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Social media firms told to take down dangerous driving content in wake of fatal A66 crash
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. The government has told social media companies to take down content showing people driving the wrong way down roads following a fatal crash over the weekend.
Two police officers were among seven people killed when a car travelling the wrong way down a dual carriageway crashed into a force vehicle on the A66 near Middlesbrough.
There have been reports that at least one of the young men who died in the collision early on Saturday had been involved in filming dangerous driving in TikTok videos.
Asked about these reports this morning, the defence minister, Luke Pollard, said social media platforms must remove content glorifying dangerous driving or else the government will use powers under the Online Safety Act to compel them to take the videos down. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live this morning, Pollard said:
We’ve communicated to those social media platforms that have been hosting content that celebrates this type of dangerous behaviour on our roads to take down that content.
I think we all need to give the police time, but there’s also things we can be doing in the meantime to make sure that the internet is a safer place for everyone, that doesn’t celebrate and load views and therefore financial incentives on people to generate such awful content. I want to see social media companies step up.
It’s one of the reasons they’ve argued against some of the regulations, saying they can police themselves. Well this is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate it. Remove the content that celebrates dangerous behaviour on our roads.
The issue of lax social media regulation of dangerous driving content came to prominence amid a public outcry in Ireland after five teenagers were killed in a head-on crash involving a car driving in the wrong direction on a motorway in County Kildare last weekend.
The Garda commissioner, Justin Kelly, described the head-on collision between the two cars as “horrific” and said “in some cases” vehicles were being driven on the wrong side of motorways for social media likes. TikTok declined an invitation to appear before an Irish parliamentary committee on media to discuss videos, citing the ongoing police investigation, according to Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ,
Key events
Tice explains how Reform will pay for all of the affordable social homes he promises will be built. He says a Reform government will “reactivate an attractive right to buy housing programme” for existing tenants.
Tice says if someone has lived in a council house or housing association for five years they’d receive a 30% discount, and a 40% discount if they lived there for ten years, as examples. He said the failure of the Conservatives in the 1980s laid in the fact that the party didn’t “reinvest the proceeds” back into building affordable homes.
Local authority tenants have been able to buy their homes since 1936, but changes made under the first Thatcher government in 1980 triggered a boom in sales at steep discounts to market value. Although welcomed by many, the policy fuelled vast shortages in the social housing stock and turbocharged inequality.
“That’s the key difference. Here we know it (the money) will go back into building affordable homes by a factor of two to one. So that will be about a third of the total money involved,” Tice told journalists.
Reform’s deputy leader went on to claim that the rest of the funding will come from a “modest increase in the debt levels” of existing housing associations and through the “British sovereign wealth fund” that the party argues would boost economic growth by investing in British businesses.
Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, says we have a “desperate shortage” of affordable housing and council housing. In order to address the shortage, he says a Reform government would build an extra £50,000 extra “affordable social homes” every year for a decade, a significant uplift on the 18,000 the government has promised to build on average each year for a decade.
Labour’s plans are being financed by a £39bn affordable housing scheme, 60% of which is due to be allocated to social homes, which are the most heavily subsidised, as my colleagues note in this story. Reform said its plans would be funded, with no extra borrowing or taxation required to pay for the additional homes. It is yet to give details about where exactly the money will come from (this may come shortly).
Lee Anderson, the Reform UK MP for Ashfield, is first up to speak. He says young people in his constituency – and in many areas across the country – have “absolutely no chance” of securing council housing or social housing. He says that Reform’s government would “put British people first” in a housing system he characterises as being unfair.
Reform UK will use a press conference that is due to begin at 11am to announce its pledge to prioritise British-born workers under 35 when allocating social housing. We will bring you the key lines from the conference, fronted by deputy leader, Richard Tice, and the party’s chairman, Lee Anderson, here. You can watch it live:
Lammy gave Burnham number of fraudster pretending to be senior White House aide – report
The Sun on Sunday reported that the prime minister, Andy Burnham, exchanged messages with someone posing as Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, after being passed a phone number by David Lammy, the former justice secretary and deputy prime minister.
According to Politico, Burnham communicated with the person claiming to be Wiles “before becoming suspicious that the contact was illegitimate”, with officials claiming only a “few messages” were exchanged.
The incident, which occurred earlier this month, prompted serious concern at the British embassy – so much so that officials raised their concerns with their counterparts in the US.
It has now emerged that Lammy, the Tottenham MP who developed an unlikely friendship with the US vice-president, JD Vance, gave the fake number to Burnham, believing it to be genuine, according to the Sun on Sunday.
“David Lammy thought he was currying favour with the new PM by getting them the phone number of one of the most powerful people in Washington,” a source told the paper.
“But it turned out to be the wrong one and the whole thing has turned into a massive headache for the PM. It is a serious embarrassment for David.”
Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI had launched an investigation into efforts to access Susie Wiles’ phone after an unknown person contacted prominent Republicans and business chiefs while pretending to be her.
In March, the Atlantic reported that the White House had been told Donald Trump’s contact details had been offered for sale to people seeking influence. “It’s honestly just wild,” one of them told the outlet. “I’ve heard of CEOs offering money for his number. I’ve heard of crypto bros offering cryptocurrency for it.”
As we outlined in the opening post, the government has told TikTok and other social media companies to remove content featuring a social media trend showing people driving the wrong way down roads.
It is worth mentioning that TikTok is already under investigation by Ofcom, the UK’s online regulator, with a probe launched in July over concerns it has failed to protect children from harmful content.
An Ofcom spokesperson said:
Under the Online Safety Act, platforms must minimise children’s exposure to violent material and content promoting dangerous challenges. In July, we launched an investigation into TikTok’s compliance with its child safety duties, and we’ve shown we’ll take action if evidence suggests companies are falling short.
TikTok has said its policies strictly prohibit content that could cause significant physical harm, including dangerous driving, and that it actively removes any videos and accounts that break its rules.
Green party working group calls for police to lose Tasers and pepper spray
The Times is reporting that the Green Party will consider adopting an official policy to remove Tasers and pepper spray from police officers.
The proposal, drawn up by the party’s crime and justice working group before the October conference, says the Greens should pledge to “withdraw lethal tools and tactics, eg tasers, pepper spray” from police officers.
Only specially trained officers can carry Tasers, which deliver a high-voltage electric shock and is meant to temporarily incapacitate a suspect by interfering with the body’s neuromuscular system. Home Office statistics have shown in the past that Black people were much more likely than white people to experience a Taser being drawn on them or discharged.
The Green’s internal proposal also says the party should move funds away from “policing, prisons and surveillance” and, according to The Times, calls for the scrapping of programmes – such as Prevent, the UK government’s anti-terror scheme, that “over-police marginalised communities”.
The Prevent programme, which identifies those feared to be falling for terrorist ideologies and attempts to turn them away from carrying out violence, has faced scrutiny for police heavy-handedness, spying and disproportionately targeting and stigmatising British Muslims (although there has been a recent rise in referrals for extreme rightwing ideology).
The Green’s policy proposal also reportedly calls for the end of police presence in schools and the “closure of all prisons through systemic obsolescence”.
Government vows to make business rate valuations for pubs and hotels fairer
Lauren Almeida
The government has promised that business rate valuations will be “made fairer” for pubs and hotels in England and Wales, as Andy Burnham faces growing calls to help the UK’s struggling hospitality sector.
An independent review for England and Wales will look at improving the system for hospitality venues, which were hit by higher business rate bills this year after the end of pandemic-era relief and when new revaluations took effect.
It comes after Burnham announced last month that he would cut business rates for pubs, social clubs and live music venues in England by 20% from April next year.
The government has faced calls to reduce the tax burden on hospitality businesses, which have also struggled to cope with rising energy and food bills in recent years.
The review, which will be led by Jerry Schurder, an independent business rates specialist, will report back to the Treasury by the end of March 2027. It will consider valuations before the next revaluation date in 2029. The rise in valuations this year will not be affected. You can read the full story here:
The prime minister will use the trip to Kyiv to announce that the UK government will allow the European defence company MBDA to declassify information about UK-made components of the Anglo-French Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles to help Ukraine build its own version.
While the announcement will probably take years to have an impact on the war, it is likely to escalate tensions with Moscow at an already fraught moment in UK-Russian relations.
Andy Burnham will announce in Kyiv that the UK will help France set up assembly lines in Ukraine for long-range missiles, which the French president, Emmanuel Macron, promised last month.
The British announcement is a small step in a much larger and longer-term project that could lead to Ukraine making its own long-range versions of the Storm Shadow cruise missile in several years’ time.
But the move is likely to trigger further criticism from Moscow at a time when tensions between the UK and Russia are already high.
Last week, Russia accused the UK of deliberately escalating the conflict by allowing Ukraine to launch attacks with British-made drones, warning that the deeper Britain’s involvement, “the higher the price it will pay”.
This weekend it emerged that Russia had withdrawn its ambassador in London without naming a replacement, prompting speculation it was downgrading its diplomatic presence in the UK.
Burnham has insisted that Russian threats will not weaken British support for Ukraine, saying last week: “We are not fair-weather friends. We will be there in Ukraine’s hour of need, and that won’t change.” You can read more from my colleagues Kiran Stacey and Dan Sabbagh here:
Andy Burnham arrives in Ukraine with promise of boost for Kyiv’s long-range missiles
Vivian Ho
The prime minister, Andy Burnham, arrived in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Monday alongside a number of European leaders to mark the country’s independence day.
Burnham was photographed at Kyiv railway station shaking hands with Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha, who said Burnham was to be joined by António Costa, president of the European Council; Luc Frieden, the prime minister of Luxembourg; Maia Sandu, the president of Moldova; and Alar Karis, the president of Estonia.
“For Ukraine, independence is not an abstract idea. We defended it against all odds. In times like these, nations learn how important it is to have allies by your side,” Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X announcing their arrival.
“And today, we know for sure who our true friends are.”
Burnham plans to announce during his visit that the UK government will allow the European defence company MBDA to declassify information about UK-made components of the Anglo-French Storm Shadow/Scalp long-range missiles to help Ukraine build its own version – a major boost to the country’s capacity in weapons development at a crucial time in the war. You can read the latest developments in our Europe live blog:
Cleveland police and crime commissioner Matt Storey was on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning to take questions on the fatal A66 crash.
Cole Robert Worthy, 17, Theo Rae, 17, Makai Saddington, 18, and 23-year-olds Michael Robert Cahill and Jacob Matusiak died when their Volkswagen Passat, believed to be using cloned plates, collided with a marked armed response vehicle early on Saturday near Middlesbrough.
Pc Matthew Blades, 37, and Pc Tom Clough, 38, who had been driving in the correct direction, were killed in the collision. They have been hailed as heroes by their families.
It has been reported that Saddington was involved in filming dangerous driving in TikTok videos before the fatal crash took place – although this has not been confirmed by police. Storey acknowledged the reports about the TikTok videos, but urged people to avoid speculation. He said:
Without being able to say whether that was anything like involved in this case, it’s absolutely idiotic for anybody to be doing anything other than being completely 100% focused on the road when they’re behind the wheel of a vehicle.
And for somebody to be filming themselves or doing anything like that is absolutely ridiculous, and of course nobody should be doing that. And it is a worrying situation if that’s becoming more prevalent because it is incredibly dangerous.
Social media firms told to take down dangerous driving content in wake of fatal A66 crash
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of UK politics. The government has told social media companies to take down content showing people driving the wrong way down roads following a fatal crash over the weekend.
Two police officers were among seven people killed when a car travelling the wrong way down a dual carriageway crashed into a force vehicle on the A66 near Middlesbrough.
There have been reports that at least one of the young men who died in the collision early on Saturday had been involved in filming dangerous driving in TikTok videos.
Asked about these reports this morning, the defence minister, Luke Pollard, said social media platforms must remove content glorifying dangerous driving or else the government will use powers under the Online Safety Act to compel them to take the videos down. Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live this morning, Pollard said:
We’ve communicated to those social media platforms that have been hosting content that celebrates this type of dangerous behaviour on our roads to take down that content.
I think we all need to give the police time, but there’s also things we can be doing in the meantime to make sure that the internet is a safer place for everyone, that doesn’t celebrate and load views and therefore financial incentives on people to generate such awful content. I want to see social media companies step up.
It’s one of the reasons they’ve argued against some of the regulations, saying they can police themselves. Well this is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate it. Remove the content that celebrates dangerous behaviour on our roads.
The issue of lax social media regulation of dangerous driving content came to prominence amid a public outcry in Ireland after five teenagers were killed in a head-on crash involving a car driving in the wrong direction on a motorway in County Kildare last weekend.
The Garda commissioner, Justin Kelly, described the head-on collision between the two cars as “horrific” and said “in some cases” vehicles were being driven on the wrong side of motorways for social media likes. TikTok declined an invitation to appear before an Irish parliamentary committee on media to discuss videos, citing the ongoing police investigation, according to Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ,
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