Government urged not to weaken ‘Hillsborough Law' as MPs demand Bill is passed
MPs have demanded that the Government does not weaken a law designed to prevent cover-ups in the wake of major disasters, as they urged it to be passed as soon as possible.
Labour MP Clive Efford (Eltham and Chislehurst) warned Commons Leader Lucy Powell that the Public Authorities Accountability Bill, which will include the 'Hillsborough Law', should not be changed under pressure from Whitehall.
Mr Efford asked for it to be passed before the end of July.
Meanwhile his party colleague Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) asked for the Bill to be 'worthy of the name'.
The proposed law would require public bodies to have a duty of candour.
This means they would need to co-operate with official inquiries and tell the truth in the aftermath of major disasters – or face criminal sanctions.
A previous deadline set by Labour, that the Bill would be passed before the anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster in April, has been missed.
The Government had said it needed more time to finalise the Bill.
A draft Bill has been criticised by campaigners, including the Hillsborough Law Now group, for not containing pledges previously made – including the duty of candour.
Speaking at business questions, Mr Efford said: 'Can (Ms Powell) tell me when we're likely to see the Public Authorities Accountability Bill, this introduces the Hillsborough Law on duty of candour.
'Are we likely to see it before the summer recess?
'And can I have an assurance that this is not being watered down at the request of the mandarins in the Cabinet Office?'
Ms Powell said: 'The Government remains focused, very much focused on fulfilling our commitment to the Hillsborough families and indeed many other families affected by injustices and scandals and bringing forward and enacting a Hillsborough Law which includes, of course, a duty of candour.
'I think the most important issue is to ensure that we get this legislation right, and that it does reflect the full range of concerns and experiences and does meet the expectations of the families.
'So we are working on that Bill at pace, but we will take whatever time is necessary to work collaboratively and get the legislation right.'
In March it was reported that a meeting between Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and campaigners had been cancelled, with claims officials were attempting to have the contents of the Bill watered down.
It is understood concerns related to who the duty of candour would apply to.
Ninety-seven football fans died as a result of a crush at the FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough in Sheffield in 1989.
Mr Byrne told the Commons: 'The Prime Minister promised my city and all those affected by state cover-ups that the Hillsborough Law would be introduced before April 15 of this year – the 36th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster.
'Almost two months have passed since the Prime Minister missed that deadline.
'This is particularly disappointing, since there is a draft Hillsborough Law ready to go, written by legal experts, endorsed by survivors, families, campaigners and proposed in Parliament by Andy Burnham.'
The Liverpool West Derby MP added that 'a failure to introduce a Hillsborough Law worthy of the name will be seen as a continuation of the betrayal of families and survivors of Hillsborough and all those affected by state cover-ups'.
Ms Powell said the Government was 'working at pace' and was co-operating with families and their representatives.
She said: 'At these times, we always remember those affected by the Hillsborough disaster but particularly the plight that they have faced ever since to fight for justice and fight for accountability.'
Ms Powell added: 'It's absolutely vital that we get this legislation right, that it is workable and watertight in legal terms, but it does meet the expectations and the needs of the families and all those affected.'
Meanwhile shadow commons leader Jesse Norman said Wednesday's spring statement by Rachel Reeves was an 'exercise in distraction and sleight of hand'.
He claimed the planned £14 billion of efficiency savings were 'illusionary' and said the measures included by the Chancellor would lead to £140 billion in borrowing.
Mr Norman said: 'The truth is plain, there will be a tax cut for the people of Mauritius.
'For the rest of us, the spending review was a gigantic speculative splurge of spending, presented by smoke and mirrors, which will end up – as it always does with Labour – with higher taxes, and British taxpayers will have to bear the impact.'
Ms Powell replied: 'As ever, their economic argument is utterly incoherent.
'On the one hand, they're saying we're spending too much, and on the other that we're not spending even more on police and defence.
'They're criticising us on growth, yet they don't want the investment to turbocharge our productivity and therefore our growth.
'We're the party with a plan.
'We've got a plan to renew Britain.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
How Trump's ‘revenge tax' brought the world to its knees
When Donald Trump unveiled his 'One Big Beautiful Bill' last month, all the focus was on how the president's trillions of tax cuts might blow out America's budget bottom line. But hidden within the bill's 1,000-plus pages was a clause that set alarm bells ringing in boardrooms at many of Britain's biggest companies. In section 899 of the bill, Trump proposed what has become known as a 'revenge tax', which gave him a new power to punish countries that had tax regimes he didn't like. If Britain's taxes displeased him – and they do – he could ratchet up US taxes on British companies' American operations to blood-curdling levels. Every year, British companies would face an extra 5pc tax hit on earnings from their US operations, with the rate maxing out at 50pc. The threat was a devastating one. British companies with big US exposure include the food giant Compass, the big pharma pair GSK and AstraZeneca, Barclays, British American Tobacco, drinks conglomerate Diageo, goods manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser and Intercontinental Hotels Group. All are listed on the London Stock Exchange, meaning Trump's threat could have been devastating for the already beleaguered index. The response was immediate. Business leaders and lobby groups quickly began knocking on Rachel Reeves's door, sounding the alarm and urging the Chancellor to get on the case with Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary. Reeves got the message. She raised the S899 tax threat with Bessent when he came to London for trade talks with the Chinese in early June. By then, though, the bill was breezing through the House of Representatives and into the Senate, with the only change being a tweak to ensure investors in US Treasury bonds weren't affected by the 'revenge tax'. Businesses began weighing up Plan B. All the options for coping with the revenge tax were expensive and disruptive, ranging from pulling money out of the US to beat the higher rate to scaling back US investments, or dual-listing their stock in New York. Some even considered the nuclear option of spinning off their American businesses altogether. Fearing Trump's wrath The public debate on S899 hasn't matched the anxiety behind closed doors. Companies were reluctant to speak out, fearing Trump's wrath. But the clock was ticking. Trump wants his Big Beautiful Bill to become law by July 4. With less than a week to go, there was still no public sign that his team, or the Republicans in Congress, were ready to compromise. On Thursday night, though, the tax bloodbath was averted. Bessent announced that he'd extracted surrender terms from the finance ministers of the G7 – Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada – and told Congress to drop section 899. 'It's a big relief,' says Emanuel Adam, a Washington-based executive director at the lobby group British American Business. CS Venkatakrishnan, the Barclays chief, called it 'welcome progress, and a significant outcome for a great many UK companies like Barclays that invest in the US'. But a deal with Trump always comes at a price. The main target of s899 was efforts to impose a global minimum corporation tax, part of a OECD-led initiative, and in particular the Under-Taxed Profits Rule (UTPR). This aims to ensure that multinational companies always pay a tax rate of at least 15pc on their earnings, rather than being able to shelter profits in lower-tax countries. Bessent says the G7 will now not impose that levy on US businesses. The risk now, observers say, is that an American exemption to the UTPR could start to unravel that whole process, sending the world back into the rabbit warren of widespread tax avoidance. 'The biggest success has been to get a load of low-tax or no-tax countries, like the Gulf states and most of the island tax havens, to up their company tax rate to 15pc,' says Tim Sarson, the head of tax policy at KPMG UK. 'If they think they can reduce that rate and attract US companies to their jurisdiction, that might start to unpick the new system more widely.' Digital services taxes, which were one of Trump's explicit targets of s899, are still on the table. The president sees these as unfair imposts on American tech giants, but The Telegraph understands these will be fought over as part of his trade negotiations with individual countries, rather than as part of this deal. Closer to home, there's the question of whether the s899 deal will deliver yet another blow to Reeves's already shattered Budget. The Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that the OECD 'Pillar Two' deal, which includes the global minimum tax rate and the UTPR, would deliver £1.3bn of extra revenue this financial year and next, climbing to £1.5bn by 2029-30. Most of this, though, would come from a different part of Pillar Two, which targets UK companies with subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, rather than US businesses. Tax experts say revenue from the UTPR, which the UK would collect from foreign companies, would be difficult to model and likely have only a small impact on the OBR's forecast. Price worth paying Even if there is a hit to Britain's tax take, it may have been a price worth paying to shield Britain's corporate A-list from Trump's brutal tax. With many blue chip companies reporting their annual or half-yearly results next month, boards were preparing and planning for the inevitable questions from alarmed shareholders. Many were evaluating what could be done to minimise the impact in the short term, in the hope that the political weather in the US might change after the Congressional midterm elections next year and the presidential election in 2028. 'I don't think companies would have retracted their investments or stalled major plans, but it would create additional friction. Projects might have taken longer,' British American Business's Adam says. 'Companies are agile, and companies know how to adjust. But this would have consumed resources and money that could be spent on other things.' Damage to confidence Although the immediate crisis seems to have passed, the Trump administration may have inflicted some lingering damage on the confidence that UK companies and investors have in the US as a place to do business. It just doesn't look quite like the safe, secure and stable proposition it used to be. Joe Dabrowski, of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, says that when you add the s899 scare to the tariff threats, Trump's fight with Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman, and his radical surgery on corporate governance, the sum total is much greater uncertainty. 'It all creates an environment where investors just have to tread more carefully. There is a lot more thinking and due diligence and risk you have to factor in,' he says. 'Some of it might just be white noise and political posturing, but at times it's very difficult to tell the difference between that and reality.' And although Reeves probably had little choice but to yield to Trump, the G7's readiness to give way has probably only increased that risk. 'There's the fear, which I'm sure UK Treasury has as well, that if you give the Americans this, then the next time they're unhappy about something, they'll try the same trick,' says KPMG's Sarson. With the mercurial Trump barely started on his four-year term, British businesses should probably just put those contingency plans in a drawer, rather than feed them to the shredder.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
The gold-plated pensions costing taxpayers £400m a year
Taxpayers are spending more than £400m a year on gold-plated pensions for just 10,600 judges, new analysis shows. The average member of the Judicial Pension Scheme now receives £37,000 in pension contributions for each year of work, before being handed almost £40,000 a year in retirement. They have built up £4.5bn in taxpayer-funded pension entitlements, but pay up to 7pc towards the cost of their retirements. The figures come despite major reforms to public sector pensions in 2015 after rising costs pushed the Government to act. The Taxpayers' Alliance said judges should be moved into defined contribution schemes, while the Intergenerational Foundation said the 'profligate pension promises' would be funded by young people. There were 10,578 members of the Judicial Pension Scheme at the end of 2023-24, according to a Freedom of Information request made by The Telegraph. Judicial salaries ranged from £106,563 to £312,510 during the year, according to the Ministry of Justice. As public sector workers, they are entitled to guaranteed, inflation-linked pensions for life. The scheme's 6,162 working judges paid in 4.1pc of their salary on average. As their employer, the Ministry of Justice then added another 51.1pc at a cost of £229m. The required employer contribution increased to 62.6pc from April last year to keep pace with the rising costs of the scheme, but the amount paid in by employees has remained the same. Before 2012, judges did not have to contribute to their personal pensions and only paid towards benefits for their dependants. The scheme's pension payouts are also more generous than other key public sector schemes, with retirees receiving £39,400 on average – costing taxpayers another £180m a year, taking the total bill to £409m. By comparison, the average pension was around £16,600 for teachers and £12,300 for Armed Forces personnel, falling to £11,400 for NHS workers and £9,900 for retired civil servants. Liz Emerson, of the Intergenerational Foundation, said: 'Younger generations can only dream of similar pensions, but they will end up paying for these profligate promises via higher taxation, later retirements and lower pensions themselves. 'At the very least, the Government should levy National Insurance contributions on annual pensions that are higher than the average earnings of working-age adults.' Public sector pensions already cost the UK £54.3bn a year, despite being moved away from final salary schemes in 2015 amid fears they had become unaffordable. Payments are now based on a worker's average earnings, but the final salary entitlement for existing members was extended to 2022 after a legal challenge from members of the judicial and firefighters' pension schemes. Under the new system, judges have 2.5pc of their salary added to their pension each year, which is more than teachers, civil servants, NHS workers and Armed Forces personnel. John O'Connell, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: ' Public sector pensions are extraordinarily generous with employer contributions, often outstripping those in the private sector. 'But what makes them particularly generous is the fact that they are gold-plated schemes, not based on the value of a pension pot, but on the average earnings of the employee, meaning they get topped up above and beyond what has already been contributed. 'On top of this, they are unfunded, coming not from an investment scheme, but general taxation. At the very least, ministers should be moving all public sector workers onto fully-funded, defined contribution schemes which are based on monies actually paid in.' A report published last year by the University College London Judicial Institute revealed that more than one in three judges planned to quit the profession within five years, citing poor working conditions and a continual loss of net earnings amid a backlog in the country's courts. The Senior Salaries Review body recommended a 4.75pc pay rise for members of the judiciary for 2025-26, but the Lord Chancellor reduced it to 4pc. A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'The Judicial Pension Scheme 2022 is designed to encourage top legal professionals to become judges who are vital to keeping the justice system running.'
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Holly Valance, 42, SPLITS from billionaire property tycoon husband Nick Candy, 52, after years of living separate lives
Holly Valance has split from billionaire property tycoon husband Nick Candy after 13 years of marriage and a long time living separate lives MailOnline can reveal. The ex Neighbours actress, 42, who has reinvented herself as a conservative firebrand, is said to have been left lonely while the Reform Party treasurer, 52, tends to his business ventures around the world. A source told MailOnline: 'They have been living separate lives for a long time, he's travelling a lot and it's been a lonely life for Holly. 'Nick has businesses in Dubai and London, The Reform Party.' The couple are parents to daughters Luka, 11, and Nova, seven, and tied the knot back in September 2012 in Beverly Hills. A spokesman for the couple said: 'This is a private matter and we will not be making any further comment.' The estranged couple were last pictured together in March, with Holly dressed in £10K of designer clothing as they enjoyed a swanky lunch together in London. They wed in 2012 a lavish £3million ceremony with guests including Elton John, Simon Cowell as well as Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. Together they have enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and previously lived in a two-storey Hyde Park penthouse worth £175million, making it Britain's most expensive flat. Nick and Holly have since downsized to a £10million countryside mansion in the Cotswolds, which they have been renovating. In 2020, Nick gifted Holly with a £26million superyacht, despite the mother-of-two famously suffering from sea sickness. The businessman who previously poured millions into Conservative coffers, became Farage's party treasurer earlier this year. Both he and his former singer and actress wife have made little secret of their support for Farage. As far ago as 2022 they joined him and then incoming US president Donald Trump for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. A source told MailOnline: 'They have been living separate lives for a long time, he's travelling a lot and it's been a lonely life for Holly' As far ago as 2022 the former couple joined Farage and then incoming US president Donald Trump for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florid Holly also hosted fundraisers for Reform and they were in the audience when Farage returned as Party leader last year. The former soap star has spent the last decade focusing on her personal life and political interests. She launched her acting career in 1999 after winning the role of Felicity Scully in Neighbours, which she played until 2002. The Melbourne-born actress later moved to America and starred in several popular US movies and TV shows, including Taken, Entourage and Prison Break. She semi-retired from the industry in 2015, although she made a brief cameo on Neighbours in 2022. She raised eyebrows last year after slamming Greta Thunberg as a 'demonic little gremlin' and claiming Australia has become 'too woke' in a TV interview. Holly criticised climate activist Thunberg to podcast host Christopher Hope. 'I don't understand why you have this, like, demonic little gremlin high priestess of climatism as the goddess in classrooms, Greta [Thunberg],' she said. 'All the kids are all coming home with depression and anxiety. She Valance also told LBC radio she had donated around £100,000 to Reform. She and Candy were both seen at the Reform conference at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre. There have previously been signs of a political split in their household, with the billionaire businessman a former Tory donor who backed Labour at the general election, before jumping ship join his wife and Reform.
