Evening summary
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:
- Rishi Sunak’s multi-millionaire wife claims non-domicile status, it has emerged, which allows her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire. Akshata Murty, who receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from her stake in the Indian IT services company Infosys, declares non-dom status, a scheme that allows people to avoid tax on foreign earnings.
- Several leading international tax experts have disputed Akshata Murty’s claim that must be treated as a non-dom for UK tax because she is an Indian citizen, saying tax domicile status is a choice and not connected with a person’s nationality. Those resident in the UK do not have to have a British passport in order to pay British taxes, meaning Murty could have paid UK tax at any time.
- Labour has called for clarity and “complete transparency” over why Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, uses non-domicile status. Keir Starmer, asked about Rishi Sunak’s wife holding non-domiciled status, said: “If it now transpires that his wife has been using schemes to reduce her own tax then I’m afraid that is breathtaking hypocrisy.”
- Rishi Sunak’s wife pays £30,000 a year to secure her non-domiciled tax status, her spokesperson has confirmed and accepted it was possible that Akshata Murty uses the status to take advantage of tax havens for income earned outside the UK. As political pressure increased on the chancellor and his spouse, the spokesperson said Murty had no plans to say where she pays tax on overseas income as that information was not “relevant”.
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The business secretary has admitted that the government’s energy security strategy will do little to help alleviate soaring fuel bills now. Kwasi Kwarteng said that it’s “more of a medium three, four, five year answer” ahead of its reveal later today.
- Keir Starmer said the government’s energy strategy “won’t help those who only last week saw their energy bills go up by hundreds of pounds”. What people wanted from the government was a response that met that challenge, he said.
- Boris Johnson said “nuclear is coming home” as a result of the government’s energy strategy. In a social media video to promote the plan, which was finally released today after repeated delays and cabinet wrangling, the prime minister said: “We’ve got the ambition, we’ve got the plan and we are going to bring clean, affordable secure power to the people for generations to come.”
- Rishi Sunak vetoed plans to ease the cost of living crisis for millions of households after proposals to more than double the energy bill rebate scheme were rejected, according to a document leaked to the i paper.
- The UK government has confirmed that no new nuclear power stations will be built in Scotland, as the Holyrood government – which is opposed to nuclear energy – dismissed new plans to install eight reactors at existing sites as “risky and expensive”. Kwasi Kwarteng confirmed there were “no plans to impose nuclear reactors in Scotland” in future.
- Ed Miliband said the government should ban transgender conversion therapy. He said: “Trans people face incredible barriers and stigma in our society” and that the debate on trans issues was “really awful” for many trans people.
That’s it from me today. Thanks for joining me.
For the latest news on Ukraine, follow our dedicated live blog:
Updated
Akshata Murty says it’s not ‘relevant’ to say where she pays tax overseas
Rishi Sunak’s wife pays £30,000 a year to secure her non-domiciled tax status, her spokesperson has confirmed and accepted it was possible that Akshata Murty uses the status to take advantage of tax havens for income earned outside the UK.
As political pressure increased on the chancellor and his spouse, the spokesperson said Murty had no plans to say where she pays tax on overseas income as that information was not “relevant”.
The spokesperson declined to elaborate on the initial explanation for Murty’s non-dom tax status – the fact she has Indian citizenship – when this would still mean such a tax arrangement was a choice. They accepted it was possible that Murty’s arrangements meant she minimised her tax using tax havens.
They said no further details would be given, other than to say that Murty abided by all necessary rules.
Labour called for clarity over her tax arrangements, while Keir Starmer said it would be “breathtaking hypocrisy” if she had been reducing her liabilities while the chancellor was raising taxes on others.
There was also concern from some Conservative MPs, with one former minister saying the revelation was particularly unfortunate on the day the national insurance rise came into force.
The perception is, what is the problem? Here is someone worth £3bn who has a different tax arrangement. I’m sure everything is above board but that’s not the point.
Murty receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from a stake in her family’s IT business empire, Infosys, which is headquartered in Bengaluru, India, and listed on the Indian and New York stock exchanges.
Under UK tax laws, Murty’s status as a non-dom means she does not have to pay tax on dividend payments from overseas companies. UK resident taxpayers currently pay up to 39.35% tax on foreign dividend payouts.
It is not known where she pays tax on this overseas income. It previously emerged that Murty is a shareholder in a restaurant business that funnelled investments through the tax haven of Mauritius.
Asked where Murty paid tax on her overseas income, a spokesperson said Murty had no plans to comment on this because it “doesn’t seem relevant”.
Read more from my colleagues Peter Walker, Jessica Elgot, Aubrey Allegretti and Rupert Neate here:
This is the government form that the chancellor’s wife Akshata Murty will have filled in to apply for non-domiciled status in order to avoid paying UK tax on tens of millions in dividends collected from her family’s Indian IT business empire.
When it was revealed on Wednesday that Murty was a non-dom, and therebynot required to pay UK tax on about £11.5m in annual dividends from her stake in Infosys, her spokeswoman said Murty “is treated as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes” suggesting that she had no control over her UK tax status.
However, all UK residents must actively apply for non-dom status by filing in government tax form SA109 to claim the tax relief.
Murty’s spokeswoman suggested that because Murty was an Indian citizen she cannot also hold UK citizenship and therefore must be treated as a non-dom for UK tax.
Akshata Murty is a citizen of India, the country of her birth and parents’ 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.
However, several leading international tax experts have disputed this and said tax domicile status is not connected with a person’s nationality. Those resident in the UK do not have to have a British passport in order to pay British taxes, meaning Murty could have paid UK tax at any time.
Richard Murphy, a professor of accounting at Sheffield University management school and tax justice campaigner, said:
Domicile has nothing to do with a person’s nationality. Nor does it have anything to do with not being able to have a British passport because a person holds citizenship from another country. And non-domiciled status is certainly never given for that reason.
Murphy said non-dom status is only given to people who applied for it.
In that case the implication in Ms Murty’s statement that she has to be treated as non-domiciled is simply wrong. She is only non-domiciled because she asked to be so.
She can also give up the claim to be non-domiciled at any time,Just because she was non-domiciled when she arrived in the UK as a newly married person does not mean she has to keep the status now. So the fact she’s still non-dom is also a choice.
Arun Advani, assistant professor at the University of Warwick’s economics department and an expert on non-dom tax law, said: “Citizenship has nothing to do with whether you choose to/not to claim remittance basis in the UK.”
Read the full story here:
Updated
Rishi Sunak vetoed plans to ease the cost of living crisis for millions of households after proposals to more than double the energy bill rebate scheme were rejected, according to a document leaked to Richard Vaughan and Paul Waugh at the i paper.
EXCLUSIVE. We have a leaked document showing that one of @BorisJohnson's own cabinet ministers asked him to more than double the energy bill rebate from £200 to £500 this spring - and nothing happened.https://t.co/Mac3SMH1wT
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) April 7, 2022
The i reports:
An earlier draft of the energy security strategy drawn up by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng’s department and obtained by i included measures to increase the £200 energy rebate to “£500 or more” for either all households or just “fuel poor” homes.
But the policy recommendation was rejected by the Treasury, despite growing fears within government over damage soaring energy bills would have on household budgets.
An alternative suggestion was to delay the repayment of the energy rebate or to extend the repayment period for either all households or the poorest was also dismissed. So too was a policy proposal to exempt the poorest homes from having to repay the rebate.
Read the full story here.
Full story: UK’s energy strategy may take years to bring down bills, says Kwarteng
Boris Johnson’s new energy strategy could take up to five years to start shaving money off people’s bills, the business secretary has admitted, as the prime minister announced a drastic expansion of nuclear reactors.
Kwasi Kwarteng said the plan for cutting reliance on imported energy in response to soaring prices caused in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was more of a medium-term way to increase homegrown energy production.
Johnson declared that the long-delayed energy security strategy meant “nuclear is coming home” – but the review declined to set targets for onshore wind and committed to continuing the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas.
Days after 22 million people were hit by the energy price cap rising by 54%, Kwarteng suggested it would be years until the benefits of the strategy would be felt by consumers.
The business secretary told Sky News:
The strategy is more of a medium-term three, four, five-year answer.
I think it’s really important that we get an energy strategy that means we can have more security and independence in the years ahead.
We want to have security of supply, we want to live in a world where we’re not dependent on what Russian policy is, but we have more control over energy sources here in Britain.
The cost of offshore wind had decreased enormously in the past 10 years, Kwarteng said, adding:
Some of these benefits can happen quite quickly. But we need to start the planning process and the strategy now. And that’s what this security strategy is all about.
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, attempted to intervene in the cost of living crisis at the end of March, but was accused of not doing enough to help struggling households expected to face the biggest fall in living standards since modern records began in the 1950s.
Read the full story here:
Updated
The “cold hand of the chancellor” should not prevent the government from investing more in insulating homes in the UK, ministers have been told.
The crossbench peer Lady Hayman questioned whether reluctance from the Treasury was responsible for the lack of action on insulating homes in early information from the government’s energy strategy.
The strategy was published today as western countries wrestle with high prices and how to reduce reliance on Russian oil and gas, and in the face of calls to end the fossil fuel era to tackle dangerous climate change.
In the Lords, Hayman – a former minister – criticised early information from the strategy, released yesterday.
She said:
What has been published is in the week of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most frightening warnings yet on global warming and when customers and consumers face horrifying energy bills.
It is deeply dispiriting to see a set of policies outlined that concentrate on the expensive and the long-term and fail to support what would work immediately and help both consumers and the climate.
Why are there no extra measures to support consumers in insulating their homes? We have some of the worst housing stock in the world and it is an absolute no-brainer to reduce demand and to support.
Is that the result of the cold hand of the chancellor?
The business minister Lord Callanan said the government was “already spending a lot of money on energy efficiency programmes”.
He also said:
We are rolling out the development and the formation of low carbon sources of power, be it nuclear, be it offshore wind and we are going to go further on onshore wind. I know it is a subject she feels passionately about.
We must do so in full recognition of the concerns of many local communities so we want to take people with us – when we do that we will be seeking a number of pilots to take those policies forward.
Updated
Full story: Labour says Rishi Sunak must ‘come clean’ about wife’s non-dom tax status
Labour has called for clarity over why Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, uses non-domicile status, as Keir Starmer said it would be “breathtaking hypocrisy” if she had been reducing her tax liabilities while the chancellor was raising taxes on others.
Murty receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from a stake in her family’s IT business empire, Infosys.
Under UK tax laws, Murty’s status as a non-dom means she would not have to pay tax on dividend payments from overseas companies. Infosys is headquartered in Bengaluru, India, and listed on the Indian and New York stock exchanges. UK resident taxpayers pay a 38.1% tax on dividend payouts.
After her status was revealed by the Independent a spokesperson for Murty said that because she was a citizen of India, which does not allow Indians to hold the citizenship of another country simultaneously, she “is treated as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes”. They added: “She has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her UK income.”
However, tax experts have said non-dom status is not automatic but a choice.
Prof Richard Murphy, a Sheffield University academic who co-founded the Tax Justice Network, said:
Domicile has nothing to do with a person’s nationality. In other words, the claims made in the statement issued by Ms Murty are wrong, and as evidence, just because a person has Indian citizenship will never automatically grant them non-dom status in the UK.
The Labour MP Chris Bryant said the statement needed to be clarified:
This is just wrong. Non-dom status is not automatic and the Treasury needs to urgently clarify this inaccurate statement.
After shutting down legitimate questions about Infosys and its operations in Russia last week, it’s time for Rishi Sunak to come clean.
Starmer said Sunak “has very, very serious questions to answer”.
Read more from my colleagues Peter Walker and Aubrey Allegretti here:
Labour leader calls for 'complete transparency' on Rishi Sunak’s wife's non-domiciled status
Keir Starmer, asked about Rishi Sunak’s wife holding non-domiciled status, told broadcasters:
A chancellor who says to the British public that he will tax them – he’s introduced 15 tax rises, and he says all of this is necessary, there’s no option – if it now transpires that his wife has been using schemes to reduce her own tax then I’m afraid that is breathtaking hypocrisy, and it shows yet again that we have got a chancellor who is completely out of touch with the struggles that so many people in this country are going through at the moment with this cost-of-living crisis.
Asked if Akshata Murty should change her tax status, Starmer added:
We need complete transparency on this so that we can all understand what schemes she may have been using to reduce her own tax.
But to use a scheme when the Chancellor is out there day after day saying we need tax rises on millions of people in this country who are really, really struggling is breathtaking hypocrisy.
More than one in 10 residents of some of London’s wealthiest neighbourhoods have claimed “non-dom” status at some point, meaning they paid no tax on their offshore income.
UK-based people who have benefited from this special tax status by claiming another country as their legal “domicile” made up more than 12% of residents in two parliamentary constituencies in 2018 – Kensington, and the Cities of London and Westminster, according to an analysis of HM Revenue and Customs data. In five of the most affluent council wards they accounted for more than a quarter of residents.
The study by the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick found that the number of people who had ever claimed non-dom status in the UK rose from 162,000 in 2001 to 238,000 in 2018.
The findings were published after it emerged that Akshata Murty, the wife of Rishi Sunak, claims non-dom status, which would allow her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire.
The study found that more than 93% of non-doms were born abroad, coming mainly from the US, India – of which Murty is a citizen – and western Europe, especially France, Germany and Italy, the study found. The number of Indian non-doms has risen most rapidly, from about 4% of the total in 2001 (3,200) to almost 14% in 2018 (22,700).
Amongst all Indians living in UK, around 6% have ever claimed nondom status (fig10). Amongst migrants with reported income >£5m, this figure is over 83% (Fig4b)... pic.twitter.com/rOTFMYLyIg
— Andy Summers (@Summers_AD) April 7, 2022
Read the full story here:
Updated
The UK government has confirmed that no new nuclear power stations will be built in Scotland, as the Holyrood government – which is opposed to nuclear energy – dismissed new plans to install eight reactors at existing sites as “risky and expensive”.
The Scottish government’s energy secretary Michael Matheson told BBC Radio Scotland this morning:
Not only is there environmental risk associated with that, there is also the issue that this is likely to drive up the cost of household bills - whereas renewables such as wind and marine tidal in the future would actually reduce the cost of electricity.
I think the UK government might have allowed themselves to be wrapped up in the nuclear lobby here.
His UK counterpart Kwasi Kwarteng said there were “no plans to impose nuclear reactors in Scotland” in future.
The UK government plans also proposed a new licensing round for oil and gas projects in the North Sea – but Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has previously said that ramping up North Sea oil and gas is not a short-term solution to Europe’s reliance on Russian supplies.
Keir Starmer said the government’s energy strategy “won’t help those who only last week saw their energy bills go up by hundreds of pounds”.
What they want from the government is a response that meets that challenge, he said.
The Labour leader told broadcasters that “because of political squabbling it leaves out of account really important initiatives like keeping homes warm, insulating homes, which I’ve seen for myself can make a huge difference and reduce bills by up to 400, that’s the sort of real action we were looking for today”.
Asked if the strategy will help the UK achieve energy security, he said:
Anything that makes us less reliant on importing our energy is a good thing, which is why I didn’t think the prime minister was doing the right thing by saying we’re going to stop our reliance on Russia, but then go to Saudi Arabia. But anything that keeps our supply in Britain is a good thing because we do need a secure energy supply.
Speaking about what Labour would do, Starmer said:
What we’ve been calling for a number of years now is turbo-charging on renewables, including onshore wind turbines, fast-forwarding nuclear, that should have happened over the last decade and it hasn’t happened, there’s been a real failure there, developing on hydrogen, but also very importantly insulating our homes so that we reduce our energy intake and reduce bills for people.
Because at the moment I think the thing that most people are worried about is how on earth they are going to pay their energy bills, and we need real answers to that question right now.
Updated
Labour leader Keir Starmer said the energy strategy was “not enough” and “too little, it’s too late” to help families with rising costs.
Asked if the measures will be enough to help those struggling, Starmer told broadcasters:
No, these measures are not enough. Only last week we saw energy bills going up in the middle of a very real cost-of-living crisis which is causing people real hardship.
All we’ve got today is a cobbled-together list of things that could and should have been done over the last 10 to 12 years and it doesn’t even tackle really important things like insulating homes, which could save 400 on everybody’s bill.
So it isn’t enough, it’s too little, it’s too late.
Updated
The Liberal Democrats said plans to build new nuclear reactors could add £96 a year to household energy bills and would be an “energy betrayal”.
The added cost would come about if each household paid an additional £12 a year for eight new reactors, the party said.
The party’s leader Ed Davey said:
People are facing eye-watering hikes to energy bills and are looking to the government for urgent help now.
But instead of rapidly reducing energy costs by expanding onshore wind and insulating homes, the government’s nuclear plans will add almost 100 to annual household bills.
This is an energy betrayal that will add to the pain facing households on the brink. Instead of offering the help families need, the Conservatives seem happy for people’s record energy bills to get even higher.
Updated
The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), the progressive voice of over 650 organisations working together for a more sustainable built environment, has criticised the government’s lack of new energy efficiency measures in the energy security strategy, saying it was a missed opportunity.
UKGBC’s director of communications, policy and places, Simon McWhirter said:
Today was a chance to insulate the nation’s homes, protect us against future price hikes and tackle the painful effects of rising energy costs to households across the UK.
This should have been the moment to show leadership and set out a comprehensive strategy to reduce energy demand.
But despite the building industry standing ready to rise to the challenge, the Government has woefully missed its opportunity.
He added:
In the week the world’s climate scientists name energy efficiency as one of the most significant lower-cost solutions to address the climate crisis, the prime minister hasn’t even got a plan to stop heat leaking out of the windows, walls and roofs of the UK’s 29 million homes.
Boris Johnson said measures to help people with bills in the short term will come from other government policies, rather than the newly unveiled energy strategy.
The strategy has been criticised for its lack of focus on reducing energy demand through measures such as insulating homes.
Speaking during a visit to the Hinkley Point C power plant, the prime minister said:
This is a long-term energy security strategy, this is about supply, this is about undoing the mistakes of the past and taking the big decisions now.
What we are also doing is looking after people who need to retrofit their homes, who need to put in lagging, who need to insulate their boilers - there is a 6 billion energy efficiency fund that we are already using to deliver very substantial savings to people.
There is a 5,000 grant you can get if you want to change your boiler, we are also looking to see what we can do to champion heat pumps so they are made in this country rather than elsewhere, and we are setting up a 30 million ‘accelerator fund’ to do that.
UK businesses are growing increasingly worried about rising energy and commodity prices.
The latest analysis of the UK economy, from the Office for National Statistics, shows that rising input costs, and soaring energy bills, are the top two main concerns reported by businesses
The ONS says businesses in the food and accommodation sector are particularly anxious about the jump in energy prices:
Among specific concerns reported for the next month, energy prices saw the largest percentage point increase between February and March 2022, increasing from 15% in late February 2022 to 20% in late March 2022. The accommodation and food service activities industry reported the largest proportion of businesses noting rising energy prices as their main concern, at 35%.
The two main concerns reported by businesses over the next month continued to be
— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) April 7, 2022
▪️ input price inflation (23%)
▪️ energy prices (20%)
Energy prices experienced the largest movement reported, rising from 15% in late Feb 2022 to 20% in late Mar 2022 https://t.co/KFXKuREquU
Other main concerns reported by businesses were:
- input price inflation (inflation of goods and services prices) at 23%, up from 21% in late February 2022
- supply chain disruption at 6%, unchanged from late February 2022
- taxation at 6%, up from 5% in late February 2022
For more business stories, you can follow our business liveblog here:
The chairman of the commons business, energy and industrial strategy committee said the strategy was a “missed opportunity” to help households struggling with their bills.
Labour MP Darren Jones said:
For families and businesses across the country energy security means being able to turn the heating or electricity on knowing you can afford to pay the bill.
Ministers continue to ignore the reality faced by of millions of people with yet another missed opportunity to help bill payers and a failure to announce funding for the home insulation works required to reduce the amount of heating needed in the first place.
Replacing gas power with more nuclear power is lower carbon, but nuclear isn’t renewable and it isn’t cheap.
It’s disappointing that the government has failed to seize the full opportunity of onshore wind and solar once again with no explanation other than disagreements within the Conservative party.
Speaking at Hinkley Point C, Boris Johnson denied that the government was doing nothing to help families in the short-term, saying:
We are really doing a huge amount for the immediate cost of living.
This (energy strategy) is about tackling the mistakes of the past and making sure that we are set well for the future and we are never again subject to the vagaries of the global oil and gas prices and we can’t be subject to blackmail, as it were, from people such as Vladimir Putin, we have energy security here in the UK.
It is a massive strategy for delivering 50GW – almost half the total energy capacity of this country – from offshore wind by 2030, totally reviving the nuclear industry which, I am afraid, has been more or less moribund in this country.
This is the home of nuclear energy - we first split the atom in the UK, we had the first civilian nuclear power plant, we are bringing nuclear home.
Updated
A former minister should be suspended from the Lords for a week for bullying a parliamentary security officer, a standards watchdog has recommended.
The Lords conduct committee recommended that Labour’s Lord Pendry should receive the punishment following an incident in July 2021, PA News reports.
The peer confronted a security guard who had found one of his guests walking unescorted near the Lords chamber in the Palace of Westminster.
A report by Lords standards commissioner Akbar Khan found that Lord Pendry was “verbally aggressive” to the security guard and showed “intimidating behaviour”.
Lord Pendry denied a claim he grabbed the guard’s radio, but the guard and a witness both described physical contact “in an inappropriate, unwarranted and non-socially distanced manner”.
The House of Lords will be asked to agree the report and punishment early in the new session.
Almost 3,000 Covid-19 deaths have been added to the UK’s official figures after the discovery of a data error.
The cumulative number of people who have died within 28 days of testing positive for coronavirus rose by an extra 2,714 on Wednesday, in addition to 233 newly reported deaths.
It means the total number of deaths in the UK within 28 days of a positive test is 169,095.
The UK Health Security Agency said:
Due to a data processing error, a number of people who died within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test were not reported in a timely manner.
The 2,714 deaths, all of which occurred in England this year, were added retrospectively to the government’s coronavirus dashboard on Wednesday evening.
The revision to the figures narrows the gap slightly between the government’s preferred death toll, based only on people who have died within 28 days of testing positive, and the number of people who have had Covid-19 recorded on their death certificate, which is published by the Office for National Statistics and stands at just over 190,000.
Both measures of Covid-19 mortality have shown a slight increase in recent weeks in the number of deaths occurring each day in the UK, reflecting the impact of the surge of infections driven by the Omicron variant.
The daily death toll remains well below levels reached during the first and second waves of the virus.
Boris Johnson said energy bills had been going up around the world and “absolutely soared” after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We just can’t carry on like this,” the prime minister said in a social media video promoting his new energy strategy.
The plan has been criticised for not saying enough about tackling high bills now, instead focusing on longer-term shifts in energy generation.
Johnson said the plan would make British energy “cleaner, more affordable and more secure”.
As well as the already announced £9bn package to help with rising costs, the government would “bring those bills downs” by “upgrading homes so they use less energy”.
Ending dependence on foreign oil and gas would make supply more secure, he said, with a shift to British fossil fuels during the transition to cleaner forms of energy.
That would involve “capturing their emissions and storing them safely under the sea”, he said – but carbon capture projects have been promised by successive governments without any real progress.
Updated
Ed Miliband said the government should ban transgender conversion therapy.
Speaking to Sky News, he said:
I think there are strong views on lots of sides here but I’ll give you my perspective on this. I think that trans people face incredible barriers and stigma in our society.
I was talking to a trans person the other day about this. I think the way this debate has been conducted – these anatomical debates – I think it is really awful for so many trans people in our country.
Asked if transgender conversion therapy should be banned, he said “Yes”.
He also spoke about transgender women taking part in female sport, saying there needs to be “fairness” and not a blanket ban.
He said:
I think that is a decision for the sporting bodies though ... I think it’s different in different sports. I think the principle here is that we need fairness in sport.
Updated
Kwasi Kwarteng insisted chancellor Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, has not been “sheltering” herself from paying UK tax.
He told BBC Breakfast:
I was very interested in the transparency, it was very clear to me what’s happened.
I think the chancellor has been very honest, very clear, and she’s after all a private citizen, she’s not a politician, and I think her affairs were completely transparent, and there’s no hint of any wrongdoing at all. So, I think everything is in order in that way.
Asked if she was sheltering herself from tax, Kwarteng said:
I don’t think that’s true at all, sheltering sounds as if you’re evading things.
I think she’s been very clear, she’s been very transparent, the chancellor’s been very transparent, and this non-dom status has been part of the UK tax system for more than 200 years.
Chancellor should issue explanation for wife's non-dom decision, says Miliband
Ed Miliband said Rishi Sunak’s wife claiming non-dom status is “legal, but is it right?”
Speaking to Sky News, the shadow secretary of state for climate change and net zero, said:
Non-dom status is legal but I think we should be clear that non-dom status is used to... pay less tax than you otherwise would.
You don’t have to be a non-dom. You choose to do it... I think there are legitimate questions that need to be asked of Rishi Sunak about this.
Asked if the move is above board, he said:
I think it’s legal, but is it right?
He also added that the Chancellor should issue an “explanation” about his wife’s decision.
He is the UK chancellor asking people to pay more in taxes. Is it right that his immediate family is sheltering from UK taxes? I think Rishi Sunak and his family should reflect on that.
Updated
Rishi Sunak’s multi-millionaire wife claims non-domicile status, it has emerged, which allows her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire.
Akshata Murthy, who receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from her stake in the Indian IT services company Infosys, declares non-dom status, a scheme that allows people to avoid tax on foreign earnings.
Murthy, the daughter of Infosys’s billionaire founder, owns a 0.93% stake in the tech firm worth approximately £690m. The company’s most recent accounts suggest that Murthy’s stake would have yielded her £11.6m in dividend payments in the last tax year.
Under UK tax laws, Murthy’s status as a non-dom would mean she would not have had to pay tax on the dividend payment from overseas companies. Infosys is headquartered in Bengaluru, India, and listed on the Indian and New York stock exchange. By contrast, UK resident taxpayers pay a 38.1% tax on dividend payouts.
A spokeswoman for Murthy said:
Akshata Murthy is a citizen of India, the country of her birth and parents’ home. India does not allow its citizens to hold the citizenship of another country simultaneously. So, according to British law, Ms Murthy 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 Treasury declined to comment.
It comes a day after it was revealed that Sunak and Murthy donated more than £100,000 to the chancellor’s old private school, Winchester College.
It is understood that Sunak, the chancellor, declared his wife’s tax status to the Cabinet Office when he became a minister in 2018, and he had also made the Treasury “aware, so as to manage any potential conflicts”.
Tulip Siddiq, the shadow economic secretary to the treasury, 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 benefiting from tax reduction schemes. This is yet another example of the Tories thinking it is one rule for them, another for everyone else.
Rishi Sunak must now urgently explain how much he and his family have saved on their own tax bill at the same time he was putting taxes up for millions of working families and choosing to leave them £2,620 a year worse off.
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Boris Johnson said “nuclear is coming home” as a result of the government’s energy strategy.
For years, governments have dodged the big decisions on energy, but not this one.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) April 7, 2022
Our Energy Security Strategy sets out our plans to make British energy cleaner, more affordable and more secure. pic.twitter.com/BQwuR4FawV
In a social media video to promote the plan, which is finally being released on Thursday after repeated delays and cabinet wrangling, the prime minister said:
In the country that was the first to split the atom, the first truly to harness its power to light our homes and drive our factories, we will once again lead the way. Nuclear is coming home.
So instead of a new reactor every decade we will have a new reactor every year.
For years, governments have dodged the big decisions on energy, but not this one.
We’ve got the ambition, we’ve got the plan and we are going to bring clean, affordable secure power to the people for generations to come.
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said it was “completely unfair” to scrutinise the tax affairs of the chancellor Rishi Sunak’s non-domiciled wife, Akshata Murty.
He told Sky News:
It’s completely unfair to be bringing someone who is not a politician and essentially attacking them in a way that’s happening.
She made it very clear that as an Indian national she can’t have dual citizenship and she’s got non-dom status here in the UK.
Now, after 15 years staying here she will be domiciled, but for the moment she pays tax on UK income, as I understand, and on foreign income she pays tax outside the UK – that’s what non-domiciled status means.
But I’m not here to comment on her tax affairs.
He added:
I’m totally comfortable with people having businesses, people operating what they do as private citizens, I’m completely comfortable about that.
I’m not an expert on her financial arrangements but I think absolutely people have a right to pursue their own business arrangements.
I’ve just come here to say very clearly that I think her tax affairs are a matter for her.
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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.
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Ed Miliband has said that a few Tory backbenchers have been “holding the government’s energy policy to ransom”.
Speaking to the BBC, Labour’s shadow climate change and net zero secretary said:
Onshore wind is the cheapest, quickest form of energy we can get.
It’s been blocked since 2015 because of government rules, not because of the views of the population ... but because a few Tory backbenchers are holding the government’s energy policy to ransom ... and people are paying higher bills as a result.
Ministers have promised cleaner and more affordable energy to be made in the UK, aiming to make 95% of electricity low carbon by 2030.
Miliband added:
The government wanted to have a target to double onshore wind ... that is the equivalent of building five new nuclear power stations between now and 2030.
I’m in favour of new nuclear but stations that the government is talking about today won’t be built for at least a decade. That’s why this strategy is so deeply flawed.
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The business secretary has admitted that the government’s energy security strategy will do little to help alleviate soaring fuel bills now, adding that it’s “more of a medium three, four, five year answer” ahead of its reveal later today.
Pressed on the impact it will have on energy bills now, Kwasi Kwarteng told Sky News:
You are right to say that the strategy is more of a medium term, three, four or five-year answer, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t address this.
It’s really important that we get an energy strategy, an energy policy, that means we can have more security and independence in the year ahead.
Kwarteng was asked if his department are deprioritising targets to reduce the climate crisis, which he dismissed:
I think that the net zero legislation is, after all, in law, we’re focused on that.
But, of course, given what’s happening around the world, given the pressure on energy prices, we’re also doing lots of other things to make sure we get energy independence back into the UK.
Welcome to today’s politics live blog. I’m Nicola Slawson and I’ll be taking the lead today. You can contact me on Twitter (@Nicola_Slawson) or via email (nicola.slawson@theguardian.com) if you have any questions or think I’m missing something.
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