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Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, told police that they must investigate every theft and follow all reasonable leads to catch criminals; the Police Federation of England and Wales said forces were already ‘stretched beyond human limits’. Home Office figures showed that only 3.9 per cent of residential burglaries resulted in someone being charged, and for thefts from the person it was 0.9 per cent. Hartwig Fischer resigned as the director of the British Museum and Jonathan Williams stepped aside as his deputy when it became clear that information about 1,500 or so missing objects had been wrongly dismissed; police continued investigations. Two men were arrested on suspicion of arson in connection with the fire that gutted the Crooked House pub at Himley, Staffordshire, on 5 August. Six policemen were bitten at the Notting Hill Carnival.
The government set about (by an amendment to the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill) changing the law that prohibits new housing if it raises the level of nutrients in waterways. The Ultra Low Emission Zone was extended to every London borough, meaning a £12.50 daily fee for the drivers of many cars – up to 700,000, some said. The number of people in Scotland to die from conditions caused by alcohol rose by another 2 per cent last year, to 1,276, the highest since 2008; Elena Whitham, the minister responsible, said: ‘If we didn’t have minimum unit pricing in place, I think that the deaths that we would be seeing today would have been higher.’
Nadine Dorries at last applied, with success, to oust Boris Johnson as Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham, thereby vacating her seat in the House of Commons after announcing that she would do so in June.
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