“George Osborne will spend £1.5 billion on additional lessons and activities at secondary schools over the next four years in a move that his aides said spelt the end of the ‘Victorian’ finish time of 3.30pm. In today’s budget, the chancellor will also confirm that local education authorities are to be dismantled and all English state schools required to become academies by 2022, bringing a close to the century-old system” – The Times (£)
“Plans to reduce capital gains tax have been examined by Treasury officials as ministers look at ways to encourage people to sell their second homes. George Osborne has suggested that he is keen to cut the tax after the Liberal Democrats forced him to raise it during coalition negotiations in 2010. Officials have been asked to look at cuts to the top rate from 28 per cent to 20 per cent, while the charge for basic rate taxpayers would drop from 18 per cent to 15 per cent” – The Times (£)
“George Osborne will use Wednesday’s budget to set in motion plans for a high-speed railway line from Manchester to Leeds and an 18-mile underground road tunnel beneath the Peak District. The chancellor will also promise to ‘prioritise’ a north-south link through central London as he accepts the final recommendations of the National Infrastructure Commission, led by former Labour peer Lord Adonis… Adonis said: ‘If the north is to become a powerhouse, it has to be better connected’” – Guardian
“David Cameron should veto the ‘dangerous’ deal between Europe and Turkey this week, according to Iain Duncan Smith. The work and pensions secretary said that a plan to give 70 million Turkish citizens access to the Schengen free travel area meant that more migrants were likely to head to northern France and try to enter Britain” – The Times (£)
>Today:
>Yesterday:
“UK expats are bringing a legal challenge against the government’s decision to exclude up to 2m Britons living abroad from voting in June’s EY referendum. Law firm Leigh Day claims it is unlawful to exclude UK expats from voting if they have lived outside the UK for more than 15 years… If their challenge is successful it could require the government to rush through amending legislation to change the voting register for the June referendum” – Financial Times
“Millions of black and Asian votes are ‘up for grabs’ in the Brexit referendum amid growing hostility towards the European Union from Britain’s ethnic minorities. Race equality activists say they are surprised at the extent of anger about the EU driven by resentment over large-scale migration from Eastern Europe and support for neo-Nazi groups on the continent” – The Times (£)
“Clearly, there is some deception going on. [Boris] Johnson, Farage and the other Brexiters are quick to denounce anyone who spells out the facts about what Brexit would mean for Britain’s prosperity, security or influence as constituting “Project Fear”. But it is increasingly clear that the leave campaign is the one that is reliant upon deception – let’s call it Project Fantasy” – Alan Johnson, Guardian
“Labour has suspended for a second time an activist at the centre of a row about antisemitic tweets. Vicki Kirby was a parliamentary candidate when she was put under investigation by the party in 2014 after a series of posts on Twitter in which she apparently suggested Adolf Hitler might be a ‘Zionist God’ and that Jews had ‘big noses’” – Guardian
“Nicola Sturgeon has been accused of ‘abuse of power’ for encouraging head teachers to send 16- and 17-year-old pupils to a ‘political rally’ on the eve of the Holyrood election campaign. A Scottish Government official wrote to education bosses asking them to get pupils – ‘ideally a boy and a girl’ – from each school to an ‘Ask the First Minister’ event in Edinburgh next Monday” – Scotsman
>Yesterday:
“Donald Trump knocked Marco Rubio out of the Republican race by winning Florida and three more states, reinforcing his status as the GOP frontrunner, but he lost to John Kasich in Ohio, complicating his path to the presidential nomination. Mr Trump, the New York property mogul who has several properties in the Sunshine State, handed a devastating loss to the Cuban-American senator in his home state of Florida, by winning 46 per cent of the vote against Mr Rubio’s 27 per cent” – Financial Times
>Yesterday: