The UK and Germany have agreed a plan to create a new, direct rail link between London and Berlin as part of a wide-ranging treaty.

The Kensington Treaty also includes opening e-gates for frequent travellers between the two countries next month, as well as agreeing school exchange visits.

Friedrich Merz made his first official visit to the UK as German chancellor to sign the deal, which will also tighten laws around people smuggling gangs and strengthen defence ties.

Downing Street said the move will make it easier for German authorities to investigate and act against warehouses and storage facilities used by smugglers to conceal small boats intended for illegal Channel crossings to the UK.

The new travel arrangements come as part of plans to re-set relations around trade and business between the two countries.

A joint taskforce will be established to pave the way for direct train services within the next decade.

Merz met Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington for the signing ceremony.

Sir Keir described the pact as “evidence of the closeness of our relationship as it stands today” as well as a “statement of intent, a statement of our ambition to work ever more closely together”.

Commercial investments in the UK, worth more than £200m and expected to create more than 600 new jobs, have been announced, and a new UK-Germany Business Forum has been established.

Defence and security was also a key part of discussions, including support for Ukraine, and a new agreement on the joint export of co-produced military equipment has been unveiled.

Downing Street said the agreement on equipment such as Boxer armoured vehicles and Typhoon jets was likely to lead to billions of pounds of additional defence exports in the coming years.

On security, Merz has committed to changing the law, making facilitation of illegal migration to the UK a criminal offence, by the end of the year.

Facilitating people-smuggling is not technically illegal in Germany currently, if it is to a country outside the European Union – which, following Brexit, includes the UK.

A BBC investigation last year exposed the significant German connection to small boat crossings, with the country becoming a central location for the storage of boats and engines.

Sir Keir said: “Chancellor Merz’s commitment to make necessary changes to German law to disrupt the supply lines of the dangerous vessels which carry illegal migrants across the Channel is hugely welcome.”

The German agreement comes a week after the UK announced a new pilot returns scheme with France, during President Emmanuel Macron’s state visit.

Under the “one in, one out” deal, some small boat arrivals would be returned to France in exchange for the UK accepting an equivalent number of asylum seekers with connections to the UK.

The prime minister is under pressure to tackle the number of people crossing the Channel in small boats.

More than 21,000 people have made the dangerous journey so far this year – a 56% increase on the same period in 2024.

The Conservatives’ shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the figures showed “the crisis in the Channel continues to spiral”.

“This is just more of the same tired, headline-chasing from Keir Starmer.

“This government has clearly lost control of our borders and left the country exposed when they cancelled our returns deterrent.”

Three men in their 20s have been given long jail terms for their part in the fatal shooting of award-winning hip-hop artist C Gambino in Gothenburg last year.

C Gambino, whose real name was Karar Ramadan, had been named hip-hop artist of 2023 in Sweden’s Grammis music awards a month before he was murdered, in what prosecutors described as a ruthless and premeditated shooting.

All three men were convicted of aiding and abetting murder, and two of them were cleared of murder, as the Gothenburg court ruled it could not be established beyond reasonable doubt who had fired the fatal shots.

The gun that killed C Gambino has never been found and a car used in the shooting was later found burned out.

C Gambino’s murder has been linked to a local gangland conflict, although the motive remains a mystery. Prosecutors said there was no evidence to suggest that he was part of any criminal network.

For several years Sweden’s biggest cities have been beset by gang violence that have claimed dozens of lives, often involving children recruited to carry out violent attacks.

The rapper, who was 26, was shot at a multistorey car park in Gothenburg in June 2024 in what the court said was a carefully planned attack and had the character of a “pure execution”.

Investigators were unable to find DNA traces of the attackers but did map their movements from mobile phones around the time of the shooting.

The prosecutor also told Swedish public broadcaster SVT that police had been able to use hours of CCTV footage from the car park and elsewhere.

Videos showed the killers’ vehicle entering the car park more than a week before the shooting, and then waiting for hours before the attack took place as C Gambino returned home from the gym late in the evening.

Although he was able to raise the alarm, emergency services who arrived at the scene were unable to use their communication system and had to shout to each other, SVT reported.

The artist died in hospital about an hour afterwards.

In its verdict, the court gave a 22-year-old man a life sentence in jail, while two others aged 21 and 20 were handed terms of 15 and a half years and 12 and a half years respectively,

A fourth man, aged 19, was convicted of setting fire to their car.

Another gang-related case concluded on Wednesday with a 14-year-old boy found guilty of shooting dead a man in his home on the order of one of Sweden’s most notorious gangs, Foxtrot.

Two other boys were convicted: one for conspiracy and another for preparing the murder in Skurup in southern Sweden. None of the three will face punishment because they are below the age of criminal responsibility, which is 15 in Sweden.

The victim of the Skurup murder was targeted because his son had refused to carry out an attack for the Foxtrot gang.

Police in Iraqi Kurdistan have meanwhile arrested a key figure in the Foxtrot gang, according to Swedish radio.

The suspect is described as close to gang leader Rawa Majid and has been linked to a number of killings in Sweden, including the Skurup shooting.