Responding to the Prime Minister confirming the Conservative Party’s commitment to the 0.7% foreign aid funding target, UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall said, “The foreign aid budget which is due to go up to £15 billion by 2020 is an absolute outrage. It costs the British people £30 million every single day.

“UKIP is the only party that wants to see a drastic reduction in the foreign aid budget and to see that money spent on our NHS instead.

“We want to see British taxpayers’ money spent here in our country on our own people. We are not afraid to say ‘charity begins at home'”.

Twenty Members of the European parliament from six EU member-states have written an open letter to President Donald J. Trump calling for early implementation of his campaign pledge to pull the USA out of the Paris Climate Treaty. In their letter, they say that a US withdrawal from the Paris accord “would effectively neuter it, to the benefit of us all”. They applaud the new and more positive approach which President Trump is taking to climate and energy issues, and say they “are pressing for similar policies on this (European) side of the Atlantic”.

They also raise their concerns about the EPA’s “endangerment” finding with regard to CO2, and urge the President to revisit the issue. They argue that the finding “has no sound basis in science, but provides a pretext for damaging and extreme environmental policies”.

Commenting on the letter, UKIP’s Energy Spokesman Roger Helmer, who set up the initiative, said “It is clear that the EU’s extreme green policies are doing huge damage to EU industry and EU competitiveness, and are driving energy-intensive industries out of the EU entirely, taking their jobs and their investments with them. At the same time these policies have a trivial effect on the climate. Billions spent on “green” investments amount to little more than gesture politics and virtue-signalling from politicians spending other people’s money”.

UKIP Immigration Spokesman John Bickley said, “Trusting Theresa May and the Tories to control immigration is as safe a bet as expecting a pub team from the ‘Dog & Duck’ to win the World Cup!

“As both Home Secretary and now Prime Minister Theresa May ‘promised’ to reduce immigration to the ‘tens of thousands’ – a promise and a pledge that has completely and utterly failed.

“Even the Home Office under Theresa May was concerned that many students coming into the UK, allegedly to study, would disappear off the border agency’s radar and into the black economy.

“Fudging student numbers looks like a ruse to massage the immigration statistics and con the British people into believing immigration is coming down, when in fact under the Tories it’s been out of control, running at over 500,000 a year.

Pollsters are putting UKIP in third place in the race for the first elected mayor of the West Midlands.

The results of the poll – which place the party’s candidate Pete Durnell clearly ahead of the Lib Dems – have been welcomed by James Carver, one of the region’s three UKIP MEPs.

Mr Carver said the Birmingham Mail poll underlined the relevance of UKIP as the nation heads towards the general election on June 8.

Labour and the Conservatives each look set to get around 33 per cent of first preference votes, but the online survey of 2,500 Trinity Mirror readers shows UKIP is going to make a difference in the mayoral election with a 15.7 per cent share of the vote – steaming ahead of the Lib Dems on just 7.4 per cent.

Mr Durnell said: “Although lagging a little behind Conservative and Labour, this survey reflects solid support for UKIP across the region, and for the central theme of my campaign, which is to be absolutely open and honest with voters at all times.”

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of a General Election on June 8, UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall said: “We welcome the opportunity to take UKIP’s positive message to the country.

“However, we believe that the Prime Minister’s decision to call this election is a cynical decision driven more by the weakness of Corbyn’s Labour Party rather than the good of the country.

“There is also the prospect of a slew of Tory held by-elections caused by the seeming systematic breach of electoral law at the last election, predominantly in places where UKIP were pressing the Conservatives hard.

“We are in the midst of Brexit negotiations so this election will provide a perfect opportunity for the 52% to vote for UKIP the only party wholeheartedly committed to a clean quick and efficient Brexit.”