Whitehall Yesterday

Alex Norris, newly sworn Lord Chancellor, has struck a collaborative note in his first public remarks, emphasising the importance of close working between the senior judiciary and the executive. Speaking at the Royal Courts of Justice, Norris thanked the Lady Chief Justice for her welcome and paid tribute to the incoming Attorney General, highlighting her extensive legal experience and long track record campaigning against violence against women and girls. The simultaneous swearing-in of Norris, the Attorney General, and the Solicitor General—a barrister with over two decades championing justice—suggests the government intends to project harmony across the legal establishment at a time when the judiciary faces close scrutiny over its role in shaping policy.

The Department of Health and Social Care has committed to a significant reorientation of mental health provision, moving towards early intervention for children, young people and adults without requiring them to wait for clinical diagnosis. The government's response to an independent review chaired by leading clinical psychologist Professor Fonagy—published today—promises broader support and advice at the earliest opportunity, with the aim of keeping young people in school and enabling them to enter the workforce. The strategy also signals intent to strengthen regulation around ADHD and autism assessments and review advertising practices in this space. The timing of this announcement reflects growing concern about diagnostic backlogs and the mental health toll of prolonged waiting periods.

Yorkshire has officially entered drought status, joining central, southern and eastern England in the declaration, while the North East and North West remain in prolonged dry weather. The Environment Agency's decision comes despite recent rainfall, which officials say has been insufficient to replenish water supplies depleted over spring and summer. Water Minister Emma Hardy indicated that the government is intensifying scrutiny of water company compliance with statutory drought plans. The National Drought Group—convening government, the Met Office, regulators, water companies, farmers and conservation experts—is now meeting weekly, underlining the seriousness with which Whitehall views the situation.

Britain's Permanent Representative to the UN has directly challenged Russia's professed desire for peace, citing a relentless pattern of attacks including a glide bomb that killed at least 33 civilians on a bus in Kramatorsk and cruise missile strikes on residential buildings in Chernihiv that killed at least 22 people, including five children. The statement, delivered as Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband visited Ukraine to witness the damage, came during a Security Council meeting convened to discuss the conflict. Cataloguing Russian strikes on Black Sea ports, merchant shipping, civilian bridges and heating infrastructure across 1,688 days of full-scale invasion, the UK's ambassador left little room for ambiguity about the government's assessment that Russian actions contradict its diplomatic messaging.

The Serious Fraud Office has announced it will not pursue retrials following a Supreme Court judgment that found the legal directions to juries at the original trials of Hayes and Palombo were incorrect, rendering their fraud convictions unsafe. The decision closes a significant chapter in a thirteen-year investigation into traders and submitters at selected banks who manipulated London and Euro Inter-bank Offered Rates—benchmark rates affecting hundreds of trillions of dollars' worth of financial products including ordinary people's pensions, mortgages and savings. The SFO secured nine convictions overall from the investigation, seven by jury verdict, but the judgment has now undermined confidence in the legal reasoning that underpinned at least two of those convictions. The office's determination that a retrial would not serve the public interest suggests it has concluded the evidentiary or legal foundations no longer justify further prosecution.

The Home Office has abolished a provision that trapped recognised modern slavery victims on Skilled Worker visas to abusive employers by threatening their immigration status if they left. Under the new rules, once formally recognised as a victim of modern slavery, workers can leave their sponsor and take any lawful employment for the remainder of their visa without risking destitution or deportation. The change addresses a long-standing campaign concern: victims previously faced an impossible choice between enduring exploitation or losing both immigration status and access to public funds. The Home Office cited the case of a woman who paid an agency £20,000 for care work only to have her sponsor demand £400 monthly extortion payments while providing minimal employment.

The Prime Minister has unveiled plans to devolve research and development funding to regional leaders for the first time, allocating £1 billion over four years to industrial clusters in high-potential regions. The announcement, made at an Innovation Nation Summit in Manchester, forms part of a broader strategy to establish Britain as the world's leading place to innovate, build and grow. A new entity called No.10 North will forge partnerships between innovation clusters across the UK, beginning with the Northern and Oxford to Cambridge growth corridors. The move represents a significant devolution of central investment control, though the thinness of the announcement leaves questions about the scale of funding transferred and the criteria for regional selection.