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Telegraph
3 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
The countries that let savers access their pension early – even for a house deposit
Do you have a substantial pension pot but can't afford to get on the property ladder? Or have you retired on a good pension but are unable to buy a house? Email us at money@ When George Osborne entered the House of Commons to deliver his 2014 Budget, few predicted the seismic changes coming for pensions. Just minutes later, the then chancellor would strip back decades of restrictions and finally allow savers to access their retirement savings early. While he transformed how pensions could be accessed, strict limits remained. To this day, unless someone is in serious ill health or worked in a very limited set of professions, they cannot touch their nest egg until age 55 – rising to 57 in 2028. Critics say the rules are trapping workers into decades of renting in retirement because despite building up healthy pots, many still cannot afford to buy a home. A study by Scottish Widows found a quarter of workers will be renting or paying a mortgage into retirement, with an annual cost of £10,600 – enough to almost obliterate a full state pension. It is against this backdrop that calls are growing for further radical changes, including allowing people to raid their pension for a house deposit – something that the Government, midway through its major pensions review, continues to rule out. Countries on at least five different continents have allowed people to access their pension early already, according to a report co-authored by investment managers Schroders and the Pensions Management Institute. Here are some of the reasons why – and whether they should come to Britain. Buying a home Savers in Singapore have been able to withdraw cash from their pension and put it towards buying a home since 1968. As a result, home ownership has surged from 58pc in 1980 to more than 90pc now. There are rules on the type of property and how much a prospective homeowner can take out, but anyone meeting the criteria can take advantage. Similar opportunities are available in countries like Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Sir Steve Webb, the former pensions minister, said that by 2045, a million more pension households could be living in rented accommodation. He said: 'Having to fund rent out of an often meagre pension pot is pretty catastrophic for your standard of living in retirement. If we can use the growing pension pot sooner for the specific reason of helping people to buy a house, then this has to be worth looking at. 'I accept that there are risks here, not least that you end up with an even more inadequate pension pot at the end, but that's not as bad as having to fund rent. 'This isn't a panacea, as many people have too little in their pension pot at a relatively young age to be able to make a meaningful contribution towards a deposit, but it will help some – perhaps especially outside the high house price areas of the country.' Taking a home loan In South Africa, pension savers can use their pension pot as collateral for a home loan. This applies across their entire pot, but a cap applies – beginning at 60pc of the first R200,000 (£8,350) and falling as more is borrowed. However, if they fall behind on the repayments, their pension can be used for the repayments – bringing tax implications alongside a threat to their retirement. Paying off mortgage arrears In the event of serious mortgage arrears, some countries allow savers to access their pot early. In New Zealand for example, members can withdraw their own contributions, although not those made by the Government. The amount is capped at 13 weeks of living expenses. Homeowners in Australia and the US can also withdraw some of their pension to avoid the forced sale or repossession of their property. Covering medical expenses Some countries do not offer free universal healthcare, but allow access to pension savings in order to meet the cost. In the US, members can take a penalty-free hardship withdrawal to cover medical expenses for them or a family member are allowed – although they are also taxable. They can also take out funds for funeral costs, tuition fees and other educational expenses. In Singapore, $1.3bn dollars (£750m) was taken out for medical expenses and long-term care in the first three months of 2025. For its part, successive UK governments have already shown they are not averse to borrowing ideas from abroad. The hugely successful auto-enrolment, through which people are signed up to a pension until they opt out, was inspired by the world's first such system in New Zealand. The Labour Government is also midway through a major two-part pension review and lessons have not only been learnt from other countries, they're already on the verge of being implemented. The upcoming Pension Schemes Bill will merge all 86 Local Government Pension Scheme pots into six 'megafunds' –similar to the Canadian and Australian systems. A new form of pension saving popular in the Netherlands, known as collective defined contribution schemes, is also on the way. James Brokenshire, then housing minister, first mooted the idea of using pension funds to buy a home back in 2019. As recently as March this year, it was echoed by Nikhil Rathi, the Financial Conduct Authority's chief. However, the regulator said it had no official plans to explore the idea and the Government has indicated it will not be included in the next round of major pension reforms, which will be published on Monday. Major changes are still expected however, including steps to increase the amount people are saving and increase employer contributions to their workers' retirements as ministers look to tackle poverty in later life. Experts also believe that the affordability of the state pension will come under the microscope.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘All those posh apartments. It's a playground for the rich': is Manchester turning into London?
Arriving in Manchester after moving up from London in 2013, I spotted something I took as a sign of how different my new life would be – how much cheaper, how much less pretentious. I told everyone back in London about the £1 Brew Stall at Piccadilly station. 'Can you imagine being able to get a cup of tea at Euston for only a pound?' I would ask. For a while, I was always seeking to prove I had not made a mistake leaving behind the bright lights of the capital city. I was the last staff reporter the Guardian had left in the whole of the north of England, and I felt isolated in a place no one in London really seemed to care about. It made me extremely chippy. This was a year before George Osborne anointed Manchester the centre of his fictional 'northern powerhouse'; four before Andy Burnham abandoned Westminster to become the region's mayor. It irritated me when Londoners would sometimes ask after the north as if it were a foreign land – certainly more foreign to them than Paris or New York. But, truthfully, life was very different just two hours up the west coast main line. It was poorer, obviously. And, yes, wetter, too. But that combined to create its greatest asset: a population who never let a lack of funds or sunshine stop them from having a good time. Once I ended up dancing outside Strangeways with a crowd who had gathered to watch a prisoner spending his third night up on the roof. There were kids in pyjamas, pulled from their beds; their mums in dressing gowns doing the Macarena. The protester was eventually coaxed down in a cherry picker with the promise of a takeaway pizza and a can of Coke, and gave the Manchester Evening News (MEN) the unimprovable quote: 'I've had a mad one.' Twelve years later, as I end my reign as North of England editor – staying in Manchester to present the Guardian's daily news podcast but leaving behind the biggest northern reporting team we have had in decades – how things have changed. The £1 Brew Stall is a distant memory and I'm sad to report the £6 pint has well and truly arrived, along with £199 monthly gym membership and studio flats where you pay £1,200 a month rent and still have to eat your tea in your bedroom. Last month the luxury Swiss watch brand Audemars Piguet chose Manchester as the location for its first UK boutique outside London, selling 'timepieces' for six figures, displayed in cases shaped like honeycomb – the bougiest appropriation of the Mancunian worker bee I've seen yet, against increasingly strong competition. Chanel put on a soggy catwalk show in the Northern Quarter 18 months ago, Puma recently relocated here and the English National Opera is coming soon, albeit unwillingly. Next year the Brit awards move up from London, and in October Soho House opens its first UK private members' club outside the capital, with a rooftop pool everyone jokes will never need topping up. Some call this the Londonification of Manchester – a highly charged allegation in a city where the capital has long been used as an insult, a byword for everything Manchester isn't – or wasn't. Two years ago the Resolution thinktank made the mistake of comparing the cities unfavourably, pointing out – not unreasonably – that it was not ideal that Greater Manchester was 35% less productive than London, a larger gap than between France's second city, Lyon, and Paris, which stood at just 20%. 'Why do we want to be like London?' ran the headline of the MEN's write-up of the report. 'Make Manchester Mancunian again!' goes the rallying cry. But is Manchester really becoming any less Mancunian? Or are Mancunians just changing, along with their ever expanding, shape-shifting city? It's a Thursday evening in late May and I'm in Deansgate Square, a collection of glistening skyscrapers that a few tiresome people persist in calling Manc-hattan. Is Manchester becoming more like London, I ask Iain Butterworth, a waspish florist working at the foot of one of the towers? 'It is a bit,' he says, surrounded by £40 bouquets. 'I personally like it because I don't want this chatty northern stuff. You know when people say, 'Oh, they're a bit cold in London – no one chats to you at the bus stop'? I'm like, 'I don't want people to chat to me at the bus stop.' So for me, it's quite good.' Butterworth, a scouser, came to Manchester in the 90s for the clubs. He likes how the city is changing: more shops, more restaurants, Korean supermarkets selling interesting noodles: 'It's less like London and more global.' Most of his customers are either Chinese or from Gulf states: rich foreign students whose parents don't mind paying £2,500 a month in rent – and £30,000-plus in annual tuition fees. Almost 10,000 Chinese students are studying at the University of Manchester this year – 21% of the entire student body – as well as more than 1,000 from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. But many of the residents of the towers, he claims conspiratorially, are influencers or OnlyFans creators. 'OnlyFans is massive. Humungous. The percentage of OnlyFans people in here is quite high.' He points up at the ceiling. 'One of my friends is gay for pay and he made £2m last year. I know his girlfriend. He's not even gay!' I look up this chap and can tell he's filming in the towers, pressing his buff body against the ornamental safety grates that stop people falling out of the windows. 'The window cleaner told me he saw one girl filming a guy with like five other guys who were bent over on the couch,' Butterworth chuckles. 'This is what I love about the lads here, they weren't ashamed. One of them said to the window cleaner, 'Hey, mate! Want to come and join in?'' Good old Mancunian hospitality. Residents wanting a bit of body work can pop down to see plastic surgeon and boob job expert Reza Nassab, who recently counted Love Island contestant Samantha Kenny as a satisfied customer. He opened his Deansgate Square clinic three years ago, after toying with one in the capital and deciding London is 'becoming a little bit saturated'. Such is demand that he has just opened his own private hospital in Manchester, the Deansgate Clinic. He likes operating on Mancunians. 'Some London patients could be quite demanding, whereas up in the north, they tend to appreciate more what you do and the results they achieve,' he says. So many influencers live in Colliers Yard, another high-rise cluster, that one on-site gym has designated hours for selfie-taking and content creation. An argument recently broke out on the residents' WhatsApp group after an influencer did a photoshoot in the lift, blocking the doors with her shopping bags. One disgruntled tenant posted a screenshot and blamed her for the lifts always taking aeons to arrive. It all kicked off when the influencer's boyfriend piped up to defend her. 'That's my girlfriend you're talking about,' he said. 'She's everyone's girlfriend for a fiver a month,' came the reply. But despite the aggro, demand for these high-spec flats continues to outstrip supply, with Deloitte recently heralding the advent of tenant bidding wars, 'similar to what has been seen in the London rental market'. The classic signs of gentrification 10 years ago would have been a craft beer bar or a hipster haberdashery. Now it's a padel club, and naturally Deansgate Square has its own hangout for people who like playing tennis but need an easier version. There's a sauna and ice pool next door, too, if you want to play gentrification bingo. Club de Padel opened at the end of 2023 and is booked out by locals and a surprising number of Kuwaitis when I visit. English teacher Zabeen, from nearby Bury, is having a knockabout with her Saudi Arabian students, who all say their favourite thing about Manchester is the weather. 'They all rush to the window to take pictures every time it rains,' Zabeen says. Club co-owner Lucy Noone Blake insists she can only think of good things about the Londonification of Manchester. Bike lanes, for one: a belated import from the capital (via Copenhagen and Amsterdam), they were finally installed over Covid at glacial speed. 'I can't remember the last time I used the car. I take my kids to school by bike, then I cycle to work,' she says. Bike lanes were one of the things I missed when I moved up from London, along with reliable public transport, Turkish food, good sushi, lidos and a general feeling of being where the action is. Progress has since been made on most fronts: Burnham explicitly says he is trying to build a 'London-style' transport system, the Bee Network of trams, trains and buses. Eight years into his reign, buses are now cheaper than when he began (£2 v £1.75 for a single in London). And a lido was recently granted planning permission on a new development in Holt Town, a fly-tipping hotspot in east Manchester. After leaving Leeds Beckett University in 2012, Noone Blake weighed up whether to move to London. Instead she came home to Manchester and became one of the launch team of Hawksmoor, the stupendously successful Manchester outpost of the London steak chain, which encouraged a whole generation of London restaurants to try their luck in the north. Recent implants include Blacklock chophouse, Pizza Pilgrims and the unforgivably named Sexy Fish. Lina Stores arrived in April, with Circolo Popolare, a Sicilian joint which is one of the first tenants in Gary Neville's St Michael's development, billed as 'Manchester's new five star destination – a visionary workspace with vibrant living'. St Michael's has taken Neville almost a decade to get off the ground, with initial plans scrapped after locals complained that they looked like 'two massive turds pointing to the sky'. It involved him buying the only city centre synagogue, which he paid to have rebuilt elsewhere, and also a pub, the Sir Ralph Abercromby. He originally wanted to bulldoze that, too, but capitulated following howls of protest about losing a pub that bore witness to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. Louis Twist-Green, a city centre property consultant, says Neville's project will push prices ever nearer London's. 'The apartments in there are scheduled to complete in 2027 and they are going to be the highest priced yet in Manchester. Their two-bedrooms are rumoured to be starting at £700,000, which would be the first development [in Manchester] that's in line with the price per square foot of London,' he says. Two-beds in Deansgate Square go for £450,000, often snapped up by Middle Eastern parents so that their children don't have to slum it in a Fresh Meat-style student houseshare. 'It's unbelievable how young they are to be living in such luxury apartments. They don't know they're born,' says Louis's mum, Julie Twist, who founded the family estate agency in 1994 when 'there were only 600 people living in the city centre'. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion According to estimates from Manchester city council, that number has now swelled to 95,000. Most of these new residents are on good money. 'If they eat breakfast, lunch or dinner out four or five times a week, that's four or five hundred thousand meal events happening in one demographic alone that didn't exist not too long ago,' says hospitality consultant Thom Hetherington. The London blow-ins have not priced out local indies, he insists, singling out the Spärrows, Winsome and Erst for praise. He has no time for people moaning about supposedly London affectations, such as the plague of small plate joints selling cloudy natural wine for ungodly sums: 'Saying 'It's a bit London' is an emotive red flag. What it actually is a hipster or engaged foodie demographic that you'll find in every western city in the world.' One pub you wouldn't find anywhere else is the beautiful Peveril of the Peak, a grade II listed building clad with emerald tiles that dates back to 1820. Among those enjoying an alfresco pint when I visit is Dr Kate Themen, a sociology lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University who, like so many people in Manchester, was briefly in the Fall. She disapproves of the way the city has developed, saying up and coming artists and musicians – the kind the city trades so heavily on in its marketing and self-mythologising – can't afford to live or practise centrally. 'There's this tendency to push out the creativity that gave the city its character. The ultimate thing is if you keep on pricing people out, you're going to be left with a bit of a shell of a city,' she says. 'I don't like to use the word gentrify, because it doesn't really encapsulate what's going on: that push towards becoming a much more consumptive and transitional space.' A few years ago, dozens of local bands lost their practice rooms when Brunswick Mill, an old cotton mill in the rapidly gentrifying New Islington district, was given planning permission to be turned into luxury flats. Off-plan apartments were recently advertised for £250,000, with landlords told to expect yields of 6.7%. Despite its London connotations, New Islington is the historic name for an area dating back to the early 19th century. It's better known to some locals as Miles Platting – one of the poorest wards in Manchester, where life expectancy is 11 years less than in Piccadilly, just 15 minutes' walk away in town. Gentrification is coming fast as the city centre creeps north-east. Just one old pub remains in Miles Platting – the Bradford Inn, where you can still get a pint for £3.85, less than half the price inside the new Co-op Live arena around the corner. I ask Sean, a 34-year-old coach builder having a bargain liquid lunch, if he thinks Manchester is becoming more like London. He can't answer that because he has never been to London – 'never had a reason to' – but nor does he really go into town either. 'It's not for us,' he says. 'All those posh apartments that we could never afford. It's a playground for the rich, isn't it?' I walk into the estate and get chatting to David Taylor, a 62-year-old care worker who is sitting on an office chair in his front garden, blowing bubbles for Mia, his 19-year-old tortoiseshell cat. The new high-rise towers are 'nice', he says, but not for normal people. 'They're for people like you,' he says, gesturing at me in a not entirely complimentary fashion. 'Professionals.' He offers me a can of pop as a peace offering, then makes fun of me for living in Stockport. He finds the new Mancunians baffling, 'always going running' and keeping 'tiny furry little dogs' in their overpriced flats. He cannot fathom the queues outside Pollen, a hipster bakery on Cotton Wharf just down the canal. 'I went once, but all that queueing up, just for a croissant? Nah.' I decide not to alert him to the area's newest coffee joint, Voodoo, which doubles up as a running shop and sells shorts for £150. Jain Edwards is a comedian who makes deadpan Instagram videos satirising the new Manchester, 'a nightmare of overpriced novelty cocktails, retro fonts and burgers named after serial killers'. Edwards moved to Manchester from Rhyl in north Wales to go to university in 2010 and sees herself as part of the creative working class. 'It's actually surreal how fast it has changed. I think it just feels like the main reason for moving here isn't due to a love of Manchester, it is due to it being (a bit) cheaper than London. There's a feeling that newbies don't want Manchester, they want London, so that naturally affects how they interact with the place. And because money talks, the city will always adapt to this fast cash above all else.' She dislikes the newcomers' 'hyperconsumption … a constant need for London-style experiences of food and drink at a scale that feels new in Manchester'. That and the way they rush around the city: 'I have never been so pushed about, bumped into without someone apologising … There was never a hostility to how people walked around Manchester. This comes down to the self-entitlement of interacting with the place, also forgetting that Manchester isn't that big? I walk around this city stopping and chatting to people I know. I recognise people, see the same people all the time. You don't 'never see people again', like in London. It isn't the same vibe; there isn't the same anonymity. This is why I have always thought everyone calls it 'town'. There was always something town-like to the place.' In the Northern Quarter, Botswanan law student Yao Tafa, 25, agrees. 'People are much nicer here,' she says. 'I come from a place where we greet each other, people say hi, you help each other. In London you don't get that.' It's easier to make friends here, she adds: 'There's more freedom to be who you are, whether that's part of the LGBT community or just to dress a certain way.' For David and Chris, two drama teachers enjoying a glass of rosé on Canal Street, being gay in Manchester used to mean 'having your wits about you', David says. If the Londonisation of Manchester means 'it's more cosmopolitan, with more openness and acceptance of difference', then they welcome it, Chris says. Local content creator and PR director Alicia Boukersi, who posts as Life In Manc, loves Mancester, but worries that while the city may feel 'cool and Instagrammable', it seems 'more like a costume than the city's actual identity. It's still got an edge, a humour and a character that London can't touch. But there's a risk of us losing that if we keep importing trends and pricing out people and places that made this city exciting in the first place.' Jack Barton, head of communications and impact at homelessness charity Mustard Tree, says Manchester's housing crisis is the city's 'great shame'. In 2023, one in 71 people were homeless in Manchester – only London has a worse rate. A staggering 19,000 people are on the waiting list for social housing. Outside the Guardian's Manchester office, a mini tent city recently cropped up around a statue of Abraham Lincoln, installed to recognise the solidarity of the city's cotton workers during the abolition of slavery – a reminder that Mancunians once made stuff for a living. 'Manchester used to be more equal,' Barton says. 'Now the gap is greater and more visible – much like our London counterparts. A change in leadership at the council and positive focus is encouraging, but the reality is the city has suffered by not building houses of any type, resulting in an inflated housing market.' Bev Craig became leader of Manchester city council in 2021 and is clearly irritated at the notion that it might be becoming in any way like London – though she dreams of a Mancunian tube: 'By 2050, for Manchester to be sustainably growing and connecting people into it, we will have to think about how you route trams underground.' Earlier this month, Burnham went further, saying he had instructed Transport for Greater Manchester to 'start planning' for an underground network. Craig insists she doesn't look to London for inspiration, but to Melbourne, Barcelona, Lyon, Vancouver or Austin, Texas: 'All of the international evidence shows that cities that aren't the capital thrive in the longer term when they differentiate themselves.' She knows that housing is an issue, but insists 'last year we built more council and social homes in the city of Manchester than at any point in well over a decade'. On Downley Drive in New Islington, near pubs that are too cool to serve pints (schooners only: two-thirds of the liquid for three-thirds of the price of a pint!), 52 flats are being built for social rent, alongside 75 'affordable' homes. Across the city, despite spiralling prices, according to Manchester city council the average house still costs around 60% less than in London (£277,750 in Manchester v £682,190 in London), with rent on the average two-bed 34% cheaper (£1,394 in Manchester v £2,118 in London). Disposable income for the average renter is more or less the same in both cities, with the median salary of a Manchester resident £32,704, two-thirds of the £49,455 you can expect in London. So is Manchester becoming like London? Yes – and no. But I know where I'd much rather live. It may now cost more than a pound for a cup of tea, and you can sometimes wait five minutes for a bus without anyone chatting your ear off. But you'll never have a bad night out. You might even have a 'mad one'.
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Elgin Marbles could be loaned to Greece indefinitely under MPs' plans
MPs will push to change the law to pave the way for the Elgin Marbles to be returned. Greece and the British Museum are locked in a stalemate in talks over a potential deal that would see the ancient sculptures returned to Athens. Limited by legislation, the best the British Museum chairman George Osborne can offer the Greek government is a three-year loan. This will not be countenanced by Greek leaders who claim that the Marbles were stolen by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century, and are in effect illegally held in the UK. Parliamentarians sympathetic to the Greek cause are hoping to alter existing laws to pave the way for an 'indefinite loan' currently barred by UK law. This would allow the British Museum to 'loan' the Marbles to Greece without having to renounce ownership of the sculptures that once adorned the Parthenon. Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George is leading efforts in the Commons to have the Marbles returned. He told the Telegraph that he hopes to 'get parliamentary draughtsmen to look at the way we could bring in a statutory instrument to address it'. Mr George said that tweaking UK law would give the British Museum more freedom and make it easier to reach a deal over the Marbles, which Mr Osborne has advocated. The MP said: 'We have fertile ground in George Osborne and the trustees of the British Museum.' The British Museum is prevented by British Museum Act 1963 from disposing of objects in its collection, which is held for the public, and it therefore lacks the power to hand over the Elgin Marbles. It can offer a loan, but this would necessitate Greece accepting Britain's legal ownership, and the eventual need to return what had been loaned. The Greek position is that the Marbles were stolen, and that the statues, plaques and sections of frieze designed by Phidias should be permanently returned to Athens. The UK government has said it will not change the British Museum act, resulting in a stalemate between all parties. Chris Bryant, the art minister, has been adamant that the three-year loan option is the only currently available legal means by which the Marbles could ever end up in Greece. However, MPs and former peers, including Lord Vaizey and Baroness Debbonaire, hope that they can push for changes to the Export Control Act 2002. This limits the loan of cultural artefacts to three years, but by tweaking to allow for indefinite periods, MPs hope to create a backdoor to permanently exporting the Marbles without becoming embroiled in the legality of ownership. This plan would require Parliamentary support to introduce a statutory instrument, and on the Greek government accepting a permanent return deal under the guise of a 'loan'. The British Museum will soon need somewhere to store the marbles as it begins work o a major restoration of its western galleries, where the artworks are held, and campaigners feel that it is the pert time to reach and agreement with Greece
The Independent
16-07-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Non-doms are abandoning London's wealthiest postcodes – and it matters more than you think
The round robin emails come in weekly. 'Dear friends,' it begins. 'Our devoted housekeeper of 15 years is looking for new opportunities, as sadly, we cannot take her with us to Dubai. Thank you, Rachel Reeves, sad emoji.' Where the residents of Notting Hill and Holland Park once stole each other's staff, now the same crew of cleaners, gardeners, tutors and chefs drop handwritten notes under my door offering their services at half the previous rates. According to recent payroll figures, the number of people employed in hospitality – and this includes our favourite local Italian trattoria on Holland Park – fell by 58,000 between January 2024 and January 2025. Some of this is because of the hikes in national insurance, but having called three local restaurants, it's also about the absence of regular European customers. Cadogan Tate moving trucks are a daily feature on my street, as are goodbye parties. Here's just one of many examples from my WhatsApp. 'Hallo, as life moves on and taxes increase, we are celebrating ___'s birthday at home and our departure. Are you free?' At a recent dinner, I reckoned around three-quarters of the guests – all of them European – were leaving the UK against their will (practically at gunpoint is how they described it) because their (to be honest, very cushy) deal of the past 200 years was coming to an end. George Osborne laid the foundations. Rachel Reeves poured the quick cement, particularly when she announced that non-doms would now be subject to the same inheritance tax as the British, which currently stands at 40 per cent, and that this would now apply to the global assets of wealthy foreigners who have lived in the UK for more than 10 years. This, more than anything else, is what's driving the rich out. Britain lost more billionaires than any country in the world over the past two years, raising fears that more will flee abroad if the government introduces a wealth tax. Non-doms, as they are known, or non-domiciles, describe a class of wealthy people born outside of the UK who previously were allowed to live full-time in the UK while declaring their permanent home overseas. This allowed them to avoid paying taxes on any foreign income or gains. The influential group of millionaires and billionaires to whom this status applied included Lakshmi Mittal and Rishi Sunak's wife, Akshata Murty. The vast majority of non-doms who kept central London restaurants, shops and hair salons in employment were Europeans. Many worked in the same international banks as my husband, their children occupying the desk next to my own two sons. Seamus Wylie of the Belgravia estate agent Ayrton Wylie tells me that anything that is top ticket – wine, art or luxury cars – is badly down. Non-doms may not have paid tax on their family's investment funds, but boy did they spend in London (also Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, where many bought second homes). Which doesn't matter, until it does and you realise London is the country's investment hub. Many top-end London houses now sit unsold (20 luxury properties in Belgravia are on the market currently). 'Some houses on the £10-15m mark have been mothballed because this is just one of many properties owned,' he says. 'The inhabitants have moved to Dubai, Monaco or Switzerland for a few years.' The cost to the local economy, he says, cannot be underestimated. 'My clients went to restaurants and stayed in country hotels on the weekend. They kept the local shops, butchers, dry cleaners and car dealerships going.' A buying agent for the very wealthy who would like to remain nameless says kicking out the non-doms has been an incredible act of self-harm. 'When you had non-doms, they employed people because that's what homeowners do. They employ builders and decorators, they hire staff, creating a massive trickle-down economy. The ultra-rich are the most mobile people in society and there is the Labour government trying to chip away at them. There is no trickle-down effect. There's just the politics of envy.' And if plans for a further UK wealth tax are implemented, as some have suggested, while it could generate billions annually, the revenue leakage – via capital flight, evasion, and offshore concealment – could be significant. Some are even predicting that it could wipe out 10-20 per cent of the tax base (potentially more than £200 bn), which would reduce what the Treasury actually nets. The TaxPayers' Alliance regularly points to OECD data that shows countries like Sweden, Ireland, and the Netherlands all scrapped wealth taxes, citing capital flight and administrative costs. Those that kept them (Spain, France, Norway, Switzerland) generate only 0.2-0.4 per cent of GDP, according to their cited data. Of my group of international friends (this includes Brits who are also leaving because of the new tax regime), I would say almost 30 per cent have already left. At one recent dinner, we were the only couple without plans to relocate to some hybrid of Dubai/Milan/Cyprus. The man seated next to me, a scion of a European banking family, boasted that by moving to Cyprus, he was saving vast amounts on tax, even though his wife later told me she hates travelling every weekend from Oxfordshire to see him. Noteworthy was the fact that his two children had moved to America, which allows no tax exemptions and therefore he would not be joining them. Where once we heard comments such as 'if Labour gets in, we're going', we're now getting emails which include four changes of address. Wealth advisers Henley & Partners who help the rich obtain those ever more elusive 'golden visas' (which I suspect are rapidly turning into a thing of the past) estimate that more than 10,000 millionaires left the UK last year, with all the consequences of turning off the tap of wealth trickling into the local economy that comes with that. While their numbers are challenged by other wealth advisers and even the government, I don't need a graph. My hairdresser was on the verge of tears last week as we sat in an almost empty salon in central Notting Hill. 'My European clients used to leave for July and August. Now I see them once or twice a year on their allotted 14 or 19 days,' he says. The ability to return to the UK is based on individual (tax) situations, meaning that some of my friends can only come to the UK for two weeks (even if their children live here). Others are allotted 90 days. This exodus is also affecting gyms and private clubs – 5 Hertford Street and The Walbrook Club in the City of London among them. '[HMRC] have cited membership as evidence of ties to this country, and so they've had to resign from us,' says Walbrook managing director Philip Palumbo. But there is a price to leaving, too. A European friend, whose children live here and whose closest friends are British, chose to stay. He tells me: 'My wife and I have talked about this endlessly and we decided we didn't want to live in Dublin. Dubai is a hellhole, and Switzerland is about to put in an inheritance tax. There is growing resentment, if not hostility, across Europe towards wealthy tax exiles and their golden visas. In an uncertain world, Britain feels safer than most.' The non-doms exodus has already scared Rachel Reeves into offering a new package called FIG (foreign income and gains), which allows former non-tax residents to bring in money at a lower tax rate for four years. Word is she could be reconsidering inheritance tax as well. Everyone I spoke to for the purposes of this article said they would return to the UK if new decisions were made, meaning London is still the city they most want to live in. There is sympathy for how these taxes are affecting the wealth creators, versus the wealth protectors. Like the young British entrepreneur who moved to New York or Hong Kong for business purposes and opportunities (then came back and bought properties). That is different from the tax-exiles choosing simple wealth protection, those living in some sad Maltese development in order to fulfil their 'obligatory' tax residency days. To many, they have made a Faustian pact. Ole Lehmann, a German tax exile who moved to Cyprus and eventually returned to the UK, described his sad life. 'Building real, lasting in-person relationships became nearly impossible,' he writes. 'I've watched friends disappear for months at a time, returning only to maintain residency [then] only to vanish again.' In the end, he says, 'I traded one prison (high taxes) for another (day counting).' 'Day counting' means you get an email from European friends saying, 'we're back next week for Wimbledon and would love to see you', to which many of us now shrug our shoulders. Those of us left behind, paying our dues, contributing to society however unhappily, have closed ranks. A member of my book club who has relocated to Ireland now misses half the meetings – do we kick her out? We have a grandchild now – do we really want to see her twice a year or whatever HMRC allows? Our adult children pop in weekly, a great luxury for me as the daughter of a diplomat whose parents lived on the other side of the ocean for most of my life. Do my husband and I really want to move to Italy or Lisbon, where the residents not only ignore you but actually dislike you for hiking up property prices and not bothering to learn the language? A friend sums it up. 'The trouble with the non-dom thing is that it puts a price on what is essentially above price and invites a discussion on what is wealth. True wealth, it seems to me, is about love and friendship and belonging and making a difference. Unfortunately for many non-doms, it looks like wealth is defined by dollars.' It's about core values. 'Friendship is about consistency and time spent: it's an investment. When a non-dom says 'we're coming next week', I don't respond anymore. They made their choice.' It's just a shame that their choice is having a miserable effect on so many of the people who loved having them here, and those whose businesses depended on them being here. Rachel Reeves, take note.
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Call for British Museum to take Bayeux tapestry to ‘1066 country'
The MP for Hastings and Rye has called on the British Museum to let the Bayeux tapestry spend time in '1066 country' when it comes to the UK, and to ensure the region reaps the benefits of the 'once-in-a-generation exhibition'. The tapestry will return to the UK for the first time in more than 900 years as part of a landmark loan agreement announced by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron. The 70-metre embroidered cloth, which depicts the 1066 Norman invasion and Battle of Hastings, will go on display at the British Museum from September next year. The Labour MP Helena Dollimore said it would be a 'great shame' if 1066 country – the area named after the battle – was locked out of 'this national moment'. 'Obviously, the practicalities and logistics would need to be looked at by experts, but our area is such an integral part of this tapestry that we must be included,' she said. In a letter to the British Museum chair, George Osborne, co-signed by the TV historian Dan Snow, Dollimore urged the museum to consult with French experts and curators to explore the viability of local English Heritage plans to take the tapestry to the south coast. She also called on the museum to ensure every local child had the opportunity to visit the exhibition by reserving free tickets and helping with the cost of transport to London; reserve at least 1,066 tickets to the exhibition for people from Hastings and the surrounding area, and support efforts to promote the region to exhibition visitors. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'Few works of art are as central to our island's story as the Bayeux tapestry, which quite literally wove Hastings into the fabric of our national history,' the letter says. 'Although Hastings and the rest of 1066 Country has often been at the centre of historical events, it has not always felt the benefits of it. The Sutton Trust recently found that Hastings and Rye ranks among the bottom 10 areas in the country for social mobility. 63% of young people leave school without the basic qualifications in maths and English GCSE. Like many coastal communities, it has been left behind for too long. 'Why not return this iconic piece of our heritage to the very ground where it all began in 1066? Whilst we acknowledge that it is for experts to decide what is feasible, the Hastings area must play its rightful part in this national moment.' Dollimore said there was a huge opportunity to bring tourists to the region. 'We've got Hastings Castle, We've got Battle Abbey, we've got Pevensey Castle over in Eastbourne, the 1066 walk. Other parts of the country make a big thing of their history. There's loads of signage, there's exhibitions. So there really is more we can do now that the nation's attention is going to be turned to the tapestry.' Sarah Broadbent, the chair of the 1066 Country tourism organisation, said she was confident the loan would spark people's curiosity about the events depicted and the places where they happened. 'There are few dates as memorable, the Norman conquest was such a significant turning point in English history and we're very proud to call ourselves 1066 Country,' she said. 'We're not only rich in history but also in landscape, in heritage and in culture. We might be tucked away in the corner of the south-east but we pack a punch well above our weight in terms of the visitor experience … this is our chance to showcase everything we have to offer.'
