UK has ‘no issues’ with Trump’s Nato challenge, says minister – UK politics live | Politics

Ministers are dragging their heels on an investigation into the mistreatment of migrant carers, the country’s largest nursing union has said, as it continues to receive complaints about low pay, substandard accommodation and illegal fees.

Nicola Ranger, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, has written to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to urge her to speed up her promised investigation into the abuse of foreign care workers.

Despite the government’s promises to clamp down on abusive practices by rogue employers and agencies, the RCN says it continues to receive more than 100 calls a year from nurses who say they are being mistreated.

Ranger said in her letter:

The RCN is deeply concerned by reports of exploitative workplace practices that many international educated nursing staff in the care sector face. Our members report a range of issues from long working hours, excessive repayment fees to exit contracts, substandard and crowded accommodation, and illegal work finding fees.”

Cooper promised last June to hold an investigation into the experiences of people coming to the UK to work in the social care sector, after the Guardian uncovered widespread allegations of mistreatment.

The investigation showed how dozens of migrant nurses had been induced to pay tens of thousands of pounds for their visas on the promise of a job, only to find little or no work when they arrived.

Some were sharing rooms, and even beds, with other migrant workers, to make ends meet.

The problems stem from the decision by the previous government to relax the rules around sponsoring care worker visas, which ministers took in response to a staffing crisis in social care.

Cooper said at the time the Guardian’s revelations were a “disgrace”, adding:

There must be a full investigation into these reports to ensure standards are upheld, and exploitative employers are prosecuted.”

Keir Starmer will speak to European leaders on Friday as he presses on with a diplomatic push over Ukraine. The prime minister and French president Emmanuel Macron are seeking countries willing to supply troops for a peacekeeping force to defend a potential deal – an idea that Russia has rejected.

Defence secretary John Healey said Donald Trump has “asked Europe to step up, and we are” as he started talks in Washington with his US counterpart Pete Hegseth on Thursday.

Hegseth said it was “very encouraging” to see France and the UK say they are prepared to take a leading role. He also said suggestions that the US had moved to a “pro-Russia” stance were “all garbage” and that Trump is “working with both sides in a way that only President Trump can”.

Speaking to US news channel Newsmax after the meeting, Healey said the UK and Europe were on a “push for peace” in Ukraine, reports the PA news agency. He said:

It’s a lasting, secure peace that we all want to see. We’ve got a big role to play in Europe and we are determined to do that.”

Negotiations between the US and Ukraine could be getting back on track as Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed talks will take place in Saudi Arabia next week, after a Trump administration envoy earlier said they were in the works. But the fate of the minerals deal that Trump and the Ukrainian president were due to sign before a dramatic Oval Office row last week remains unclear.

Since then, the US has paused military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
The US president is “very encouraged by the signs we’re seeing” from Ukraine, Hegseth said.
Rachel Reeves said the government will work with Ukraine for “as long as it takes”. She said:

The world is changing and that’s why this government is stepping up to take defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, funded by a reduction in the aid budget. And we’ve just signed off the extraordinary revenue acceleration loan agreement, to be repaid by the profits on sovereign Russian assets, to unlock £2.26bn additional for Ukraine to help them fight this war after Russia’s illegal invasion.”

Kinnock has also been speaking to Sky News this morning about Trump’s comments on defence spending.

The health minister told Sky News:

Donald Trump’s not actually the first president to say that the European arm of Nato needs to step up. More needs to be spent on defence, military capability needs to be made fit for purpose.

Sadly, in our country, we’ve seen our armed forces hollowed out by 14 years of Conservative neglect and incompetence, and it’s about now rebuilding our military capability to look after our own back yard.

And, you know, I think that’s fair enough – the challenge has been laid and we must now show that we are equal to that challenge.”

Health minister Stephen Kinnock is on the morning media round.

Asked how hopeful he was of progress at talks between the US and Ukraine, due to take place next week, health minister Kinnock told Sky News:

It’s very welcome that those talks are taking place, and I think it reflects absolutely what the prime minister has been saying, which is that we’ve got to get Ukraine to the table: nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.

And what we’re also working to do is to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position for when these talks do start.

The prime minister, I think, has played an outstanding role as a statesman and an honest broker between the United States and Ukraine and our European partners and allies, and those are all the key factors that we need to bring together to deliver a just and lasting peace.”

The Online Safety Act could be used for “bargaining” during trade negotiations after US president Donald Trump showed his support for less regulation of US social media companies, a former culture secretary has said.

Asked on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether there could be trade consequences if the UK government acted against someone like controversial influencer Andrew Tate, Nicky Morgan said:

There could be, and I think what worries a lot of us now who campaigned for the Online Safety Act is that actually the act itself could be up as part of the bargaining on the trade deal, for the very reason, as you say, which is that you know, president Trump appears to want to take a step back from regulation of the platforms, and they’re allowing him to do that, and that will be, I think, a huge retrograde step.

The UK has done the right thing in bringing the Act into force, and this is just the starting point for regulating the platforms.”

Donald Trump’s comment that he would not defend Nato countries that do not spend enough on defence presents “no issues”, a government minister has said.

Asked about Trump’s comments overnight, health minister Stephen Kinnock told Times Radio on Friday that even before Trump took office the US “has been challenging the other Nato members to step up and boost defence capability and be ready to defend our own back yard”.

According to the PA news agency, he added:

I think it’s absolutely right that we are now seeing, particularly through the leadership of our prime minister, the European arm of Nato coming together and meeting that challenge.

So I think there’s no issues really around the challenge that the United States has set for us as European nations, what’s vitally important now is that we step up and do that.”

Asked whether the UK could trust the US, Kinnock said:

Donald Trump has never said that he thinks the United States should leave Nato, he has never said that he doesn’t believe in article 5, and I think that we absolutely have to hold together as an alliance in defence of freedom and democracy and the values that we cherish.”

Keir Starmer will speak to European leaders on Friday as he presses on with a diplomatic push over Ukraine. Yesterday, Starmer said it would be a “big mistake” to think that Ukraine no longer needs military help because a peace deal is inevitable.

More on that in a moment, but first, here is an roundup of some of the latest developments in UK politics:

• Ministers are dragging their heels on an investigation into the mistreatment of migrant carers, the country’s largest nursing union has said, as it continues to receive complaints about low pay, substandard accommodation and illegal fees. Nicola Ranger, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, has written to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to urge her to speed up her promised investigation into the abuse of foreign care workers.

• The work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, has said helping more people back into a job is the best way to cut the benefits bill, as the chancellor looks for savings ahead of the 26 March spring statement. With Rachel Reeves zeroing in on welfare as a source of potential cuts as she prepares to take action to meet her self-imposed fiscal rules, Kendall said the starting point must be getting people back into work – not numbers on a spreadsheet.

• Britain will continue to supply intelligence to Ukraine, though the more limited capabilities on offer from London and other European countries will make it difficult to replace the flow halted from the US earlier this week. The UK will also continue to supply its analysis of the raw data, sources said on Thursday, though in line with normal intelligence practice it will not simply pass on US information obtained via long-established sharing arrangements between the two countries.

• People in London have been breathing significantly cleaner air since the expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez), a study has found. Levels of deadly pollutants that are linked to a wide range of health problems – from cancer to impaired lung development, heart attacks to premature births – have dropped, with some of the biggest improvements coming in the capital’s most deprived areas.

• Tens of thousands of children in migrant and refugee families in the UK are being denied access to government-funded childcare because of benefit restrictions linked to their parents’ immigration status, a report says. Having “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) means parents are not entitled to 30 hours of free childcare and are having to stay home to look after their young children instead of working. This is pushing families into poverty and denying their children the benefits of the early years education available to their peers, the report finds.

• Reform UK is facing a split at the top after Nigel Farage called one of his most prominent MPs “utterly completely wrong” for calling him the “messianic” leader of a protest party. Farage hit out at Rupert Lowe after the Great Yarmouth MP and former Southampton FC chair criticised his leadership publicly in an interview.