A grassroots revolt against councils closing or narrowing roads as part of a “cycling revolution” has led to campaigners preparing to sue over “abuse” of emergency coronavirus laws, The Telegraph can reveal.

In May, Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Transport, invited local authorities to bid for £250 million of an emergency fund to promote walking and cycling to relieve pressure on public transport during the coronavirus crisis.

The move came after bike sales rose more than 50 per cent as people shunned trains and buses during lockdown.

Many councils enthusiastically embraced the green emergency policy by introducing new or wider cycle lanes, closing some residential side streets to traffic and expanding footpaths, occasionally with little or no public consultation.

In what may prove increasingly embarrassing for the Tory Government, local conservatives are leading much of the opposition to the policy as...

This Friday Boris Johnson will mark the first anniversary of the day he entered Downing Street shortly after fulfilling a lifetime's ambition to become prime minister.

When he first addressed the nation in his new role, with the odd swipe at his predecessor, and a bold pledge to "change this country for the better", little could Mr Johnson have imagined the horrors through which he would have to steer the UK just six months later.

But, sitting in his study in No 10, having recovered from his own near-death experience from Covid-19, Mr Johnson is insistent that coronavirus has not blown the Government off course from the major reforming agenda he set out last year.

The Government's test and trace system would currently fail to prevent a second wave of Covid-19 infections because it is only identifying a third of people it needs to track down, a senior official has admitted.

The civil servant in charge of efforts to test the public said the system was only identifying 37 per cent of the people "we really should be finding". 

In an industry briefing, Alex Cooper, the "senior responsible owner" for two of the five pillars of the Government's testing programme, added: "We need to be finding roughly half of the people that have got Covid-19 so that we can keep R [the reproduction rate] down, if test and trace is going to work."

Last week the Government said NHS Test and Trace was reaching 77 per cent of those who had tested positive in order to seek details of their contacts and ask them to isolate. But Mr Cooper's remarks raise concerns that many more who may be infected with the virus are not...

It was, by any measure, a royal wedding like no other. On the side of tradition, there was the beaming couple, a chapel laden with flowers, and the bride’s beloved grandparents at its heart.

In almost every other respect, the wedding of Princess Beatrice and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi was unrecognisable as a Great British Royal Wedding of the modern era.

As the Royal Family adhered to the same coronavirus rules as the rest of the country, the Princess and Mr Mapelli Mozzi wed in lockdown, with a handful of socially distanced family members, no hymns and a national anthem which was played by not sung.

As official photographs of the newlyweds were released on Saturday night, there was also one other notable difference: the conspicuous absence of the mother and father of the bride in commemorative pictures.

The Duke of York walked the Princess down the aisle, but did not take part in photographs released to the public in...

This Friday Boris Johnson will mark the first anniversary of the day he entered Downing Street shortly after fulfilling a lifetime's ambition to become prime minister.

When he first addressed the nation in his new role, with the odd swipe at his predecessor, and a bold pledge to "change this country for the better", little could Mr Johnson have imagined the horrors through which he would have to steer the UK just six months later.

But, sitting in his study in No 10, having recovered from his own near-death experience from Covid-19, Mr Johnson is insistent that coronavirus has not blown the Government off course from the major reforming agenda he set out last year.

Taxes and red tape will be slashed in towns and cities across the country next year, under Government plans for a post-Brexit economic revolution.

Rishi Sunak is preparing to introduce sweeping tax cuts and an overhaul of planning laws in up to 10 new "freeports" within a year of the UK becoming fully independent from the EU in December, The Telegraph can reveal.

The disclosure comes as Michael Gove declares the reasons for Brexit are "stronger than ever", in a rebuke to Michael Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator, who last week said he saw no "added value" from leaving the bloc.

Writing in The Telegraph, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster also launches "The UK's new start: let's get going", a public information campaign to help individuals and businesses to prepare for life outside of the EU's structures and "seize the opportunities" of Brexit.

Ministers are dramatically stepping up plans for the end of the...

Ministers and Public Health England were warned in early April that staff working in multiple care homes could be unwittingly spreading coronavirus among the elderly – five weeks before the Government finally issued guidance restricting workers to one institution.

The Telegraph can reveal that the warnings were repeated by government advisers over the following weeks as data showed that three quarters of one home’s residents were infected with the virus, despite its managers having identified only two cases. 

An official study conducted in mid-April found that symptomatic staff were self-isolating and being replaced by “bank” staff who worked at multiple homes.

Scientists also recommended effectively quarantining elderly patients in “intermediate” Nightingale-type facilities before transferring them back to care homes, but the idea was never taken up nationally. 

Government advisers later concluded that discharging...

Boris Johnson is poised to begin phasing out the use of Huawei technology in Britain’s 5G network as soon as this year, in a major about-turn, The Telegraph can disclose.

GCHQ is understood to have revised its previous assurance that the risks posed by the Chinese technology giant can be safely managed.

A report due to be presented to the Prime Minister this week is expected to conclude that new US sanctions on Huawei will force the company to use untrusted technology that could make the risk impossible to control.

The report, by GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, has concluded that the sanctions, which bar Huawei from using technology relying on American intellectual property, has had a “severe” impact on the firm that significantly changes their calculations.

Officials are now drawing up proposals to stop installing new Huawei equipment in the 5G network in as little as six months, and to speed up the removal of technology...