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NatWest Settles Dispute With Farage That Led to CEO's Ouster

NatWest Settles Dispute With Farage That Led to CEO's Ouster

Bloomberg26-03-2025
NatWest Group Plc has settled a yearslong dispute with Nigel Farage, a prominent Brexit campaigner and Member of Parliament, over the bank's decision to shutter his account.
The terms of the settlement are confidential, NatWest said in a statement, which noted the bank had also apologized to Farage. Sky News first reported the dispute had been resolved.
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Martin Lewis says millions of UK motorists could be entitled to compensation
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Martin Lewis says millions of UK motorists could be entitled to compensation

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced it will consult on an industry-wide compensation scheme - meaning drivers across the UK could be owed a share of an £18 billion cash pot. It comes after the revelation that many motor finance firms weren't complying with the law. Millions of drivers could be eligible, meaning that individual compensation pay-outs could be around £950 or less. Consumer champion Martin Lewis said in a video posted to X that millions of people are likely to be due a share of up to £18 billion. He told Sky News the consultation is 'likely to mean 40 per cent of people who got a car finance deal between 2007 and 2021 will be due some form of redress, likely to be hundreds not thousands of pounds'. READ MORE: Our trip to little-known theme park just an hour from Stoke-on-Trent READ MORE: New service could save motorists hours on car-related admin The consultation will be launched by early October. If the compensation scheme goes ahead, the first payments should be made in 2026. It comes after Friday's ruling by the Supreme Court on cases in which the FCA had intervened. While some motor finance customers will not get compensation because in many cases commission payments were legal, the court ruled that in certain circumstances the failure to properly disclose commission arrangements could be unfair and therefore unlawful, the FCA added. People who have already complained do not need to do anything, the FCA said. Consumers who are concerned that they were not told about commission and think they may have paid too much to their motor finance lender have been urged to complain now. How to claim Consumers do not need to use a claims management company or law firm and doing so could cost them around 30 per cent of any compensation paid, it added. To make an initial complaint, the FCA says people should get in touch with their lender or broker, then the provider should send an acknowledgement within eight weeks. Under the FCA's current rules, it will not have to send a final response until after December 4, 2025. But as the FCA is consulting on a compensation scheme, the deadline may be extended. If customers are unhappy with their provider's response, they can then complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service, the FCA added. The authority will propose rules on how lenders should 'consistently, efficiently and fairly' decide whether someone is owed compensation and how much. It will monitor if firms are following the rules and act if they are not. Nikhil Rathi, chief executive of the FCA, said: 'It is clear that some firms have broken the law and our rules. It's fair for their customers to be compensated. "We also want to ensure that the market, relied on by millions each year, can continue to work well and consumers can get a fair deal. 'Our aim is a compensation scheme that's fair and easy to participate in, so there's no need to use a claims management company or law firm. If you do, it will cost you a significant chunk of any money you get. 'It will take time to establish a scheme but we hope to start getting people any money they are owed next year.' Get daily headlines and breaking news emailed to you - it's FREE

Nigel Farage should do his bit to keep the peace
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There is no situation where an intervention by Nigel Farage won't make things worse. He has, after all, made a career out of detecting, exploiting and exacerbating people's grievances and fears, a grim cycle that has delivered electoral success. The man is gifted in his insidious trade, if nothing else. Nowhere is this strategy more dangerously deployed than in issues of migration, race and crime, so often shamelessly conflated by the Reform UK leader with a studied and long-experienced hand. It is done almost instinctively. Once, he even blamed being late for a 'meet-the-Ukip leader' event in Wales on traffic jams on the M4 caused by immigration, rather than, say, the infamous bottleneck at Newport. Rather more grievously, his actions in the aftermath of the horrific Southport murders a year ago did nothing to calm tempers and stop the wild social media speculation that the person responsible was a Muslim asylum seeker who'd more or less just arrived in Britain, via a small boat. 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In fact, of course, it is he who is creating additional tension, adding to a sense of injustice and the fear that the police are more interested in defending perpetrators than defending victims, despite the obvious truth that those accused have been caught and taken into custody by those same police, doing their duty. It is difficult to see why the migration status of everyone arrested on a serious offence should be automatically released, as Mr Farage suggests, even when it is immediately known for sure. If the person involved is a refugee, for example, accepted for indefinite leave to remain, then that does not make them 'more guilty' or their offence 'more serious' simply by the fact that they may have escaped from torture or some war zone. There is a strong probability that migration status will be equated to race, which is even less relevant. The only possible valid use of immigration status in the criminal justice system is if the person is convicted. At that point, the question of deportation does arise. The fact is that someone's immigration status can affect the feelings of many perfectly law-abiding and worried people demonstrating outside 'migrant hotels' (real or imagined) up and down the country on legitimate grounds. They are not all fascists or racists, still less pathologically violent. They are angry and fearful at what they learn from the news and the speculation on social media, and they deserve to be told the facts. But there is just the suspicion that immigration status can, in some grotesque, emotionally-charged way, lead to violence and mob rule. It is, quite simply, wrong and criminally so, to attempt arson on a hotel with human beings inside, whatever the circumstances. It doesn't help anyone or solve anything. If a rapist comes from a family that can trace its English origins to Anglo-Saxon times, that should make people no more or less angry than if the criminal has only lived here for a matter of weeks and is from some country in Africa or the Middle East. Race should play no part in justice, even mob justice. It would be refreshing, statesmanlike and a genuinely great public service if Mr Farage and those like him used their public platform to call for calm and peaceful protest, and not display so much apparent tacit support for angry, violent reactions in tense demonstrations. His warnings sound too much like self-fulfilling prophecies, as when he declared a few weeks ago: 'I don't think anybody in London understands just how close we are to civil disobedience on a vast scale in this country.' Given what happened last July and early August, the opposite is surely true: ministers and police chiefs are all too well aware of such a possibility. The difference is that, unlike Mr Farage, they don't seem to be talking it up. It would make a useful change if Mr Farage didn't make everything into a 'cover-up' and accept that, in many cases, details are withheld for sound legal reasons concerning a fair trial and the provisions of the Contempt of Court Act 1981. The police should not have to break the law and risk upsetting a trial and letting the guilty go free simply because of the threat of a riot if they don't, or accusations of 'two-tier policing'. What's more, Mr Farage shouldn't call for the resignation of chief constables, or any other officers, who are trying to keep the oaths they took to uphold the laws set down by parliament and the King's peace. Standing up for the police, defending the independent judiciary, condemning violence and respecting human rights are, in fact, the patriotic British things to do at times such as these. If he cares about the cohesion of communities and the rule of law as deeply as he claims, Mr Farage should do his bit to keep the peace as well.

FTSE 100 Live: Stocks Rebound From Selloff, Dollar Weakness Resumes
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time6 hours ago

  • Bloomberg

FTSE 100 Live: Stocks Rebound From Selloff, Dollar Weakness Resumes

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