Well, that’s one way to displace our front page story on the crisis of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E. It was revealed this afternoon that the prime minister is being investigated by Parliament’s standards watchdog over allegations of a possible failure to declare the shares his wife, Akshata Murthy, holds in a childcare agency that could benefit from changes made in the Budget.
In the days following 15 March, Rishi Sunak faced questions about the shares owned by his wife in Koru Kids, given that it stands to gain from the changes to childcare provision announced by the chancellor. At the Liaison Committee on 28 March, when asked by the Labour MP Catherine McKinnell whether he had any interest to declare, the prime minister replied: “No. All my disclosures are declared in the normal way.”
In a subsequent letter to the Committee on 4 April, Sunak acknowledged the “minority stake” his wife holds in Koru Kids and said that it had “rightly been declared to the Cabinet Office”. Downing Street says the prime minister will clarify how it was declared as a ministerial interest, rather than to the Commons.
The primary issue for Sunak is not his imminent resignation, but that this clumsy episode will generate a further opportunity to remind voters, should they need it, of just how extraordinarily wealthy he and his wife are. This would be awkward during strong economic times, let alone when voters are suffering the largest fall in real living standards in a century.
Indeed it was only last week, on the day it was confirmed that UK GDP growth flatlined in February, that Murthy landed a £6.7m payout in dividends from Infosys, a Bangalore-based tech company founded by her father. That takes her dividends to over £20m in the past 12 months. For context, her stake in the company is worth more than half a billion pounds.
That the prime minister is rich and his wife even more so is not news to voters – just look at this world cloud produced by market research firm Savanta. But it reinforces a vulnerability and harks back to perhaps the most difficult moment of Sunak’s short political career, when it was revealed last year that his wife was claiming non-dom status, meaning she did not have to pay tax on her overseas income. Sunak condemned the stories at the time as “unpleasant smears”.
I suspect many people still don’t appreciate just how wealthy Sunak and his family are, and assume Keir Starmer is nearly as rich. That is why investigations such as this are unhelpful, especially at a time when the prime minister is eager to construct a comeback narrative.
For as long as Sunak remains the Conservative Party’s strongest asset, any story that reminds voters of his stunning wealth is a boon to Labour.
Elsewhere in the paper, Daniel Keane reports on the terrible state of the NHS in London. Latest figures show that in February, 22,000 people waited longer than 12 hours to be seen in the capital’s hospitals, representing more than one in 10 of those who attended.
One London trust, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, saw nearly one-third of patients waiting at least 12 hours, the highest of any in the country. The NHS’s operational standard states that at least 95 per cent of patients be admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours. This target has not been met nationally since 2015.
In the comment pages, Philip Collins calls on Labour to scrap its tuition fees pledge and end middle-class handouts. Rob Rinder is embracing JOMO (joy of missing out) after the shock of not being invited to the Coronation. While Harris Bokhari says we can change the world, one iftar at a time.
And finally, how do Michelin-starred chefs order on a plane? Joanna Taylor discovers the secrets to avoiding a disappointing meal in the sky
