‘Not clear’ who was behind cyber-attack
Good morning.
The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was hacked in October, according to trade minister Chris Bryant.
Details of the hack emerged on Friday in a report by the Sun that claimed a Chinese hacker group was behind the cyber-attack.
The Sun named Storm 1849 as the Chinese cyber gang responsible for the breach, which it said was understood to possibly include tens of thousands of visa details.
The group has been “accused of targeting politicians and groups critical of the Chinese government”, the newspaper said.
However, when asked if China was behind the attack, Bryant said: “That’s not entirely clear.”
“There certainly has been a hack at the FCDO and we’ve been aware of that since October,” Bryant told Sky News.
“Some of the reporting has, I think, been a bit more speculation than accurate.”
He added, “We’re fairly confident that there’s a low risk of any individual actually being affected by this.”
A government spokesperson told the Guardian: “We have been working to investigate a cyber incident. We take the security of our systems and data extremely seriously.”
Key events
Afternoon Summary
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The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was hacked in October. Details of the hack emerged on Friday in a report by the Sun that claimed a Chinese hacker group was behind the cyber-attack. The Sun named Storm 1849 as the Chinese cyber gang responsible for the breach, which it said was understood to possibly include tens of thousands of visa details. However, when asked if China was behind the attack, trade minister Chris Bryant told broadcasters it was “not clear” who perpetrated the attack and cautioned against speculation. The minister also said that risk to “any individual” from this cyber-attack was low.
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A review found that the BBC’s editing guidelines do not need to be altered in the wake of controversy surrounding the edit of a Donald Trump speech. The US president is seeking up to $10bn (£7.5bn) in damages in response to the BBC’s editing of a speech he made before the 2021 attack on the Capitol.
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Russian president Vladimir Putin told his annual end-of-year press conference that US president Donald Trump was right to sue the BBC over edited clips of his speech.
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Rachel Reeves said the UK’s support for Ukraine remains “iron-clad” as she welcomed a European deal to provide billions more in financial support for Kyiv. The chancellor said she was “pleased” a deal had been reached, adding: “The UK’s support for Ukraine remains iron-clad. “We will work with partners to urgently consider options to ensure that Ukraine gets the funding it needs.” Meanwhile, the UK has given its final warning to Roman Abramovich to release £2.5bn from the oligarch’s sale of Chelsea FC to give to Ukraine, telling the billionaire to release the funds within 90 days or face court action.
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Reform UK held on to a seat on Cornwall council in a byelection after a turbulent time for the party in the county. Reform’s Heinz Wolfgang Glanville was elected as the new member for St Columb Minor and Colan with 408 votes despite a flurry of resignations and suspensions as well as public infighting that many said undermined Reform’s authority in the county.
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Reform-run Kent council was accused of trying to block scrutiny after it refused, for more than five months, to produce evidence that it had saved more than £40m by cancelling two environmental projects that did not exist yet.
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The UK government borrowed more than expected in November according to official figures. For more in Business news:
The Electoral Commission has voiced concern about the prospect of further delays to local elections, saying capacity constraints are not a legitimate reason to postpone long-planned polls.
Some 63 council areas due to hold elections in May could postpone them until 2027 after some told ministers they lack the capacity to reorganise in time, the government said.
It comes as Labour’s plans to scrap two-tier authorities and merge them into single unitary councils by 2028 are implemented.
But Vijay Rangarajan, the Electoral Commission’s chief executive, said the move caused “unprecedented” uncertainty and could damage public confidence. He said:
We are disappointed by both the timing and substance of the statement. Scheduled elections should as a rule go ahead as planned, and only be postponed in exceptional circumstances.”
BBC editing guidelines can remain unaltered in wake of Trump edit, review says
The BBC’s editing guidelines do not need to be altered in the wake of controversy surrounding the edit of a Donald Trump speech, a review has found.
The US president is seeking up to $10bn (£7.5bn) in damages in response to the BBC’s editing of a speech he made before the 2021 attack on the Capitol.
The scandal unfolded earlier this year after a leaked memo, written by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, highlighted concerns that the speech had been selectively edited.
In the Panorama programme, a clip from Mr Trump’s speech on January 6 2021 was spliced to show him saying: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”
After an initial review of the Prescott report in October, the BBC’s director of editorial complaints and reviews, Peter Johnston, conducted a more detailed review of the Panorama programme, Trump: A Second Chance?.
In his report, published on Friday, Mr Johnston said:
I was asked to look at the editorial guidelines on use of editing. I do not believe any changes are required, but we will ensure these lessons are reinforced.
More actions had been taken than acknowledged in Michael Prescott’s document and since this was made public we have also dealt with some remaining issues.
The key unresolved issue in the document was the editing of President Trump’s 6 January speech in the Panorama programme.
This has now been publicly acknowledged as an error of judgment and it has been made clear that the edit unintentionally created the impression that we were showing a single continuous section of the speech, rather than excerpts from different points in the speech, and that this gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.
A separate review of the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC) outlined areas the BBC would “fix” including an effort to make the EGSC “more strategic – focused on major areas of current and emerging editorial risk.”
The BBC will also “adopt a new approach so individual editorial queries are dealt with promptly at the right level in the organisation, and to ensure that potential systemic issues are considered for deeper editorial review.”
Rachel Reeves said the UK’s support for Ukraine remains “iron-clad” as she welcomed a European deal to provide billions more in financial support for Kyiv.
The European Council agreed on Thursday to provide an interest-free loan worth 90 billion euros (£78.8bn) to support Ukraine’s military and economic needs over the next two years.
The chancellor said she is “pleased” a deal had been reached, adding: “The UK’s support for Ukraine remains iron-clad.
“We will work with partners to urgently consider options to ensure that Ukraine gets the funding it needs.”
Meanwhile, the UK has given its final warning to Roman Abramovich to release £2.5bn from the oligarch’s sale of Chelsea FC to give to Ukraine, telling the billionaire to release the funds within 90 days or face court action.
Prime minister Keir Starmer told the House of Commons the funds from Abramovich, who is subject to UK sanctions, would be converted into a new foundation for humanitarian causes in Ukraine and that the issuing of a licence for the transfer was the last chance Abramovich would have to comply.
Putin says Trump is right to sue BBC over speech edit
Russian president Vladimir Putin told his annual end-of-year press conference on Friday that US president Donald Trump was right to sue the BBC over edited clips of his speech.
Trump sued Britain’s publicly owned broadcaster for at least $10bn in damages over edited clips of a speech that made it appear he directed supporters to storm the US Capitol.
The BBC apologised to him last month, but rejected his demands for compensation and disagreed there was a “basis for a defamation claim”.
Trump’s legal team accused the BBC of defaming him by “intentionally, maliciously, and deceptively doctoring his speech”.
A BBC spokesperson said: “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case.”
They added: “We are not going to make further comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”
UK imposes sanctions on perpetrators of violence against Syrian civilians
The UK government imposed sanctions on Friday on individuals and organisations it said were “linked to violence perpetrated against civilians in Syria”, including some who financially supported former president Bashar al-Assad’s government.
The government measures were targeted at individuals involved in coastal violence in Syria in March, as well as historic violence committed during the country’s civil war, the statement said.
WH Smith will try to take back as much as £7m in bonuses from former executives after it said the UK’s financial watchdog had launched a formal investigation into a devastating accounting error linked to its US business.
Almost £600m was wiped off the books to paperclips retailer’s stock market value overnight in August after it identified errors with accounting for supplier income and provision for lost stock going back to 2023 in its North American arm.
Last month its chief executive, Carl Cowling, stepped down in the wake of the scandal.
On Friday the company said it would be “applying malus and clawback to recover overpaid bonuses” from Cowling, and its former finance director Robert Moorhead, after the restatement of profits in its 2023 and 2024 financial year.
It confirmed the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority had launched a formal investigation into the company’s compliance with UK listing, disclosure and transparency rules.
Responding to news of the FCDO hack, Conservative shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel shared a Telegraph report that said the hack was Chinese and wrote on X:
“China undermines our security, institutions and democracy but Labour is failing to protect Britain from China’s foreign interference in our country.
“Starmer kowtows to China at every opportunity and cannot be trusted to protect our national interest.”
Reform accused of blocking scrutiny of claim it saved £40m
Reform-run Kent council has been accused of trying to block scrutiny after it refused, for more than five months, to produce evidence that it had saved more than £40m by cancelling two environmental projects that did not exist yet.
Polly Billington, a Labour MP in Kent, first requested background to the claim via a freedom of information (FoI) request in July. She said the subsequent delay had not been explained and seemed to show the council was embarrassed at what the documents would show.
Kent county council said it rejected any suggestion of a cover-up, and that it planned to release the information to Billington, the East Thanet MP, later this week.
Read more of the exclusive report:
UK borrowed more than expected in November amid pre-budget pressure
Richard Partington
The UK government borrowed more than expected in November, official figures show, amid pressure on the economy before chancellor Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed public sector net borrowing – the difference between spending and income – was £11.7bn last month, £1.9bn less than in the same month a year earlier.
In the first snapshot since the November budget, the reading was above City predictions of a £10bn deficit.
The figures come a day after the Bank of England cut interest rates for a sixth time since August last year, easing some of the pressure on borrowers, in a pre-Christmas boost for the UK’s struggling economy.
Elliott Jordan-Doak, a senior UK economist at the consultancy Capital Economics, said the higher-than-expected November borrowing figure showed it was “only a matter of time before fiscal worries begin to dominate the news flow again” after Reeves’s budget.
“The public finances remain weak. Reeves has staked much fiscal credibility on chunky tax increases in the back end of the forecast period. But we think today’s figures further illustrate the shaky foundations of that gamble.”
For all the latest updates on Business news, follow our liveblog:
Reform holds on to seat in byelection
Jamie Grierson
Reform UK have held on to a seat on Cornwall council in a byelection after a turbulent time for the party in the county.
The result shows support remains for Nigel Farage’s party in Cornwall despite a flurry of resignations and suspensions as well as public infighting that many said undermined Reform’s authority in the county.
Reform’s Heinz Wolfgang Glanville was elected as the new member for St Columb Minor and Colan with 408 votes, beating independent candidate John Fitter with 325 votes.
The byelection was called after Reform UK member for the division, Christine Parsonage, resigned for medical reasons. She had come under heavy criticism for living more than 40 miles away from the division.
After May’s local elections, Reform had the most seats in the county but was unable to form an administration. However, following several resignations the party no longer holds that title and is now the second biggest party by seats on the council to the Liberal Democrats, who rule in a coalition with independents.
‘Not clear’ who was behind cyber-attack
Good morning.
The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was hacked in October, according to trade minister Chris Bryant.
Details of the hack emerged on Friday in a report by the Sun that claimed a Chinese hacker group was behind the cyber-attack.
The Sun named Storm 1849 as the Chinese cyber gang responsible for the breach, which it said was understood to possibly include tens of thousands of visa details.
The group has been “accused of targeting politicians and groups critical of the Chinese government”, the newspaper said.
However, when asked if China was behind the attack, Bryant said: “That’s not entirely clear.”
“There certainly has been a hack at the FCDO and we’ve been aware of that since October,” Bryant told Sky News.
“Some of the reporting has, I think, been a bit more speculation than accurate.”
He added, “We’re fairly confident that there’s a low risk of any individual actually being affected by this.”
A government spokesperson told the Guardian: “We have been working to investigate a cyber incident. We take the security of our systems and data extremely seriously.”
