Westminster Crisis: Children's Home Failures, Russia Sanctions Row

Wednesday delivered Westminster its hardest single day in weeks, with a domestic failure of social-care regulation and an external row over Russia sanctions running on parallel front pages.

A BBC investigation by Noel Titheradge, whose 2020 reporting prompted the 2021 ban on housing under-16s in unregistered children's homes, found English councils are now placing around 800 of the most vulnerable children in unregistered — and therefore illegal — children's homes. Extreme placements are billed at up to £2 million per child per year. Spending on residential care has doubled in four years and tripled in eight; average registered placements cost £6,100 a week, or £318,000 a year. Staffordshire Council confirmed paying £2.6 million last year for a single teenage girl needing up to five staff, with the NHS covering half; Cornwall has been paying £63,000 a week for one child in a secure unit. Ofsted's registration backlog now stretches to 18 months, and the regulator has yet to successfully prosecute a single illegal provider, though newly passed powers will allow it to impose unlimited fines. England's children's-homes market is 84% privately run, against 17% in Denmark, and the non-profit share sits at 4% in the UK against 29% in Denmark. Wales is requiring all new providers to be not-for-profit from last month; Scotland is exploring similar steps. Children's homes minister Josh MacAlister said in February he wanted to cap providers' profits if profiteering continued, but the Department for Education declined to confirm whether that is now policy.

On Russia sanctions, the Labour government issued a General Trade Licence on May 20 permitting imports of diesel and jet fuel refined from Russian crude in third countries, citing the Iran-war price shock and the doubling of kerosene prices since Hormuz closed. Trade Minister Chris Bryant apologised to Parliament for handling the announcement "clumsily" and said he accepted full responsibility; Prime Minister Keir Starmer told MPs the move authorised only "two targeted licences" on a short-term basis to protect British consumers, not a wider sanctions relaxation. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch accused the prime minister of choosing to buy "dirty" Russian oil, saying the money would help "fund the deaths of Ukrainian soldiers." Labour's own Foreign Affairs Committee chair Emily Thornberry said she opposed the change and that Ukrainian contacts were "very disappointed," rejecting the Spain/US precedent argument. On the same day the UK and the Gulf Cooperation Council formally signed a £3.7 billion-a-year trade deal removing 93% of GCC tariffs on British goods — a Brexit-era win the government will struggle to surface above the sanctions row.

Defence diplomacy added a separate shock. The Ministry of Defence said two Russian fighter jets — a Su-35 and a Su-27 — repeatedly and dangerously intercepted an unarmed RAF Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft over the Black Sea in mid-April. According to London, the Su-35 came close enough to trigger the British aircraft's emergency systems and disable its autopilot; the Su-27 made six passes in front of the Rivet Joint, at one point closing to within roughly six metres of its nose. Defence Secretary John Healey denounced "dangerous and unacceptable" behaviour creating a "serious risk of accident and escalation." The MOD called it the most dangerous incident involving a British Rivet Joint since 2022, when a Russian aircraft fired a missile near a British plane in the same region.

Domestic politics added the day's other gut-punch. Former health secretary Wes Streeting resigned from Cabinet and used a Commons speech to warn that Labour is losing the fight against nationalism, calling it an existential threat to the UK. He said he had lost confidence in Sir Keir Starmer's leadership; the speech followed Labour's heavy local-election defeats in early May and lands as Starmer enters the summer with a fraying parliamentary base. April CPI separately fell to 2.8% from 3.3% in March, but the ONS noted analysts expect inflation to rise back to about 4% by year-end as Iran-war fuel and raw-material costs feed through — a forecast that helped frame Bryant's defence of the Russian-fuel licence in the Commons but did little to blunt the political damage.