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Last week's Spring Statement decision to cut the benefits of the weakest members of our society, on the basis of a series of forecasts by the Government's spending watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility, wasn't democratic but technocratic. The argument of the Chancellor was that she had no choice and the fiscal rules imposed this on her and us. But what then is the point of voting when a body which is totally unaccountable to us ultimately decides our fate?

The OBR is just one example of this broader problem, albeit an important one of decisions being outsourced from democrats to technocrats. Representative democracy is ultimately an issue of trust. Will the people we've elected deliver on the promises contained in their manifestos? For decades trust in politicians has been breaking down. The world has become more complex and much more difficult for politicians to run while we have become much less trusting, less deferential and more cynical. The answer has been to ditch democracy for technocracy.

The critical moment in the long march to the outsourcing of power came with the Trilateral Commission in 1973. This was a non-governmental body established by the banker David Rockefeller which brought together decision makers from the USA, Western Europe and Japan to look at the growing threat of inflation. The Commission determined politicians could not be trusted to control price rises as they gave in too easily to demands from their electorate to 'spend more money than they had'. The key recommendation of the Commission was the establishment of independent central banks to take key macro-economic decisions out of the hands of politicians and the people and into those of the bankers.

Keir Starmer Plans to Crack Down on Political Interference by Foreign Billionaire Donors

The Prime Minister is under pressure to close legal loopholes that would allow tech billionaire and Donald Trump aide Elon Musk to funnel millions of dollars into right-wing political parties in the UK

Olly Haynes

In the UK this elite shift in thinking eventually manifested itself in Labour's 1997 move to give interest rate decisions to the Bank of England, ironically without any mention in their manifesto. The establishment of the OBR in 2010 by George Osborne to act as a control on government spending, was a further development of this trend and a confirmation that the politicians didn't trust themselves. Politics had now been separated from power.

We now live in this grim world where some decisions are outsourced and others not, sometimes politicians agree with the technocrats they appoint, other times they don't. The confusion and the contradictions cement the crisis of democracy, which unless resolved, will only benefit the anti-democratic authoritarian populists.

Just look at the mess Labour is now in. Before the Spring Statement Labour argued that benefit reforms were designed to get people working, but on the eve of the statement the OBR reported that the cuts announced were insufficient to hit the £5bn target that it had stipulated for the government to stay within its fiscal rules.

So overnight another £1.4bn cuts were found, which evidently had nothing to do with getting people into work and everything to do with jumping the hurdle set by the technocrats. Later last week the Prime Minister clashed with the independent Sentencing Council for England and Wales over so-called two-tier sentencing. Next month the first private rail company will lose its franchise and become part of GB Railways, an arm's length body from the Transport Department. But only a few weeks before the Health Minis...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Peter Mandelson has a dream. The original spin doctor and Tony Blair's former communications guru is now Britain's ambassador to the USA. And in Washington DC, he's dreaming about a "full spectrum technology partnership between Britain and America", one which rivals the nuclear partnership of the 1960s.

This time, the partnership could encompass genomics, protein design and engineering, artificial intelligence, data centres and quantum computer, and more nuclear technology.

And the deal that could give this vision lift-off, Mandelson has dubbed the 'Make our Economies Great Again' agreement.

This deal is already more than a figment of Lord Mandelson's imagination. Since Keir Starmer's Oval Office visit, US and British negotiators have been trying to put flesh on the bones of such an agreement. Starmer views it as a way of removing Trump's 'liberation day' tariffs. And he might succeed in the short-term, but in the process he will have given away vitally important tools that we need to rein in the Big Tech monopolists and regulate their technologies.

What's more, Trump is a bully. He is partly using tariffs as a revenue raiser to cut taxes on his oligarch friends. But he is also using them to blackmail foreign governments into making concessions that run counter to their interests.

In essence, he wants the rest of the world to pay for tax cuts for America's super rich. And if he sees the British prime minister roll over, he's unlikely to stop there.

'Trump's Betrayal of America's Closest Allies Should Be a Wake Up Call for the UK'

The UK Government's attempts to bridge the divide between Europe and the White House are rapidly running out of road, argues Alexandra Hall Hall

Alexandra Hall Hall

What is the Deal?

The UK has twice tried to agree a trade deal with the US. The first was TTIP, the EU-US deal, of which Peter Mandelson was a leading champion. The second attempt, post-Brexit, fell apart when Trump was voted out of office. Both prospective deals became deeply unpopular with the UK public after they realised that they posed a threat to public services, farmer's livelihoods and food standards - threatening to unleash chlorine-washed chicken and similarly unsavoury products onto Britain's supermarket shelves.

This time, Starmer and Mandelson want to focus more on "clicks and portals than goods and mortar." There is no evidence that Britain will be able to limit a deal in this way, in fact Trump has already said that Britain should accept chlorine chicken if they want to reduce tariffs. But even if they could, a digital-only trade deal carries serious threats for UK citizens, workers, public services, the environment and democracy itself. This would not be a deal that helps build a strong British economy, but an extreme liberalisation deal that hands even more power to US corporations.

Any deal would be based on a wishlist dreamt up by the Big Tech giants over the last decade. In essence they have learnt from the pharmaceutical corporations who, in the 1980s and '90s, worked to get politicians in rich countries to use enforceable trade rules to cement the monopoly power of their businesses across the world. The result is the dysfunctional industry that produces our medicines today - highly financialised giants, addicted to sky-high profits, yet unable to make the medicines we needs at a price we can afford.

Similarly today, Big Tech wants to enshrine its monopolies, in perpetuity, through a series of trade rules. Their wishlist was pushed as US policy in Trump's first term, but Biden's administration dropped it, saying countries had to balance trade objectives wit...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

On Monday Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French far right party Le Rassemblement National was found guilty of embezzling 4.4 million euros of public funds from the EU in relation to the so-called "fictitious assistants scandal".

The verdict delivered a penalty of four years in prison, two of which are suspended, two of which are to be served at home with an electronic tag, a 100,000 euro fine and, most importantly, five years of ineligibility to run for public office with "proximate execution" meaning that the penalty applies even during the appeal process.

This means that it will be highly unlikely she can run for office again at the presidential election in 2027.

Following the verdict, US President Donald Trump denounced it as a "Witch Hunt" posting on his Truth Social platform that it was "another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison."

Dismissing the case against Le Pen as a "bookkeeping" error, Trump demanded that France "FREE MARINE LE PEN!"

'Elbows Up, Britain': Canada's Boycott of American Goods Spreads to the UK

How British voters could hold the cards when it comes to resisting President Trump's global trade war

Josiah Mortimer

The reality of the case is quite different, however.

According to the judgement, Le Pen sat at "the heart" of a "carefully organised system" of embezzlement of EU parliamentary funds by running a fake jobs racket in which permanent members of party staff were declared EU parliamentary assistants and had their salaries paid by the EU.

Several other high-ranking members of the RN were also found guilty of embezzlement as part of this system, such as MP Julien Odoul, Perpignan mayor and RN vice-president Louis Aliot and the MEP Nicholas Bay who now sits with Identite et Liberte, a micro-party founded by Marion Marechal Le Pen, Marine's niece.

MEPs for the Front National (now rebranded as the Rassemblement National) would have one assistant dedicated to their parliamentary work and the rest of their budget for staff would be spent on permanent members of the party.

Two of the assistants for MEP Ferdinand Le Rachinel for example never actually worked for him and were in fact Jean Marie Le Pen's private secretary and bodyguard.

The judgement describes how when Marine Le Pen inherited the system from her father Jean Marie, she actively chose to maintain it.

She instructed MEPs at a meeting in July of 2014 that they should give Charles Van Houtte power of attorney to decide their budget allocation and choose their cabinets and told the assembled that they would only need one assistant for their parliamentary work and the remaining balance of their budget would be at the party's disposal.

European Parliament Elections: Experts and Law-Makers 'Extremely' Worried About Influence of Anti-Gender Movements

As Europe's far-right movement gains alarming momentum, what are its funding, tactics - and prevention strategies?

Tatev Hovhannisyan

Le Pen has continued to protest her innocence by using the argument that it is normal that parliamentary assistants should do political work. She told the court "I have absolutely no sense of having committed the slightest irregularity, or the slightest illegal act", reiterated her innocence after the verdict and immediately said that she would launch an appeal.

This set of facts, and the news of the judgment, set political discourse alight as one of the most infamous figures of global politics was banned from running in a presidential race that polling suggests she had a good chance of win...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

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Thames Water's preferred investor KKR, previously signed a deal to manage the US municipal water company of Bayonne New Jersey which "sent bills soaring" and has been described by residents of the city as "drowning us".

On Monday Thames Water, the UK's biggest water supplier, which has been struggling under mounting debt, announced the American private equity firm KKR as its preferred buyer in a bid to prevent nationalisation. KKR is expected to acquire a stake of around £4 billion in Thames Water.

While KKR has some experience managing water companies, both in the UK and the US, the company has not always left customers happy.

In 2012, the New Jersey city of Bayonne signed a deal with KKR and Suez to manage their municipal water system which was in dire need of repairs to its crumbling infrastructure.

In 2016, the New York Times reported that "those crusty brown pipes have been replaced by shiny cobalt-blue ones" but this came "with a hefty price tag - not just to pay for new pipes, but also to help the investors earn a nice return".

The deal the financially desperate city signed with KKR and Suez guaranteed the company a return of over half a billion dollars over 40 years. However, water rates rose 28% between the signing of the deal in 2012 and 2016 and continued to rise afterwards. The deal promised residents a four year freeze on water rates, which never materialised because of the revenue guarantee.

KKR sold its share in Bayonne's water company to Argo in 2018, making a return of 2.8 times the amount invested, though the deal signed alongside Suez remains in place.

The company also has a record of overseeing price rises, and allegations of sewage dumping in the UK.

At Prime Minister's Question Time on Wednesday Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey criticised Kier Starmer's refusal to bring Thames Water into special administration by while raising KKR's previous investment in Northumbrian Water.

He said "three years ago the American private equity firm KKR bought a 25% stake in Northumbrian Water, since then people across the North East have seen their water bills soar, while last year alone Northumbrian Water has dumped nearly one million tonnes of raw sewage in to Durham's Whitburn coast conservation area".

Davey asked if Starmer would guarantee that Thames Water would not be allowed "to pull the same trick of raising bills and dumping raw sewage at the same time".

Just Stop Oil Has Called It Quits, but They Say Their Fight Is Far From Over

The climate movement has announced an end to its direct action campaigns. The group's spokesperson tells Josiah Mortimer what's next

Josiah Mortimer

Mathhew Topham of the campaign group We Own It told Byline Times "KKR inspired a book and film called Barbarians at the Gate precisely because of its rampant profiteering and financial abuse of service users so we know that it is completely ill suited to delivering a public service that works in the interests of its users and the environment".

KKR claims to have moved beyond its asset stripping past. In a 2019 Forbes article titled "Gentleman at the Gate" Henry Kravis one of the co-founders stated "You can't buy a company and strip out all the costs. It's not a sustainable business model […] "If you're not putting money back in to come up with new products, new plants and new ways of doing business in new geographies, you'll die eventually".

In July last year KKR bought FibreCop from Telecom Italia, the major Italian telecoms network. In September 2024, Fibrecop announced that they were cutting 1300 jobs through a voluntary redundancy scheme.

In January the CEO of Fibrecop Luigi ...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Family members of British nationals who are currently or have previously been detained abroad are calling on ministers to develop a 'clear and consistent' strategy that supports British nationals who are unfairly detained abroad.

A new campaign from Amnesty International outlines the "many failings" from successive UK governments in securing the release of arbitrarily detained prisoners.

Hong Kong journalist Jimmy Lai waited three years for the UK Government to publicly call for his release while being kept in solitary confinement with no access to light (he remains imprisoned by the Chinese state).

British-Iranian labour activist Mehran Raoof had to wait for four and a half years whilst suffering health problems in jail.

And Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe saw then-PM Boris Johnson incorrectly claim she was teaching journalism at the time of her arrest, which her family say jeopardised efforts to secure her release from Iran.

Meanwhile, Laila Soueif went on hunger strike for 149 days before being hospitalised to raise awareness of her son's plight. She remains on an extremely calorie-restricted diet in hospital in protest over her British-Egyptian son Alaa Abdel-Fattah's continued imprisonment in Egypt.

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Now a new campaign video from Amnesty features these figures or their family members and friends, including Zaghari-Ratcliffe, Leila Soueif (Alaa's mother), Sebastien Lai (Jimmy Lai's son) and others, all calling for a proper strategy and process for handling unfair detentions of Brits overseas.

Labour's 2024 manifesto saw the party commit to better support for British nationals abroad and especially those whose human rights are being violated, which Amnesty says was "important and welcome."

However, the campaign group says the problem of British nationals being detained arbitrarily is significant and appears to be growing. "It is important that the government urgently develops a clear strategy for how it will support those caught in this terrible predicament," Deshmukh adds.

Backing the campaign, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe said: "I was never visited by any of the UK government or embassy staff, and it took eighteen months for them to even call for my release.

"The turmoil that my child has gone through is one of the things that I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive. What I would like to say to the UK Government is, when a person is arrested, that person's life matters."

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Richard Ratcliffe: Families Face 'Suppression and Isolation'

Richard Ratcliffe, husband of Nazanin, who campaigned for her release from Iran, tells Byline Times in an interview: "The first thing they need to do is to recognise the problem. At the moment, the Government doesn't acknowledge anyone detained overseas as being arbitrarily detained or hostage."

The US has a mechanism whereby they'll check and decide if someone is unfairly detained, and they call them "wrongfully detained".

Ratcliffe says: "There's a door you can knock on to say, 'Listen, I'm unfairly imprisoned, and I want my Government's help' The UK doesn't do that."

Successive Conservative Governments buried the problem, he adds. Evidence that then-Foreign Secret...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Former Conservative Health Secretary Matt Hancock used his personal email account to help secure a multi-million pound Covid contract for a 'VIP' supplier, which was awarded by officials on the very same day, correspondence released to Byline Times reveal.

Hancock's private referral for the biotech firm Excalibur Healthcare, which was revealed via a Freedom of Information request by Byline Times, came despite repeated denials by the last Government that personal emails were ever used by ministers for official business.

Excalibur, which provided the NHS with tens of millions of pounds worth of unusable equipment during the pandemic, later folded, owing over £22 million to DHSC.

The newly-released correspondence reveals that Hancock had received an email from Excalibur's boss, Sir Christopher Evans, on 8 April 2020 offering to sell the UK Government millions of face masks. In his email, Evans pleads with Hancock to help seal the contract.

"Feel these are important. Make the public aware yourself you invested in them and start handing them out tonight Mat!!", Evans wrote.

Within two hours of receiving the email, Matt Hancock forwarded the offer onto Jonathan Marron, the Director General at the Department for Health and Social Care, stating "Do we want to act on this? I will leave it with you". The email from Hancock was sent using his personal email account and Excalibur were subsequently placed into the VIP lane.

DHSC officials have confirmed that Hancock was the "source of referral" for Excalibur onto the VIP lane - a system that fast tracked offers from politically-connected companies, many of whom had never previously supplied PPE to the NHS.

Excalibur's lobbying appears to have been effective, and remarkably on the same day of the email exchange, the company received a £25 million PPE contract to supply facemasks - a deal that was awarded without any formal competitive tendering process.

During the pandemic No.10 repeatedly denied that ministers including Hancock were using personal email accounts for government business. They claimed ministers "understand the rules around personal email usage and only ever conducted government business through their departmental email addresses". We now know this wasn't true.

The Government's dealings with the company were hugely costly for the taxpayer. An investigation by Spotlight on Corruption in 2023, revealed that Excalibur had provided 4.4 million items of unusable PPE to the Government, valued at over £20 million.

Excalibur's face mask contract wasn't the only one involving the Hancock-led DHSC. A Good Law Project Investigation previously revealed that Excalibur also secured a £135 million contract to supply 2,700 ventilators in April 2020. .

Remarkably none of the 2,7000 ventilators were used and eventually the Government decided to auction the machines off on the cheap.

Excalibur's ventilators were passed on for quickfire sales to British Medical Auctions, and dozens were listed on the company's site. Units which originally cost the taxpayer circa £50,000 each - appeared with bids starting at £100 - generating an eye-watering loss.

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Matt Hancock confirmed in his witness statement to the Co...

Some good news for once, and a word of thanks for all of you who have supported Byline Times over the six years since our launch on 31 March 2019.

By coincidence, the day after our sixth birth, the Government announced that it was putting Russia as the second country (after Iran) on its new Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS). As Foreign Secretary David Lammy explained, this will expose Putin's "shady attempts at interference to sunlight - helping us to detect & disrupt threats to the UK".

"Now more than ever," Lammy said"we must hold them to account for their increasingly hostile policies against the UK."

According to the Home Office minister, Dan Jarvis, the scheme, which will go live on 1 July, will register and publicise "arrangements to carry out political influence activities in the UK at the direction of any foreign power".

An enhanced tier, which will include Russia, has been "specifically designed to shed light on activities directed by those foreign powers or entities whose activities pose a threat to the safety and interests of the UK".

Better Late than Never

This is an issue Byline Times has been passionate about since its inception.

Russian influence in both the EU Referendum and the first Trump presidential election in 2016 was a key theme of our original crowdfunding site Byline.com. We joined Carole Cadwalladr and various other media organisations like openDemocracy and Channel 4 News in exposing Russia's influence operations in our elections.

Explosive Report Exposes the Molten Core of the Brexit, Trump, Russia Scandal

The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee's final report on disinformation and fake news reveals new evidence and calls for new investigations into dark data, dark money and Russian influence in British elections.

Peter Jukes

Then Deputy Leader Tom Watson spoke up at the Byline Festival in 2018, calling for a criminal investigation into Russian interference in Brexit.

In 2019, in one of my first articles for Byline Times, David Lammy, then an opposition Labour MP, told me that "the scale and depth of malicious disinformation and foreign interference this report uncovers demands an urgent response from the Prime Minister on behalf of the British Government.

"It is now blindingly obvious that we need a criminal investigation", he added, "equivalent to the US' Mueller inquiry - to investigate any possible links between the 2016 Leave campaign, Donald Trump's campaign team and Russia."

The DCMS report concluded by calling for an "independent investigation into past elections" - including the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, the Brexit vote and the 2017 General Election - "to explore what actually happened with regard to foreign influence, disinformation, funding, voter manipulation, and the sharing of data, so that appropriate changes to the law can be made and lessons can be learnt for future elections and referenda".

Byline Times has been pushing for a UK equivalent of the US FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act) ever since. We published a whole book, Digital Gangers, on the subject, written by a former DCMS committee member, Ian Lucas.

Nigel Farage and an 'Extraordinary Lack of Curiosity' from UK Government and Intelligence Services Over Possible Russian Interference in Brexit

"It did strike me as ridiculous that, given the overt nationalism of the Leave.EU campaign, it was involved in discussions with representatives of the Russian Government"

Ian Lucas

Six years on, some limited criminal inquiries have taken place. However, further investigations by me and Carole Cadwalladr with the whistleblower Sergei Cristo in our podcast series Sergei and the Westminster Spy Ring reveal an even more stunning lack of action or accountability by the security services over Russian Interference.

So we remain in the dark in too many ways, and a public inquiry is still needed to learn from the past and find ways to fight back against information warfare and foreign influence.

However, Dav...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

How should Britain respond if President Trump imposes high tariffs on UK products this week? Pressure is growing on the Prime Minister to hit back with retaliatory tariffs of our own. But the PM isn't the only one who controls the fightback.

What can be done, if our PM is reluctant to copy Canada and hit back as hard as we get? We may see the British public responding to Trump's far-right administration with more force.

There is an emerging movement to boycott American products in the UK, inspired by Canada's 'Elbows Up' campaign - a hockey term for the action taken by players getting ready for the puck drop - which has led to a collapse of 70% in Canadians travelling to the US, while many Canadian stores have removed American alcohol from shelves.

Brits are now sharing lists of major US consumer brands that might be avoided to hit the US where it hurts: in the wallet.

Major US consumer brands in the UK include Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald's, Burger King, clothing companies like Nike, Converse and Levi's; and tech giants like Apple, Google, Microsoft and Netflix - some of which are harder to avoid than others.

Some well-known US brands operating here actively funded Trump's campaign or his Presidential Inaugural Committee, including PayPal, Uber, ExxonMobil, Amazon and Meta.

For this reason and others, some Byline Times readers already seem to be boycotting American goods and seeking alternatives from the UK, EU, Canada, and other non-US sources.

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Canadian artist Margaret J Rolfe urged Brits to get involved, writing on Threads that the anti-Trump movement in Canada was "grassroots": "You don't need to wait for the Government to start a boycott. Elbows up, my UK friends!"

Another Canadian, Sandra Norman, added in a post that after Trump's first round of tariffs on Canada, "we developed apps to help us figure out where a product came from." One such app is called 'Is This Canadian' and it gives alternative non-US products consumers can buy. "[It was] very effective. Good luck from Canada."

Pam Mercier from Norfolk replied: "Lots of British people already are boycotting US made goods, but as is usual they are doing it quietly." Another, Jayne Dyson, added: "We really need to stand up for Britain. It's time we hit America hard."

And Wales-based clothes designer Virginia Stockley said: "Absolutely. Instead of 'don't buy from x' we should be saying 'buy British' - something positive to get behind."

Some pointed out challenges in boycotting certain US products, especially tech (Apple/Microsoft). But alternative European tech services do exist, including search engines Mojeek and Ecosia to help users ditch Google.

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Another Canadian added examples of renegade pro-Canadian consumer action: "Be sneaky like us Canadians. When you look at a product and it's American, put it back upside down. Then flip more upside down so other shoppers know it's American & been put back on the shelves. We say sorry a lot but if you screw with us you'll be sorry!"

The conversation is also drawing attention to brands previously thought of as British. For example, high street pharmacy Boots is owned by US-firm Walgreens, while ...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

Five days after Elon Musk's infamous Nazi salute at Trump's inauguration ceremony, Dr Jeremy Stone, a software engineering consultant, launched a petition to "remove loopholes that allow wealthy foreign individuals to make donations into UK political parties (e.g. by funnelling through UK registered companies), cap all donations to a reasonable amount and review limits on the fines that can be levied for breaking the rules". Stone posted the petition on X (formerly Twitter) below an AI generated image of Elon Musk performing the salute over a ballot box with dollars stuffed inside. "Is this what we want?" Stone wrote in his posts about the petition. The answer, at least for the 142, 076 people who signed, was no.

The petition quickly cleared the 100,000 signature threshold needed to force a parliamentary debate as Elon Musk threatened to intervene in UK politics with the promise (as yet unrealised) of a $100,000,000 donation to Reform UK. The debate took place in parliament on Tuesday between MPs for Labour, the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the DUP.

Here's what we learnt from the debate.

Keir Starmer's Government plans to tighten rules on foreign donors

Democracy Minister Rushanara Ali told MPs "although it is clear that foreign donations to political parties and other campaigners are illegal, the Government recognise the continued risk posed by actors who seek to interfere in our democratic process. The current rules no longer match the sophistication and perseverance of those who wish to undermine our laws, and that threat must be addressed through stronger safeguards".

She added that, "We are considering a series of new measures that would achieve that, such as enhanced checks by recipients of donations and tighter controls on donors, including more restrictions around company donations".

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But they will leave British big money donors alone

Some MPs raised concerns in the debate about the influence of big money donors generally, whether they are foreign or not. Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill said: "We all know the saying, "Money is power," and I would hope that none of us are naive enough to think that this does not apply to the UK.

"If we want to create a democratic system where everyone's vote has equal value, we need strong protections in place to prevent the very richest individuals in our society from warping our democracy".

Ribeiro-Addy also described a proposal from the IPPR thinktank to cap individual and corporate donations to political parties at £100,000 a year as a "modest starting point".

Ali told MPs that there would be no action taken to cap donations from British citizens or corporations.

She said, "The Government do not plan to introduce such restrictions, as we are rightly focused on safeguards that protect against the threat of foreign interference"

She added, "I mentioned at the start that we must protect what is hard won. It is vital that those who play a crucial role in our democracy can fundraise effectively and communicate their ideas with the electorate. Those who choose to participate in electoral campaigns must follow the strict accounting and transparency rules th...

Byline Times is an independent, reader-funded investigative newspaper, outside of the system of the established press, reporting on 'what the papers don't say' - without fear or favour.

To support its work, subscribe to the monthly Byline Times print edition, packed with exclusive investigations, news, and analysis.

Help us build the better media Britain deserves

MPs today condemn Whitehall for failing to recover over £400 million in loans given mainly to sports clubs to survive the shutdown during the Covid pandemic five years ago.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport lent £474 million to 120 sporting and cultural bodies between 2020 and 2024, but so far only £41 million has been paid back. On top of this, nine organisations went bust, leaving £46 million irrecoverable, and some 60 organisations have still to pay any money back.

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee say there have been severe weaknesses from the start in the Department's arrangements for managing its loan book. The Department did not draw enough on expertise across government when setting up its loan schemes.

It has subsequently improved its governance, procedures and capabilities for managing these loans, but there are still too many parties involved in managing them- the Department itself, Sport England and Arts Council England as its loan agents, and accountancy firm PwC as its managed service provider. As a result, the cost of managing the loans has already run to £17m.

EXCLUSIVE

Conservative Fixer Lord Feldman Lobbied Boris Johnson to Push Through Dyson's Ventilator Contract

Private messages between Boris Johnson and his team reveal they were "on a mission" to secure the contract with leading Brexiteer James Dyson

Russell Scott

Conflict of Interest

The report highlights the huge sum - £124 million or 57 per cent of all sports loans - given to help professional rugby clubs.

It has been unable to question Susannah Storey, the permanent secretary of the department since 2023, about this because of her declared conflict of interest over her husband playing a major role in financing professional rugby union clubs. She had recused herself from all discussions on the loans to rugby clubs after she was appointed.

She declares he is a managing partner and shareholder of CVC Capital Partners - a private equity firm registered in Luxembourg - which has invested £200 million in the Premiership Rugby League in 2019 to keep them going and holds directorships with Premier Rugby, Six Nations Rugby and the United Rugby Championship.

During this period, three Premiership league rugby clubs, London Irish loaned £11.8 million, Wasps loaned £14.1 million, and Worcester Warriors loaned £15.7 million, had become insolvent, accounting for over £41 million of the irrecoverable money. Another seven clubs are being financed by their owners but are technically in the red, according to evidence given to MPs.

Damning Report Suggests Government is Soft on COVID Fraud

A committee of MPs has found that HMRC is failing to deal with an 'avalanche' of fraud by businesses during the pandemic, reports David Hencke

David Hencke

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP, Tory Chair of the Committee, said:

"Cultural and sporting events came to an abrupt and shocking halt during lockdown, by law. In such circumstances, it is of course right that Government came forward with necessary support to ensure the long-term future of foundational elements of our national life.

"But such support was contingent on the unprecedented nature of a global crisis, not to provide a lifetime guarantee to institutions like rugby union, which may be experiencing financial difficulties five years later.

"DCMS is inherently conflicted in the management of its COVID loan-book. As a lender, its priority will be to secure best value for the taxpayer from these loans. As a Department, its priority is to do everything in its power to support a sector which has become its debtor.

"This is before one even considers the direct c...