Here’s a curious tale involving Boris Johnson, the annual allowance for former Prime Ministers, and the man Kemi Badenoch chose to stand in for her at PMQs last month. Oh, and £67,803 of taxpayers’ money handed to Johnson that he wasn’t entitled to claim. (1/8) First we go back to 31 March 2023, when a new version of the guidance was published covering the £115k per year ‘Public Duty Costs Allowance’ for ex-PMs. From what I could tell, the only change to the previous guidance related to the section below on claim processes. (2/8)

Many people have asked me what Labour would do differently to end the abuse of ministerial severance payments. This is how we plan to change the rules; a set of reforms that would have cut £378k, or 40%, from the Tory severance bill in 2022/23.🧵1/7 theguardian.com/politics/2024/… First, anyone who leaves their job while under investigation for misconduct or breaches of the ministerial code would have their severance suspended, and quashed entirely if the allegations were upheld. That would have meant no payments at all to Peter Bone or Chris Pincher. 2/7

What on earth is going on here? Let me try and explain the story as I understand it. This starts with Rishi Sunak travelling on a private jet to the Tory conferences in Scotland and Wales on April 28th, which – as we know – is fairly standard for him. 1/5.
theguardian.com/politics/2023/… Originally, in May, Rishi Sunak said the £38,500 cost of that jet was donated by a medtech millionaire named Akhil Tripathi. But two weeks later, he changed his declaration to say the donation came from a firm called Balderton Medical Consultants. The two entries are below. 2/5.

Here is today’s latest evidence of a government that can turn even the simplest idea into a total fiasco: a £5 million pilot scheme to give early legal advice to people with housing-related debts, which ended up helping just THREE individuals in the space of five months. 1/6 The Early Legal Advice Pilot has been in the works since 2019, designed to provide three hours of free support to individuals who wouldn’t normally get legal aid, to stop their debt problems landing them in court. Rishi Sunak announced £5m in funding for the pilot in 2020. 2/6

The Sunday Times today carries jaw-dropping extracts from the new Liz Truss book about three overseas trips she made shortly after becoming Trade Secretary in 2019. In this thread, I want to focus on one aspect of those revelations: her expenses. (1/10). thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-tr… Earlier this year, I exposed the fact that Truss had failed to declare her full taxpayer-funded expenses on two trips in late 2020 to Japan and Singapore/Vietnam, and I started looking into whether she’d done the same on previous trips abroad. (2/10) mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…

This is a little bit strange from Penny Mordaunt. Either she was attending on behalf of the Foreign Office or she wasn’t. It’s not the kind of thing you’d forget. Just for a bit of background, Penny Mordaunt tweeted last December that she was at the ‘Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue’ in California with Condoleezza Rice, Jim Mattis and others, but then didn’t declare it in March among the list of official meetings she held on that US tour.

From Rishi Sunak writing off £4.3bn in Covid fraud, Lord Agnew resigning in protest, and Kwasi Kwarteng saying fraud is a crime that doesn’t affect people’s day to day lives, you may think you’ve heard it all recently. But you might not have heard of Ziad Akle. If so, read on 1/9 When investigators closed in on consultancy firm Unaoil over acts of bribery, its owners hired a ‘fixer’, David Tinsley, to get them off the hook. He pressured more junior employees like Mr Akle to plead guilty, and lobbied the Serious Fraud Office to let them take the fall. 2/9

In advance of #PMQs, I advise the PM to correct two simple matters on which he has misled parliament. In accordance with the Ministerial Code he should correct these at the earliest opportunity.
Today will do. Crime has not "gone down by 14%", it has gone up by 14%.
The Chair of UK Statistics Authority, @FullFact and Labour have told you this Prime Minister.
Just correct this please.
#PMQs

I predict today’s Sunday Times story by @Gabriel_Pogrund won’t be the last time Liz Truss gets in trouble asking the taxpayer to foot the bill for her expensive tastes. She had a bit of form during her time as Trade Secretary. Let me take you through another example...(1/6) Back in December 2020, Truss and 3 staff went on a four-night trip to Singapore and Vietnam to sign the cut-and-paste rollover agreements to maintain free trade post-Brexit. After details of the visit were published on 7th May 2021, I asked how much it had all cost. (2/6)

I’m only one paragraph into the government’s new export strategy – from Boris Johnson’s foreword no less – but the signs are not good. Let’s do a quick fact-check on four of the Prime Minister's points, and remember this is just the first paragraph...(1 of 6). 1. Actually, 35 weeks passed between the UK taking its seat at the WTO on 4/2/20 and the next FTA being signed – with Ukraine – on 8/10/20, part of a last-minute rush that, amongst other things, means the Ukraine deal now needs to be re-written to correct the legal errors made.

A year ago today, Liz Truss signed a post-Brexit trade deal with Japan, and subsequently told Parliament it delivered ‘higher’ benefits than our previous deal via the EU. Now I can reveal her officials advised her on how to correct that false claim, something she never did. (1/5) The trouble started on 19th November, when I asked her in the Commons simply to quantify in pounds or percentages the difference between the benefits for the British economy of the UK-Japan deal versus the EU-Japan deal. This is how the end of those exchanges played out. (2/5)

Here’s my letter to Liz Truss exposing the catastrophic negotiating blunder that risks leaving manufacturers in the UK’s new generation of freeports shut out of £35bn in export markets, as reported by the FT, the Indie and others today. A short thread to explain (1/6). When DIT Ministers were negotiating rollover deals to maintain our free trade after Brexit, they failed to remove ‘prohibition clauses’ from 23 of those deals, which stop manufacturers who don’t pay duty on their imports from getting lower tariffs on their exports (2/6).