Jim Ratcliffe sorry his ‘choice of language offended some people’ after saying UK colonised by immigrants – politics live

In a post defending what Jim Ratcliffe said about immigration, Nigel Farage claimed that there are one million people in Britain who don’t speak English. (See 1.53pm.)

A reader points out that the ONS census figures for 2021 England and Wales imply the real figure is much lower. The ONS says:

People who did not report English (English or Welsh in Wales) as a main language were asked to report how well they could speak English (8.9%, 5.1 million). Of those 5.1 million people, 43.9% (2.3 million) could speak English very well, 35.8% (1.8 million) could speak English well, 17.1% (880,000) could not speak English well, and 3.1% (161,000) could not speak English at all.

Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has referred the Telegraph’s proposed sale to the publisher of the Daily Mail to the competition and media watchdogs, weeks after she raised concerns about the consolidation of rightwing newspapers. Michael Savage has the story.

Here is the letter from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to the Daily Mail group explaining the reasons for Nandy’s decision.

The government has now published its representation of the people bill.

The headline measures in the bill is the plan to extend voting rights in all UK elections to 16 and 17-year-olds. But, as Jessica Elgot explains in our overnight story, the legislation will also tighten the rules intended to stop foreigners donating to political parties.

There are more details in the government’s press release. The official explanatory notes, and other documents relevant to the bill, are available here.

As Jess explains in her story, the Electoral Reform Society and Unlock Democracy, two groups campaigning for fairer politics, have both said the reforms do not go far enough.

And this afternoon the Electoral Commission, the government’s elections watchdog, has also said the legislation needs to be “strengthened” to protect British politics from foreign money. It said:

While the commission welcomes many of the changes set out in the bill, some provisions need to be strengthened to improve the experience for voters further and better protect the system from foreign interference.

Although only people registered to vote in the UK are allowed to donate to British political parties, there are concerns that under current rules foreigners who own UK companies could donate just by transferring money into a British-based firm. At one point last year there was speculation about Elon Musk giving $100m to Reform UK this way – speculation that ended when Musk and Nigel Farage had a row, and Musk suggested Rupert Lowe would be a better party leader.

The bill is supposed to close this loophole. In its new release, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government says:

The reforms will mean companies making political donations will be required to show that they have a genuine connection to the UK. This includes demonstrating that they are headquartered in the UK, majority owned or controlled by UK electors or citizens and have generated sufficient revenue to cover the donation – closing down foreign actors’ ability to use shell companies to influence UK politics.

But Vijay Rangarajan, the Electoral Commission’s chief executive, said this aspect of the bill should be stricter. He explained:

We are concerned that using revenue to determine companies’ eligibility to donate to political parties is an inadequate safeguard against foreign money. Using profit would more clearly reflect genuine UK-based activity. The current clauses appear to allow a company to donate its entire revenue many times over each year.

The commission also criticised the government’s decision not to repeal the law passed by the last Tory government saying it should have to operate in line with a “strategy and policy statement” written by ministers. The commission said it would “continue to make the case for non-partisan accountability directly to parliament”.

The commission has set out its views on the bill in further detail here.

This is what Zarah Sultana, the Your Party MP, has said about Jim Ratcliffe.

A billionaire worth £17,000,000,000 who moved to Monaco to dodge £4,000,000,000 in tax is now blaming immigrants for Britain’s problems.

If parasitic billionaires like Jim Ratcliffe paid what they owe – and politicians weren’t in their pockets – our NHS, schools and public services wouldn’t be on their knees.

It is textbook divide and rule. The real enemy of the working class travels by private jet, not migrant dinghy.

Unsurprisingly, Liz Truss agrees with Jim Ratcliffe.

Max Wilkinson, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson, has posted this on Bluesky about Jim Ratcliffe. He put it up after Ratcliffe issued his partial apology.

The Manchester Evening News Gorton and Denton byelection debate has started. There is no live feed, but the MEN has a live blog here and the full video should be available at some point this afternoon on YouTube.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has doubled down on his support for Jim Ratcliffe, posting a video on social media claiming that Ratcliffe was right in what he said about the impact of immigration.

1m people living in Britain don’t speak English.

Areas of our towns and cities have been completely changed.

Jim Ratcliffe is right.

Raphael Boyd is a Guardian reporter.

Angela Rayner has urged the government to do more to support pubs, clubs and restaurants.

Speaking at the night-time economy summit in Liverpool this morning, the former deputy prime minister said:

Over the last few weeks, I’ve spoken candidly with businesses in my own constituency, and many beyond it, and they say it’s a huge challenge that they’re facing, and it’s a challenge just to stay afloat.

Rayner also said that “customers aren’t just there in the way they used to be, as business rates remain punishingly high, energy bills soar and costs in your supply chains and VAT bite”. She declared that the government had to “recognise that hospitality and nightlife required extended support – not handouts”.

Speaking about the challenges facing this sector in her Q&A, she said:

I think we’ve got to recognise, it’s not even a double whammy, it’s not even a triple whammy, I talk about the challenges on business rates, the challenges on VAT, the challenges of the minimum wage going up and the living wage going up.

And the cost of energy – we’ve got to start looking at the intersectionality of all these challenges and start relieving some of them.

At the event Rayner also said she supported calls from with the industry for the government to establish a ministerial position dedicated to the night-time economy, in the vein of London’s night tsar or Manchester’s night-time economy adviser, saying this was something she “pushed for” when she was in government.

The event was also attended by the mayors of Liverpool city region and Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram and Andy Burnham, who also backed cuts to VAT rates, with Burnham calling for rates “more consistent with those found in Europe”.

Burnham also referenced a book that the pair wrote together about leaving Westminsister called Head North, and quipped that “the sequel, Head South, is currently on hold, but may be available some time in the future”.

Nadhim Zahawi, the former Tory cabinet minister who recently defected to Reform UK, has defended Jim Ratcliffe. In a post on social media, he says:

The scoundrels in @UKLabour in Gov & the @LibDems & @TheGreenParty trying to attack & discredit Jim Ratcliffe are either deliberately missing the point or worst colluding in the collapse of our economy. Why? Because they say he is using inappropriate language on immigration, that his own Man U players are immigrants, yes they are but the big difference is they pay huge amounts of tax to the UK. They say he got his numbers wrong, well it’s still millions who came across. The millions who have come are low skilled & therefore are a huge burden on public services & the economy, and as @DuncanBannatyne says today are they not claiming benefits? Look at the countries who do attract the best immigrants – the UAE has 10 to 1 immigrant vs local population. The locals support this wholeheartedly. Why? Because if you are an immigrant you have to have a job & pay taxes. If you don’t have work you have to leave. I call that Smart Gov. We @reformparty_uk will change this, we will tackle the tough choices and deliver. The @Conservatives (which yes I was part of) made a huge error of judgement on this issue. @Nigel_Farage is determined to fix. I predict more & more smart loyal Brits will join us. @Keir_Starmer is yet again on the wrong side of history on this.

Zahawi is claiming that migrants who have come to the UK recently to work have been “a huge burden on public services and the economy”.

But that is not what the government’s expert body, the migration advisory committee, says. At the end of last year it published a report on the lifetime economic contribution of people coming to the UK on skilled worker visas (a category that included health and care workers in the period covered by this data) and it said that overall their contribution was “clearly fiscally positive”.

The number of people waiting more than 12 hours in A&E departments for a hospital bed has risen sharply – though the overall NHS waiting list continues to drop, PA Media reports. PA says:

New data for England shows that the number of people waiting more than 12 hours for a hospital bed following a decision to admit them stood at 71,517 in January, up sharply from 50,775 in December.

This is the highest number since monthly records began in August 2010.

Meanwhile, the number waiting at least four hours from the decision to admit to admission stood at 161,141 last month, up from 137,763 in December and the second highest figure on record.

Some 72.5% of patients in England are being dealt with within four hours, against a March 2026 target of 78%.

When it comes to the overall NHS waiting list, this has fallen for the second month in a row.

An estimated 7.29 million treatments were waiting to be carried out at the end of December 2025, relating to 6.17 million patients.

This is down from 7.31 million treatments at the end of November, while the figure for patients has remained at 6.17 million.

The list hit a record high in September 2023, with 7.77 million treatments and 6.50 million patients.

Some experts have raised concerns about how the drop in the waiting list is being achieved, owing to the practice of “list cleaning”.

The Nuffield Trust has argued that the balance between referrals for treatment versus treatment delivered has not changed very much, meaning a big proportion of waiting list reductions have happened due to other reasons, such as list cleaning.

In its own news release about today’s figures, NHS England says it carried out a record number of operations and treatments last year. It says:

The NHS delivered more elective activity in 2025 than any other year in its history, helping cut the waiting list to its lowest level since February 2023.

Staff delivered a historic high of 18.4 million treatments and operations in 2025, up from 18 million in 2024, as the waiting list dropped to 7.29 million.

Today’s data shows there were 1.43 million treatments delivered in December – an increase of 91,775 on last year – despite 5 days of industrial action by resident doctors, thanks to staff maintaining almost 95% of usual activity during strikes.

The percentage of people waiting over 18 weeks for treatment slightly decreased to 61.5%, while the percentage of those waiting over 52 weeks dropped to just 1.9% – the lowest since June 2020 – as the Elective Reform Plan continues to drive NHS services to tackle the longest waits and ensure more people are seen quicker.

Jim Ratcliffe’s statement today (see 12.10pm) does not count as a full, proper apology. Ratcliffe is not apologising for what he said; he is saying he is sorry that some people were offended – implying that whether or not his words were offensive is a matter for debate. But at least he did not say “if” people were offended.

At the Downing Street lobby briefing, asked if the Ratcliffe apology should have gone further, the PM’s spokesperson did not press this point. He just said:

The prime minister asked for an apology, and one’s been issued, and it’s absolutely right that Jim Ratcliffe has apologised for that language.

Asked again if the apology went far enough, the spokesperson said:

It’s for Mr Ratcliffe to speak to his apology … It’s not for me.

Sunder Katwala, who runs British Future, a thinktank dealing with immigration, race and identity issues, has posted on Bluesky about what he thinks Ratcliffe should have said.

Jim Ratcliffe has issued a bland and generic statement about economic policy which does not engage at all with what he got wrong, or why saying the UK has been colonised has been legitimately criticised. Nor does he seem to retract his language of colonisation in gesturing towards a semi-apology

TRY: “I regret saying that UK has been colonised by immigration, I understand that was the wrong language to use. I can see how that has detracted from what I see as the substantive issue: jobs, growth, welfare and well-managed migration for the benefit of all, which I hope to engage with better”

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has said that it was “disgusting” for Jim Ratcliffe to talk about the UK being “colonised” by migrants.

On a visit to Crawley, speaking shortly before Ratcliffe issued his partial apology (see 12.10pm), Reeves said:

Investment in Grangemouth is to support jobs in Grangemouth and support vital industries in Scotland and in the UK.

But what Jim Ratcliffe said was unacceptable. It was disgusting, frankly, and he should apologise for his remarks, but I’m not going to let what Jim Ratcliffe has said determine the future of jobs in Scotland.

Ratcliffe runs the chemicals company Ineos, which has major ethylene plant in Grangemouth in Scotland. At the end of last year the government announced £120m in funding to keep it operating.

The Downing Street lobby briefing has just finished but, on the issue of the fate of Chris Wormald (see 10.07am), reporters emerged no wiser than when they went in.

The PM’s spokesperson refused to say what is happening to Wormald and refused to say whether or not he is still cabinet secretary.

At one point the spokesperson said that the Cabinet Office was ‘“still being supervised by the cabinet secretary” – implying that someone is actually doing the job. But, when reporters asked who this mysterious individual was, the spokeperson refused to say.

He repeatedly said he would not comment on the “ongoing speculation”.

Asked about the claims that Antonia Romeo is being lined up to replace Wormald, the spokesperson said those were “speculative reports”.

The Football Association will look at whether Jim Ratcliffe brought the game into disrepute through his claims that the UK has been “colonised” by immigrants, Nick Ames reports.

Jim Ratcliffe has issued a statement saying he is sorry that his comment about the UK being “colonised” by migrants “offended some people”. But he defends the need for an “open debate” on the topic.

He said:

I am sorry that my choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe and caused concern but it is important to raise the issue of controlled and well-managed immigration that supports economic growth.

My comments were made while answering questions about UK policy at the European industry summit in Antwerp, where I was discussing the importance of economic growth, jobs, skills and manufacturing in the UK.

My intention was to stress that governments must manage migration alongside investment in skills, industry and jobs so that long-term prosperity is shared by everyone. It is critical that we maintain an open debate on the challenges facing the UK.

Keir Starmer’s approval ratings are dire. Last week the polling firm Ipsos published this chart showing how he compares to other Labour and Tory leaders over the past two decades.

But Starmer’s ratings are improving. YouGov has published figures showing that his net favourability rating is up 10 points since January – although, at -47 – it is still very poor.

The fieldwork for the YouGov polling was carried out on Tuesday and Wednesday, after Starmer faced down a threat to his leadership from his party. He may have got some credit for that, but it is also possible that he impressed people by standing up to Donald Trump, over Greenland and over the president’s comments about the record of British troops in Afghanistan in late January.

Alexandra Topping is a Guardian political correspondent.

Chris Ward, a Cabinet Office minister, has told MPs that the government will comply with last week’s humble address requiring the release of government papers relating to Peter Mandelson’s time as ambassador to the US “as soon as possible”.

Responding to an urgent question tabled by the Conservatives, Ward said:

The government will comply fully and publish documents as soon as possible.

As I said in this house last week, we welcome both the principle and content of that motion, and we will deliver on it as soon as we can.

As such, government departments have been instructed to retain any material which may be relevant, and work is under way to identify documents which fall in scope of the motion.

We will do [this] as soon as possible when the house returns from recess, in line with the motion passed by this house.

Where the government considers documents may be prejudicial to UK national security or international relations, the Cabinet Office will refer this material to the independent intelligence and security committee.

The Commons starts a half-term recess this afternoon, and will return on Monday week.