UK Politics

Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has admitted the impact of the government’s long-awaited energy strategy on consumers’ soaring bills may take “two or three years”.It comes as the government prepares to unveil a revival of nuclear power, to improve energy independency in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — but only a “limited” increase in onshore wind.But the plan has already been criticised for not saying enough about tackling high bills in the immediate turn, after a huge spike in the energy price cap by more than 50 per cent in April.There is also concern of another considerable rise in the autumn and pressure on the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to go further to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis after criticism of the spring statement.Speaking on Times Radio, said he was unable to “guarantee” that energy prices would be lower in two years because “nobody can guarantee” what the market price for gas will be at that point.“What I can say is the energy and security strategy gives us a lot of independence, much more than today, and also in the long-run prices will generally be lower because we’ll have more capacity, and it’ll be onshore — it’ll be onshore in the sense it will be in the UK”.Pressed on how “fast” energy bills will go down based on the energy strategy, he replied: “I think the impact could be very soon, and by soon I mean two or three years.“We’ve seen over the last 10 years for example the cost of offshore wind come down enormously,” Mr Kwarteng added.The cabinet minister also told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Obviously it’s a strategy, and a strategy is generally a long-term plan to make sure we have more energy independence and security.“What a strategy won’t address is energy bills in the immediate term, it won’t reduce bills next week, but it will create a system, we think, that can reduce them in the longer term.”Earlier, a former chief executive of Ofgem said the government’s energy security strategy does little to solve the cost-of-living crisis now and fails to improve the efficiency of homes.Dermot Nolan told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Frankly it’s not something that’s that radically new and different.“The disturbing thing to say at a time of rising energy prices is that there’s very little that can be done in the short run.“Most of these decisions will take a long time to have an impact and in the short run we will continue to be dependent on fossil fuels and the prices that consumers are going to pay will still depend on the price of gas.“One failure, that could’ve helped in the short to medium run, is a lack of focus on energy efficiency, on insulation, on improving the quality of people’s homes – I think that is an opportunity missed.”In a video posted on social media to promote the energy plan, Boris Johnson insisted “nuclear is coming home”, claiming: “Instead of a new reactor every decade we will have a new reactor every year”.“Everybody knows energy bills have been increasing around the world,” he said. “They’ve absolutely soared since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and we just can’t carry on like this”.As well as the already-announced £9 billion package to help with rising costs, the government would “bring those bills downs” by “upgrading homes so they use less energy”, he added. More

Former MP George Galloway has threatened to sue Twitter after his account was labelled “Russia state-affiliated media”.The politician and broadcaster denied working for Russian media and warned the social media giant that he would take legal action if the designation – which appeared in his bio and on his posts – was not removed.The 67-year-old and his wife Gayatri Galloway have presented a show called Sputnik: Orbiting the world with George Galloway on the Kremlin-linked RT network, formerly known as Russia Today, since 2013.He wrote: “It’s Kafkaesque really. When I did present on Russian state media I had no Twitter designation. Now that I don’t can’t and would be committing a crime if I did I have been given the designation.”Ofcom revoked RT’s broadcasting licence in the UK in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. An episode of Sputnik featuring Mr Galloway, titled “Ruble rebounds and US regime change denials”, appears to have been published on RT’s website as recently as Saturday.The internet archive site Wayback Machine suggests that, at least as recently as 24 March, Mr Galloway’s Twitter bio included a link to the official Twitter account of his Sputnik show, which continues to list him and his wife as hosts.Mr Galloway directed some of his indignation over Twitter’s move to Elon Musk, who it emerged this week has become the social media site’s largest shareholder.“Dear Elon Musk,” Mr Galloway tweeted on Wednesday evening. “This must be removed forthwith or action will follow. We had such hopes for your new era.”Mr Galloway had previously shared a tweet in which Mr Musk wrote on 26 March: “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy. What should be done?”A former Labour MP, Mr Galloway most recently ran for office in the Batley and Spen by-election, where he won 21 per cent of the vote under the banner of his Workers Party of Britain, coming third behind Labour and the Conservatives.Last May, he led the unionist All for Unity party into the Holyrood elections, but it emerged with no seats. The party was hit by a rift in February, with its former leader Jamie Blackett criticising Mr Galloway’s comments in relation to Russia’s war in Ukraine. In a statement published on the day of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Mr Galloway said it was “not what I wanted to see in Ukraine” and lamented that “it didn’t have to end this way”, adding: “Pumping Ukraine full of Nato weapons, mercenaries and propaganda was a grave mistake (and Russia inherits a billion dollars worth of weaponry)”.But he came under cross-party fire north of the border, with Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton accusing him of “acting as an apologist for Russian expansionist aggression” and alleging that his “association with RT has lent legitimacy and influence to the propaganda apparatus of a hostile power”.In a tweet on Wednesday, Mr Galloway said: “I am not ‘Russian State Affiliated media’. I work for no Russian media. I have 400,000 followers. I’m the leader of a British political party and spent nearly 30 years in the British parliament. If you do not remove this designation I will take legal action.”It comes a day after Twitter announced it had decided to limit some 300 Russian government accounts, meaning they will no longer be “recommended or amplified” by the site’s algorithm.The tech firm – access to which has been blocked in Russia, amid a crackdown on independent sources of information about the war in Ukraine – said it would take action against any nation which “restricts access to the open internet while they’re engaged in armed conflict”.The Independent has approached Mr Galloway for comment. More

Rishi Sunak’s millionaire wife has claimed non-domicile status in order to save on her tax bill while her husband was chancellor, The Independent understands.Akshata Murthy, whose family business is estimated to be worth around £3.5bn, has continued to use the valuable tax status even after Mr Sunak was put in charge of setting taxes for the country in February 2020, according to two people familiar with her financial arrangements.It is not known exactly how much has been saved by Ms Murthy but sources told The Independent it could have saved her millions of pounds in tax on foreign earnings over several years.The Treasury declined to comment. A representative for Mr Sunak did not respond to multiple requests for comment.In a statement issued after publication, a spokesperson for Ms Murthy claimed that she had to use non-dom status because of her Indian citizenship. The spokesperson said: “Akshata Murty is a citizen of India, the country of her birth and parent’s home. “India does not allow its citizens to hold the citizenship of another country simultaneously. So, according to British law, Ms Murty is treated as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes. She has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her UK income.” The decision to pay less tax through non-dom status is optional. So-called “non-dom” status is entirely lawful and can save an individual from paying UK tax on income from dividends from foreign investments, rental payments on property overseas or bank interest. The status also means that you avoid UK inheritance tax.Meanwhile, most people who live in the UK must pay tax on all their income, wherever it comes from. Unlike non-residents, non-doms can live in the UK for 365 days a year.Tulip Siddiq, Labour’s shadow economic secretary to the Treasury, called for Mr Sunak to “urgently explain how much he and his family have saved on their own tax bill” at the same time as raising taxes for millions of people during the cost of living crisis.She said: “The chancellor has imposed tax hike after tax hike on the British people. It is staggering that – at the same time – his family may have been benefitting from tax reduction schemes. This is yet another example of the Tories thinking it is one rule for them, another for everyone else.”The news comes as Mr Sunak’s popularity with voters plunged amid continuing debate over the government’s reaction to surging living costs.A YouGov poll found more than half of Britons now have an unfavourable opinion of the chancellor, compared with 28 per cent who view him in a positive light.Mr Sunak raised the tax burden on UK taxpayers to its highest level since the 1940s in his spring statement last month, even as living standards face their sharpest decline on record.In the latest evidence of the chancellor’s personal wealth it was revealed on Tuesday that the couple donated more than £100,000 to Winchester College, the exclusive private school he attended.Ms Murthy, who met Mr Sunak while the pair studied at Stanford University in the US, holds investments in a range of companies, and is the daughter of an Indian billionaire, Narayana Murthy.The No 11 resident is also a director of Catamaran Ventures UK, which is described as “a family office” venture capital and private equity business that operates out of Bangalore and London. Her father is the chair of Catamaran’s Indian arm.Alongside an MBA, Ms Murthy has a range of business experience and speaks four languages, according to her LinkedIn profile.One of Ms Murthy’s investments is in Infosys, an Indian company founded by her father that is listed in New York, which generated billions of dollars of revenue last year and has drawn fresh media attention in recent weeks.The company recently closed its operations in Russia. The step followed criticism about the contrast between its ongoing presence in the country and Mr Sunak’s public call on all companies to “think very carefully” about maintaining any investments in Russia, following the Putin regime’s violent invasion of Ukraine.Mr Sunak has not declared his wife’s shareholdings on the Register of Members’ Interests and previously said he has ”followed the ministerial code to the letter”.The ministerial code states that ministers “must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise”. It adds that on appointment, ministers have to provide a list of all interests that “might be thought to give rise to a conflict”, this should also cover “interests of the minister’s spouse or partner and close family”.Dividends from Infosys calculated from Ms Murthy’s stake in the company, of 0.93 per cent suggest the payments could have totalled around £11.6m in the past year. As a non-dom, Ms Murthy would not have had to pay tax on these dividend payments in the UK. That compares to an ordinary UK resident, who, paying tax on dividends at the so-called “additional rate” (for all dividend payments over the personal allowance) would have to pay tax of 38.1 per cent on the payouts.The special status could therefore have saved her a bill of around £4.4m in tax, although she may have incurred tax liabilities overseas. There is no suggestion the chancellor minimised his own tax bill.Yet despite the huge economic reward it can offer individuals, there is no statutory definition of what non-dom means. Instead, HMRC makes a determination taking into account whether they or their father was born outside the UK, or they have lived outside the UK for a number of years.Notable examples of non-doms in public life have included former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who is Canadian. Lord Goldsmith, minister for the Pacific, who faced controversy over his non-dom status when he ran in the London Mayoral elections in 2016, and Tory peer Lord Ashcroft who gave up his status to remain in the House of Lords. More

Months after her birth in April 1980, Akshata Murthy’s ambitious parents left her in the care of her paternal grandparents to build a better life for their young family hundreds of miles away in Mumbai.In a letter to Akshata published in Legacy: Letters from Eminent Parents to their Daughters, NR Narayana Murthy told of how he and wife Sudha made the “hard decision” to leave their firstborn behind as they “struggled to find their feet” in their burgeoning engineering and computer science careers.Narayana, then a promising programmer who would go on to launch £3.5bn IT services company Infosys, said he flew to a regional airport where he hired a car every weekend to drive and spend time with his little girl.“It was very expensive, but I couldn’t do without seeing you,” he wrote.Narayana credits his wife, Sudha, with raising Akshata and brother Rohan, three years her junior, to be the “fine individuals” they are. Sudha, who was the first female engineer to work for India’s then-largest car manufacturer, is now a philanthropist and public healthcare advocate, The Times of India reports.When a young Akshata eventually joined her parents in Mumbai, they did their best to immerse her in study, reading and debate – by having no TV in the home, according to the book.Even as business boomed at Infosys and her family grew richer, Akshata continued to travel to school in a “regular autorickshaw” instead of the private chauffeured car typically favoured by India’s elite.She studied economics and French at the private liberal Claremont McKenna College in California, US, before moving on to the Fashion of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles and eventually taking an MBA at Stanford University.It was there that she met Rishi Sunak, a Southampton-born student there on a prestigious Fulbright scholarship. The couple married four years later in Bengaluru, in a lavish two-day ceremony attended by the likes of Indian cricket legend Anil Kumble.While Narayan wrote that he initially felt “sad and jealous” of Akshata’s relationship, his feelings changed when he met her husband-to-be.“I … found him to be all that you had described him to be – brilliant, handsome, and, most importantly, honest. l understood why you let your heart be stolen,” he said.The Sunaks went on to welcome daughters Krishna and Anoushka. More

The UK has imposed an asset freeze on the Kremlin’s largest bank and an end to all new investment into Russia, the government has announced.The asset freezes will apply against Sberbank — Russia’s largest bank — in coordination with the United States’ sanctions, and the Credit Bank of Moscow. The latest round of sanctions comes in response to the scenes of atrocities that were revealed when Russian forces left the town of Bucha, northwest of the capital, Kyiv, last week.In what the Foreign Office described as a “major hit” to the Russian economy, the government will also introduce an “outright ban” on outward investment to the country, worth £11 billion in 2020.It also confirmed earlier plans to end all imports of Russian coal and oil by the end of 2022, with the end of gas imports “as soon as possible thereafter”.Imports of Russian iron and steel products will be banned and a further eight oligarchs have also been added to the sanctions list.Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, said: “Today, we are stepping up our campaign to bring Putin’s appalling war to an end with some of our toughest sanctions yet,” she said.“Our latest wave of measures will bring an end to the UK’s imports of Russian energy and sanction yet more individuals and businesses, decimating Putin’s war machine.“Together with our allies, we are showing the Russian elite that they cannot wash their hands of the atrocities committed on Putin’s orders. We will not rest until Ukraine prevails.”The oligarchs facing sanctions are leading business people in strategic industries including fertilizer companies, gas and oil firms, and the world’s largest diamond producer, Alrosa.One, Andrey Guryev, the founder of the fertilizer firm PhosAgro, is described as a “known close associate of Vladimir Putin”.A second, Boris Borisovich Rotenberg, is the son of the co-owner of Russia’s largest gas pipeline producer SGM.The Foreign Office said the Rotenberg family “are known for their close connections to Putin and a number of them have already been sanctioned”.The crackdowns come as the UK and leading EU nations attempt to reach agreement on stepping up the targeting of Moscow’s lucrative gas exports, at a G7 meeting on Thursday.Ms Truss has said sanctions must include “agreeing a clear timetable to eliminate imports of Russian oil, coal and gas”, after weeks of EU indecision.On Tuesday, the EU announced a ban on imports of coal, wood, cement, liquors and seafood – and said it would consider an embargo on oil – but made no mention of gas.While the EU’s coal imports are worth an annual €4bn to Russia, that is dwarfed by the €100bn paid to Russia by EU countries last year for its oil and gas.Josep Borrell, the EU’s Spanish foreign affairs chief, called for action on oil, saying: “Each day, roughly, we are paying €1bn to import Russian energy, and that’s, obviously, a source of income that’s used to finance the war.” More

The government has said it has no need for a dedicated unit to tackle child poverty – because it has abolished its child poverty targets.Opposition politicians and poverty campaigners accused ministers of “grim” logic and not having a plan after the DWP dismissed the need for the body.The government had a dedicated Child Poverty Unit since Labour set it up in 1999 and until it was scrapped by David Cameron’s 2016 Welfare Reform Act.The unit worked across government departments and advised them on how to reduce child poverty. But ministers shut down the body at the same time as they scrapped their child poverty targets – a highly controversial move.Child poverty has climbed rapidly in recent years, with 4.3 million children below the line even before the pandemic. This figure was up 500,000 over the past five years and up 200,000 from the previous years.But asked whether the cross-government unit could be restored, DWP minister David Rutley said: “A key function of the previous Child Poverty Unit was to support the delivery of the child poverty targets that we abolished in 2016, which we have no plans to reintroduce.”Sara Ogilvie, policy director at Child Poverty Action Group told The Independent: “The Government appears to be saying a unit isn’t needed to implement the child poverty reduction plan because there isn’t one. “That’s grim when child poverty has been rising year on year and is expected to go on climbing.”Quantifiable measures and targets are essential for reducing child poverty, as is political will. Without them Government can evade concrete action in favour of sound bites – with disastrous consequences for children.”The Resolution Foundation think-tank has calculated that government policies and the state of the economy are likely to see a further 1.3 million people pushed into poverty this year, 500,000 of them children.Reacting to the minister’s comments Jonathan Ashworth, shadow Secretary of State for work and pensions said: “Tory ministers are shamefully pushing 500,000 extra children into absolute poverty this year and this is more evidence of their refusal to accept the scale of the crisis that is of their own making.”Liberal Democrat DWP spokesperson Wendy Chamberlain said the scrapping of the targets had been “utterly shameful”.“It’s clear ministers don’t want to have targets because they don’t want to face the reality that it is their damaging policies which are pushing children into poverty,” she said.In his written parliamentary answer about the child poverty unit, DWP minister Mr Rutley added: “We believe that an approach to tackling child poverty focused primarily on meeting income-based targets can drive action that focuses primarily on moving the incomes for those ‘just in poverty’ just above a ‘poverty line’ whilst doing nothing to help those on the very lowest incomes or to improve children’s future prospects.”Ministers and officials engage extensively across Government to ensure a coordinated approach to tackling poverty and we will we continue to do so in the future. The latest statistics show that in 2020/21 there were 200,000 fewer children in absolute poverty before housing costs than in 2009/10.” More

The refugees minister has slammed Boris Johnson’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for processing, insisting it will fail.The prime minister hopes to strike a deal to pay millions of pounds to the east African country for “offshoring” applications, having been thwarted after approaches to other countries.Unlike those rejections – from Ghana and Albania, for example – Rwanda is thought to be credible option, having accepted refugees from other countries in the past.But Richard Harrington, the minister appointed to sort out the chaos of the Ukraine refugee programme, revealed he has been kept in the dark and dismissed the idea.“If it’s happening in the Home Office, on the same corridor that I’m in, they haven’t told me about it,” he told LBC Radio.“I’m having difficulty enough getting them from Ukraine to our country, there’s no possibility of sending them to Rwanda.”The criticism comes after Tory rebels warned it would involve building a “British Guantanamo Bay” and cost £2m per asylum seeker – more than putting them up in The Ritz hotel.Ascension Island was seen as an alternative location to send asylum seekers for applications – as a British territory, with no need to involve a foreign government – but has now been ruled out.Mr Johnson is thought to be keen to announce an agreement with Rwanda to trumpet in the looming local elections campaign, amid a fresh surge of asylum seekers crossing the Channel.But the plan is also being held up by a parliamentary battle over the hardline Nationality and Borders Bill, which will also criminalise people attempting the crossing.The House of Lords has passed an amendment that would see parliament consider the “appropriateness and safety” of any proposed country.Opponents believe that requiring the government to publish a costs breakdown would lead to MPs blocking any agreement – once the huge costs were laid bare.Plans to transfer responsibility for curbing Channel migrant crossings from Border Force to the Royal Navy has also been delayed by concerns at the Ministry of Defence.Lord Harrington’s comments came as the minister admitted his government’s handling of refugees attempting to flee Ukraine is “embarrassing”.“It was a slow and bureaucratic process, with sending information to different places, waiting for an answer, sending it, waiting for an answer,” he said.“The Home Office and the British government generally, was not geared up to this kind of volume.” More