with lawyers telling openDemocracy that asylum applications and claims for false imprisonment have been put on hold due to the delays.
Victims of the Windrush Scandal have also struggled to obtain copies of their immigration papers in order to claim compensation.
The UK’s data protection laws allow individuals to request a copy of any of their personal data that is held by an organisation. These applications, known as Subject Access Requests (SARs), have become a vital tool for collecting evidence in legal cases, as well as helping to hold authorities to account.
But a year-long investigation by openDemocracy has found that public authorities – including police forces and government departments – are routinely missing statutory response deadlines. The findings of the investigation are set out in a 27-page report published today.
In Whitehall, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) stands out for its poor record for handling SARs. Last year, it responded to just one in five requests within the standard one-month deadline.
Lawyers and campaigners also singled out the Metropolitan Police for criticism. At the beginning of the year, almost 2,000 SARs being dealt with by the force were more than 60 days old.
In one case, lawyers needed to see the records of a human trafficking victim and asylum seeker, whom the Home Office had wrongfully accused of absconding when they were abducted by traffickers, held against their will and sexually exploited.
The government department later admitted it was wrong to withdraw the individual’s asylum application, and accepted they were a victim of trafficking and modern slavery. But the lawyers still needed to understand why the claim had been withdrawn in order to reinstate it. Lengthy delays to the SAR meant they had no choice but to progress the asylum case without these important documents, though the asylum claim was not reinstated until the day after the Home Office released them months later.
‘Wild West’
Individuals affected have almost no way to challenge their case. This has created a ‘wild west’ of personal data, in which public organisations are effectively free to flout the law.
The Information Commissioner’s Office, which is supposed to police SAR compliance, very rarely takes direct action, admitting it doesn’t “punish an organisation for breaking the law” apart from in the “most serious cases”.
Instead, the watchdog encourages ordinary citizens to pursue cases themselves through the courts. But this route is prohibitively expensive for most people, leaving them at the mercy of individual organisations, with little to no ability to enforce the law.
This is compounded by the fact that SAR compliance is already shrouded in secrecy, with several public authorities refusing to provide openDemocracy with their performance data.
An ICO spokesperson said that it provides “advice to organisations to improve their information rights practices” and has issued 13 reprimands since September 2022.
“We work closely with public authorities to monitor their regulatory obligations and help organisations respond effectively to requests for information,” they said. “We have processes in place to identify concerns, and these include looking at backlogs and how requests for information are handled.”
Major departments like the Home Office, Ministry of Justice, the Department for Work & Pensions and the Ministry of Defence are frequently complained about to the ICO.
In response to openDemocracy’s findings, a government spokesperson said: “We take our obligations under the Data Protection Act 2018 and UK General Data Protection Regulation very seriously, and we are working hard to remove delays to Subject Access Requests identified by the Information Commissioner’s Office.”
Palestinians look at the destruction after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, April 29, 2024
ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed today to follow through on his pledge to attack Rafah, the southern Gaza city where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge from Israel’s military campaign.
Mr Netanyahu said Israel would enter Rafah to destroy Hamas forces there “with or without a deal” emerging from internationally mediated talks aimed at securing a ceasefire in the seven-month-long conflict.
The deal is meant to free the remaining hostages taken during the Hamas assault on October 7, when about 1,200 people were killed.
Since then, Israel’s retaliation has killed at least 34,454 Palestinians in Gaza.
“The idea that we will stop the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question. We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate Hamas’s battalions there — with a deal or without a deal — to achieve total victory,” Mr Netanyahu said at a meeting with families of the hostages, according to a statement from his office.
A record 145,800 children are now homeless in England, the government’s latest quarterly homelessness stats have shown, highlighting once more the sheer scale of the housing crisis in the country.
The number of children living in temporary accommodation is now at the highest ever level recorded and up 15% on last year.
Almost 320,000 households were assessed as homeless or at risk of homelessness – also a record high, while the number of households threatened with homelessness and owed a prevention duty because of a section 21 notice is the highest on record, at 25,910 over the last year. It was only last week that the government failed to set a date for banning section 21 no-fault eviction notices, which continue to have devastating impacts for low-income and vulnerable households up and down the country.
Reacting to the record figures, Matt Downie, chief executive at Crisis, said: “Today’s statistics need to be a wake-up call. We are failing to stop people being forced into homelessness and we are failing to help them back out. These are the appalling consequences of our failure to get a grip on this crisis.
