5 top UK news stories today (2 March 2026)

Here’s your UK news roundup for Monday (2 March 2026):

Consultation on social media ban for under-16s to begin

A public consultation on whether to ban social media for under-16s is being launched on Monday, inviting young people and their parents and guardians to submit comments ahead of a government decision on the proposal. The debate over a minimum age for social media use has been fired up by Australia’s decision last year to ban children from a range of platforms, including Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and TikTok. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall said the consultation would help establish how young people could “thrive in an age of rapid technological change”. [BBC]

New asylum rules for the UK

Shabana Mahmood has ripped up the government’s asylum rules so that from Monday every refugee will be told that their status is temporary and will last just 30 months. In a move that has concerned a refugee charity, the home secretary said that claimants whose countries are deemed to be safe by the UK government will from now on be expected to return. The announcement comes despite pleas from some Labour MPs, peers and affiliated unions this weekend for Keir Starmer’s government to shift towards progressive policies after the party came third in Thursday’s Gorton and Denton byelection. [Guardian]

Heathrow’s third runway to cost almost £1 million per metre

Heathrow’s third runway will cost almost £1m per metre to build, according to new estimates. The cost for just the landing strip itself – covering cement, asphalt, and lights – will come in at £830,000 per metre, making it one of the most expensive runways ever built. The bill will be “a magnitude higher” than for runways at other major airports, 95pc of which have cost between £10,000 and £100,000 for every metre of length, according to a new study into Heathrow’s expenses obtained by The Telegraph. [Telegraph]

Starmer’s cost-of-living tsar to introduce interventions

Keir Starmer’s ‘cost of living champion’ has said he is exploring measures to help households with their bills, ranging from tackling bank late payment fees to taking more levies off the cost of energy. Lord Richard Walker, executive chair of supermarket chain Iceland, told the FT living costs were ‘way up there domestically in terms of people’s concerns’ and that the government was determined to ‘make this their core . . . focus’. The prime minister and his cabinet should make or pull ‘certain interventions and levers’ to persuade households they understood their situation, Walker said, noting that more could be done on cutting the cost of energy after the removal of the ECO energy efficiency scheme from bills. [Financial Times]