The Times - 28 November 2023

Israel and Hamas agreed a two-day extension of the ceasefire in Gaza last night as 11 more hostages were freed hours before the fragile truce was due to end. After a last-minute dispute threatened to derail the negotiations it was agreed that more hostages would be freed over the next 48 hours. The original four-day ceasefire had been due to end last night with the final handover of hostages and prisoners. The freed hostages included several children, among them Emma and Yuli Cunio, twin girls aged three. The fathers of all the children remained captive. The freed hostages have dual nationality with six being Argentinian, three French and two German, according to the foreign ministry of Qatar, which has served as an intermediary. Media affiliated to Hamas said that Israel had freed 30 Palestinian children and three women in return. Qatar, Egypt and the United States had all pressed Israel to extend the deal to save more hostages and let more humanitarian aid into the shattered territory. Ten more Israeli women and children will be released in exchange for 30 Palestinian prisoners each day for two days. Hamas said it had located more women and children, including those being held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official in Lebanon, told Qatar’s Al-Arabi television channel: “We are preparing new hostage lists.” The two groups said they were ready to open further negotiations over the exchange of hostages and soldiers, male and female, who have not been the subject of talks so far. Hamas is thought to hold at least five female soldiers, after one was rescued and another confirmed killed in captivity. “We are willing to negotiate over military prisoners but at the right time and the price will be much higher,” Ezaat alRashq, a Hamas leader, told Al-Arabi. Israel’s political and security leaders were split over whether to agree even to the first ceasefire after warnings that it would hand Hamas a military advantage. Commanders are unwilling to let a ceasefire extend beyond Friday. Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has said that the Israeli military will restart its offensive the moment the ceasefire is over and will not stop until Hamas is destroyed. Last night, Yoav Gallant, his defence minister, told soldiers that when fighting resumed “it will be bigger and take place throughout the Gaza Strip”. He warned that their enemy had had time to rest and regroup. The next stage in Israel’s ground offensive is expected to focus on the Shuja’iyya neighbourhood, one of the last Catherine Philp Tel Aviv Anshel Pfeffer Jerusalem da i ly n e w s pa p e r o f t h e y e a r Tuesday November 28 2023 | thetimes.co.uk | No 74265 2G Abigail Edan, an American citizen who turned four in captivity, with her aunt Liron at a hospital near Tel Aviv yesterday after being released by Hamas on Sunday. Both her parents were killed when Hamas attacked their kibbutz on October 7 Hamas demands ‘higher price’ to set soldiers free areas of Gaza City where Hamas is believed to have a significant fighting force. President Biden hopes to bring home more American hostages but also to get more aid into Gaza. His backing for Israel has cost him Democratic support. He called Netanyahu on Sunday to coax him into agreeing an extension, a day after consulting the Emir of Qatar. Legal advice warns PM off ‘full-fat’ Rwanda plan Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor Steven Swinford Political Editor Rishi Sunak has been warned by government lawyers that opting out of the European Convention on Human Rights in an attempt to implement his Rwanda policy will backfire. The prime minister held talks on Saturday with James Cleverly, the home secretary, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, and Victoria Prentis, the attorneygeneral, to discuss emergency legislation to get the scheme off the ground. Sunak is considering including a “notwithstanding” clause to direct British courts to ignore the convention (ECHR). Legal advice drawn up for the meeting, however, said this could lead to further challenges on the grounds that Britain is breaching its obligations. The Foreign Office, led by Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, is said to have raised concerns that Britain’s international standing could be damaged. Three government sources said that No 10 was backtracking on the possibility of opting out of the ECHR. One said: “Everyone wants whatever is going to work and that doesn’t seem to be the full-fat version. We’d be picking a fight when it’s not practically useful and we really just want what’s going to get planes off the ground quickest.” Downing Street insisted that “all options are on the table”. A source said: “It’s completely wrong to pre-empt where we will land. The prime minister wants legislation that works and delivers what we need.” Dropping proposals to disapply the ECHR on asylum cases would provoke a backlash from the right of the Tory party. Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, is pushing Sunak to adopt the hardline version, put forward by Suella Braverman when home secretary and backed by dozens of right-wing MPs. Several have told Cleverly that failing to disapply the ECHR would allow migrants to block deportation to Rwanda. Speaking in the Commons, Sir Simon Clarke, the former cabinet minister, told the home secretary it was “imperative” that the government pass legislation that would bar migrants from using the ECHR. Miriam Cates, one of Israel in talks to secure more hostages’ liberty as truce in Gaza is extended for two more days £2.80 £2.00 to subscribers (based on a 7 Day Print and Digital Subscription) The truth about man flu . . . maybe I admit it, I’m a MePea (that’s a metro peasant) INSIDE TIMES2 I N T H E N E W S Cop28 oil deals claim The UAE aimed to use meetings before Cop28 to win deals on oil and gas with other countries, according to leaked documents. It disputes the claims. The ‘fractured Firm’ King Charles’s accession to the throne has “heightened” a tussle for the spotlight with his son, according to claims made in an inflammatory new book about the royals. German budget woe Germany has been forced to patch together an emergency budget and declare a renewed fiscal “crisis” after a court ruling torpedoed government spending plans. Plea for stability The head of one of the world’s leading investment firms has called for “consistency” in business strategy, pointing out Britain has had four prime ministers since 2019. VAR for free kicks? Football’s lawmakers will be asked to consider whether VAR’s powers should be extended to cover free kicks, corners and second yellow cards. y(7HB7E2*OTSNMP( |||+&!:'

2 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times News Nadhim Zahawi, a former chancellor, has said that he does not need to register his position as a middleman between the UAE and the Barclay family as it seeks to regain control of the Telegraph Media Group. Zahawi has been acting as an “intermediary” on the deal and parliamentary rules require former ministers to seek the advice of the Whitehall sleaze watchdog before taking on paid or unpaid roles. However Zahawi, who could be made chairman of the newspaper group if the deal goes through, said that he is not required to register with the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) because he has not yet taken on a formal role. He confirmed that he introduced the Barclays to Jeff Zucker, the former CNN boss who is leading the Abu Dhabi backed Redbird-IMI bid to take control of the Telegraph. “I have no role with Jeff Zucker, the Telegraph or the Barclays. If that changes, I will seek advice on any role I could have and then Acoba will publish in the usual way, should I accept a role,” Zahawi said. Zahawi has not declared role in Telegraph sale Steven Swinford Political Editor Rishi Sunak sacked Zahawi as Tory party chairman after the prime minister’s ethics adviser found that Zahawi had not been transparent about an HMRC investigation into his taxes. Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, has said she is minded to refer the takeover to regulators. However, Lord Johnson of Lainston, the investment minister, publicly endorsed the Abu Dhabi-backed bid and said that objections to the deal were “sentimental”. He said: “It’s very important we remain an open economy if we’re to have the wealth and investment to power this country.” However the prime minister’s official spokesman declined to endorse the comments. “You will know there is now a formal process in place so I am limited in what I can say.” Other potential bidders for the Telegraph include the hedge fund boss, Sir Paul Marshall, and DMGT, the owner of the Daily Mail. News Corp, the ultimate parent company of The Times, is said to be interested in The Spectator. Cleverly sorry for swearing in Commons Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor James Cleverly has formally apologised for using “inappropriate language” towards a Labour MP but denied that he called Stockton a “shithole”. The home secretary was accused of making the remark after Alex Cunningham challenged Rishi Sunak over child poverty in his Stockton North constituency on Wednesday. An ally of Cleverly said he called the MP “shit” and his off-the-cuff remark was not directed towards the northeast town. Issuing a formal apology yesterday for his choice of language in the House of Commons , Cleverly, 54, told MPs: “I rejected the accusation that I criticised his constituency.” He added that his criticism of “the honourable gentleman used inappropriate language for which I apologise”. Cunningham, 68, said it was “sad that the home secretary hasn’t the guts to admit to his appalling remark about my Stockton North constituency from the front bench and apologise to the people I have the privilege of representing.” Senior doctors have struck a deal with ministers to end strikes in exchange for a “disguised” pay rise. In a significant boost for hopes of stopping months of industrial action in the NHS, consultants’ leaders have accepted a reformed contract under which the Treasury will find hundreds of millions of pounds more for doctors’ pay. Ministers will insist they have not budged on headline pay after strikes that aimed to force them to increase a 6 per cent salary rise awarded this year to senior doctors. However, they have agreed a system that will enable doctors to reach the top of their pay scales five years faster, in what will amount to a further pay rise for the average consultant and boost the overall pay bill by 4.95 per cent. The Department of Health and British Medical Association are expected to confirm the deal imminently. Ministers insist that pay rises will be linked to tests of clinical skills in order to tie extra money to productivity improvements, but doctors’ leaders believe there will be no change. The deal will cost hundreds of millions, Consultants’ strikes set to end with deal on ‘disguised’ pay rise Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor with the Department of Health still negotiating with the Treasury over how much extra money will be given to fund it and how much diverted from elsewhere in NHS budgets. Rishi Sunak said: “This is a fair deal for consultants who will benefit from major reform to their contract, it is fair for taxpayers because it will not risk our ongoing work to tackle inflation, and, most, it is a good deal for patients to see the end of consultant industrial action.” However, nurses are threatening to go back on strike in “fury”. Nicola Ranger, of the Royal College of Nursing, said staff were “appalled” by the doctors’ deal. “The government has shown it has the political will to reform pay for some of the highest earners in the NHS — while our members are left with the lowest pay rise in the public sector,” she said. “Today’s news will ignite our members’ fury further, making nursing strikes more likely in the future.” Union sources said nurses would now be “emboldened” to press for strike action if they did not receive a similar pay rise next year. Nurses and other workers agreed to a 5 per cent rise this year, but union bosses faced grassroots anger as they saw doctors continuing to hold out for more. Government sources argue that the deal will ultimately cost less than allowing strikes to continue. A deal with the consultants will also pile pressure on junior doctors to compromise, after months of insisting they will not budge from demands for a 35 per cent pay rise. Consultants have staged four rounds of industrial action in protest at a 6 per cent pay rise, insisting that increases must match inflation. Ministers have previously refused to budge, insisting further increases are unaffordable. However, The Times revealed this month that ministers had agreed to put more money on the table in exchange for concessions on productivity, in what sources described as a “disguised pay rise”. Under the deal announced yesterday, the consultant pay scale will be reformed and doctors will be able to reach the top in 14 years instead of 19. Most consultants will get an immediate pay rise from January if they vote to accept the deal, with some receiving up to 12.8 per cent on top of the 6 per cent already agreed. the New Conservatives group of 2019 MPs, said: “This new legislation promised by the prime minister must be clear and unambiguous in establishing that the sovereign will of this parliament, as expressed in legislation, takes legal precedence over the interpretation of international treaties and principles.” Cleverly insisted that he would “do everything we can” to get flights to Rwanda. He faced anger from MPs over comments in his interview with The Times on Saturday that described the Rwanda scheme as not the “be all and end all” of migration policy. Government lawyers have said that instructing the courts to ignore the ECHR risks legal challenges in UK courts and the European Court of NEWS Human Rights. A government source involved in drafting the legislation said: “If you went for a ‘notwithstanding’ clause on ECHR you might just attract as many negative headlines [about Britain breaching its ECHR obligations] and you still get the right wing of the party saying you might as well have gone the full hog and left the ECHR.” Another government source said: “If we take the Supreme Court’s ruling at face value and play a straight bat, that will be the quickest way of getting flights off the ground.” Two less hardline versions are considered more likely to be adopted: a proposal to disapply the Human Rights Act in asylum cases; and an option simply to state that Rwanda is a “safe country”. Chalk, Prentis and Cleverly are all said to favour options that do not involve derogating from the ECHR. The courts can declare an act of parliament incompatible with the Human Rights Act, which would lead to parliament being asked to reconsider. Flights would not be able to take off until this process has been completed, according to a government source involved in drafting the legislation. A source pushing for designating Rwanda a “safe country” said it would be the most direct response to the Supreme Court’s ruling that Rwanda is unsafe for asylum seekers due to the risk they will be sent back home. Downing Street and the Home Office confirmed there were delays to the new Rwanda treaty but insisted they remained confident of signing a deal early next month. continued from page 1 PM warned over Rwanda plan SOUNDS GREAT Our five-star review of Richard Osman’s new podcast PAGE 25 CASA DE CARRIE The Johnsons have grand designs for their moated manor PAGE 9 BACK TO ‘HELL’ Revisiting United’s infamous 1993 trip to Galatasaray PAGE 62 Today’s highlights 7.50am 10.15am 2pm 7pm 8.30pm Johan Lundgren, easyJet chief executive Matt Chorley’s ‘How to Win an Election’: Peter Mandelson, Danny Finkelstein and Polly Mackenzie discuss how to see off rebels within your own party Billy Bragg, right, musician and activist chats to Mariella Frostrup about his tour Pienaar and Friends: Adam Boulton and Rachel Cunliffe review the big stories The bestselling author Patricia Cornwell on her latest thriller T O D AY ’ S E D I T I O N COMMENT 27 LETTERS 30 LEADING ARTICLES 31 WORLD 32 MARKETS 46 REGISTER 51 SPORT 56 CROSSWORD 66 TV & RADIO TIMES2 FOLLOW US thetimes timesandsundaytimes thetimes SPORT OFFER Save up to 30% with a subscription to The Times and The Sunday Times THETIMES.CO.UK/SUBSCRIBE Rhino calf raises hope for species The birth of a Sumatran rhino in an Indonesian sanctuary bolsters a critically endangered species with a population of fewer than 50 animals. The male calf weighed in at 25kg. Trans teenager murder trial A transgender schoolgirl, Brianna Ghey, was stabbed to death by two teenagers who listed people they wanted to kill after becoming infatuated with violence, a court was told. Squats prevent knee surgery Keeping thigh muscles strong with regular squats and lunges can avoid the need for a knee replacement in old age, a study found. Knee osteoarthritis affects five million Britons. days since Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was detained in Russia #FreeEvan 244 DAB RADIO l ONLINE l SMART SPEAKER l APP TIMES2 Chilly with sunshine but showers in places and wintry further north. THE WEATHER 7 25 8 1 5 5 6 5 7 2

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 2GM 3 News With its russet brown fur, bushy tail and endearingly tufty ears, the red squirrel might just be Britain’s most fondly regarded animal. It would seem, however, that some are immune to its charms, with a wildlife expert arguing that too much effort is being spent on trying to maintain its presence on these islands when the focus should be on other species that really are in danger of disappearing from the planet. While scarce in the UK, the red squirrel is abundant across much of Eurasia, said Nigel Dudley, an ecologist who has worked with organisations including the World Wildlife Fund and Unesco. It is listed in the “least concern” category by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), meaning there are no great fears over its immediate future, though the overall population is thought to be declining. In a new book, Why Biodiversity Matters, Dudley suggests this raises doubts over whether measures to boost its numbers in the UK, such as potential culls of grey squirrels, make sense. The introduction of grey squirrels from North America caused native reds to plummet in number, largely because of a poxvirus carried by the greys. it would put £25 million towards a “survival fund” to support a range of species including red squirrels, as well as hedgehogs and grey seals, both of which are also listed as being of “least concern” by the IUCN. The cash injection is designed to help meet the UK’s domestic figure of eight and the dusky-lemon sallow, which have all declined by more than 90 per cent in the past 30 years, according to Butterfly Conservation. “We’re putting a lot of effort into species that are very common elsewhere, so I think there’s a genuine question that needs to be asked about our priorities,” Dudley said. In terms of the roles they perform in the ecosystem, there is little difference between grey and red squirrels, he added. “Replacing a grey with a red squirrel probably isn’t going to make much difference to the ecology of the woods. I would say we probably spend too much time worrying about the grey squirrel, but I know that’s not going to be a popular message for everybody.” He is quite right: others disagree and argue that grey squirrels spoil woodlands, in part by stripping trees of bark. One conservation scheme, the Exmoor Squirrel Project, has asked landowners to trap and kill them and local restaurants to serve them. Kay Haw, director of the UK Squirrel Accord, a partnership of 41 conservation and forestry organisations, government agencies and companies, said: “Red squirrels are found in the UK and their wider Eurasian range. However, introduced grey squirrels cause local extinctions of red squirrels across the UK and Italy through competition for food and habitat, and disease transmission. They also bark strip young ecologically and economically important trees, at an estimated cost to England and Wales of at least £37 million a year. Research is being undertaken to understand their wider impacts. “Management of grey squirrels takes place to save red squirrels, but also to protect the many tree planting and woodland creation projects taking place around the country. We need to be growing healthy tree and woodland ecosystems to support wildlife and people. This will only happen if we effectively manage our grey squirrel problem.” Rob Stoneman, director of landscape recovery at the Wildlife Trusts, said: “Red squirrels, like many wild animals native to the UK, have suffered huge declines due to habitat loss, but also disease carried by their grey cousins. The fact they are hanging on and, in some areas, recovering is a conservation success story and shows what can be achieved when we invest properly in nature. “The challenge is not only about how we spend money on nature recovery, but how much money is in the pot to start with. “Nearly one in six species in the UK is now at risk of extinction so we need to see dramatic increases in public and private sector funding to stop any more wildlife disappearing from the UK. Just because a species still exists abroad doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight for its survival at home.” Ecologist sees red over costly attempts to save squirrels Reds are seen only in pockets across Britain, including Anglesey, the Isle of Wight, parts of northern England and Scotland. “We put a lot of money into maintaining red squirrels in Britain,” Dudley said. “And that’s culturally important because people get really excited about seeing them. But as a species they’re not in danger. On a global scale, there’s loads. So if we’re worried about biodiversity, putting time and effort into defending red squirrels against grey squirrels in Britain probably shouldn’t be a priority.” Earlier this year the government said Rhys Blakely Science Correspondent Though scarce in the UK, red squirrels are on an international “of least concern” list. Nigel Dudley, an ecologist, suggests there are more endemic species facing extinction such as the Figure of Eight moth, left, that would benefit more from support Marks & Spencer has been caught up in a cultural appropriation row after it was criticised for selling “Spanish Chorizo Paella Croquetas”. The supermarket faced a backlash online from a number of chefs and the British ambassador to Spain. Paella, the national dish of Spain, is a saffron-infused rice dish that originated in Valencia. Croquettes, meanwhile, are a traditional French dish consisting of deep-fried mini rolls of potatoes and bechamel sauce, but are also cooked in Spain using Serrano ham. M&S said its new dish would combine the two cultures, describing the dish as a combination of “paella rice, Shayma Bakht goal of halting the decline in species abundance by 2030, as well as the terms of an international nature deal agreed in Montreal last December. However, Dudley questioned the wisdom of investing in creatures that are seen as cute or charismatic if they are doing relatively well elsewhere. “It’s misguided in terms of the fact that there’s quite a few endemic species [native species found only in certain areas of the UK] that are not being addressed by conservation at all at the moment,” he said. “But, of course, they’re less interesting. They’re things like lichens and mosses, maybe a few moths — things people don’t think about and probably never even see.” At least 71 species of moths seen in the UK are considered as threatened internationally under the IUCN criteria. The rarest include the dark hedge rustic, Four endangered species The horrid groundweaver spider is found at just four sites in Plymouth. It is listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The gwyniad, a freshwater fish native to Bala Lake in Gwynedd, was marooned at the end of the last ice age. It is threatened by deteriorating water quality and the ruffe, a fish introduced in the 1980s that eats its eggs. Conservationists have warned that the Scottish crossbill, the only bird unique to the UK, right, is at risk as warmer summers affect the quality of cones on Scots pine trees, its primary food. About 6,800 breeding pairs are estimated to be left. The Lundy cabbage flea beetle is found on Lundy in the Bristol channel, where it feeds on the Lundy cabbage. It is listed as critically endangered. Rishi Sunak cancelled a meeting with the prime minister of Greece at the “11th hour” after Downing Street rejected calls for the return of the Elgin Marbles. Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he was “disappointed” that the planned bilateral meeting had fallen through. Mitsotakis, who is visiting Britain, and Sunak were due to meet today. However, late last night the Greek leader said he had been snubbed. It is understood a meeting was No 10 gives Greek PM Parthenon freeze offered with Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, instead. Mitsotakis’s spokesman expressed disappointment at the move, despite the “very deep history of friendship” between the UK and Greece. To dispel suggestions that Greece was solely interested in pursuing its campaign for the marbles to be returned from the British Museum, the spokesman said topics including European security had been on the agenda. A No 10 spokesman said: “The UK-Greece relationship is hugely important. From our work together in Nato, to tackling shared challenges like illegal migration, to joint efforts to resolve the crisis in the Middle East and war in Ukraine.” Sunak’s only publicly listed engagement this morning is chairing the cabinet. Earlier yesterday Downing Street rejected Mitsotakis’s suggestion that the museum’s custodianship of the Parthenon friezes was like the Mona Lisa being cut in half. Sunak’s spokesman said: “Obviously [that’s] not something we would agree with. These were legally acquired at the time, they’re legally owned by the trustees of the museum.” Greece has long insisted that the sculptures, which have been held by the British Museum for more than 200 years, belong in Athens. The 1963 British Museum Act prevents the institution giving away objects except in very limited circumstances. Aubrey Allegretti Chief Political Correspondent Britain says that the Elgin Marbles were legally acquired One paella of a mistake: M&S mixed dish panned smoky chorizo, saffron and a creamy bechamel sauce” on the packet. It adds that it is “handmade in Spain”. Hugh Elliott, the British ambassador to Spain and Andorra, described the food as “wrong on every level” and added: “Chorizo, yes! Paella, yes! Croquetas, yes! Yes! All together? ... M&S, what have you done?” Simon Hunter, a contributor to the The Times based in Madrid, posted a picture of the product on Twitter/X, with the caption “NO NO NO”. But Omar Allibhoy, a Spanish celebrity chef, said that while the dish was “not authentic”, he supported it. “Ultimately taste, texture, flavour, enjoyment and convenience will speak for itself — let the public be the judge.”

4 2GM Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times News The United Arab Emirates aimed to use meetings before the Cop28 conference to secure deals on oil and gas with other governments, according to leaked documents. Campaigners said the revelation showed “a fox is guarding the hen house” because the oil-rich state is hosting the UN climate talks, which many nations are hoping will agree a deal on phasing out fossil fuels. More than 150 pages of country briefings prepared for the president of Cop28, Dr Sultan al-Jaber, show “talking points”. These included commercial opportunities for Adnoc (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) and Masdar (Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company). Al-Jaber is the head of both. The talks Cop28 host UAE ‘is using climate talks to strike oil and gas deals’ begin in Dubai on Thursday. Although it is unclear how many times such deals were raised in the meetings, the documents seen by The Times are inflammatory because the host of the UN climate conferences is meant to be impartial and not to use talks to further its own commercial agenda. The Cop28 presidency has insisted al-Jaber’s multiple roles are separate and not in conflict. Leaked by a whistleblower and obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR), the briefings included one before a meeting with China which raised the possibility of Adnoc partnering on liquefied gas projects in Mozambique, Canada and Australia. A document regarding a meeting with Egypt said Adnoc would continue to seek Egypt’s support to facilitate oil and gas schemes in the country. Al-Jaber was also briefed to seek UK support for Masdar to expand its investment in UK offshore windfarms. Campaigners said it showed having an oil executive as chairman of the Cop28 talks was a conflict of interest. “Sultan al-Jaber claims his knowledge of the fossil-fuel industry qualifies him to lead a crucial climate summit but it looks ever more like a fox is guarding the hen house,” said Ann Harrison, Amnesty International’s climate adviser. A key goal for the UK and other countries at the Cop28 talks is a commitment to “phase out unabated fossil fuels”. The CCR said it had seen internal emails and records of meetings from Adnoc that raised questions about the independence of the Cop28 presidency. Global Witness, an NGO, said the documents, first reported by the BBC, showed climate negotiations had been “hijacked by the oil and gas industry”. A Cop28 spokesman told The Times: “The documents referred to in the BBC article are inaccurate and were not used by Cop28 in meetings.” Adam Vaughan Environment Editor About 1,800 rehabilitated criminals could have “unjust” indefinite prison sentences ended by 2025 under new reforms. Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, said imprisonments for public protection sentences were a “stain” on the justice system. They were introduced in 2005 to stop serious offenders being freed if they were a danger to the public but scrapped in 2012. About 3,000 given such sentences are in prison and those freed on licence have to wait ten years for a review by the Parole Board. Chalk said he was giving “rehabilitated people” the chance to move on with their lives. A A D E E E E E G I I I I L L N N R S S T T T T T T T U V V W W Solve all five concise clues using each letter underneath once only 1 Chirp (5) 2 Scenic view (5) 3 Know instinctively (6) 4 Simmering slowly (7) 5 Journeyed (9) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Quintagram® No 1797 Solutions see T2 MindGames p15 Cryptic clues T2 MindGames p14 ‘Unjust’ sentences Breakfast: 6am to 10am Our free radio station has all the latest headlines, interviews and debates every morning Listen seven days a week On DAB, app, website and smart speaker Oil be damned Olivia Colman stars in a campaign calling on pension funds to divest from the fossil fuel industry. The Oscar-winning actress plays a sinister tycoon named ‘Oblivia Coalmine’ in the advert for Make My Money Matter, which highlights the £88 billion of UK pension savers’ money invested in non-renewable energy stories of our times Find it wherever you get your podcasts Listen to today’s episode: ‘The climate summit hosted by an oil executive’

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 5 News Esther Ghey, Brianna’s mother, and Peter Spooner, her father, were in court A Metropolitan Police officer used a Taser on a ten-year-old girl twice inside her home as she was running away from him, a disciplinary hearing was told. PC Jonathan Broadhead fired the device within seconds of arriving at the flat in southwest London where the girl had threatened her mother with garden shears and hit her with a hammer. The girl, referred to as Child A, was admitted to hospital as a result of the incident, which the officer claimed was a necessary use of force. Police attended her home after her mother called 999 stating that she was “frightened” by her daughter’s behaviour. Broadhead is accused of using force “which was not necessary, reasonable and proportionate” against the girl. A gross misconduct hearing in central London was told that Broadhead had arrived at the property with his colleague PC Steven Morgan on January Mario Ledwith A transgender schoolgirl was stabbed to death by two teenagers who had drawn up a list of people that they wanted to kill after becoming infatuated with “violence, torture and death”, a court was told. Brianna Ghey, 16, was allegedly lured to her death by a girl and boy, both aged 15 at the time, who had spent weeks graphically discussing how to kill her. Manchester crown court was told that the female defendant had become “obsessed” with Brianna, who was born male but identified as female. In one message planning the attack, the male defendant said he wanted to hear if Brianna would “scream like a man or a girl”. Brianna’s bloodied body was found face down in mud along a woodland path on February 11 this year having suffered 28 stab wounds during a “sustained and violent assault”. The accused, both now 16, cannot be named and are identified as Girl X, from Culcheth, near Warrington, and Boy Y, from Leigh, Greater Manchester. Both deny murder. The prosecution said that the defendants had admitted being at the scene but blamed each other. Days before the death of Brianna, who was born Brett Spooner, the pair had drawn up a list of four other people that they wanted to kill, it is claimed. This followed months of messaging in which they allegedly discussed topics including how to watch torture videos on the dark web, and used web searches to research serial killers and murder using poison. Brianna’s mother, Esther Ghey, sister Alisha and father, Peter Spooner, were in court. Deanna Heer KC, for the prosecution, said that Brianna, from Warrington, was stabbed after Officer who tasered girl, 10, is accused of excessive force 21, 2021. Giving evidence, the mother said that she feared the girl’s behaviour may have been affected by consuming cannabis edibles. She said she expected the police only to help her to calm her. Olivia Checa-Dover, a barrister representing the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), described how the mother had appeared calm as she answered the door. Child A was seen to pick up the garden shears and then refuse police requests to put them down before running up the stairs. Video from body-worn cameras showed Broadhead rushing into the house shouting: “Put it down now, on the ground now!” followed immediately by: “Police officer, Taser.” “Officers are required to consider de-escalation, rather than inflaming the situation,” Checa-Dover said. The Met’s directorate of professional standards previously reviewed the incident and said that “no misconduct was identified”. The hearing continues. Trans schoolgirl ‘murdered by teens who wrote a kill list’ Girl X confided in her alleged accomplice that she had become “obsessed over” her. Heer said that Girl X first met Brianna in about November last year when she moved to her secondary school. In a message last December, the girl told Boy Y that she did not have romantic feelings for Brianna. The message read: “She’s called Brianna. I don’t know how to explain. Also she has a dick lol.” Boy Y responded by referring to Brianna as “it” in messages. In one, he wrote: “Tell me what you feel when you interact with it.” By January, the girl’s messages had turned darker. That month, she told her friend that she had given Brianna a dose of tablets that “should have been enough to kill her”. Brianna’s mother recalled her daughter being sick around the time of the claims. Heer said the defendants, who had been friends since they were 11 years old, began to discuss killing people in November last year. On January 1, Boy Y sent Girl X a photograph of a hunting knife with the message: “Spent my money. I bought a knife.” The jury was told that this weapon was used to kill Brianna six weeks later. By January 26, the pair had allegedly drawn up a list of four people that they wanted to kill, as well as Brianna. Girl X was said to have created a fake Instagram account to potentially lure one of their targets, referred to as Boy E in court, but the attempt at making contact was blocked when he “smelt a rat”. In a message read to the court, Girl X told Boy Y: “If we can’t get Boy E tomorrow we can kill Brianna.” He replied saying: “Yeah, it’ll be easier and I want to see if it will scream like a man or a girl.” The pair allegedly discussed an intricate plan to coax Brianna to Culcheth Linear Park before killing her, detailing code words for when they should attack. Heer said the pair did meet in the park but Brianna pulled out at the last minute, saying: “Each blames the other. The prosecution case is that, whoever it was who delivered the fatal blow or blows, both defendants are equally guilty. Acting together, they planned and executed their plan to kill Brianna Ghey.” The trial continues. Mario Ledwith Brianna Ghey, 16, was found dead on a woodland path

6 2GM Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times News A British surgeon who spent six weeks in Gaza has accused Israel of dropping white phosphorus on Palestinian civilians as he described seeing bodies pockmarked with burns like “Swiss cheese”. Ghassan Abu-Sittah said patients had distinctive burns that had penetrated deep into their flesh, wounds he said were consistent with the use of the incendiary chemical. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have denied using white phosphorus in Gaza and Lebanon in their response to the October 7 Hamas attacks when about 1,200 people were killed and an estimated 240 hostages were taken. White phosphorus can be used to illuminate battlefields but is very hard to extinguish once ignited and burns through human flesh. Its use in civilian areas is illegal in most circumstances under international humanitarian law. Abu-Sittah, 54, said the wounds he saw while working in the al-Shifa and British surgeon ‘saw phosphorus burns’ al-Ahli hospitals were consistent with previous white phosphorus injuries he had seen in Gaza in 2009 in a conflict in which the IDF admitted using the chemical. He described a 13-year-old boy and his father who were covered with black burns like “Swiss cheese”. Abu-Sittah has been asked to provide first-hand testimony to the Metropolitan Police’s war crimes unit, which has been collecting evidence for the International Criminal Court’s investigation into “the situation in the State of Palestine” since 2014. Scotland Yard has received 20 referrals since the attacks for alleged war crimes. Israel is not a member of the court and does not recognise its jurisdiction. Addressing a press conference in London organised by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians, a notfor-profit campaign group, Abu-Sittah said he struggled with the guilt of leaving his patients after running out of medical supplies earlier this month. He arrived in Gaza two days after the Hamas terrorist attacks, having made his way there via Cairo. The plastic surgeon, who is based in London, said washing-up liquid and vinegar were used to clean festering wounds by the end of his time in Gaza because of the lack of antiseptic. “I had kids with worms coming out … I had a man with an amputation above the elbow. When I went to clean out the wounds it was full of white larvae.” The doctor, who has gained a worldwide following after documenting his experiences working in Gaza on social media, said hospitals had also run out of anaesthetic, forcing staff to carry out operations while patients were in “excruciating pain”. Without morphine or methadone, Abu-Sittah concluded that he could no longer work in Gaza and returned to the UK two weeks ago. Abu-Sittah, who said he worked from 8am to 1am every day, estimated that 40 to 45 per cent of the patients at al-Shifa hospital were children. George Grylls Avichai and Hagar Brodutch and their children Yuval, Ofri and Oriya, also top left, Netanyahu faces cabinet turmoil over war budget Anshel Pfeffer Jerusalem The Israeli government last night held a stormy meeting on the first draft of its war budget amid accusations that billions of shekels were going towards West Bank settlements and religious institutions instead of the war effort. Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, proposed adding 30.5 billion shekels (£6.5 billion) to the budget for 2023 to pay for extra expenditure caused by the war in Gaza and relief efforts for Israeli communities impacted by the fighting. However, Smotrich, a hard-right MP who lives in a West Bank settlement himself, refused to remove from the budget more than 4.8 billion shekels (£1 billion) that have been earmarked for settlements in the West Bank and for religious institutions that are affiliated with the parties in Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition: Religious Zionism, Jewish Power, United Torah Judaism and Shas. Netanyahu has backed the budget, with the extra money coming from budget cuts, borrowing and Israel’s currency reserves. The main opposition within the coalition government is coming from Benny Gantz, the centrist leader and former defence minister who is a member of the war cabinet and also Netanyahu’s most serious challenger as prime minister. In a letter to Netanyahu on Sunday, he wrote that his party, National Unity, was “against any discretionary coalition funding which is not connected to the war effort or boosting growth in the economy”. Sources close to Gantz say that he is not planning to leave the government at this point, as he believes that it is crucial he remains in the three-member war cabinet, along with Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the defence minister. Eleven Israeli women and children were handed over to the Red Cross in Gaza last night, in the final exchange of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas before a two-day extension agreed at the eleventh hour takes effect. For the second time since the initial ceasefire began, the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners was almost derailed by last-minute disagreements between the two sides. After receiving Hamas’s list of those to be freed, Israel protested that the group had for a second time breached a promise not to release children without mothers that were taken hostage with them. The final list of nine children and two women, both mothers of abducted children, was handed over hours after the exchange should have already been in motion. Among the hostages released by Hamas on Monday were several children, including Emma and Yuli Cunio, who are twins aged three. All the children released last night were freed while their fathers remained captive. The 11 Israelis freed included Emma and Yuli’s mother, Sharon, 33. Their father, David, 34, remains a hostage. Also freed were Karina Engelbert, 51, and her daughters, Mika, 18, and Yuval, 11. Their father, Ronen Engel, 55, was not. Sahar, 16, and Erez Kalderon, 12, were released. Their father, Ofer, 53, also remains a hostage. Or Yakov, 16, and Yagil Yakov, 13, went free as their father, Yair, 59, remained captive. Eitan Yahalomi, 12, was freed, leaving behind his father, Ohad, 49, who is presumed to be still held captive. The Qatari foreign ministry said that other hostages released included six Argentinians, three French citizens and two Germans. On Saturday night, Hamas released Hila Rotem, 13, along with her friend Emily Hand, 9, but not Rotem’s mother, Raya, 54, angering Israel. That handover was also delayed by Hamas’s accusations that Israel had not stuck to the terms of the agreement News Middle East crisis Hamas is treating women and Catherine Philp Tel Aviv concerning the delivery of aid to northern Gaza. Six Thai migrant workers were expected to be released over the Rafah crossing into Egypt while the Israelis were to cross directly into Israel, following a path set for the first time on Sunday night, when the freed hostages included a critically ill Alma Avraham, 84, who was taken by helicopter straight to hospital to be put in intensive care. There was crushing news for one of the best-known hostage families last night after they received a call telling them their loved ones were not listed for release. The Bibas family — Yarden Bibas, 34, his wife, Shiri, 32, and their children, Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months — became widely recognised after Hamas broadcast footage of Shiri’s abduction, holding Ariel and Kfir, who have red hair. According to the Israel Defence Forces, the Bibas family have been transferred to the custody of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Khan Yunis in the south of Gaza, where a ground offensive is yet to begin. The IDF’s Arabic language spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Avichay Adraee, accused Hamas of treating women and children as “loot”. “Children and babies under the age of one who have not seen the light of day for more than 50 days are being held captive by Hamas,” he said. “Hamas treats some of them like loot and in some places has transferred them to other terrorist organisations in the Gaza Strip. Like, for example, the Bibas family, the babies with orange hair, who were kidnapped in Nir Oz by Hamas operatives and are being held in the Khan Yunis area by one of the Palestinian factions.” In a statement, relatives of the Bibas family expressed their heartbreak. “We are experiencing moments of great uncertainty. The realisation that we will not get the hug we wished for leaves us speechless,” they said. The family added that they were happy for “all the families who have been reunited with their loved ones. We will not stop the fight for the return of our loved ones to Israel.” Hostages freed over the preceding three nights were spending time reunited with their families at Sheba Medical Centre and the Schneider Children’s Medical Centre of Israel, where returning women were also being debriefed by military intelligence over what they had seen during their captivity. Israel is keen to glean what information it can on where the other hostages may be. The aunt, uncle and grandparents of Avigail Idan, 4, the young AmericanIsraeli girl whose freedom President Biden lobbied for, were reunited with her on Sunday night following her release. Both of her parents were murdered by Hamas on October 7, though her elder siblings survived. Liz Hirsh Naftali, Avigail’s great aunt, said: “There are no words to express our relief that Avigail is safe and coming home.” She went on to thank Biden, the Qatari government and others who had helped win her freedom, pointedly omitting Binyamin Netanyahu, who has found himself at the end of sharp criticism from the hostage families. Schneider Children’s Medical Centre also released photographs showing the moving reunion of the family that sheltered Avigail in their home in Kibbutz Kfar Agar during the Hamas rampage. Avigail fled there covered in her father’s blood after he was shot dead by Hamas gunmen, and was taken to a safe room by Hagar Brodutch, 40, along with her own children, Ofri, 10, Yuval, 9 and Oriya, 4. Avichai, their father, left with a weapon to fight off the Hamas attackers but when he returned home he found all five had been abducted. The family of Avraham spoke of their anguish over her critical health condition after enduring 50 days of captivity without medication for long-term health problems. She is now fighting for her life in intensive care. “She was severely neglected for the entire time she was captive there, she didn’t get her lifesaving medicines,” Tali Amano, her daughter, told reporters. “She arrived a few hours before she was going to die. She came with the heartbeat of a butterfly, a 40 pulse and a body temperature of 28. I have no idea how she’ll get through these days. From euphoria to the abyss.” Sharon Aloni-Cunio with her three-year-old twin daughters Yuli and Emma

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 2GM 7 News Elon Musk has been rebuked for the “reservoir of hatred and antisemitism” on Twitter/X at a meeting in Tel Aviv. President Herzog told him: “The platforms you lead, unfortunately, have a huge reservoir of hatred of Jews.” Musk was visiting Israel amid concerns about antisemitic content on X and the use of his Starlink internet system in Gaza. Herzog was echoing concerns from groups campaigning against hate speech, who have warned about the rise of extremist content on X since Musk bought it. He has implemented a “freedom of speech, not of reach” policy, whereby radical content is tolerated but not promoted. That has led to a plunge in advertising revenue and Musk has sued some pressure groups, claiming their research is flawed. During a live chat with Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, on X during the visit, Musk said it is “essential” to stop the propaganda that is driving terrorists to kill Israelis. He was given a tour by Netanyahu of the Kfar Aza kibbutz, where dozens of Israelis were killed on October 7, and shown a film of atrocities committed by Hamas. Musk said it was “jarring” to see the terrorists “revel in the joy of killing civilians ... that’s evil”. He added: “The challenge is how do you get rid of the ones who are hell bent on murdering Jewish people, while minimising civilian casualties, and then ultimately stopping the sort of propaganda that is convincing people to engage in murder? “That’s essential to figure out ... how are they being trained to have the belief that murdering and having joy at the death of civilians is a good thing? And to stop that training.” He made a similar point during the meeting with Herzog, according to the president’s office. Netanyahu’s office said that the prime minister wanted to demilitarise and deradicalise Gaza, and likened the challenge to the rebuilding of Germany and Japan after the war. Netanyahu said: “That will take some time, especially [in mosques and schools]. That’s where children are imbibed on their values. We also have to rebuild Gaza and I hope to have our Arab friends’ help in that context.” Musk replied: “I’d like to help as well.” Musk added that it “was troubling to see massive protests in almost every major city in favour of Hamas”. The visit appeared to have defused a row between Musk and Israel over Starlink. Musk offered to give aid groups in Gaza access to Starlink, a satellite internet service from his SpaceX company. Israel claimed the terminals would end up in the hands of Hamas and threatened to cut ties with Starlink, weeks after agreeing a deal for it to be used by settlers in the West Bank. As Musk landed in Israel, Shlomo Karhi, the communications minister, announced a deal that Starlink can be operated in Gaza only with approval by Israel. The X advertising boycott from companies including Apple and Disney will cost X as much as $75 million in revenue in the final quarter, The New York Times reported. Musk denies being antisemitic. Comic will host BBC show despite ‘genocide’ tweets Alex Farber Media Correspondent Training videos show that Hamas had been practising for its October 7 attack “in plain sight” for three years and only two kilometres from Israel’s border, according to a report. The footage, which shows military drills in mock Israeli bases and villages alongside the Erez crossing controlled by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), has been publicly available on Hamas channels since 2020. The footage has been analysed by BBC Verify and BBC Arabic in a joint investigation. In 2020 the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who codenamed the four drills “Strong Pillar”, oversaw a coalition of Gaza’s armed factions as they took part in exercises over the threeyear period. He said the drills would send a “strong message and a sign of unity” across the territory. According to the BBC investigation, newly uncovered footage of the first drill, shared on Telegram, shows armed fighters storming a mock tank carrying the Israeli flag before detaining its “crew” and raiding modelled buildings. Both tactics were used on October 7. The second drill took place on Boxing Day 2021. Ayman Nofal, a commander in Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades, said the aim was to “affirm the unity of the resistance factions”. He added that the drills would “tell the enemy that the walls and engineering arrived at Schneider Children’s Medical Centre in Israel on Sunday after being freed by Hamas under the ceasefire deal A comedian who has labelled Israel’s operation in Gaza “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” has been booked to host Have I Got News for You. Guz Khan, 37, will present this week’s edition of BBC1’s topical panel show after a string of antiIsrael posts on social media since the war began on October 7. The star and creator of the BBC3 sitcom Man Like Mobeen, who has more than 113,000 followers on Twitter/X, has made references to Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation. He tweeted: “This settler project is falling down in front of our eyes. I’ve never been more sure of a Free Palestine.” On the day about 1,200 people were massacred by Hamas and 240 hostages seized, his account retweeted a message from Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of Greece, that called for “the end of the Israeli occupation and apartheid”. While BBC comedy programmes do not have to abide by the strict impartiality guidelines governing its news output, one BBC staffer said that they were “lost for words” by the decision to book Khan as they predicted that the situation was likely to feature in this week’s show given its topicality. Guz Khan is due to present Have I Got News for You Video reveals drills for October 7 attack measures on the borders of Gaza will not protect them”. Images from the third drill, on December 28, 2022, show militants overrunning tanks in a replica military base. The exercises were reported across Israeli news outlets and would have been monitored by its intelligence agencies, BBC Verify reported. “There was a lot of intelligence that they were doing this training — after all, the videos are public and this was happening just hundreds of metres from the fence,” the former IDF deputy commander Brigadier General Amir Avivi said. He claimed officials “didn’t see what they were training for”. Last year fighters shared propaganda images from exercises inside a mock Israeli base only 2.6km from the Erez crossing, a route between Gaza and Israel. BBC Verify said matching geographic features in the videos suggested the site was 800m from Gaza’s barrier. As of this month, the site was still visible on Bing Maps aerial footage. Shayma Bakht Footage of the drills was available on social media channels run by Hamas News children ‘like loot’ says IDF Israel rebukes Musk as he tries to calm X and Starlink rows Mark Sellman Technology Correspondent Elon Musk at the Kfar Aza settlement in southern Israel targeted by Hamas

8 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times News Some 20,000 lives a year could be saved by 2030 if the UK takes bold action to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer, experts have said. In a landmark report from Cancer Research UK that aims to influence manifesto policies for the next election, the charity warns that hard-won progress against the disease is at risk of stalling. The NHS is set to miss a target to diagnose 75 per cent of cancers by stage one or two, when the disease is easier to treat, by 2028, the government’s former cancer tsar warned. Cancer Research UK said bolder action was necessary, including the creation of a national cancer council accountable to the prime minister and a ten-year action plan. This should include commitment to capital investment for cancer equipment, the charity said, and address a research funding gap of £1 billion over the next decade. Cancer survival rates have doubled over the past 50 years but the UK lags behind many comparable countries. The report said cancer was a “fixable problem”, pointing out that while England and Denmark were improving cancer outcomes at broadly the same rate 30 years ago, Denmark has since “raced ahead, with consistent funding and long-term cancer strategies”. The report said the “inequalities in who gets and dies from cancer are stark, Cancer plea to save 20,000 lives a year with more than 33,000 cases each year across the UK attributable to deprivation”. Professor Sir Mike Richards, former national cancer director at the Department of Health who now advises NHS England, said work was needed to boost diagnosis, treatment and survival rates. He said poor survival rates resulted from a combination “of diagnosing people at a later stage of the disease and then inconsistencies in treatment”. Richards added: “There’s a lot we can do. We can improve our screening programmes, we can improve our diagnosis of symptomatic patients and we can reduce inequalities in treatment.” He said breast screening should reach more women, while bowel screening should begin earlier. Michelle Mitchell, Cancer Research UK chief executive, said: “Cancer is the defining health issue of our time. Avoiding thousands of cancer deaths is possible but it will take leadership, political will, investment and reform.” A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “Cancer is being diagnosed at an earlier stage, more often, with survival rates improving across almost all types of cancer and the NHS seeing and treating record numbers of cancer patients over the last two years. Our Major Conditions Strategy will set out how we will improve cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment and we have opened 135 community diagnostic centres.” Kat Lay Health Editor Squiggle room Rare chairs by the Danish architect Verner Panton will be on offer at H&H Auction Rooms in Carlisle today First British case of swine flu in human A flu strain similar to that found in pigs has been detected in a human in the UK for the first time. Health officials are now tracking down close contacts of the infected individual, in an effort to trace the source of the virus, known as A(H1N2)v. The infection was spotted in North Yorkshire. Since 2005 there have been 50 reported cases of the strain, which is found in pigs, and it has not reliably spread in humans. The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has informed the World Health Organisation. There were no indications that the patient had been in contact with livestock. Viruses periodically jump from animals to humans, but are rarely able to transmit between humans. However, it is also likely that most such infections globally would be missed. Particularly with mild illness, it’s rare to ever find out the kind of virus that caused it. Meera Chand, incident director at UKHSA, said: “It is thanks to routine flu surveillance and genome sequencing that we have been able to detect this virus.” Tom Whipple Science Editor

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 9 News The NHS’s inability to care for patients with severe cases of the debilitating disease ME requires urgent attention, a hospital chief has told an inquest. Dr Anthony Hemsley, medical director of the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, revealed in written evidence that there was no NHS guidance to staff nor specialist services in the country to handle acute ME cases. He said the “gap in service” needed to be rectified and “action is required at the highest level”. Maeve Boothby-O’Neill, daughter of the Times journalist Sean O’Neill, died two years ago after becoming bedbound and finding the simple act of chewing exhausting. She had three The Chinese government is suspected of using westerners to try to entrap Hongkongers living in London as part of a wider campaign of intimidation and spying. Hong Kong activists who sought refuge in Britain have been allegedly targeted by an American man who gave false journalistic credentials as he sought detailed information about their democracy campaign work. One of the activists, Finn Lau, has been approached on several occasions by fake journalists in what he believes is a Chinese-orchestrated attempt to trace him and spy on his pro-democracy campaigning. Lau, who is the subject of a bounty by the Hong Kong authorities, has also been beaten in the street in London and impersonated by more than 70 people online. The extent of Chinese interference will be explored in a Dispatches documentary tomorrow night that reveals how dissidents are being targeted on British soil. Secrets & Power: China in the UK also raises concerns about the work of Edmond Yeo, a Chinatown businessman who chairs a charity that helps asylum seekers but is alleged to have links to the Chinese state. Lau, one of the leaders of the 2019 Hong Kong protests against China’s crackdown on the territory, said that he felt under constant surveillance in London. He has had multiple requests for interviews from journalists who turned out to be fake. In an encounter filmed by Dispatches, Lau was interviewed online by a purported reporter who gave his name as Richard Vong, which he spelt as Vuong in the email footer. The person who called himself Vong, who used photographs of an Asian male on social media but turned out to be a white American, claimed to work for the Toronto Guardian but the outlet said they had never employed him. He had sought an interview with British authorities to give more information about the threat to the Chinese diaspora. A parliamentary report in the summer said that China deployed about 40,000 intelligence officers abroad but redacted the number who were thought to be operating in Britain. Dunning said: “Those communities deserve more transparency about what is being done, who is doing it and the kinds of thing they need to look out for. There is a need for more transparency to safeguard these communities.” Secrets and Power: China in the UK, Channel 4 Dispatches, will be shown tomorrow night at 10pm. China ‘using westerners to spy on UK’s Hongkongers’ Global Detwin with China, a campaign that highlights Beijing’s human rights abuses. Vong wanted to discuss the motives of the group, what outcomes it hoped to achieve, whether it was supported by organisations in Toronto and whether it had considered alternative methods. His email account was registered about 30 minutes before he sent the request, and the server was associated with a provider in China. Lau, an adviser for Global Detwin, and the documentary makers challenged Vong about his identity and asked whether he was gathering intelligence for the Chinese. He denied it and said that “these accusations will put me in a bit of a pickle”. He refused to give Lau his surname or the name of his boss, saying it was a “personal question”. A profile on Linkedin, which uses a photograph of “Vong”, appears to be of an American resident who has worked in China. He did not respond to requests for comment. Lau said it was suspicious and exacerbated his concerns that Beijing was using sinister methods to spy on the work of activists. He believes a physical attack in 2020, when he was set upon in Fiona Hamilton Chief Reporter George Greenwood Investigations Reporter Patients with severe ME not cared for at hospitals, coroner told admissions to the Royal Devon and Exeter before her death. An inquest will be held to examine some of its clinical decisions, including the alleged refusal to offer procedures that might have saved her life. Before her death at home, BoothbyO’Neill, aged 27, refused a fourth admission after feeling that clinicians were not helping her and her symptoms were worsening under their watch. O’Neill, speaking at a pre-inquest review hearing, told Exeter coroner’s court that Hemsley said “for patients with severe [or] very severe ME there are no commissioned specialist inpatient services both regionally and nationally”. In a statement to the court, which has not been made public, Hemsley said: “This gap in service has also been confirmed by the local integrated care board [responsible for planning and funding most NHS services in an area]. In order to rectify this situation, action is required at the highest level.” O’Neill told the coroner’s court: “When Maeve concluded that the hospital was unable and indeed unwilling to provide the treatment she needed, she was right. Imagine that this was a different illness. Imagine a hospital saying that it was not commissioned and therefore not resourced to provide inpatient treatment to those with severe cancer, those with severe heart conditions, those with another severe disease. It is quite impossible to conceive.” Boothby-O’Neill’s condition deteriorated sharply in the last seven months of her life. Her GP reported her death to the local coroner, saying she was doing so because of the complexity of the case. The GP, who was committed to her care, wrote: “Several doctors involved in her care stated they do not believe ME is a medical problem.” About 250,000 people in the UK have ME and a quarter of those are bedbound or housebound for long periods with severe symptoms. Campaigners have fought to correct a misconception that ME, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, is a psychological or behavioural illness but its causes and best treatments remain poorly understood. Patients have symptoms including prolonged fatigue, dizziness, muscle pain, gastrointestinal problems and brain fog. In severe cases they need to be tube-fed. Boothby-O’Neill’s family want Deborah Archer, assistant coroner for Plymouth, Torbay and South Devon, to hold an Article 2 inquest to consider whether systemic or policy based failures could have caused her death. Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights protects people’s “right to life”. If someone has died while under the care of the state Article 2 can be engaged, which allows the coroner to look deeper at the context and background of the death than in a normal inquest. O’Neill told the coroner that Hemsley was describing “a failure to protect not just Maeve’s life but the lives of those, like Maeve, with severe ME”. Archer said she would make a decision on whether to allow an Article 2 inquest in the coming days. Will Humphries Southwest Correspondent Edmond Yeo, at a pro-China rally in London and, right, with Boris Johnson, is said to have links to the Chinese state. Below: a purported reporter who gave his name as Richard Vong sought to interview dissidents the street, was linked to China, while he has also received violent threats online. Another activist, Simon Cheng, said he was approached by Yeo, chairman of trustees for the Chinese Information and Advice Centre (CIAC), for information about Hongkongers seeking asylum. The CIAC, a charity based in Chinatown in central London, advertises a “priority visa service” for Hongkongers on its front entrance. Cheng said that Yeo told him he had good Home Office contacts and could help with cases. However, Cheng said that he was concerned to discover that Yeo, a former Conservative councillor in Ealing, west London, appeared to have close links to the Chinese state. The documentary reveals that he has been photographed on several occasions with Lu Haitian, who worked at the British embassy until last year and reported to the United Front Work Department (UFWD), China’s propaganda arm. Yeo also appears on video earlier this year near President Xi at an annual conference in China organised by the UFWD. In 2019 he attended a rally in Trafalgar Square, central London, which was supportive of Communist Party policy in Hong Kong. He held a banner that called on support for the territory’s government. The CIAC’s website says that Yeo is a magistrate. However, he was removed in November 2020 for insufficient attendance. Records show that he has been the subject to five country court judgments, totalling £2,424. He declined to comment. Sam Dunning, the director of UKChina Transparency, who also worked on the documentary, has called for the Finn Lau, a democracy campaigner, was attacked in the street in London

10 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times News have repeatedly deferred reform. Rishi Sunak can fund social care properly and implement long overdue reform, or he can allow the system to continue to rely on overseas workers. He cannot, however, pretend that he can simply turn off the migrant labour tap and assume that there won’t be consequences. The prime minister is currently fixated on reducing migration, which is understandable after last week’s record-breaking high, but if he tries to solve one problem by cutting off a vital supply of care workers he will find himself facing an even greater political disaster in the NHS. The balloon is already being squeezed from all directions and, given one more pressure point, it might just pop. Rachel Sylvester is chairwoman of the Times Health Commission migrant workers into social care. There is, of course, a case for encouraging more British people to fill social care posts, but at the moment these roles are so badly paid that many prefer to take a less stressful job in a supermarket or call centre for a better wage. Others choose to work in the NHS because those with the same level of skills are paid more in the health service than in social care. The rhetoric about parity of esteem is not matched by reality, even though the two parts of the system are intricately entwined. Indeed, social care was not included in the recent health workforce plan. Successive governments have promised to put the crumbling social care system onto a more stable footing, and even legislated for change, but ministers million older people do not get the support they need. There is a postcode lottery, with patchy and often inadequate publicly funded provision. Self-funders are crosssubsidising state support. The knock on impact is devastating for the NHS, with about 10 per cent of hospital beds currently filled with people who are medically fit to be discharged but cannot be sent home, often because of the lack of social care. This means ambulances cannot offload their patients in a timely fashion and waiting lists grow. To make matters worse, frail older people who do not get the support they need at home are more likely to fall and end up in hospital. The vicious circle of delayed discharges and unnecessary admissions would be exacerbated by curtailing the flow of T he health and social care system is like a balloon — if you squeeze one part of it then the air will inevitably bulge out somewhere else. The government cannot simply cut back on the supply of foreign care workers without serious implications for the NHS as well as social care. Between June 2022 and June 2023, almost 78,000 people secured longterm visas to work in UK social care after the government eased the rules. Care workers were put on to the shortage occupation list because they were desperately needed. There are still about 152,000 Curbs on foreign care workers would only serve to harm NHS vacancies in social care, but this represents a drop of 7 per cent on the previous year because so many overseas workers arrived and helped plug the gap. Without them, providers would be forced to reduce the number of places, leaving more vulnerable elderly people without support. Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, has floated the idea of banning those working in health and social care from bringing their families with them to the UK. Another idea is to put a cap on visas for people working in social care. But the truth is that we need them more than they need us. As populations age, there is a global market for health and care workers and these valuable recruits can easily go elsewhere. Already social care is in crisis in this country. About 1.6 Rachel Sylvester Comment Rishi Sunak is facing mounting pressure from cabinet ministers to slash immigration as the business secretary backed the “strongest measures possible” and another minister warned that current levels threaten the “unity” of the country. Kemi Badenoch told Times Radio the current minimum salary to hire foreign workers is “too low” and blamed record levels of immigration on Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit visa system. She admitted she did not know “what the plan is” in terms of government policy to slash numbers. Badenoch told LBC: “But I certainly will be pushing for the strongest measures possible. The migration figures we have seen were from last year, that was under prime minister Boris Johnson. “Many of us had reservations about the policy then. So I think that you will be seeing much, much tougher measures going forward.” Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, told MPs that current levels of immigration are “far too high”. He faced Conservative MPs in the Commons yesterday demanding tougher restrictions on immigration after official figures released last week revealed that immigration had added a record 1.3 million people to the population over the last two years. Jenrick said: “The level of legal migration into this country is far too high. That has very profound impacts on access to public services, the productivity of our economy, and the ability of the UK to be a socially cohesive and united country.” Michael Gove, the housing secretary, said current levels of immigration are putting pressure on housing as he admitted not enough homes are being built. He told Times Radio: “It is the case that the migratory flows put more pressure on housing, but we haven’t built enough homes overall for generations.” However, Sunak has so far resisted I don’t know plan to cut arrivals, says Badenoch Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor calls to accelerate his plans to announce a new package of measures to slash numbers, which is scheduled for early next month. He took a notably different tone in a speech at a summit of international business leaders in London as he said the UK’s visa rules make Britain the “best country in the world to invest and do business”. Jenrick is among those urging the prime minister to go further than current plans that would increase the minimum salary threshold for foreign workers to about £35,000, limit the number of family members and spouses that health and social care workers can bring to the UK and crack down on “manipulation of the care system”, following concerns that the easier rules for obtaining a care visa are being exploited by foreign nationals as a back door into the UK. Healthcare bosses yesterday warned that imposing restrictions on the recruitment of foreign care workers could be “ruinous” to care services. The NHS Employers group urged the government to reject proposals that prevented foreign care workers from bringing their families as it would be wrong to assume foreign workers will continue to come to the UK for work. Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said: “As a country, we must do everything we can to make ourselves a more, not less, attractive destination for employment.” Speaking at the UK’s second Global Investment Summit held at Hampton Court palace yesterday, Sunak said: “In the end the greatest asset to any economy is its people and that’s the UK’s first competitive advantage. So if you’re an innovator, an entrepreneur, a researcher, you should know that the most competitive visa regime for highly skilled international talent is right here.” He said the government’s recently introduced “high potential individual visa”, which allows graduates from 50 of the top universities across the world to move to the UK with their families for up to two years, had added economic value to the country. The prime minister said: “Nothing like that exists anywhere else in the world and it tells you everything about our pro-innovation, pro-growth, pro-business philosophy.” PM’s options Raising the minimum salary threshold Downing Street is considering raising the minimum salary needed to qualify for a skilled worker visa. It has been frozen at £26,200 for several years but Rishi Sunak is expected to raise it to at least £31,000, in line with wage inflation. The move is a response to soaring numbers of visas granted under the post-Brexit system. The number given to foreign workers in the year to September was 335,447 — two and a half times as many as in 2019. Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, is pushing for £35,000 and Suella Braverman, sacked a fortnight ago, wanted £45,000. Likelihood: 5/5 Scrap the shortage occupation list Sunak may also make it harder for businesses to recruit foreign workers abroad by scrapping the shortage occupation list. It allows companies facing labour shortages to recruit overseas at a discounted rate and has seen the number of occupations on it grow continually since Brexit. In a review last month, the Migration Advisory Committee (Mac) found that firms were increasingly using the list to hire cheaper foreign workers on the previous 12 months to 143,990, a figure far higher than expected. However, the Department for Health and Social Care has opposed plans to restrict overseas recruitment over concerns it would exacerbate the lack of care workers in the UK. The industry has a shortfall of more than 100,000 staff. Likelihood: 2/5 Crackdown on social work visas There is expected to be a crackdown on care companies abusing the present visa rules, which allow them to recruit from overseas amid concerns that some are using the scheme to bring foreign nationals to the UK but not employing them in the care sector. There are also concerns that foreign nationals are using the easier rules on getting a social care visa as a back door into the UK and working in other sectors or on the black market. Likelihood: 5/5 Revised methodology for counting migrants Sunak is said to be “frustrated” at the volatility in Office for National Statistics estimates as its changing figures make it difficult to plan immigration policies, and has tasked the Home Office with exploring ways in which the methodology could be improved and made more consistent. Likelihood: 4/5 instead of recruiting at home. Scrapping the list was backed by Braverman as home secretary: she commissioned Mac to do the review. But her efforts were stalled by a lack of cabinet agreement, and her departure makes it less likely that the list will be abolished. Likelihood: 2/5 Restrictions on family visas Measures to drastically cut the number of family members, partners and spouses — recorded as “dependants” — being brought to Britain are likely to be announced. They account for soaring levels of workrelated visas. The 335,447 foreign workers granted a work visa in the year to September brought with them 250,297 dependants, up 89 per cent on the previous year and four times more than before the pandemic. Foreign health and care workers are the most likely to bring family with them — 143,990 brought a total of 173,896 dependants to Britain in the year to September 2023. Likelihood: 5/5 Capping social care visas The number of health and care visas granted has rocketed since carers were added to the shortage occupation list in February 2022. They more than doubled in Robert Jenrick agreed the year to September numbers were too high News Politics R ishi Sunak may have used the lure of royalty past and present to entice the global business elite to London. But Sir Keir Starmer proved that the lure of future political power is just as strong (Oliver Wright writes). Dozens of executives attending the government’s global investment summit at Hampton Court Palace got up early to attend a meeting with Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor. While Sunak enticed global chief executives with a royal reception at Buckingham Palace, 35 business leaders from firms including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Blackstone thought it was worth the effort of crossing London in the rush hour to also meet Starmer in the less historic surroundings of Ernst & Young’s City HQ. Senior Labour figures said they had organised the breakfast after requests from companies attending the summit for their executives to also meet Reeves and Starmer while in London. They City elite put Sunak on ice to see Starmer

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 2GM 11 News Teachers and pupils will not be compelled to address children who want to change their gender identity by their chosen pronoun, new guidance for schools will state. The government is expected to publish the guidance next week, stating that children can socially transition with the consent of their parents, meaning that they can choose another pronoun or name and wear the uniform of the opposite sex. They will only be able to do so in limited circumstances and with appropriate safeguards in place, with one government source saying that there would be an effective “presumption against” social transitioning. The government is also said to have bolstered free-speech provisions after Kemi Badenoch, the minister for women and equalities, raised concerns. The guidance states explicitly that teachers should not be compelled to address children by their chosen pronoun if they have a “good-faith” objection. There are narrow exemptions for “exceptional” circumstances. Schools will also be told to abide by laws including the Equality Act and must keep lavatories, changing rooms and contact sports separate. Children who are socially transitioning will be allowed to play non-contact sports with those of their adopted gender, but contact sports should be separated on the grounds of biological sex, sources said. Schools would need to assess whether allowing biological boys to compete against biological girls in non-contact is fair, the guidance is expected to say. Ministers have dropped plans to ban pupils from changing their gender identity in schools completely after being warned that this might be illegal. Victoria Prentis, the attorney-general, said that an outright ban on social transitioning would be unlawful under the Equality Act Kemi Badenoch raised concerns over teachers’ free speech Something may turn up to cheer Mr Sad Face W e’d been expecting a statement on the jaw-dropping net migration number — 745,000! — which is almost a week old now, but we didn’t get one. In the end, the brand new home secretary spent the majority of his debut at the dispatch box staring into the middle distance with his lips curled down at the corners looking like a bearded sad face emoji. Maybe the sad face was the statement. It’s an improvement of sorts. Rishi Sunak sacked the redhot fury emoji, Suella Braverman, mainly for being too furious. The policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda was found to be illegal, there’s absolutely no plan B, so it’s probably better to just look sad about it, rather than mad. There’s a reassuring bathos in sadness. Better than furious anger — that puts people on edge. Cleverly wasn’t necessarily doing it on purpose. The downwardcurling mouth, coupled with the angled neck and jutting forehead, is also what people tend to do when performatively listening to anyone they consider inferior and there was plenty of that going on. It helps, in a way, that most people are very confused by the migration numbers. That enormous 745,000 figure is entirely people who’ve come here legally. Hundreds of thousands of them are students. It doesn’t include the tens of thousands who’ve arrived via small boat. None of those three quarters of a million can be packed off to Rwanda, though you’d be brave to bet that they won’t end up trying. University ents officers should start thinking now about how to organise satellite freshers pub crawls through downtown Kigali. Cleverly’s time at the Home Office has not got off to an ideal start. He has denied calling the may soon find that sensible people being brought in to do batshit things is more discombobulating than batshit ones doing it. What Cleverly most definitely has going for him is high levels of loathing for politics. The public are very bored of politicians but they’ve a long way to go to reach Cleverly levels. He answered Yvette Cooper’s made-for-socialmedia, question-free questions by telling her she hadn’t asked him a question, which she hadn’t. When one of the SNP lot wanted to know what deal he’d done with Sunak to get the job, he stood up and just said: “Fantastic question, well worth asking.” I cannot recall witnessing quite such magnificent disdain. Junior ministers laughed and the boss emitted at least a trace of a smile. Maybe that frown could yet be turned upside down. Labour seat of Stockton North a “shithole.” He says he said the words “shit MP”, to describe Alex Cunningham, the Member for Stockton, a denial now repeated in the Commons. Cleverly has said it is his voice saying the word “shit” in an audio clip in which the word directly after really does sound a lot like “hole” and nothing like “MP”. He got self-righteously angry about that yesterday, repeating with much studied pomposity that he “did not, would not and would never make such comments”, despite the recorded evidence appearing to not entirely agree. This kind of practice, at that dispatch box, possibly got someone in a bit of bother not that long ago. What he has not denied, though, is calling the Rwanda policy “batshit”, but now it’s his job to make the “batshit” happen. We Tom Peck Political Sketch News Teachers won’t have to use trans pupils’ preferred pronouns Steven Swinford Political Editor Aubrey Allegretti Chief Political Correspondent and would require new legislation. Badenoch also suggested that doctors must be consulted before allowing children to socially transition as part of a “clinical gateway”. However, this approach has been dropped after the Department of Health said that the NHS would not be able to provide enough doctors and clinical support to advise on whether children should be able to socially transition. The schools guidance was supposed to be published by the end of the summer term but was delayed by a dispute between ministers about how stringent it should be. A government spokesman said: “Given the complexity of the issue, we’re taking the time to make sure the guidance we provide is clear. Any degree of social transition could have significant consequences for a child, so it’s vital the right safeguards are in place. The government has been consistently clear about the importance of biological sex, and the guidance will reflect that.” There have been claims of differences of opinion between Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, and Badenoch. Keegan has emphasised the importance of trans rights and said that it would be “unreasonable” to stop children from socially transitioning, provided there is parental consent. Badenoch has repeatedly advocated a tougher approach and has called for the guidance to be “robust”. Ministers had considered putting the guidance on a statutory footing. However, Prentis said that a blanket ban would be unlawful because the Equalities Act states that gender reassignment is a “protected characteristic”, regardless of age. She gave the same advice when ministers asked if there could be a ban on social transitioning for primary school children. 6 The UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission risks being blacklisted by the United Nations after a review planned by the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions. The review follows complaints by 30 charities, including the LGBT pressure group Stonewall, about the body’s position on trans rights. suggested that it showed how seriously business was now taking the prospect of a Labour government next year. “Keir and Rachel took questions and discussed some of the current barriers to investment in the UK, including planning, grid connection, instability in the corporate tax regime and the relationship between government and industry,” a Labour spokesman said. “They set out Labour’s plans to tackle these barriers, through once-ina-generation reforms to the planning system for nationally critical infrastructure [and] tackling the challenges around grid connectivity.” Across London Sunak also delivered a sales pitch to highlight the opportunities on offer under the Conservatives. “When I say that this country can be the best place in the world to invest in to do business you should believe me because of three big competitive advantages that we have — our low tax approach, our culture of innovation, and our people,” he told the audience of about 200 executives. “The purest expression of this government’s economic philosophy is that people and businesses make far better decisions about their own money than any government could. “[By] allowing you to keep more of the return on your capital, our country becomes more competitive.” Bosses including Stephen Schwarzman from Blackstone, Amanda Blanc at Aviva, David Solomon from Goldman Sachs and Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan Chase were among those attending the gathering at Henry VIII’s palace. Before the summit, the government said £29.5 billion had been pledged by investors, triple the sum raised at the last global investment gathering in 2021. Rishi Sunak at Battersea Power Station on Sunday. Left: Labour’s meeting for business chiefs

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 13 News The idea that smartphones and social media have caused widespread damage to mental health has been challenged by a global study. A survey of two million people found no sign that the digital era had coincided with broad declines in psychological wellbeing, researchers from the University of Oxford said. Instead overall life satisfaction appeared to have been stable over the past two decades. Professor Andrew Przybylski of the Oxford Internet Institute, who oversaw the work, said: “We looked very hard for Word of year is Swift lesson in ‘authentic’ Will Pavia New York Using web to unwind ‘doesn’t harm mind’ a ‘smoking gun’ linking technology and wellbeing and we didn’t find it.” While individuals including children had been harmed by different kinds of online exploitation, there was no evidence of a broader pattern of internetfuelled misery, he said. “There’s a very widely held view, globally, that the introduction of the internet and smartphones has been bad for people of all ages, and for young people in particular — that there’s been a global mental health epidemic,” he said. “But nobody’s shown that this is the case and until now, it’s just been assumed.” The study participants, from 168 countries, were aged 15 to 89 and their mental wellbeing was tracked from 2005 to last year. There was no sign that landmark dates, such as the release of the first iPhone in 2007 or Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in 2012, heralded significant changes. There was also no sign of particular groups being more vulnerable to negative effects from pastimes such as social media or online gaming. For the average country, life satisfaction increased for females over the two decades. “There is no evidence to support popular ideas that certain groups are more at risk,” Przybylski said. The researchers looked at data on wellbeing and mental health using surveys that asked questions such as “Did you smile or laugh a lot yesterday?” and “Did you learn or do something interesting yesterday?” Participants were also asked to rate their life satisfaction. The researchers looked at how quickly people in different countries had taken up online services to try to find whether internet adoption predicted psychological wellbeing. If the internet was a cause of poor mental health, the first signs would have been seen in early-adopter countries such as South Korea, which would then be echoed in others. There was no such pattern. Professor Matti Vuorre, also of the Oxford institute, said: “We studied the most extensive data on wellbeing and internet adoption ever considered, both over time and population demographics.” Any apparent links between internet use and mental health were “small and inconsistent”, he said. However the researchers also argued that big technology companies should provide more data to allow researchers to investigate the effects of internet use. In a paper published in Clinical Psychological Science, they write: “Research on the effects of internet technologies is stalled because the data most urgently needed are collected and held behind closed doors by technology companies and online platforms.” Rhys Blakely Science Correspondent Before she launched a tour expected to be the most profitable in history, Taylor Swift described some of the anxieties that keep her up at night. In an Instagram video she said her song Anti-Hero was “a real guided tour throughout all of the things I tend to hate about myself”, adding: “I think it’s really honest.” The sight of America’s leading pop star discussing her insecurities before packed stadiums is now credited with raising searches for “authentic” and making it the word of 2023, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Lexicographers said that Swift had helped turn to the word and its meaning into a “pop-culture superpower”. They noted that the business magazine Forbes had cited the song AntiHero, in which she discusses disguising her narcissism as altruism, as offering a guide for executives who want to adopt “Swift’s authenticity” and build a workplace inspired by her Eras tour. The dictionary also reported a growth in searches for “deepfake”, denoting artificially generated or manipulated videos, often of public figures. The King’s significant year was reflected for the dictionary in searches Eye feel fine This 15ft long mosaic from the swimming pool at John Lennon’s home Kenwood in Weybridge, Surrey, is auctioned at Bonhams in Knightbridge, tomorrow for “coronation”.

14 2GM Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times News documentary and a ghostwriter to air grievances, Scobie claims. “His ineptitude surrounding the Harry and Meghan saga has effectively turned the couple into the disruptors they were feared to become in the first place,” he writes. This is echoed by a family friend: “For so long Harry had made it clear that he and Meghan simply wanted to be heard. For Harry, it was about seeking accountability and, where appropriate, apologies.” Then the Prince of Wales, “stubbornly refused to give them that”, and instead offered a “cold and brief” conversation in January 2023, according to a “friend” of Harry. “It’s complex, but there’s increasing frustration from some of the wider circle of family members that Charles won’t just fix things for the sake of everyone,” a royal source quoted in the book said. The King openly criticised his son as “that fool” after the Netflix documentary. Palace staff had their “heads in hands”: “[The show] took the wind out of everyone’s sails. Here you have the King doing his damnedest best and no one is watching,” an aide said. The decision to evict Prince Harry from Frogmore Cottage is presented as “undoubtedly” an exercise in “punishing his son”. Scobie reports from a phone call in which Harry asks his father: “Don’t you want to see your grandchildren?” Scobie continues the scene: “His silence, followed by a halfhearted declaration that they would always have ‘somewhere’ to stay didn’t, according to a source, give Harry much hope.” But the picture of the King’s handling of claims of racism in the royal family over the colour of Archie’s skin is more favourable. Charles exchanged letters with Meghan which helped an understanding to be reached that the damaging allegation would not be raised in the Netflix documentary, or in Spare. “The fact that [Charles] engaged in a conversation about it shows a lot more of a willingness to take some of these issues on than Prince William, for example, who has completely avoided talking to his brother whatsoever,” Scobie recently told The Times. kate and meghan’s media war ‘far from over’ The Duchess of Cambridge has taken to “jokingly shivering” when Meghan’s name has come up in conversation around her, Scobie claims, but there has been almost zero direct communication, bar a few short pleasantries, between the pair since late 2019. He said the relationship cannot be rebuilt with Meghan or Harry, with whom she was close. “To her there is no way she could ever trust them after all their interviews,” a source told Scobie. The book also alleges that the Waleses allowed their staff to circulate negative rumours about the Sussexes, claiming that the “media war” was far from over. Kate “wasn’t a fan” of Meghan from the start, Scobie reports, including a quote from a source who said the Duchess of Cambridge “can be cold if she doesn’t like someone”. Kate “watched in silence as the Palace refused to set the record straight” after she made Meghan cry “even though it was the other way around”. Kate is presented as an animatronic princess with a cold, calculating edge. Scobie reported that she has “quietly gone through” five private secretaries in six years, saying this is not reported in the press. But describing the Princess of Wales as an “institutional dream come true”, Scobie wrote that Kate has “successfully sublimated her authentic self, becoming an enigma to the public and perhaps even herself. “Unimpeachable, relatable Kate was also now an inscrutable queen in training — an institutional dream come true.” Separately, the book King Charles’s accession to the throne has “heightened” a tussle for the spotlight with his son, according to claims in an inflammatory new book about the royals. Omid Scobie, who made his name writing a highly sympathetic story of the Sussexes’ rise and fall, has now returned with a 400-page tell-all on the rest of the family, presenting it as debilitatingly out of touch. Prince William has made attempts to upstage his father in a move to “establish himself as his own man” before he becomes King, and because he sees his father’s reign as “transitional”, the book, called Endgame, claimed. William gave a large set-piece interview to The Sunday Times, which was published the day after the King’s first Trooping the Colour parade, “essentially wiping any coverage of the special moment off the front page”, Scobie reported, adding that a Palace aide remarked that “nothing is ever a coincidence”. Scobie also reported that William was frustrated that his own image was affected by his father’s missteps. “Kensington Palace sources say William is keen to ensure his own image is no longer impacted by ‘poor decisions’ made by others,” he wrote. Scobie claimed William led the efforts inside the royal family to remove Prince Andrew, once allegations against him emerged. A source said: “William doesn’t think his father is competent enough, quite frankly. Though they share passions and interest, their style of leadership is completely different.” The late Queen, Scobie said, could not face sacking Andrew because “she has always believed his innocence”, a former aide claimed. The Prince of Wales unilaterally distanced himself from his godmother, Lady Susan Hussey, after she repeatedly asked Ngozi Fulani, a black British charity boss, where she was really from. But William’s “fury” led Buckingham Palace to privately rail against the “rash … knee-jerk response”, and accuse the younger royal of failing to think as a team. “This father-son relationship was beginning to bristle with tension and one-upmanship,” Scobie claimed. William ignored the King’s desire to be involved in his environmental project, the Earthshot prize. “He had hoped that William would want to involve his father or at least credit him for inspiring him to take on this role, but instead it was as if [Charles’s environmentalism] didn’t even exist,” a Clarence House source told Scobie at the time. This rivalry meant Charles “derived some schadenfreude” from his son’s missteps and public humiliation on the disastrous 2022 tour to the Caribbean, it Endgame claims Harry’s texts to William at the time of the Queen’s death were ignored. It also claims attempts were made News Royal family Relative rivalries and race rows is claimed. William and Kate had been accused of being tone deaf, out of touch, and unable to engage on the thorny issue of full independence and calls for slavery reparations. The death throes of the tour itself “left a mark” on Charles, as William’s team briefed journalists on the plane home, perhaps in a move to temper the bad news from the trip, that the “never complain, never explain” motto should be ditched. The King’s camp thought comments about the family’s broad strategy ought to be reserved for a monarch, or at least someone who was a little closer to ascending to the throne. william believes harry has been brainwashed by therapists There were further revelations about the rift between Prince Harry and William, who is said to believe that his brother has been brainwashed by an “army of therapists”. In fact, William says he no longer even recognises his own brother, a source told Scobie. William believed Harry and Meghan “blindsided the family, even the Queen, with their public complaints and their ‘oh so California’ self-importance”, he wrote. Harry was said to have found out that the Queen had died from BBC News after his brother ignored his text messages. In her final hours on September 8, 2022, Harry rushed to join the family but when he failed to get through to his brother, he chartered a flight alone from Luton to Aberdeen for £30,000. He landed after his grandmother’s death. The new King’s press team briefed journalists that he had told his son personally but this was just to “save face”. A statement was published to the world despite the Duke of Sussex’s request it be held back. “Harry was crushed,” a friend of the duke said. “His relationship with the Queen was everything to him. She would have wanted him to know before it went out to the world. They could have waited just a little longer ... but no one respected that at all.” Meghan was also frozen out of the historic moment, Scobie claims. Charles had cited “protocol” when he told Harry that she should stay at Frogmore, in Windsor, as Kate was staying at home. “The reality was that Catherine chose to stay back to pick up the children from their first day at a new school,” Scobie wrote. He quotes a Palace aide who said: “They just didn’t want Meghan there.” The book contained further evidence of the depth of Harry’s rift with his brother. Shortly after the release of Harry’s memoir, Spare, he was said to have enlisted a mutual friend to try to arrange a conversation with William. It got nowhere. In Endgame Scobie quotes Harry talking to a friend: “I’m ready to move on past it. Whether we get an apology or accountability, who knows? Who really cares at this point?” the king’s ‘ineptitude’ in dealing with harry It was Charles’s stubbornness that led his son to turn to a Netflix The latest book by the Sussexes’ biographer Omid Scobie takes aim at ‘out-of-touch’ royals, Tom Witherow reports Omid Scobie says that the royal family is in “endgame”

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 2GM V2 15 News Princess” and “race baiter” on Twitter/ X in 2021 after she had spoken out about feeling suicidal, Camilla “quietly thanked him for defending the Firm”. Prince Edward gets a mention as someone who refuses to have physical contact with the public, or the “great unwashed” as Scobie jokingly calls them. “He’s a massive germaphobe,” a royal source said. He and his wife, the Duchess of Edinburgh, get tough treatment from Scobie, who says they are not big enough media players to fill the boots of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. “When the couple was dispatched to the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, and the Bahamas in February 2023, the only outlets who covered their movements in the first few days were the Cayman Compass and Cayman News Service,” he wrote. scobie’s missiles at the firm Chapter after chapter contains new attacks on the royal family as an institution to support his “endgame” thesis. One typical passage reads: “Hailing from an incredibly shrinking, old-fashioned world of land barons, polo fields, and posh formality, the royal family is finding it is debilitatingly out of touch, even expendable, with an increasing percentage of the public.” Another said an interview misstep, in which the Duchess of Edinburgh joked “Oprah who?” was a “miscue” which “could be used to prove that the institution is an anachronistic, intolerant organisation steeped in bigotry and privilege”. “The monarchy is now running out of meaningful words,” he concludes in his final chapter. “In the story of Beckett’s stubborn old diehard Hamm, he eventually admits he’s out of moves”. appears to suggest that Kate, lacking in originality, has previously sought to emulate Meghan. He notes that her Hold Still lockdown photo project is “reminiscent” of Meghan’s 2018 Together cookbook, a project she did with survivors of the Grenfell fire. Scobie branded William and Kate’s 2019 holiday to Balmoral Castle a “showy publicity stunt” after they were praised for booking a £73-a-head Flybe flight from Norwich to Aberdeen — in contrast to Harry and Meghan’s four chartered private flights in 11 days. william the hotheaded ‘company man’ Scobie cast the future King as “a petulant, grudging brother” who is “so consumed by Harry’s decisions”. Scobie claims fortieth birthday interviews, which William’s friends used to share the belief that Harry has been “sucked into an alien world [in California] and there’s f*** all [William] can do about it”, confirmed William’s metamorphosis into what some have described as a hotheaded “company man”. That is, Scobie continued, “an institutional champion who’s privately embraced the draconian tactics of an antiquated and often vicious institution, and an heir increasingly comfortable with the Palace’s dirty tricks and the courtiers who dream them up”. camilla rails against ‘lefty nonsense’ Behind closed doors, Camilla “usually rolls her eyes” when topics such as gender identity, unconscious racial bias, and veganism are raised, Scobie writes. “It’s all ‘lefty nonsense’ to her,” a former aide said. “Even gluten-free or dairyfree options on a restaurant menu irk her.” Scobie claims, too, that when Piers Morgan called Meghan “Pinocchio to upstage the King by William, who outraged staff by distancing himself from Lady Susan Hussey, below. Kate is said to “shudder” when Meghan is mentioned News in portrait of a fractured Firm outside Buckingham Palace who had come to pay their condolences. “It’s not a stretch to suggest that this moment was orchestrated and planned by Charles and his team years ago,” he writes and it’s true, it isn’t a stretch, but it’s also boring. The book is full of this sort of thing. A chapter called Shaky Ground could more aptly be named welltravelled ground. We already know all we need to know about Charles’s black spider memos and, while it’s possible that he declined an invitation to fly to California for Lilibet’s christening because he is a heartless monster, it could also be because it was a few weeks before his coronation. This is basically Finding Freedom: the Sequel. It’s not so much an incisive look at why he thinks the monarchy is doomed, more a mishmash of ancient history, ageing stories and a bit of new stuff, some of it interesting. The monarchy might face questions about its future, but Scobie doesn’t have many answers. Mostly, he offers random thoughts, wild generalisations and scoresettling. It’s a shame, because the royal family obviously isn’t perfect. Its members are, I expect, as fallible, ruthless and occasionally unkind as anyone else. Harry and Meghan, for example. There are valid conversations to be had about the royal family’s connections to and profit from slavery, and about racism in Britain today. But it doesn’t help anyone to “prove” your point by stating “the mawkish Union Jack and St George’s Cross flag-waving often conjures up a yearning for the golden age of empire”. Oh, please. Writing about a 2019 EU report which found Britain to be the least racist place in Europe, Scobie writes “but being the ‘least’ racist country doesn’t mean there isn’t racism”. Well of course it doesn’t! He gets variously het-up about canals because they transported goods cultivated by enslaved people, and the Koh-i-Noor. “Looted wealth is visible everywhere,” he writes glibly, although the Koh-i-Noor has been looted more times from more places than I’ve had hot dinners. “Charles and Camilla ventured to Wrexham to celebrate the village achieving city status” is, thrillingly, both boring and wrong. Wrexham was a town. Few would argue that Harry and Meghan were a sad loss to the monarchy, but off they went and here we are. Stating that William is “disappointed by Harry’s lifestyle decisions” could mean anything from his wife to his chickens, so what’s the point? H&M’s eviction from Frogmore may well speak of “bitterness and recrimination”, but one man’s bitterness and recrimination is another man’s righteous revenge for being trashed on Oprah. Any insights are only found if you survive chapters which begin like this: “Resting in the rugged but fertile valleys that stretch between Crete’s majestic Mount Psiloritis and the towers of sunbleached limestone that make up Mount Spathi, the Lyrarakis Winery is a family-owned business best known for its first-rate wine and commitment to sustainability and environmental stewardship.” The existence and future of the monarchy is a debate like any other, worth having as long as we disagree agreeably. Scobie doesn’t debate, he berates. And by the way, the sweater came from M&S and he got to the TV studio on the Tube. That’s £22 I’ve just saved you. Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy’s Fight for Survival is published by HQ, HarperCollins, £22 S ay what you will about Omid Scobie, the man writes a killer intro. Finding Freedom, his last book about the royals, started with a bang — luggage arriving at a house in Canada — and moved breathlessly on to talk of square footage and wardrobe space. The new one, Endgame, starts with him buying a black sweater, followed by how he got to a TV studio in Hammersmith. By page six of a book about the royal family’s supposed fight for survival, we feel the full force of his argument. “Everyone already knows that King Charles might have preferred a life as Queen Camilla’s tampon.” Only 363 pages of pofaced prose still to come. Scobie spends quite a bit of the prologue bigging himself up as a serious and well-connected royal reporter. He writes breathlessly that a “long serving member of the Queen’s most trusted If they face questions about their future, this doesn’t have answers staff” told him “Charles may be the next king, but William is “the future”, and hopefully he was sitting down for that scoop. If you can read the following without laughing, you’re better than me. “The rot has set in and it’s eating away at the monarchy’s undergirding.” Undergirding? As you’d expect, the Poor Harry and Meghan stuff is there from the get-go in all its vaguely defamatory glory. The “institutional cruelty” they experienced at the hands of the palace, the misogyny and racism wilfully ignored or hushed up, but no mention of the report into Meghan’s alleged bullying commissioned by the Palace and also hushed up. It never cuts both ways, there are no shades of grey, only good guys and bad guys. And so to Queen Elizabeth’s last days at Balmoral. The castle is, we learn, “in any season a beautiful place”, boasting a “stunning view” of some “sublime peaks”. “Nobody,” he writes, “knew in advance that it would be the final weekend of her life”, showing an admirable grasp of how death works. He writes how, after her death, Charles chatted to members of the public Hilary Rose Review

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 17 News A housing association worker, a solicitor and a social worker are among council workers caught exploiting work-from-home policies to work for multiple councils at the same time. Nneamaka Ijeh-Nwankwo was banned from practising social work after she was found to be working fulltime from home for both Hampshire county council and Southend-on-Sea borough council in 2021. She was discovered after she was overheard by her manager answering a call for a different council while on a remote team meeting. Nwankwo had forgotten to mute her microphone, allowing her Hampshire council manager to overhear her answer a phone call saying: “Hi this is Nneamaka, you’re through to Southend children’s services.” A housing association employee, who worked at Kensington and Chelsea council, was caught using her sick leave to work at another council after her co-workers discovered her second work email address. She was able to get away with working both full-time jobs because both were fully working from home, which let her split her time between the two jobs while claiming full pay for both. A solicitor, who worked for the same council both in the office and from home, was discovered after they were spotted in the office by someone from the other public sector organisation It pays to WFH for some council staff. . . Tom Saunders that the lawyer was moonlighting for. The borough, in its annual anti-fraud report for 2022, described “moonlighting” as a “new and emerging fraud type” in large part created by the pandemic “when it normalised working from home and hybrid working”. Following reports of “moonlighting” across a number of councils — including Haringey, Wakefield, Enfield, Hammersmith & Fulham, and Kensington and Chelsea — the National Fraud Initiative (NFI), a government fraud watchdog, has launched a new pilot programme in collaboration with London councils to examine what it calls “multiple contract working”. Anti-fraud officials from every London borough are represented in the group, which is chaired by Chris Keesing, the City of London’s counterfraud and investigations manager. At Hammersmith and Fulham, two employees were identified as working two jobs simultaneously. The council’s 2022 annual fraud report said that the pandemic and the rise of working from home had led to “new types of risks when during a cost-of-living crisis, a second income becomes very alluring”. “Moonlighting” only becomes time theft or fraud when someone knowingly collects two full-time salaries despite splitting their hours between two jobs. A Hampshire county council spokesperson said: “The county council takes any incidents of misconduct very seriously, and these remain extremely rare.” TMS [email protected] | @timesdiary Rain pours in on prize losers The Booker prize is a brutal business. While Paul Lynch gained a £50,000 cheque for Prophet Song, his victory sent his fellow nominees Paul Harding and Paul Murray back to literally broken homes. They told a Diary elf before the ceremony that they could really use the prize money as both of their houses were falling apart. The cash would have covered Harding’s roof repairs, while Murray was even more in need. “There are so many things wrong with my house that it would take ten or eleven Bookers to fix,” he said. Many Booker winners use the money for the home. Kingsley Amis said he would spend it on curtains. That was if he had anything left after buying booze. Margaret Thatcher wasn’t for turning, but she was for grovelling. The royal biographer Gyles Brandreth told an event for The Oldie that Mrs T’s curtsies were deep enough to alarm the Queen’s equerries. When she arrived to become PM, Mrs T was told she could genuflect but that HMQ wouldn’t stand on ceremony. “Of course I’m planning to curtsy to the Queen!” Thatcher replied. “I’ve been practising.” So they entered and Thatcher produced a floor-level stoop. “She went right down to the ground,” Brandreth said. “Where she stayed.” The equerry’s attempts to lift her up proved insufficient so, in that audience, the Queen had to elevate Thatcher’s position not once but twice. matrimonial expenses Gossip-mongers can have a heart. Gideon Haigh’s new book on An Edwardian Cricket Murder has a story about Horatio Bottomley, the MP, fraudster and editor of the tabloid magazine John Bull, who despite his failings was given to generosity. Upon hearing that his favourite railway attendant had been imprisoned he said: “Why we must send money to his wife at once.” Informed that the charge was bigamy, Bottomley replied: “Well, we must send money to both of his wives.” dodgy ira ticker While negotiating the Good Friday agreement, Tony Blair’s adviser Jonathan Powell received a concerning offer. A fellow negotiator said he’d get a friend to fix Powell’s wristwatch, which would have been a charming gesture had it not come from Martin McGuinness. Powell was not surprised that the IRA man knew someone who was handy with a timer, but felt he had to accept this risky offer. “It was all about building trust,” he told a Law Society dinner. When Powell got it back, the watch ominously stopped ticking but he was not at risk. The hand of history may have been on their shoulders, but the hand of Powell’s watch had fallen off. Ridley Scott’s Napoleon has taken many liberties with the character of the Empress Joséphine, above, and yet it didn’t dwell on her unlikeliest role as an influence for the American humorist Mark Twain. A letter of Joséphine’s is going on sale with RR Auctions, in which she dismisses rumours of bankruptcy after furnishing her home, the Château de Malmaison, after her divorce. In it she writes the not quite immortal line: “Rumours of my debts have been greatly exaggerated.” jack blackburn

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 2GM 19 News Keeping your thigh muscles strong with regular squats and lunges can prevent you needing a knee replacement in old age, research shows. A study looked at adults with knee osteoarthritis, whichaffects five million people in the UK. It found that people who performed exercise that strengthened their quads — the quadriceps muscles on the front of the thighs — were less likely to need knee replacement surgery. The study, presented at the Radiological Society of North America conference, looked at 134 patients with knee arthritis. Half needed total knee replacements, and the researchers analysed scans showing how strong the participants’ leg muscles were over the four years before their surgery. Having strong quads was found to be the most important factor in reducing the risk of needing the operation, and more important than having strong hamstrings, the muscles on the back of the legs. Dr Upadhyay Bharadwaj, of the University of California, the author of the study, said the research was the first to demonstrate the importance of the reCome on down to save knees from surgeon’s knife Eleanor Hayward Health Correspondent lationship between the quads and the hamstrings in determining the risk of knee complications. “The two muscle groups act as counter forces, and the balance between them enables a wide range of activities while protecting the knee joint,” she said. “Our study shows that in addition to strong muscles individually, larger [quadriceps] muscle groups, relative to hamstring muscle groups, are significantly associated with lower odds of total knee replacement surgery in two to four years.” The study suggested that keeping the quads strong relative to the hamstrings was more important than simply having strong leg muscles overall. Bharadwaj said: “Although we presume that overall muscle volume is important as a surrogate marker for muscle strength, the ratio — hence the balance — between quad and hamstring muscles may be more important and significantly associated with lower odds of total knee replacement. “While these results are essential for targeted therapy in a population at risk for osteoarthritis, even the general public can benefit from our results to preventively incorporate appropriate strengthening exercises.” Knee osteoarthritis typically affects over-45s and gets worse with age, causing joint pain and stiffness. Half of those with the condition go on to require a knee replacement, which is one of the most common operations in the UK, with about 120,000 performed each year. Exercises such as step-ups, squats and lunges, which can be easily done at home, help to build strength that in turn can reduce stress on the knee joint and improve the stability of kneecaps, which can stop arthritis progressing. For step-ups, step on to an elevated surface such as a step or bench, one leg at a time. Place your right foot on top of the step, then push through your right leg to lift your body up, before lowering, and switching to your left leg. Try to repeat for a few minutes at a time. To lunge, stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Step forwards with one leg into a long stride. Keep your posture upright and lower your back knee down close to the ground. Drive up through your front leg to return to standing. Repeat with the other leg. For squats, stand with your feet about hip width apart. Lower your bottom towards the floor, bending from the hips while keeping your back straight, then push back up to the starting position. Try to repeat ten times. Once you get more proficient, you can add weights. How to do squats Feet shoulder-width apart, lower yourself bending from the hips while keeping your back straight. Push back up to the starting position and repeat Can be done with weights Ten reps are ideal Quadriceps muscle I N T H E T I M E S T O M O R R O W DAVID SMITH Boom in the USA MAIN PAPER BUSINESS TIMES2 SPORT FROM THE TRENCHES TO GAY CLUBS 1917 actor George MacKay on his new role PULLOUT CHAMPIONS LEAGUE Can Arsenal seal their place in the knockout round? MAIN PAPER

20 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times News A lack of trust and communication among government ministers and mayors cost lives during the pandemic, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry heard yesterday. Giving evidence, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said he was frequently “kept in the dark” and had requests to attend Cobra meetings from early 2020 refused. Liverpool’s mayor, Steve Rotheram, said he had required 24-hour police protection because of threats he received after Boris Johnson reneged on an agreement to work together to announce that the area would be placed under Tier 3 pandemic restrictions. And Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, said he had felt forced to raise problems through the media, and categorised ministers’ approach to devolved areas as “divide and rule”. Khan said it was “unusual” that his requests for information in the early stages of the pandemic were not granted, compared with those made during other emergencies under different administrations. His team were briefing him based on “open-source” information such as news articles, he said. The London mayor said he believed lives could have been saved if he’d been invited to Cobra. “If the government under different prime ministers can trust us on issues to do with terrorism, counterterrorism, and other issues, you’d think they’d be able to trust us Mayors kept in the dark on Covid rules when it comes to issues to do with a civil emergency, a crisis like the pandemic,” he said. Khan added that “not being trusted” meant he had been unable to “give the advice from the coalface that may have made a difference”. When he was invited to a Cobra meeting on March 16 and was told details of the situation in London, he “felt almost winded”. Khan said: “I was alarmed by what I was being told in relation to where we were and where we may go to. I will never forget that sort of feeling of lack of power, lack of influence, not knowing what was happening in our city.” Burnham said he was “astonished” by how centralised the government response was, and that the announcement of restrictions for Greater Manchester meant “all hell broke loose”. He said Matt Hancock, the health secretary, had given him only an hour’s notice to discuss the imposition of local restrictions with council leaders. The mayor accused the government of discussing a “punishment beating for Greater Manchester” after an argument over the level of financial support for people unable to work. He read from a minute of a meeting of a government committee that said: “Lancashire should have a lighter set of measures imposed than Greater Manchester since they had shown a greater willingness to co-operate.” Kat Lay Health Editor November turns nasty Commuters around Killhope, County Durham, faced their first snow showers of the year while there

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 21 News The production company behind Britain’s Got Talent has apologised and reached an “amicable resolution” with David Walliams after a recording was leaked of the star making insulting remarks about contestants. Walliams, 52, lodged papers in the High Court in September seeking up to £10 million in damages from Fremantle for misuse of his private information and breaching data protection laws. He is understood to have received significantly less than his initial request. According to the documents, Walliams believed Fremantle retained transcripts of “everything he said” during his time as a judge on the show, claiming its producers had to be the ultimate Walliams agrees deal over Britain’s Got Talent leak source of the transcripts that were leaked. Walliams said he had assumed he was being recorded only when contestants were on stage or during behind-the-scenes filming and alleged that private conversations, including him talking about his struggles with food addiction, his father’s death and his wife leaving him, could have been recorded. The comedian and children’s author left ITV’s talent contest last year after apologising for making “disrespectful comments” about contestants during filming breaks in January 2020 at the London Palladium. In the remarks, published by The Guardian in November 2022, he was recorded calling a pensioner a “c***” and saying that another woman “is like the slightly boring girl you meet in the pub that thinks you want to f*** them, but you don’t”. A Fremantle spokeswoman said an “amicable resolution” had been reached. “We are sincerely sorry that his private conversations when a judge on Britain’s Got Talent were published,” she said. Walliams, who was replaced by Bruno Tonioli, has previously apologised for the comments. Alex Farber Media Correspondent were bigger falls near the Lecht ski centre in the Cairngorms. Forecast, page 55 Prodigy tones down chorus 26 years on The Prodigy have changed the lyrics of Smack My Bitch Up 26 years after the single’s release. The dance music act confirmed the recurrent line, which has been heavily criticised by domestic violence charities and music artists since 1997, has been replaced with “change my pitch up” for the “past few shows”. Maxim, which featured portrayals of drug use and violence. The band defended the track at the time, arguing it was reflective of hip-hop “B-boy”, or breakdancing, culture. In 2010 the track was voted the most controversial song of all time in a poll conducted by the Performing Right Society. A representative for Maxim told The Times that the band had changed the lyrics “over the past few shows”. who became the band’s lead vocalist after the death of Keith Flint in 2019, was filmed singing the new lyrics last weekend at Alexandra Palace in London, which was the most recent stop in their European tour. The track, taken from The Prodigy’s album The Fat of the Land, faced an onslaught of criticism when it was released for repeating the phrase “smack my bitch up” and for its music video, Shayma Bakht, Constance Kampfner David Walliams had sought up to £10 million in damages

22 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times News christmas appeal Richard Assheton Catch and pass: the work of a ball boy. Catch the ball, or pick it up, and pass it on. That is what Henry Muyanja learnt to do as a youngster on the tennis courts of Kampala. Out of school and momentarily free from the slum where he lived with his family of 12, he threw himself into his new vocation. “There were football pitches but also a sports complex around the corner,” said the country director of Londonbased Street Child, one of the world’s fastest-growing children’s charities. “We noticed you could come here and catch some balls for expats and then you would get paid. “You could take some money back for your parents. Of course, at a young age, it was quite exciting.” Muyanja is now lifting tens of thousands of children out of poverty, after his own higher education was funded by a precursor to Street Child. From his first moment on the court the boy from Naguru slum, then Uganda’s largest, caught every opportunity life threw at him. He made friends with a German tennis-playing academic living in KamSlum’s success story helps others to escape pala, Professor Thomas Walter, and his son Max, who was three years younger than Muyanja. “I had my first pizza at their house,” he said. “I was about 15 years old. And even the first cinema I went to, where they paid about two dollars to make me watch a movie.” Two dollars in Naguru, he said, would give you tickets to the movie hall for a year. In time, Muyanja picked up a racquet himself, playing with the Walter family, other expats and wealthy Ugandans who liked to blow off steam in the heat of the Lugogo sports complex. He played cricket, hockey and volleyball and he boxed. But his main love was tennis. Muyanja had by now spent two years out of school, either sneaking into classrooms and being thrown out for not paying fees or scratching an education by borrowing others’ notes. He watched as peers began to fall into drugs, alcohol and crime. “Even when I dropped I made sure I didn’t repeat,” he said. “I didn’t go back to those classes, I just kept on going forward.” But he needed a hand. Walter paid for him to go back to school for two terms. Noticing his talent on the court, Uganda’s tennis association paid for another term. Still, he needed something permanent. When he was 17, a small education charity agreed to fund Muyanja’s senior school education. That was all he needed to pass his exams and win a scholarship as a tennis player to Uganda Christian University, outside Kampala, to study business computing. A trustee of the education charity agreed to pay his fees. To play tennis, he travelled to Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi and even Thailand, competing with students from around the world. He met “networks, influential government people, also top expats who were playing tennis”. Before he even graduated he secured a job at the Bank of Uganda, in the domestic markets department. Next he went to work for Uganda’s former minister of IT, who had set up a consultancy, taking seven of his former classmates with him. One day in 2010, the education charity that had provided him with his lifeline came knocking. They were expanding their reach, and needed someone with local knowledge. Would he come and work with them? Muyanja’s time had come not to catch, but pass. “It felt like it was the best way of giving back,” he said. “But also transforming some of the other peers of my community, or children from just the same background as me.” The charity was supporting about 140 children, from Naguru and other slums. “I knew each and every one” of the Naguru children, he said. He helped the charity grow to support 200 children a year, while Primary schoolboys in Uganda, one of Street Child’s biggest operations. Far left: a

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 23 News firming up its governance structures. The trust started to make sure children went to quality schools, often boarding so they would be free from the distractions of home, where families could not afford to give them three meals a day. Then, in 2018, Street Child stepped in to take over the work of a local children’s charity. Muyanja joined as programmes manager for the humanitarian sector, as the charity helped young Henry Muyanja with his brother To donate Call 0151 284 2336, go to thetimes.co.uk/ christmasappeal or use the QR code below Calls are charged at normal landline rate. Charges from other networks may vary. Donations will be administered by the Charities Trust on behalf of the chosen charities. Donations may be refunded only in exceptional circumstances. Ts&Cs apply last year they had their first son, Jason. Max Walter remains one of his best friends. Muyanja has never forgotten how it all began. “Have you watched the Queen of Katwe movie?” he said. The Disney film tells how chess enabled the Ugandan player Phiona Mutesi to escape her childhood in another Kampala slum. “That’s our story.” Just swap the knights and rooks for little yellow balls. 6 Every pound donated to Street Child by readers of The Times and The Sunday Times will be doubled up to £225,000. Of this matched funding, £150,000 will be provided by From Babies with Love, the gift brand that donates 100 per cent of profits to vulnerable children, and generous donations from Boodles, a luxury and fine diamond retailer, and an anonymous donor. Graduates in professional roles have seen their pay fall fastest relative to inflation, a report has found. Analysis of the graduate outcomes survey, which polls graduates 15 months after leaving university, finds those working in professional and managerial roles have seen the largest slump in pay compared with 2015, while those in lower-skilled jobs fared better. The study used earnings data indexed to 2015 retail prices to assess the impact of inflation on pay. When they were surveyed in 2019, those from the 2017-18 academic year were earning, on average, £25,095 per year, adjusted for inflation compared with 2015. Three years later in 2022, graduates from the 2020-21 academic year were earning only £24,647 in terms of 2015 prices. This represents a fall in real earnings of nearly 2 per cent. Students from the 2020-21 academic year with occupations classified as ‘managers, directors and senior officials’ saw a 5 per cent decline in real earnings compared with graduates from 2019-20 in the same roles. For graduates working in lowerskilled occupations, however, real earnings have remained stable or even increased slightly, with 2020-21 graduates working in “caring, leisure and other service occupations” seeing a 1 per cent increase in real earnings and graduates working in “elementary ocInflation hit graduate professionals hardest cupations” seeing a 5 per cent increase. The impact on graduates in professional roles is thought in part to be due to flat pay in the NHS, where large numbers of skilled graduates work. Pay growth has been strongest in industries where the fewest graduates are employed, the report noted. Lucy Van Essen-Fishman, one of the co-authors of the study, said: “Our findings based on the graduate outcomes survey appear to mirror what we see in salary data collected from employers. “That is, wage growth in recent years has been slowest in managerial or professional roles. Consequently, recent graduates working in these occupations have seen a fall in their spending power, as pay rises have not kept pace with higher living costs.” Salaries in many sectors which employ high numbers of graduates are flat or falling, while opportunities for new university leavers have declined overall, a separate study by Reed Recruitment found earlier this year. This summer, the number of positions available and marked suitable for graduates sat at about 40 per cent below 2018 levels, and had declined over two years — though were marginally improved from the middle of the pandemic. This is despite workforce shortages, something that has been attributed to a mismatch between the skills graduates arrive in the workplace with and the skills businesses need. Emma Yeomans those fleeing strife across the region — Uganda is Africa’s largest recipient of refugees, with 1.5 million currently in the country. He rose through the ranks before reaching the top job. Now 36, his work has touched the lives of just shy of 80,000 children and 20,000 adults via local partners. Founded in 2008, Street Child has supported more than a million deprived children around the world. In Uganda it provides scholarships but also mental health support, child protection, school refurbishments and education classes for adults, among other things. Muyanja runs a team of about 18 staff and co-ordinates nine local charities. Uganda is one of Street Child’s largest operations. Beneficiaries of the charity are now running successful businesses, or working for big companies and international NGOs, and have taken their families out of the slums as Muyanja once did. One, Henry Tebandeke, 20, won a scholarship to the American University of India to study law and business management. “I don’t take credit for myself because it’s the entire team,” Muyanja said. Tennis has taken a backseat. “I tell my wife that tennis used to be part of me,” he said. “I wouldn’t sleep without playing. Now I play maybe [once every] two weeks, because I’m so busy with work and family.” He met Audrey, his wife, in 2019, and Henry Muyanja runs a team of about 18 staff and co-ordinates nine local charities

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 25 News A baby born via an emergency caesarean section in a hospital reception area died after midwives relying on phone assessments had dismissed her mother’s massive internal bleeding as a panic attack. A report found the team at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton had repeatedly missed signs that Katie Fowler, mother of Abigail Miller, was in danger during labour. Abigail died two days after she was delivered as Fowler went into cardiac arrest. Midwives, who spoke to Fowler only over the phone, had twice missed chances earlier that day to bring her in for assessment and had failed to call an emergency ambulance when her condition deteriorated, an independent investigation revealed. Last week an inquest found that Abigail would have survived if her mother had been called into hospital sooner. Now Fowler, 37, and her husband Rob Miller, 39, have joined other bereaved families in calling for a statutory inquiry into England’s maternity serher parents’ arms later that day at just 48 hours old. “That night I was torn in two directions. My wife and my daughter were both so unwell in different parts of the hospital, there was a big question mark over whether either of them would survive,” Miller said. Fowler said: “We were badly let down. We could have been spared this trauma.” In June 2022 a report by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (now renamed the Health Service Safety InFowler had massive internal bleeding caused by a rare birth complication in which the womb tears. The blood loss caused her heart to stop as their taxi pulled up outside the hospital. Doctors from other departments rushed to save Fowler by performing emergency surgery in a lobby. Fowler survived after spending two days in a coma in intensive care and was able to meet her daughter. But despite the best efforts of staff, Abigail died in Baby died after warning signs missed vices. They say the errors that contributed to their daughter’s death included staff not having had time to do the right training or to manage calls correctly. “The midwives who were in charge of our care were under extreme pressure, they were very stretched that night,” Miller said. “We have come to realise this wasn’t about individual mistakes but about systemic problems.” The Times reported yesterday that the police were investigating 105 cases of suspected medical negligence in surgical departments at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, amid claims of a cover-up. The couple had phoned the maternity unit four times on January 21 last year after Fowler went into labour on her due date, including two calls reporting blood loss. But their concerns were dismissed and they were told to remain at home until after their fourth call at 7pm. Miller said that his wife had gone pale with blue lips and was struggling to breathe, but instead of calling a ambulance, midwives agreed it was probably a “panic attack” and told the couple to make their own way to hospital. In fact, vestigations Body) said that the maternity unit could not have diagnosed the rare complication over the phone, had missed two chances to bring Fowler in earlier that day and had failed to make an urgent 999 call when her condition deteriorated. The report added that a telephone advice line “is not designed to provide a diagnosis”. It said that if Fowler had been in an ambulance at the time of her cardiac arrest, paramedics could have intervened, which may have affected “the outcome for the mother and the baby”. University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trusts said it had improved staffing levels and staff training and had increased the monitoring and review of its telephone triage service. Emma Chambers, its director of midwifery, said: “We extend our deepest condolences to Ms Fowler and Mr Miller and their wider families. We understand the loss of their daughter has been absolutely heartbreaking . . . Since the death of Abigail we have made several improvements to the way we triage our mums, and we are monitoring how effective these changes are very closely.” Rosie Taylor Katie Fowler with daughter Abigail and, below, her husband, Rob Miller Double act dissect showbiz in sharp, sarcastic style Podcast James Marriott Marina Hyde and Richard Osman are witty and informed on what’s going on behind the scenes The Rest is Entertainment HHHHH Marina Hyde and Richard Osman are the latest recruits to Gary Lineker’s empire of The Rest Is … podcasts. We’ve had The Rest Is … History, Politics, Football and Money. Now The Rest Is Entertainment tackles “showbiz, gossip, music [and] celebrity scandal”, which sounds a bit broad and unfocused. I wondered if the subject matter was a bit fluffy to sustain 45 minutes of conversation. In lesser hands, perhaps it would have been. But Hyde (a Guardian columnist) and Osman (an author and former copresenter on Pointless) are superb. The tone is insidery, sarcastic and sceptical. Our hosts are smart people who know a lot about how showbusiness works and why it matters. The first episode begins with a discussion of Nigel Farage’s appearance on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!. Hyde is hilarious on Farage as a man “with absolutely no hinterland”. She says if he were ever to listen to any music, it would be “on a CD that came free with The Sunday Times in about 2001” (I’m sure she intends no offence to our sister paper). They’re particularly good on the behind-the-scenes stuff: why is Farage doing a game show? Why do ITV want him? What is his strategy? Osman speculates that Farage’s £1.5 million fee for the show might have been because the other celebrities were relatively cheap and the producers had “money left over”. Hyde drops in the juicy information that the makers of I’m a Celebrity “were in talks with Boris Johnson … he got quite far down the line, I think”. She has that rare capacity to make the apparently banal seem urgent and interesting. I did not think I would find myself so fascinated by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s lavish Vogue photoshoot. Hyde talks about celebrities with a usefully un-awed sarcasm, as if they’re annoying work colleagues. She says she is sure Lauren would have “loved” the Vogue shoot and is funny about Bezos’s chronic attentionseeking and his obsession with the Oscars and the Golden Globes. Osman comes into his own when discussing Netflix’s new reality show Squid Game: The Challenge, a spin-off from the popular TV series. It’s quite something to hear the star of Pointless casually announce that “game shows are dying”. He points out that the reality shows made by Studio Lambert generally succeed because the people there “spend so long on the casting”. He’s also funny on why you should never explain the rules of a TV game show to the audience: “half of the people understand what’s going on and you don’t need to explain it to them. The other half haven’t worked out what’s going on and the more you explain it to them the less they understand”. Being intelligent about showbiz is usually a fast route to pretension. Instead of tendentious theorising about Freudian interpretations of Celebrity Big Brother or wondering what Springwatch “says about modern society” (or whatever), this is a practical, funny and well-informed guide to a mad and fascinating industry.

This was a marvellous march, Pret sarnies or not Giles Coren Page 28 searching, competitive media, with the content of real newspapers still carrying substantial influence. Lord Johnson seemed to suggest that this mattered less than it used to, saying “most of us today don’t buy a physical newspaper or necessarily go to a traditional news source”. But over the next few years it is going to matter more. Misinformation is becoming rife. Social media, with its selective and addictive news feeds, is poisoning politics the world over. Whether our newspapers are in physical or digital form is irrelevant, but their freedom and existence will be more essential than ever. Far from being a quaint or out-ofdate concern, this is a rising issue of the future. In recent months, ministers have shown a welcome determination to resist encroachments on media freedom. The new Economic Crime Act will make it much harder for wealthy individuals to silence critics on bogus defamation grounds. The Media Bill will dispense with restrictive proposals that resulted from the Leveson inquiry. More remains to be done to help local newspapers survive, as they are critical to holding councils and MPs accountable, as well as to community identity. It would be a big step in the opposite direction to permit a foreign country, however friendly, to own major newspaper titles. Hostile stories in those papers would be something they would find very hard to understand. Our relations with the UAE, as well as our media, would be healthier without that. UAE is admirable but must not own our media Sale of Telegraph group to Sheikh Mansour would seriously compromise the papers’ abilities to report fairly and freely expression, are quite obviously too great for that. We should be honest, as our Emirati friends would be with us, that owning major newspapers is going too far. As I write, the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, is weighing up whether the complex deal that would result in Sheikh Mansour being ultimate owner of the Telegraph Media Group warrants intervention on public interest grounds. She has to take account of the assurances that have been given on maintaining editorial independence on the one hand, and the possible threat to free expression from what would be, in effect, foreign state ownership on the other. If I were her, I would certainly intervene, understanding that sentimentality is nothing to do with it. One of Britain’s great advantages is that we still have an irreverent, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber chairs the UAE firm attempting to buy the Telegraph up with the UAE’s vision, and you can appreciate what this country has managed to build in a dangerous region. That has taken courage and leadership. From selling alcohol in restaurants, to normalising ties with Israel, to advancing some brilliant women to senior positions, the UAE has shattered many of the taboos of the Arab world. This week all eyes will be on them as they make a brave attempt to reach global agreements at Cop28, although they would be well-advised not to use the occasion to make oil and gas deals, as reported by — you guessed it — the BBC. David Cameron should get ready for an angry phone call about that. But the UAE is also bursting with companies working on renewable energy and even net-zero towns and cities. In many ways it is, as the investment minister Dominic Johnson observed at the weekend, “a first-class and extremely well-run country”. Lord Johnson went wrong in his comments, however, when he concluded that we shouldn’t get “sentimental about some of our socalled treasured assets” — meaning our newspapers. You can admire a country and promote thriving business and investment from it, even in nuclear power stations, as has also been reported in recent days, without losing sight of important differences with it. You can have a good friend without thinking that you always have to please them. Indeed, you can be clear with a friend that some things are off limits. If we said to anyone in the UAE that the BBC was going to invest in their state television, or a British newspaper group was proposing to buy The National, their reliably pro-government daily, they would never stop laughing. Our cultural differences, on freedom of O ne morning when I was foreign secretary, I was asked to take an urgent call from a senior figure in the United Arab Emirates. Being on friendly terms with many of the leaders of that country, I picked up the phone immediately. But this was not the easiest of calls, since it turned out my caller wanted to complain vociferously about the BBC, which had been running news items that reflected very badly on some powerful Emiratis. It was a long conversation, illustrating how even two countries with good relations can have cultural differences they find difficult to bridge. He struggled to comprehend that the British government could have no knowledge of, or control over, the editorial decisions of the British Broadcasting Corporation — “they are embarrassing the government of a friendly country, which surely is not what you want, foreign secretary?”. “Whatever I want has no bearing on the BBC,” I explained. “Never mind what they say about friendly countries, you should see what they say about us. They upset their own government every day. They’re actually meant to do that.” “Are you serious? But surely, they are backed by the state?” “Yes — but they are independent. In this country, the media can report what they want to, provided they have evidence.” Eventually my interlocutor accepted I was telling the truth but he clearly thought it was a very odd way to run a country and an extremely irritating one. He found it difficult to comprehend that British ministers could do nothing about media coverage that had implications for Britain’s foreign relations, and that we would regard it as wrong even to try. The idea of owning or establishing a company or institution that is deliberately annoying to you, and doing nothing about that, was alien to him. In his world, there was no clear separation between private and public interest, or between national policy and media coverage. That is why the prospect of important British media institutions the Telegraph newspapers and The Spectator, falling into the ownership of Sheikh Mansour of the UAE is disturbing and should be prevented. I say that as an avowed enthusiast for the Emirates, its achievements and its role in the world. As foreign secretary I promoted close business links, accompanied our late Queen on a spectacular state visit and visited Emirati troops fighting alongside our own in Afghanistan. I persuaded many nations to give decisive backing for World Expo 2020 to be held in Dubai, which indeed was staged brilliantly. There is far more to like and admire about the UAE than there is to dislike or fear. Tens of thousands of British nationals have made their home there and most of them love it. Look around their region, at the tyranny in Iran, or war-torn Yemen, or Saudi Arabia now moving to catch You can be clear with a friend that some things are off limits Far from being an out-of-date concern, this is a rising issue Comment William Hague the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 27

28 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times Comment bringing his dad and would meet me at Aldwych (so we could wait for the march to pass and then nip in at the front — you have to be sharp when you’re up against 50,000 Jews used to getting the best seat in the house). But in the end, Jon came alone. “Dad had to go for lunch in Elstree,” he said with a shrug. “Fair enough,” I said. “But if every Jew in London takes up a standing invitation to lunch in Elstree, we’ll be the only ones there.” Kick-off time? T here were other concerns, too. First, that attendance would be seen as tacit support for the bombardment of Gaza, which was absolutely not the point. And second, that there might be trouble. I wasn’t personally worried but both my mother and wife were concerned for my safety. “What if it all kicks off?” said Esther. “Don’t be silly,” I said. “It’ll be fine: the Chief Rabbi is going!” “Well, that’s a relief,” said Esther. “He looks like he’d be handy in a scrap.” Unwelcome anti ‘Wait, Dad,” said Kitty, pausing the television and looking up from her chair. “You’re going on an antisemitism march?” “Yes,” I said. “Of course, I am.’ “But… Dad?” She said, looking very troubled indeed. “Darling,” I replied. “Don’t worry, honestly, it’ll be… oh. Hang on. Kitty. You idiot. It’s a march against antisemitism.” “Oh, phew,” she said, and went back to the telly. Polite presence I t was a very well-dressed rally: tailored coats, nice scarves, mostly leather shoes, the odd fedora, no masks or fireworks. Nobody climbed on the Cenotaph or any of the statues (possibly because they weren’t dressed for it) and nobody shouted anything at all. “I mean, I’d love to shout something,” said Jon. “But the police haven’t handed out the list of things we’re not allowed to say yet...” O h, but it was a wonderfully Jewish march. I knew almost everyone and was related to half of them. We gathered in the streets around the Royal Courts of Justice from noon and by 1pm every Pret in the area was sold out. “I would do this sort of thing more often,” said my friend Rob Rinder, star of Judge Rinder, Strictly and something on BBC2 called Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond the Lobby, “but they’ll have to improve the catering.” The night before, I had texted around some Jewish mates to see who was going (it seemed presumptuous to ask gentiles) and replies were mostly along the lines of “Will we have to walk far?”, “Have you seen a weather forecast?” and “You know there’s a Spurs game?”. I agreed to go down there with my old friend Jonathan, whom I’ve known since we were three. He said he was It’s not ‘far right’ to want curbs on immigration Public feeling about an uncontrolled influx is being shown in Europe and Tories are at risk too für Deutschland is now the secondlargest party; Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, heads the “far right” Brothers of Italy; the Sweden Democrats are propping up Sweden’s coalition government. Last week, a knife attack outside a Dublin school, reportedly perpetrated by an Algerian-born naturalised immigrant, provoked hours of violent rioting in the city. The immediate cause was thugs exploiting fake rumours on social media. The deeper reason was that public rage over immigration had boiled over. A few days before, a Slovak Romany migrant was sentenced for the murder of a young woman. Last year, an Iraqi immigrant murdered two Irish gay men, decapitating one of them. Earlier this year, there were protests across Ireland after the revelation that thousands of migrant men had destroyed their passports before arrival and then claimed asylum. For years, proper discussion of all this has been paralysed. There has been an unholy alliance between progressives, who hold that the defence of national identity is racist, and free-market conservatives who support mass immigration to force down wage costs. Yet across Europe, the public is showing that what has been denounced as “far right” turns out to be the mainstream — which has been abandoned by the entire political establishment. If politicians don’t stop sleepwalking over this towards cultural oblivion, politics in Britain and Europe may become transformed into something that really does bust liberal democracy wide open and take us all into dangerously uncharted territory. The proportion of dependants has accordingly increased from 6 per cent of non-EU student immigration and 37 per cent of non-EU work immigration in 2019 to 25 per cent and 48 per cent respectively by June this year. Sunak, who actually boasted of the liberal visa regime for students and entrepreneurs, has now banned most overseas students from bringing in dependants. But why should foreign workers bring their families with them? Public reaction to all this is hostile. A survey by Matthew Goodwin’s People Polling has revealed that 66 per cent feel “concerned” about the scale of this population change. Even among Labour voters, more than one third think migration is “too high” compared with 24 per cent who think it’s “about right”. Most starkly, 53 per cent overall would support a five-year freeze on all further immigration while only 22 per cent say they would oppose it. Successive prime ministers have ducked tackling immigration levels because it requires clear choices between unpalatable options. Now the strength of public feeling over this is causing a political headache for the Tories, with the antiimmigration Reform party rising in the opinion polls and threatening to split the conservative vote. Similar public feeling is having an impact across Europe. In the Netherlands, the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders, who has been a political pariah for years on account of his “far-right” warnings against Islamic extremism, has just trounced its opponents in last week’s general election. In Germany, the Alternative A lmost every day brings fresh evidence that immigration is a crisis in the midst of which the government is flailing. Legal migration totals have hit a record high. Provisional figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, in the year ending last June, 672,000 more people came into the country than left it. This is a staggering rise from a net migration rate of 212,000 a decade ago. If this rate continues, by the year 2046 the UK’s population will increase from approximately 67 million people today to about 85 million. The pressure on housing, schools and health services will be unsustainable. In addition, with so many coming from countries that don’t share cultural values or historic links with the West, the country’s character will be transformed in ways for which the public has never voted. This week it was reported that Rishi Sunak had made Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, a set of largely unfulfilled promises to bring immigration levels down in return for her supporting his leadership bid. These apparently included raising the minimum salary threshold for skilled foreign workers from £26,000 to £40,000, tougher restrictions on migrants bringing in family members and tighter rules for foreign students. Increased immigration has been driven substantially by rises in visas granted to foreign students and workers recruited to fill chronic shortages in health and social care. The universities have long depended upon foreign students because these bring in more money than British applicants, who find as a result that there aren’t enough places for them. Foreign care staff are prepared to work for low wages and thus undercut British workers. Some believe that the solution is therefore to choke off foreign recruitment and force up pay to attract British applicants. Others are sceptical that enough employers would do so, causing the care sector to become even more understaffed than it is now. However, as Oxford University’s Migration Observatory points out, although the care visa policy was intended to compensate for a lack of EU workers after Brexit, the number of visas “appears to have greatly exceeded” the number who would have come annually from the EU. The Department of Health and Social Care originally predicted that about 6,000 visas would be handed out under the scheme. Over the past year some 78,000 were issued. Moreover, each worker brought with them on average one immediate family member. Why should foreign workers bring their families with them? Petering out T wo pluses for everyone were the opportunity to get our 10,000 steps in (personally, I did 18,000) and to see some Jewish celebs up close, which is always a pleasure: Maureen Lipman, Vanessa Feltz, Rachel Riley, Peter Tatchell… “Peter Tatchell?” protested a wellupholstered mum when the gaunt Australian activist was pointed out. “He can’t be Jewish! He looks like he hasn’t eaten for months!” Wishy-washy I was a little bit miffed that what my family chose to do while I made my heroic stand against racism was to go and see Wish, from the house of that legendary 20th-century Jewhater, Walt Disney. So imagine my delight, when I got home, to be told that “It was crap, Dad, we left after ten minutes”. Thus, in their own small way, even my kids marched out against antisemitism that day. Bibi-faced I n the evening, I showed Esther a YouTube clip that has been doing the rounds of a young Binyamin Netanyahu, hirsute, bear-chested, deep-voiced, dark-suited, sounding off about Palestine to an American TV channel in 1978. “God, he was handsome,” she gushed. “No wonder he turned out such an arsehole.” Giles Coren Notebook This was a marvellous march, Pret sarnies or not A proper Covid inquiry would seek solutions not blame James Naismith T he Covid-19 pandemic killed over 230,000 people in the UK, far higher than the civilian toll combined for both world wars. In addition to the dead and their distraught families, there are those disabled by the virus, those whose lives were changed for the worse and the young especially scarred by lockdown isolation and education loss. The least we can do is learn what we can to prepare better for the next pandemic. This must, in my view, be our first aim. I understand the desire for a second aim, to hold accountable and to punish. This human need is strong, but imagine if an aeroplane crashed every day for a week and the big insight was “pilot X was to blame”, “pilot Y was to blame” and so on. What would we learn from that: don’t fly again with pilot X or Y, or ever? Don’t fly with humans in the cockpit? Aircraft accident investigations are conducted by experts who focus on identifying what led to the accident and learning what can be changed to make a safer future. The Covid-19 inquiry has degenerated into theatre. The use of private diaries, WhatsApps or emails to embarrass might seem like good clean fun, but I think it is corrosive. To date, the biggest lesson is that no one will ever speak or email or text frankly again. I get no sense of people trying to sift through for insights in how to do better. There are some big questions that the inquiry should address. Let me pose just a few of them. When, if ever, is the right time to lock down? What lockdown measures do the most harm to the economy, mental health and education? How should hospital capacity be managed? Which measures supported infectious people to isolate and which made them less likely to do so? What factors led to higher suffering in minority and deprived communities? Where did the UK fail, where comparable countries succeeded? Where did the UK succeed where other countries failed? An inquiry that loads the mistakes on to those making decisions at the top solves nothing. We must learn lessons that can be applied whoever is in the room. A solution that relies on there being all-knowing saints in power is not a solution. It might have been better to have had two inquiries: one designed to prepare us for the next pandemic, the other to investigate previous failures. The first should have been run by subject domain experts, evaluating different international responses to the pandemic and distilling the costbenefit ratios of what worked when and where. By conflating the two aims, as this inquiry has, I fear it may be very close to failing in its first aim. Melanie Phillips @melanielatest

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 29 Comment Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826 Boarding schools tolerated brutality for too long Although I survived my Spartan education unscathed I see now how others endured extreme behaviour and buried it has wrestled not only with their own trauma but also with the guilt of breaching an omerta that goes to the bone. It’s like Fight Club. Indeed, it’s sometimes exactly like Fight Club. Out in the world, all this stuff sounds dreadful. So you don’t talk about it. Not least because you may have felt it wasn’t. Where, though, does this omerta lead? What does it shield? Not long ago, I sat in an Edinburgh pub with a large group of old friends, now middle-aged, now parents ourselves, swapping war stories. We laughed, we shook our heads. More chasteningly, a few pints in, we came to realise that our experiences were not all the same. Because for some, it hadn’t just been occasional, but unending. Not just pranks and wildness but something far darker. And in that world, where even the bad experiences were supposed to give you bragging rights, there had been simply no language available to point this out. At 18, I couldn’t see it. Even at 40, I may have struggled to. But I see it now. How blithe I was, and how blind, and for so long. And I wonder, now, how many Angus Bells there were, when it’s clearly so unforgivable that there was even one. Trapped and traumatised. And with no space left to them to say, “please, stop, this is terrifying, I want to go home”. sea, which themselves often ended when the first person was sick. I, too, remember fights with hockey sticks, and one particular craze, perhaps before Bell’s time, for fighting with darts. I also remember quite a few people being set on fire. Mostly, they took it in good spirit. Personally, every bit of this suited me far better than the huge, dreary day school I’d attended before. I found the lawlessness a thrill, and my own survival a confidence boost, and it seems to have left me with no ill effects beyond the nicotine habit that I have not yet shed. That said, I was only there from the age of 13. Others started at seven. I’ll always remember the first time I saw somebody properly bullied. It wasn’t violent but it also didn’t stop when he sobbed. At my old school, that would have been simply unthinkable. But the rules were very different, I learnt, when you didn’t go home. Public schools are cults. They’re supposed to be. Every time you read an exposé of abuse — such as that suffered by Alex Renton at Ashdown House or Nicky Campbell at the Edinburgh Academy — the author particularly, was not on my radar at all. The general picture, though? The lawlessness and the flippant savagery? Sure. I remember that. Everyone does. So much so that when these accounts started making the news a couple of years ago, my main response was one of bewilderment. I’d been a journalist for 20 years. How did I never even recognise this as a story? We’ll come back to that, because I think it’s important. First, though, let me tell you about Loretto, and other Scottish public schools like it. These days, I gather, they’re all glossy, highachieving places, much like their more famous English counterparts. Back in the 1990s, though, that transition was just beginning. Yes, there was a new modern theatre, there were girls in the sixth form, the grades were creeping up. Culturally, though, the school still prided itself on a Spartan ethos. There was no heating in the dormitories, even in the Scottish winter. More importantly, discipline was still delegated to prefects. Outside of lessons, you wouldn’t see a lot of staff. Food fights could be legendary. Have you ever seen a fleeing teenager knocked flat by a baked potato to the back of the head? Because I have. Punishments, which were frequent, involved early morning runs along the nearby beach, ending with press-ups in the A couple of years ago, while my old boarding school was taking centre stage at Holyrood’s Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry over historic allegations of horrific bullying, a friend’s little brother sent me an email he’d received from another friend of his. Lots of people, they’d both agreed, had been vicious. Some of the older boys, though, hadn’t actually been that bad. For example, he wrote, he remembered one early night when he’d been desperate for the toilet but had tied his dressing gown too tight and couldn’t take it off. Fortunately, moments before life-ruining humiliation from an approaching mob, “Hugo Rifkind walked past and I asked him to help. He was off for a crafty fag, and handed me his cigarette and lighter to hold while he helped me out.” I have no memory of this. I’d have been about 18, him maybe 13, and it sounds like I did a good thing. Well done me. Naggingly, though, I do realise it also sounds a bit like I gave a small boy a cigarette, and undressed him, then we both agreed not to talk about it for the next 30 years. Last week that school — Loretto, just outside Edinburgh — was back in the news. Angus Bell, now 43, has waived his own anonymity to sue the school over abuse he recalls from that period. He was, he says, “trapped in a madhouse of violence, sexual and emotional abuse”. I remember Angus only vaguely from school, because I’m older. We have, though, been in touch on and off since. I gave him a quote for his first book, Batting on the Bosphorus, a glorious, madcap travelogue about touring eastern Europe with a cricket bat and a kilt. His recollections sound horrific. “We were beaten with hockey sticks and cricket bats,” he says. “Beds were urinated and defecated on.” He was stabbed, kicked, whipped, thrown down stairs. Other boys, he says, were set on fire, “stripped naked and tied to trees” and even “raped with objects in front of other boys”. My experiences, I’m relieved to say, were not like his. Sexual abuse, There was no heating and discipline was still delegated to prefects For some it had not been just pranks but something far darker Hugo Rifkind @hugorifkind

30 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor should be sent to [email protected] or by post to 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF the serious impact of large-scale immigration and on what can be done to reduce it to an acceptable level. Lord Field of Birkenhead Lord Soames of Fletching Sir, Robert Jenrick clearly thinks it is acceptable to require overseas workers who are prepared to uproot their lives to come here to work in the social care sector to leave behind their families and dependants (“Migration figures pile pressure on PM to act”, Nov 24). Clearly it suits the UK better if workers come here for an extended period of time. But must a mother miss the formative years of her children to work at a demanding and difficult job here that is not that well paid, and must elderly parents be left to fend for themselves? People are called dependants because they depend on the family member in question. Requiring potential workers to leave their dependants behind is counter-productive in terms of attracting workers. More importantly, it is inhuman. Margaret Ader Chalfont St Peter, Bucks Sir, At present I am in a care home recovering from spinal surgery. The only available room is in a unit for people with advanced dementia. More than half the staff come from abroad, because attempts to recruit more local carers have failed. All the carers are exemplary in their kindness, patience, cheerfulness and hard work. I find it moving to observe the loving way they interact with the residents. If the government has its way, the immigrant carers could be replaced by local workers who have been forced into the job for fear of losing their benefits. This is unlikely to improve the care residents receive. Wendy Cope Ely, Cambs Sir, While I understand Kathrine Manning’s concern over a supposed asylum seeker risking his life to get to our shores, her letter (Nov 27) does not take into account that had he stayed in France to apply for asylum that would not entitle him then to settle here, because France is a safe country, and our authorities should not be involved in handling his case. This person may wish to work, but only in the UK. Dr Arabella Woodrow Riddlesden, W Yorks DNA test for bones of Princes in Tower Sir, Alice Loxton concludes her article on the Princes in the Tower with a reference to the bones in Westminster Abbey, which are thought by some to be those of the princes (“Medieval murder mystery still divides us”, comment, Nov 25). These bones were uncovered by workmen in the Tower of London in 1674, during the reign of Charles II. The King believed they deserved a more reverent burial, and they were thus transferred to the abbey. But were they — are they — the real thing? In this age of DNA it should be possible to find out. I would therefore urge our present King, with his great knowledge of and interest in history, to arrange for this test. King Charles III could solve at last the mystery of King Richard III, which has teased historians for so long. Lady Antonia Fraser London W8 Errant dinosaur Sir, The letter (Nov 27) about lost toys reminded me of our daughter’s cuddly green dinosaur, left at a hotel in Cocoa Beach, Florida. When against expectations he arrived home in the post we were delighted to find him wrapped in a hotel T-shirt but less so that he stank of cigarettes. When our daughter told her granddad, he expressed the view that he must have fallen in with a bad crowd. Helen Draycott Chinnor, Oxon Tudor monster Sir, Emma Duncan (Notebook, Nov 27) would like to see Henry VIII recast as a monster. As a Catholic I have always regarded him as a priapic, murderous and psychopathic tyrant. This is not new. Holbein and Shakespeare portray him in dark colours. And Charles Dickens spelt it out. In A Child’s History of England, he wrote: “The plain truth is, that he was a most intolerable ruffian, a disgrace to human nature, and a blot of blood and grease upon the History of England.” Sir John Jenkins Matfield, Kent Linear forest Sir, The government has asked the public to nominate places for the creation of a new forest (“Forest for the nation looks for location”, news, Nov 27). I propose the entire length of the cancelled northern legs of HS2. At least that way we will have something to show for the hundreds of millions of pounds spent on the purchase of land and houses along the route. It could be named the Phoenix Forest and contain a longdistance footpath called the “Permanent Way” as a reminder of the originally intended use and the fiasco it became. Gordon Lethbridge Sherborne, Dorset Sir, Terry Venables’s man management extended well beyond football (Nov 27). I was a newly qualified lawyer when my firm was representing Venables against Alan Sugar. A conference of all Venables’s advisers, professional and non-professional, took place at a West End hotel. I had an important point to make but was too intimidated by the roomful of people to interrupt proceedings. Venables somehow noticed me and my hesitation and quietened the room so that the “young man can speak”. I said my piece and Venables nodded and thanked me for my contribution. At the end, as we processed out of the room, he made a beeline for me, put his arm round me and squeezed my shoulder. I am 5ft 6in but felt 6ft 5in and would have done anything for him at that point. No wonder his players jumped through hoops for him. Joseph Holder Edgware, Middx Corrections and clarifications The Times takes complaints about editorial content seriously. We are committed to abiding by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (“IPSO”) rules and regulations and the Editors’ Code of Practice that IPSO enforces. Requests for corrections or clarifications should be sent to [email protected] ADHD diagnosis Sir, I wish to correct the impression that the diagnosis of mental health disorders such as ADHD is not based upon good medical evidence (letter, Nov 27). To diagnose ADHD requires taking a history, collating standardised screening questionnaires from home and school, and clinical interviews. The assessment will also look at other aspects of the child’s emotions and behaviour to see what other issues contribute to the presentation. Investigations such as a cognitive assessment may be required before coming to a final view and before treatment. The latter may include medication and/or therapeutic help for the child and family. While there is no chemical test for mental health suffering, that does not mean there is no rigorous way of trying to understand and treat disorders of the mind. Information on protocols and relevant research evidence can be found on the Nice website. Dr Roger Kennedy, FRCPsych Consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, London WC1 Foiling of justice Sir, Jane Clemetson hits the nail on the head (letter, Nov 27). As a solicitor I witnessed many examples of people with strong cases being denied justice simply because they could not afford the financial risks of litigation. Since legal aid was effectively abolished for people of ordinary means civil disputes have been increasingly decided not by justice but by the depths of the litigants’ pockets. The frequently quoted saying of a Victorian judge that “the law, like the Ritz Hotel, is open to all”, has never been more true. Michael Loveridge Clitheroe, Lancs Time for a frank debate about immigration Sir, Immigration is the highest it has been for centuries and is clearly out of control, indeed the scale it has now reached poses dangers for our society. We accept that highly skilled immigrants can be a benefit to the UK, but scale is important. Net migration reached 670,000 in the year to June. This is three times the level of 2021, yet during the last general election the government repeated its promise to reduce it. This is bound to damage the credibility of our system of government, and in the longer term there will be a growing impact on social cohesion. Some towns and cities are now majority immigrant: in London, for example, 63 per cent of the population were born overseas. As a result we can expect growing influence from those of migrant background, including on our elections, in our national political discourse and on Britain’s identity, values and culture. These issues will have a decisive influence on the future of our country. The government’s recent attempts to switch public attention to the Channel-crossers and Rwanda were absurd. What is needed now, as your leading article says (“Light Not Heat”, Nov 24), is sensible debate on Sir, Sir Anthony Seldon pins the blame for the increasing prevalence of mental illness on the education system and its focus on test and exams, and states that to dismiss one third of young people as failures at GCSE does nothing to build self-esteem (letter, Nov 27). How does he explain that mental illness was far less in the years after the Second World War, despite our lives having been thrown into chaos (I attended three different primary schools during that time and others were far worse off than me) and for many of us our fathers had been away from home for six years. In addition of course, a considerable number of fathers did not return at all from the war or were severely injured. Moreover, we were tested in every subject at the end of every term with results that went on our school reports. And at that time many young people were dismissed as education failures at 14, after having attended a secondary modern school and having to find work when they reached that age. George Hart Rickmansworth, Herts Mental ill health El Tel’s magnetism from the times november 28, 1923 CHOOSING NEXT YEAR’S CALENDAR thetimes.co.uk/archive Single-sex schools Sir, Further to your report “Single-sex schools rush to go co-ed in fight to keep pupils” (Nov 27), I would like to echo the remarks of Donna Stevens, head of the Girls’ Schools Association. Children, rather than convenience or economic considerations, should be at the heart of this debate. A single-sex environment facilitates both boys and girls opting for subjects and activities without tedious gender pressures and stereotypes being brought to bear. For girls, this means a far greater percentage opting for science, technology, computer science and maths. Additionally, research shows that girls educated in girls’ schools have just as much self-confidence as boys, bucking national trends. As the median gender pay gap (7.7 per cent) shows, there remains much to be done, and girls’ schools can play a vital role in developing resilient young women who are ready to play a full part in areas where women are still under-represented such as AI, engineering and politics. Jane Gandee Headmistress, St Swithun’s School, Winchester Yellow in peril Sir, On a long and tedious car journey last month, my husband and I resurrected the “spot the yellow car” game that, many years ago, on holiday trips, kept our children occupied. But we spotted only two. Where have all the yellow cars gone? Elizabeth Hinks Bourne End, Bucks Letters to The Times must be exclusive and may be edited. Please include a full address and daytime telephone number. Of all the problems of Christmas shopping there is none that can be compared in importance for the man who is particular about such things with the choosing of a calendar. I would as soon think of giving a man of a certain age a calendar as find him a wife; for, after all, a calendar is something with which we have to live for a whole year. Indeed, as time goes on the buying of a calendar seems to acquire an increasing significance. Like those tender sonnets that rose in the mind of Anne Elliot amid the sweet scenes of autumn on that fine November day in “Persuasion”, the contemplation of the calendar that has borne us company during the dying year “is fraught with the apt analogy of declining happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring all gone together”. It lends itself to moralising as readily as a sundial, and the moralisings will probably be as commonplace. If all you want is a sheet of dates to be changed once a month your task is easy. But a calendar with a daily quotation fairly bristles with difficulties. Of all authors Shakespeare is the safest. He has a bigness, a wealth of associations which transcend the most hackneyed quotations. Contrast him with Tennyson, who offers endless opportunities for going wrong. Stevenson and Dickens make good company in prose. Yet, after all, it is the picture that counts, and again it should not rise above the average taste. Those strange beings possessed of a passion for calendars follow every change in fashion, such as the rise of dainty Jane Austen from the rollicking 18th century or the Pickwickian good cheer that reigned in their youth. It is hardly fair to say of a man that by his calendar ye shall know him. Yet we have often marvelled how anyone could rise cheerfully each day of the year to face three black cats or a terrier with its head on one side as he prepares to shave. Then how tired one can get of a Shakespeare heroine masquerading in boy’s clothes, or with a sentimental admirer at her foot! On the whole, a view will wear best. One has to spend a year abroad to appreciate the charms of a fat, comfortable English landscape, or wait for a London fog to understand the magic of a highly-coloured Bay of Naples. revel in this elegant book showing times readers at their most whimsical and droll

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 2GM 31 Leading articles mate concerns over levels of migration and wholly understandable desires for functional public services. Mr Cleverly must be clear-eyed about difficult trade-offs. Notwithstanding the distorting impact of unrest in Hong Kong and war in Ukraine, to say that net migration at this level is unremarkable is plainly wrong. Something profound has changed in Britain’s migration regime. The net migration number for last year that is causing so much consternation in Westminster was originally underestimated by 139,000. Close examination of the figures quickly reveals why: legal migrants, particularly health and social care workers and students, are bringing more dependants than ever. Since 2019, the number of dependant visas granted for foreign students has risen tenfold to nearly 140,000. More than half of all people arriving via the care visa route last year were dependants, too. It would be disingenuous to pretend that these numbers do not amount to a significant shift in the nature of immigration to this country. Yet the last thing the economy needs is shock therapy. There is certainly a case for curtailing the right of foreign students to arrive with multiple dependants in tow. Ministers should look again at whether the shortage occupation list that governs how many visas are issued is fit for purpose: it runs the gamut from fruitpickers to ballerinas. The care sector, however, poses another question entirely. The unpalatable truth for Tory MPs proposing a wholesale ban on dependant visas for migrant workers is that too few Britons want to do the hard work that keeps the National Health Service and nursing homes afloat. Yes, it is hardly ideal that cheap migrant labour has become a crutch for these sectors. But to kick it away will neither resolve the skills shortage that keeps so many vacancies otherwise unfilled, nor make the jobs any more attractive to workers from this country. Nor will it chivvy the millions of long-term jobless into work overnight. For Boris Johnson and Suella Braverman to advocate an unfeasible rise in the minimum salary for a skilled worker to £40,000 is particularly absurd. They had time enough to resolve these issues when in power. Now is not the time for performative outrage. No responsible government should lose control of numbers or induce the economic equivalent of cardiac arrest for the sake of an ideological flight of fancy. What Mr Cleverly should instead prioritise is incremental, evidence-based policy that will reduce numbers sustainably. It is an unglamorous and difficult course. But it is the right one. Scholz, however, finds himself fighting to agree a supplementary budget for this year and to drum up billions of euros for energy subsidies, the green transition of industries and extra grants to encourage the chipmakers Intel and TSMC to build new plants in eastern Germany. A self-imposed debt brake restricts the federal deficit to 0.35 per cent of GDP except in emergencies. The Scholz government wanted to cover this spending by resorting to special funds outside the regular budget, repurposing €60 billion of unused pandemic funds. The constitutional court ruled this to be illegal. Result: a scramble to find funds for a supplementary budget to fill the hole. A plan will be unveiled in the Bundestag today. But it will almost certainly take until the end of January to introduce next year’s budget. Other countries struggle from one budget crisis to another. Germany, on the whole, does not. It is very debt-averse, still nervous about the massive debts that it accrued in reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And if next year too tries to duck the debt brake, if the fiscal emergency struggles into a third year, the Free Democrats may well walk out of the ruling coalition. The position of leadership that Germany established under Mrs Merkel looks wobbly at best. A recent survey showed that 32 per cent of its industrial companies now favoured investment abroad over domestic expansion, amid concerns over a future without cheap Russian gas. There is popular discontent about the way that some green measures, such as heat pumps, are being introduced. And the slow pace at which arms have been supplied to Ukraine points not only to Mr Scholz’s political reticence but also how poorly prepared the German defence industry was for a serious crisis in eastern Europe. This has a political knockon effect. If Berlin is to help the European Union to meet its promise to offer Kyiv the prospect of membership, it must get its own financial house in order. Austerity seems inevitable. If it falters in this task, hard-right parties will flourish as they always do when there is a vacuum of leadership at the centre. The populist, ultranationalist Alternative for Germany is already second in the polls, with about 22 per cent of the vote, and is poised to pick up support. Mr Scholz needs to get a grip. in 1986 Mr Johnson offered Melina Mercouri, the actress turned culture minister, a platform to lobby for the return of the Parthenon frieze. By last year, he had changed his tune. “Those gods and heroes came to our country in 1812 as refugees from the Ottoman kiln,” he declared. “They were going to be melted down to make cement.” Mr Johnson has become a Retainer. His argument is that Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman empire, was not an imperial plunderer. His second argument persists too. If you surrender the marbles to Greece, what about the theoretical claims from Egypt and Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey and Nigeria. What would be left of that magnificent museum in Bloomsbury? As prime minister, Liz Truss followed these arguments. Mr Sunak should not. This should not be about ownership but about where one can best appreciate the marbles, those in Athens and those in the British Museum. They belong together as an artistic whole and they belong in their natural habitat. The rest of the relics are today beautifully displayed in the Acropolis Museum, state of the art and built for the purpose. The British Museum should lend its marbles. They will remain the property of the whole world. Get Real Now is not the time for empty threats and impossible targets on migration. Ministers must find a way to reduce numbers sustainably without hurting the economy To listen to ministers opine on migration can occasionally feel like inhabiting a parallel universe in which the only challenge for the Home Office is the seemingly unstoppable tide of small boats crossing the Channel, and deportations to Rwanda the only silver bullet. Last week’s net migration figures — revised upwards to 745,000 in the year to last December — ought to shake the Conservative Party out of its tunnel vision. Securing Britain’s shores against illegal arrivals is a fool’s errand unless the same ministers are prepared to engage in a pragmatic conversation about whether the number of legal arrivals is sustainable. James Cleverly, the new home secretary, at least appears to understand that now is the moment to do so. Unlike their predecessors — who on this question appear disengaged at best and uninterested at worst — Mr Cleverly and Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, say that legal migration is “far too high” and will have “very profound impacts” on public services and social cohesion. Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, insists that the “strongest possible measures” are needed to reduce numbers. All of which, of course, is both arguable and defensible. But empty threats and wilful ignorance have badly served a broadly tolerant public with legitiFiscal Emergency Power is slipping from the grasp of Germany’s indecisive and squabbling leaders Germany is adrift. Once proud of its frugality and housekeeping, the country is in such a tangle about its public finances that it is rapidly losing authority in Europe. The long-term result could be a meltdown at the centre of the European Union, the emboldening of the hard right across the continent and wavering support for Ukraine in its attempt to fight off Russian invaders. Yesterday its finance ministry abandoned a pledge to balance the books after three years of heavy borrowing to deal with the consequences of the pandemic and the energy inflation brought on by the war in Ukraine. It was not supposed to turn out like this. Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, had put together a seemingly solid coalition with the Greens and the economically liberal Free Democrats; he was financially experienced, quietly efficient. The political gap left after the long rule of Angela Merkel, a Christian Democrat, seemed to have been competently plugged. Climate change measures were championed by the Greens, innovation was promoted by the Free Democrats and the Social Democrat chancellor promised to overhaul dependence on Russian fossil fuels. Mr Greek Gifts The Elgin Marbles should be put on display in their natural habitat Splitting the Parthenon Marbles between Greece and the British Museum is like cutting the Mona Lisa in half, according to Kyriakos Mitsotakis, that country’s eloquent prime minister. Yesterday he made his case to Sir Keir Starmer, a politician more commonly associated with the work of Sisyphus, and he had hoped to buttonhole Rishi Sunak today for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens until their meeting was cancelled. It’s a tricky problem and the British prime minister could seek guidance from the classicist Boris Johnson. But Mr Sunak would soon end up losing his own marbles. As president of the Oxford Union UK: Second reading of the Criminal Justice Bill, which would force prisoners to attend sentencing hearings. World: The Giving Tuesday charity event follows Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Amethyst deceiver sounds like one of James Bond’s beautiful but deadly love interests, but it is actually a small, violet toadstool that likes to grow in oak and beech woods. It looks lovely pushing up through orange and yellow autumn leaves, and while it is not as deadly as its name suggests — in fact, it is edible — the danger comes from its likeness, when fading away, to the lilac fibrecap, which can be deadly if consumed. It is a useful reminder that fungi can appear very different at different life stages, and that many have close mimics. Phone-based identification apps should never be relied on to identify mushrooms. melissa harrison In 1919 Nancy, Viscountess Astor, won the Plymouth Sutton by-election. She became the first female MP to sit in the Commons. Randy Newman, pictured, singersongwriter and Oscarwinning film composer, Monsters, Inc. (2001), Toy Story 3 (2010), 80; Kriss Akabusi, athlete, gold medallist in the 1991 world championships, 65; Fiona Armstrong, Lady MacGregor of MacGregor, lord lieutenant of Dumfries, broadcaster and writer, 67; Susan Brookes, TV chef on This Morning (1988-2011) and writer, 80; Rita Mark Cann, director, The British Forces Foundation, 58; Martin Clunes, actor, Men Behaving Badly (1992-99), Doc Martin (2004-22), 62; Alfonso Cuarón, film director, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Gravity (2013), Roma (2018), 62; Lord (Alistair) Darling of Roulanish, Labour MP (1987-2015), chancellor of the exchequer (2007-10), 70; Gabriele Finaldi, director, National Gallery, London, 58; John Galliano, fashion designer, 63; Tom Goldsmith, clerk of the House of Commons, 49; Berry Gordy, founder, Motown Records, and songwriter, Reet Petite (1957), 94; Ed Harris, actor, The Rock (1996), 73; Chris Heaton-Harris, Northern Ireland secretary, Tory MP for Daventry, 56; Armando Iannucci, writer, director and producer, In the Loop (2009), The Thick of It (2005-12), 60; Andrew Jones, Tory MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, transport minister (2018-19), 60; Bernard Kops, novelist and playwright, The Hamlet of Stepney Green (1957), 97; Lord (Godfrey) Macdonald, chief of the name and arms of Macdonald, 76; Judd Nelson, actor, The Breakfast Club (1985), 64; Richard Osman, creator and copresenter of BBC quiz show Pointless and writer, The Thursday Murder Club series (2020-23), 53; Sarah Perry, author, After Me Comes the Flood (2014), 44; Édouard Philippe, prime minister of France (2017-20), 53; Stephen Roche, cyclist, winner of the 1987 Tour de France, 64; Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser to President Biden, 47; Sir Nick Varney, chief executive, Merlin Entertainments (1999-22; visitor attractions including Legoland), 61. “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.” Lord Acton, Freedom in Antiquity, in The History of Freedom and Other Essays (1907) Nature notes Birthdays today On this day The last word Daily Universal Register

32 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times World Germany has been forced to patch together an emergency budget and declare a renewed fiscal “crisis” after a court ruling torpedoed government spending plans. The verdict tore a €60 billion hole in the public finances, larger than the country’s annual defence expenditure, and left a shortfall of €18 billion for the 12 months ahead. It has led to political pandemonium as the three parties under Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, scrap openly over where cuts should fall and how deep they should be. The conflicts stretch from €12.5 billion of investment in the creaking railways to tens of billions in energy price relief for households and businesses. The court judgment has also shaken some of the central pillars of Germany’s modern economic policy, including the state’s legal duty to keep public borrowing to a negligible minimum. Yesterday the government said that the budget crisis had compelled it to renew the emergency borrowing provisions declared at the start of the pandemic in 2020, although this may only mark the start of its problems. Scholz will outline the plan to the Bundestag today amid growing criticism of a perceived vacuum of leadership and speculation that his much bigger €200 billion “double-boom” package of energy subsidies is in jeopardy. The furore revolves around an unexpected ruling issued by the German constitutional court a fortnight ago. Shortly after it came to power at the end of 2021, Scholz’s government took €60 billion of unspent pandemic “emergency” funds to top up a separate pot set aside for the green transition. The judges not only struck this measure down, but also challenged several book-keeping techniques that successive governments have used to keep hundreds of billions of euros of public borrowing out of the regular budget. The verdict caught the Scholz administration unawares. Within the coalition it has pitted the economically liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), More than half of Germans want their country to keep a lower profile on the global stage and think Germany’s international influence has declined in the past two years, according to a poll. The Berlin Pulse report, published each November by the non-profit foundation Körber-Stiftung, also found that almost three quarters of voters rejected the government’s ambition to take on a “military leadership role” in Europe among other hints that the public is increasingly sceptical of greater involvement in world affairs. However, a two-thirds majority still support Berlin’s provision of arms to Ukraine, while the survey showed that which is staunchly against raising taxes or extra debt, against the Greens and Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), both of which are loath to cut spending. Christian Lindner, the finance minister and FDP leader, initially suggested that the painful consequences of the verdict could begin to fall on households within weeks with caps on gas and electricity bills ending after Christmas, earlier than expected. He was slapped down by coalition partners who said they had not been consulted. Manufacturers fear that tens of billions of euros of strategic government investments in industry, including factories for batteries and microchips, will be torn up. There are also concerns that an austerity drive could fire up support for fringe parties, such as the right-wing Alternative for Germany, which has risen to second place in the polls, with about 22 per cent of the vote. Scholz is under particular pressure over what even some of his SPD colleagues describe as a failure to see the crisis coming and a flat-footed response. MPs from the coalition grumble about a lack of communication and direction from the chancellery, resulting in public squabbling as each of the three allied parties attempts to seize control of the narrative. The press, including newspapers broadly in ideological alignment with the government, has been scathing. Der Spiegel portrayed Scholz’s travails in a front-page story as the “crashing fall of a know-it-all”. The Süddeutsche Zeitung said the ruling reduced the government’s creative accounting to “ruined castles in the air” and damaged the chancellor’s strongest remaining political asset, an “aura of professionalism”. After more than a week of silence on the subject, Scholz tried to allay concerns in a video message, promising that the budget would be redrawn “swiftly, but with necessary diligence”. Yet the precise details will be ‘Know-it-all’ Scholz faces budget crisis showdown ferociously contested. The FDP insists that there will be no tax increases or additional debt and the extension of the fiscal emergency is a purely technical measure. That would mean the axe would have to fall solely on public services and investment. “It is important to stress that there will not be a single cent of extra borrowing,” Bijan Djir-Sarai, the FDP’s general-secretary, said. However, this approach puts the FDP on a collision course with the Greens and large sections of the SPD. Robert Habeck, the Green vicechancellor and economic minister, signalled that he would defend the climate spending. “All the projects we have conceived must be made possible,” he said. Habeck and other ministers have acknowledged that it could yet scupper the much larger €200 billion “double-boom” fund that Scholz announced last year to cushion the impact of inflation, particularly on energy bills. That would be a heavier blow to both the government’s fiscal position and the chancellor’s personal standing, opening an additional €32 billion hole in spending plans for the next financial year alone. Also at stake is the “debt brake”, a rule written into the constitution in 2011 under Angela Merkel, Scholz’s predecessor as chancellor, to limit the annual deficit to 0.35 per cent of GDP. This straitjacket has been suspended each year since 2020 as ministers borrowed heavily to cushion the shocks from the pandemic and subsequent inflation. Largely at the insistence of Lindner and the FDP, however, it had promised to restore the debt brake and end the rolling “emergency situation” this year. That vow will now be broken. Deeper divisions are opening up in the coalition over whether the rule itself can be preserved in its current form. However, the debt brake has traditionally been highly popular with the German electorate and one recent poll indicated that 61 per cent of voters opposed any moves to loosen it. Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, is facing a €60 billion hole in public spending. His predecessor, Angela Merkel, below, introduced a limit on the annual deficit Man extends Germany Oliver Moody Berlin Surgeons in Munich extended a construction worker’s legs by 22 centimetres in a series of procedures over two years so he can fulfil his ambition to operate large diggers and dumper trucks. Tom Huschenbett, 23, originally measured only 1.30 metres (4ft 3in), meaning he was unable to drive the most powerful vehicles without prostheses to help him to reach the pedals. He now stands at 1.52m after six separate operations in which his shinbones were fractured and telescopic rods inserted into the gaps, costing €140,000. “I had my legs broken for the sake of my dream,” Huschenbett told the German newspaper Bild. The legOliver Moody Fire and ice Lava spews across the Germans want a lower profile on the world stage China’s image in Germany was continuing to nosedive. More than seven in ten also want Germany to meet or surpass the Nato goal to spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence. The latest edition of the report painted a mixed picture, with signs of a slight shift towards a more isolationist position on some questions. Only 38 per cent of respondents said Germany should “engage more strongly” in international crises, while 54 per cent wanted it to “exercise more restraint”. On other issues, though, opinion seemed to have held firm since the shock of Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February last year, with little evidence of a thaw in favour of the Kremlin. Eighty-six per cent of those surveyed said they did not trust President Putin’s regime and 76 per cent said they saw it as a military threat to Germany. Out of those who thought Berlin should carry on supplying weapons to Kyiv, 54 per cent said the main point of the military aid should be to help Ukraine to recapture Russianoccupied territory. However, 84 per cent said their confidence in the Putin government would be restored if it were to show itself “willing for serious peace negotiations”. Asked whether Germany should align itself more closely with the United States or Russia, only 14 per cent opted for Moscow, while 75 per cent chose the US. These figures have held stable since the end of last year. Oliver Moody Public view Should Germany be more or less involved in international crises? Q Male More involved Less involved Other Female More involved Less involved Other Poll of 1,057 people from September 6-12, 2023 Other includes not specified, don't know and neither more or less. Source: Kantar 42% 52% 6% 34% 11% 55%

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 33 Argentina’s new leader heads to US for cash talks Page 36 Paris mayor quits Twitter/X ‘global sewer’ Page 34 legs by 22cm so he can drive a digger stretching technique was developed shortly after the Second World War by Gavriil Ilizarov, an orthopaedic surgeon in the Soviet Union treating Red Army veterans. He found that if he cut through the leg bone and created a small gap without damaging the surrounding tissue, the bone would grow back across the break. Initially working with bicycle parts, he invented a way of holding the two sections of the leg very slightly apart so that the new bone growth would extend the leg, at a rate of up to 1mm a day. In Huschenbett’s case the motivation was professional. “When I was training to be a construction machine operator, of course I wanted to drive the really chunky things on the building site. But with my size that was tough,” he said. Huschenbett, who lives in a village on the outskirts of Gotha in the east German state of Thuringia, travelled to a hospital in Munich, where surgeons carefully severed both of his tibias and added extendable rods, remotely controlled with a handheld device. The costs were covered entirely by his public health insurer. “The first three weeks after each operation were hell for me. I was in dreadful pain,” he said. Now, however, Huschenbett’s legs are long enough to allow him to drive even the biggest diggers unaided, for his construction firm in the nearby city of Erfurt. “I sit there on a 60-tonne dumper truck with 400 horsepower or a 30- tonne tracked excavator with 190 horsepower, and because of my new height I can drive them without any technical assistance,” he said. Old enemy winter is back to torment war-weary Ukraine Winter was already in the air as workmen installed new windows at homes in a war-ravaged village in the northern Kharkiv region, only ten miles from the Russian border. Slatyne was devastated during fighting last year as Ukraine pushed back invading troops. Many residents who fled during the hostilities have now returned to homes that were damaged by shelling. But winters in the region are harsh, with temperatures often falling to as low as minus 20C, and many houses are in desperate need of repair. “I’ll need windows rather than this plastic when the real frost sets in,” said Maryna, a pensioner, gesturing at temporary coverings to keep out the wind. The panes in her house were shattered when a Russian artillery shell exploded close by. At another house, Olexandr, a middleaged man, said he had spent last winter sheltering from the elements in a tiny, detached building after the windows in his main living area were blown out. “My sister and her daughter will be able to come back and live here again, when the windows are put in,” he said. Both were speaking shortly before the first heavy snow fell. The workmen installing new double glazing were employed by Kharpp, a British charity that was set up last year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to fix up homes in Kharkiv. To date, the charity has carried out repairs on more than 600 homes, as well as replaced the windows in Slatyne’s medical centre. It also supplies generators, portable power stations and Starlink satellite internet systems. “When we first started doing home repairs in the region over a year ago the situation was dire. It was freezing cold and many people were living without heating in houses where all or most of the windows were broken,” said the charity’s co-founder, Alex Thomas,who is from Gloucestershire. “It became clear to us that what people wanted and needed most was a warm, dry home to survive the winter in. Replacing their windows seemed the best way to do this.” From destroying or damaging homes to targeting power plants, Russia has sought to break the morale of the Ukrainian people by plunging them into cold and the darkness during the winter months. Russian missile strikes destroyed about 40 per cent of Ukraine’s energy facilities last winter, resulting in widespread blackouts. As temperatures fall once again, fears are rising that Russia is planning a massive wave of missile strikes on power plants that could leave millions without light and heat. Heavy snow hit southern Ukraine on Sunday, causing disruption in and around the Black Sea port city of Odesa. In Crimea, which has been occupied by Russia since 2014, about half a million people were left without power after a storm that was said to be the heaviest in the region for over a century. President Zelensky said yesterday that bad weather had caused power cuts in more than 2,000 towns and villages. Sleet and snow have also turned the roads around the front lines in southern and eastern Ukraine into quagmires, slowing the movement of heavy military equipment. Last week Britain’s Ministry of Defence said that Russia appeared to be conserving its most powerful cruise missiles in the hope of causing as much damage as possible to Ukrainian energy facilities during the winter. Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, warned recently that the country was preparing for its “worst winter in history”. He said that while Ukraine had taken steps to protect its power plants, Russia was also adapting its tactics. “The Russians are learning. They will once again test our endurance with their missiles,” Kuleba told the German newspaper Die Welt. Herman Halushchenko, Ukraine’s energy minister, said it was impossible to exclude another winter of blackouts. “It’s difficult to predict the damage from the attacks, as well as what type of weapons Russia will use,” he said during an interview in Kyiv. Zelensky has warned that if Russia targets his country’s energy facilities again then “we will not only defend ourselves, but also respond”. There were power cuts last week near Moscow after a fire at an electricity substation that some reports suggested could have been caused by a Ukrainian drone. In Irpin, a town near Kyiv, engineers with Dtek, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, are setting up substations. Russian forces destroyed more than 3,000 transformers in and around Kyiv alone, said Serhii Buriak, who is leading the efforts to reconstruct power grids in the region. He warned that the Kremlin could strike again at any time. “The Russians know the co-ordinates of these facilities very well,” he said. “Russia will most definitely resort to energy terrorism once again this upcoming winter,” Maxim Timchenko, the head of Dtek, said. “This winter season will be no less challenging than the previous one. Last winter, determination carried us through. This winter we are stronger, and our people are more experienced.” Weather is a weapon Russia is more than happy to deploy to erode Kyiv’s morale, Marc Bennetts writes Snow is already hindering Ukrainian forces fighting Russians near Kharkiv Tom Huschenbett was in agony after each surgery snowy peak of Etna, near Catania in Sicily. It is Europe’s tallest volcano, at 11,014ft, and has been constantly active since 2013

34 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times World Diplomats from Japan and China are fighting on an unexpected front after Beijing blocked imports of ornamental koi carp in an apparent act of retaliation connected to a row over the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The Japanese government is pressing China to renew import licences for breeders of nishikigoi, or “brocade carp”, the multicoloured fish esteemed by collectors across the world. Three fifths of the ornamental fish bred in Japan are exported and the business is worth ¥6.3 billion (£33.5 million) a year. Until recently, 19 per cent of the exported carp went to China, making it the biggest overseas market. Breeders report that the business has surged in because people confined to their homes by the pandemic found solace in caring for the fish. Exports by Japan’s 15 domestic carp farmers are licensed by the Chinese government for three years at a time. By the end of last month, all the licences Japan’s biggest export market is China in a business worth £33.5 million a year Thais plan ‘land bridge’ to avoid perilous strait of Thailand to the east. Ships would dock at one and unload their cargo, which would be transported 58 miles by train and lorry to be loaded on a vessel waiting on the other side. “The land bridge project will become a new shipping route in the world,” Srettha said this month at a “roadshow” promoting the idea to investors in San Francisco. “It will solve problems that now exist through the Malacca Strait and will provide an alternative that is cheaper, faster and safer. “Transporting goods through the land bridge will reduce overall travel time by four days and reduce the average cost by up to 15 per cent. This project will, in the future, elevate Thailand as an important strategic centre for production and transportation to the global market.” The construction of a canal would be time consuming, vastly expensive and polluting. To the alarm of many Thais, it would also physically divide a country that already has political and economic tension between the wealthier north and poorer south. But the land bridge would also be an immense undertaking. If construction starts as intended in 2025, the aim is that it would handle 20 million cargo containers a year by 2040. By the Thai government’s reckoning, it would create 300,000 jobs and help propel the country to annual growth of 5.5 per cent. As well as the United States, Srettha has travelled to the Middle East to seek backers, and, most importantly of all, to China, the biggest investor in southeast Asia. China imports almost all of its oil and natural gas from the Middle East — a security crisis that blocked the Strait of Malacca would cut off its energy supply. Beijing has been working on alternatives, including pipelines through central Asia, Pakistan and one connecting southern China with the Myanmar point of Kyaukphyu. A decade ago, the Kra Land Bridge was the kind of project that Beijing might have eagerly incorporated into its strategic Belt and Road initiative of international infrastructure development. However, many of its big road, railway and port-building projects have ended up mired in debt, and Belt and Road is being refocused on smaller and more achievable goals. Thailand Richard Lloyd Parry Asia Editor For hundreds of years it has been a source of frustration to sailors and merchants and a challenge to the imaginations of engineers and visionaries. Now the government of Thailand is pushing a £22.5 billion project to penetrate the stretch of land called the Isthmus of Kra and to revolutionise world trade. The isthmus is the narrowest point on the Malay Peninsula, the tongue of land that thrusts downward from mainland southeast Asia and is divided between Thailand and Malaysia. It also represents an impassable obstacle to shipping on the busy sea route that connects Europe and the Middle East to the vast and growing markets of China and East Asia. Ships must sail south and around the peninsula through the Strait of Malacca, a narrow chokepoint notoriously vulnerable to pirates and maritime collisions. Since the 17th century, Thai rulers have dreamt of a canal traversing the isthmus, which would be to Asia what the Suez and Panama canals are to the Middle East and the Americas. However, Srettha Thavisin, the new Thai prime minister, is pushing a different and arguably more feasible idea — a “land bridge” efficiently connecting the two sides of the isthmus. The plan is to construct two large ports at Ranong on the Andaman Sea to the west and Chumphon on the Gulf 200 miles Bangkok THAILAND MALAYSIA CAMBODIA Gulf of Thailand Andaman Sea Strait of Malacca The Kra land bridge would provide a way to bypass the crowded Strait of Malacca Kuala Lumpur Singapore INDONESIA Proposed land bridge Chumphon Port Ranong Port T he birth of a critically endangered Sumatran rhino has been celebrated by Indonesia, an arrival that bolsters a species population of fewer than 50 animals. Born at a sanctuary on the western island of Sumatra, the male calf was the second birth this year. The 25kg rhino was born to mother, Delilah, and father, Harapan, who was the last Sumatran rhino in the world to be repatriated after his birth in Cincinnati in 2006. Now, the species’ entire population is in Indonesia, mostly in captivity. Way Kambas Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary (SRS) said that its use of seminatural breeding efforts had led to five live births of Sumatran rhinos. Dr Jo Shaw, chief executive of Save the Rhino International, said: “The birth of a new rhino calf is always joyous, however, this is particularly wonderful news for Sumatran rhino conservation. Delilah’s first calf gives more hope and opportunity for the future of Sumatran rhinos, with three proven breeding pairs now living at the SRS.” Delilah, seven, was the second calf to be born at the sanctuary and is the first of the species born in captivity to give birth herself. This is a significant milestone for the breeding programme, which aims to develop a population in semi-wild facilities with the aim of reintroducing Sumatran rhinos into the wild. The Sumatran rhino is legally protected in Indonesia and is described on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as critically endangered, with the population in decline despite the success of programmes such as the one at Way Kambas national park. Koi carp caught up in Chinese trade row had lapsed, and despite the intervention of the Japanese government none shows any signs of being renewed. “All the farmers and quarantine facilities are waiting for the Chinese government’s approval for export,” Tsutomu Senuma, secretary-general of the All Japan Nishikigoi Promotion Association, told The Times. “Even [the] Japanese government does not know the reason for the delay.” The assumption is that it is connected to a dispute about Fukushima, which suffered a meltdown after the tsunami in 2011. Earlier this year, authorities began releasing treated waste water from the plant into the ocean. Most scientists and foreign governments agree it poses no threat to life. Nishikigoi are bred in freshwater far from Fukushima and are uncompromised by radiation. Japan Richard Lloyd Parry Tokyo Anne Hidalgo, the embattled mayor of Paris, announced that she was leaving Twitter/X after denouncing the social media platform as a “global sewer”. Hidalgo, who has been criticised on and off the platform over a trip to Tahiti this autumn, said it was spreading hate, antisemitism, racism and fake news about global warming. Describing Twitter/X as a “weapon of mass destruction”, the socialist mayor said that both the platform and Elon Musk, its owner, “act deliberately to exacerbate tensions and conflicts”. Hidalgo, 64, who joined Twitter in 2009, pointed out that hate speech on Socialist Paris mayor quits ‘global sewer’ of Twitter/X the platform was particularly prevalent in France, with 16,064 posts removed between August 28 and October 20 — more than in any other European country — according to a report for the EU. “This [social] media has become a vast global sewer,” Hidalgo said. She faces a battle in the 2026 Paris local elections after it was revealed that she had prolonged a “working” visit to French Polynesia and New Caledonia to have a holiday on an island where her daughter lives. Her political opponents have filed a lawsuit to anti-corruption prosecutors after it emerged that the trip cost taxpayers €60,000. Hidalgo denies wrongdoing. Adam Sage Paris Rhino calf raises hope for species in danger The 25kg male calf was born to Delilah, seven, on Sumatra, western Indonesia

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 V2 35 World The Pope is receiving antibiotics intravenously for a lung infection in the hope of recovering in time to fly to Dubai this weekend to address the Cop28 climate change conference. Francis’s condition was stable yesterday but he will miss some appointments this week, according to Matteo Bruni, the Vatican’s spokesman. “He doesn’t have a fever and the respiratory situation is in clear improvement,” he said. Francis, 86, failed to appear at the window of the Apostolic Palace on Sunday to give his weekly message to the faithful, instead delivering a video mesA girl whose lies led to the beheading of a teacher by an Islamist terrorist is overwhelmed by guilt, according to court documents. She is one of six teenagers on trial in Paris for their role in the 2020 murder of Samuel Paty, 47, a history and geography teacher, by an 18-year-old Chechen who was later shot dead by police. Five boys face a maximum of 30 months in jail for allegedly accepting €350 from Abdoullakh Anzorov, the that her parents would not discover that she had missed school. “She was a kid of 13. Who has not lied in their lives? She never wanted this drama. She told me I didn’t even think what could happen. She said: ‘I just don’t want to disappoint you’ .” The Pope, 86, was too ill to appear in St Peter’s Square on Sunday Glaring security errors blamed for £100m castle jewellery raid Inside the Green Vault and some of the 21 precious stone settings stolen by the Berlin burglars Thieves from one of Berlin’s most powerful crime families were able to steal jewelled historical ornaments worth about £100 million from Dresden castle because of a series of “glaring security deficiencies”, according to two new books. The Green Vault burglary was the most spectacular theft of cultural goods in Germany since the Second World War. Burglars from the German-Lebanese Remmo clan, which has an extensive record of murder, robbery, racketeering and drug-trafficking, raided the state museum housing the treasury of Saxony’s former rulers. After knocking out the local power supply to disable the lights and alarms shortly before 5am, the thieves stole 21 assemblages of jewel-encrusted ornaments from the collection, including the 50-carat Dresden White diamond and a hilt and scabbard adorned with more than 700 smaller diamonds. While 18 of the 21 stolen artefacts were recovered by police last year, some were partially damaged and several of the most famous items are still missing, such as the Dresden White and jewels that once belonged to Amalie Auguste, a 19th-century queen of Saxony. The haul had been valued by insurers at a total of about €118 million, of which only €55.6 million worth has so far been returned to the museum. However, the missing gemstones are likely to fetch a considerably lower price if they have been separated from the ornaments and recut, or fenced on the black market. Although five members and associates of the Remmo family were convicted of the theft in May, there is still considerable bafflement at how they contrived to break into what was supposedly one of the most secure museums in the country. The books, published to mark the fourth anniversary of the raid, document a list of failures that delayed the police response so that the first officers arrived only a minute and a half after the criminals had fled the scene. In The Clan and the Jewels, the lawyer and television presenter Butz Peters alleges that security guards at the museum missed a series of dress rehearsals in which the burglars tested the alarms on the outside of the castle to identify the single ground-floor window where the electronic defences did not work. He claims that the museum had known about the fault for years but failed to fix it. Peters, who attended every day of the subsequent trial, also expressed astonishment that the guards had failed to notice the thieves on their CCTV camera feeds until it was too late, and suggested they might have been asleep on the job. The Coup of the Century, a separate book by Thomas Heise and Claas Meyer-Heuer, reporters at Der Spiegel, argues on the basis of 70,000 pages of court documents that instead of pressing a panic button that would have immediately alerted police, the guards rang the regular emergency services line. This slowed the response by roughly 60 crucial seconds, the book claims. A biopic of Maurice Ravel, along with the efforts of his fans, is giving new life to the beloved home of the French composer after decades of neglect and squabbling among its guardians. Le Belvédère, a narrow hillside house in Montfort L’Amaury, on the edge of Rambouillet forest near Paris, has been a jealously guarded museum devoted to Ravel since the 1960s but it has benefited from none of the millions of royalties brought in by his Boléro, one of the world’s most performed works. In 2016, Le Figaro said the house where Ravel spent the last 16 years of his life and died in 1937 had been the victim of “organised pillaging” by heirs and others since 1960. With curtains perishing, ceilings cracking and damp setting in, the house reached a nadir in 2017 when its custodian, the local council, refused to let Martha Argerich, the Argentinian virtuoso, visit the drawing room to try out the composer’s Erard piano. The police were called to eject her. The ensuing row and the fashion for biopics have turned the tide. Ravel, seen as second only to Claude Debussy among France’s greatest modern-era composers, is to bask in new celebrity as the subject of Boléro, directed by Anne Fontaine, which opens in March. To shoot in Le Belvédère, the producers donated items and restored furnishings. Now the association the Friends of Maurice Ravel, has donated a trove of Ravel memorabilia that it has accumulated since it was founded in 2012 to halt the deterioration of Le Belvédère. They include family portraits, engravings, manuscripts and a sandstone bust by Léon Leyritz, a sculptor friend. The collection marks a new start for le Belvédère, Hervé Planchenault, mayor of Montfort L’Amaury, said. Visitors will still only be admitted in small groups because of the narrowness of the quirky house, but the aim is to open it to a wider public with musical events. Ravel’s estate went first to his younger brother Édouard, who bequeathed everything except the house to his nurse and her chauffeur husband when he died in 1960. The house was left to the state as a memorial but the heirs are alleged to have largely emptied it of its contents. In recent years, the royalties from what is thought to be the most lucrative piece of French music were paid to a web of offshore companies. The piece entered the public domain, against the heirs’ wishes in 2016 after earning an estimated €130 million. Pope is given antibiotic drip before climate talks sage shown on screens in St Peter’s Square. A cannula and bandage were visible on his right hand. “Brothers and sisters, happy Sunday. Today I cannot appear at the window because I have this problem of inflammation of the lungs,” he told the crowd. He introduced one of his aides, Paolo Braida, who sat beside him to read the message as Francis coughed. Francis said Braida was reading the message because “he wrote it, and wrote it very well”, prompting the Rome newspaper Il Messaggero to report: “It is the first time a Pope has officially introduced his ghostwriter to the world.” Francis, who may have caught a chill when he circled St Peter’s Square atop his Popemobile to greet pilgrims at his Wednesday audience last week, underwent a CT scan on Saturday, which ruled out pneumonia, Bruni said. He had a part of one lung removed in his early twenties when he was training to become a priest in his native Argentina, and in March was treated for bronchitis in hospital. In 2021 he had part of his colon removed and he recently used a wheelchair because of a knee ailment. In June he had surgery on an abdominal hernia. As he recovers from his lung inflammation, “some important commitments expected for the next days have been postponed so he can dedicate the time and desired energy” to getting fit again, Bruni said. Francis said on Sunday that he still planned to attend Cop28, where he is due to speak on Saturday. “Besides war, our world is threatened by another great peril — that of climate change — which puts at risk life on Earth,” Father Braida said on his behalf. Vatican City Tom Kington Rome Ravel biopic set to revive interest in musical legacy Charles Bremner Paris Girl whose lies led to teacher’s beheading ‘stricken with guilt’ terrorist, to point out the teacher as he left their secondary school in ConflansSainte-Honorine, a Paris suburb . The girl faces a similar maximum sentence for slander after telling her father that Paty had sought to stigmatise Islam during a lesson for pupils aged 13-14 two weeks earlier. The trial is being held in private because the defendants were under 18 at the time. They cannot be named. The girl, 13 when Paty died, told her father that the teacher had asked Muslim pupils to leave the classroom before showing an image of the Prophet Muhammad naked, saying it could shock them. Her father, who is awaiting trial next year, whipped up a campaign against Paty on social media. Police say that this came to the terrorist’s attention and led to the incident. In fact, the girl, now 16, was not in school that day and only heard about the lesson from classmates. The images held up by Paty were caricatures of the Prophet from Charlie Hebdo, the satirical weekly, to illustrate a lesson on freedom of speech. He did not ask Muslim pupils to leave the classroom. The girl’s mother said she had lied so A document from social workers and psychologists leaked to Le Parisien newspaper, said that the girl had moved to another secondary school under a false identity. “She is sometimes totally overwhelmed by the guilt,” the document said, adding that she suffered “emotional distress”. Lawyers for the boys, now aged 16 to 18, who have been charged with criminal conspiracy with intent to cause violence, said they had accepted the money in the belief that he wanted to denounce the teacher. They had never imagined Anzorov would kill Paty. France Adam Sage Paris Thomas Paty was giving a lesson on free speech Germany Oliver Moody Berlin

36 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times World Javier Milei, the Argentinian president-elect, arrived in the US yesterday to discuss his radical plan to shore up his country’s stricken economy. Milei, 53, will meet officials from the White House, Treasury and International Monetary Fund over two days in New York and Washington. The libertarian populist, who has been compared to Donald Trump, has proposed making the US dollar Argentina’s currency and scrapping New Argentinian leader seeks US support the central bank to fight the hyperinflation that has wrecked the economy. Milei will meet the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, but not President Biden. Milei won a run-off election to claim the presidency this month, riding a wave of public fury at corruption and mismanagement by the political mainstream. Voters blame it for the country’s worst economic crisis in two decades. The self-styled “anarcho-capitalist” and former TV pundit campaigned on a platform of sweeping economic reform, pledging to take a “chainsaw” to government spending to tackle Argentina’s tripledigit inflation and looming recession, and to curb growing poverty. Before his inauguration on December 10, the president-elect will explain his economic plan to western officials. “He is not looking for financing,” a spokesman said, insisting that Milei would discuss his plans for monetary reform and deregulation. Argentina has a $44 billion debt to the IMF that was negotiated in 2018 by Mauricio Macri, the former president, who is now a close ally of Milei. Argentina Hugh Tomlinson who used to own two Van Gogh paintings stolen from a Dutch museum, moved to the Netherlands in 1996 to run a coffee shop selling marijuana where he forged alliances with African drug importers. Imperiale was soon supplying warring Naples mafia clans with cocaine and arms during a feud that claimed 70 lives in 2004. Fleeing an arrest warrant in 2016, Imperiale moved to Dubai, where he took on the alias of Antonio Rocco, a builder of luxury villas. He joined drug traffickers from around the world taking advantage of the difficulty nations had in extraditing criminals from the Gulf state. His luck ran out when Dubai began to honour extradition requests and he was captured with his wife and four children at his opulent villa. As Imperiale’s trial winds up in Naples, a prosecutor asked the court to impose a sentence of 14 years and nine months, including time off for giving evidence about his career to police. Drug kingpin offers Dubai’s ‘island of Taiwan’ in plea deal A drug trafficker has offered to hand over an artificial tropical island he bought in Dubai to the Italian state in return for a reduced jail sentence. Raffaele Imperiale bought the island during his years in the Gulf state managing a global drug empire while on the run from Italian police. Extradited to Italy last year, the cocaine broker has already disclosed the secrets of his 400kg-a-week business to lower his sentence and has now thrown in “Taiwan”, one of the artificial islands dredged up in Dubai to form a map of the world. He told a court in Naples yesterday that he paid €12 million for the island seven years ago and it was now worth about €60 million. Imperiale, 49, claims he bought 40kg of gold a month in Dubai with his cocaine profits and spent €300,000 on his horses in a three-month period. The World Islands, two miles off Dubai, are grouped into continents including Europe, where a new development of hotels will offer artificial rainfall to resemble the climate. After starting as a mineral water salesman near Naples, Imperiale, Italy Tom Kington Rome ‘Taiwan’ 2 miles A Catholic church in Brooklyn that counts at least one archbishop and the president of Lithuania among its recent visitors has clerics hot under the collar after a pop star filmed a video in the building (Will Pavia writes). Our Lady of Mount CarmelAnnunciation welcomed the former child star Sabrina Carpenter, 24, who went shimmying down the aisle in a black tutu and disported herself before the altar, which was flanked by pastel-painted coffins. In the music video for Feather, a single about break-ups that was released on Halloween, she arrives at the church in a pink hearse for a funeral of her former lovers. “I feel so much lighter like a feather with you off my mind,” she sings. The video, which features blood-spattered scenes of her various paramours meeting grisly ends, dismayed some of her fans. “I was really disappointed to see Sabrina acting so disrespectful in a Catholic church,” wrote one on social media. The clergy’s response was more visceral. Bishop Robert Brennan said he was “appalled at what was filmed at Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Brooklyn,” the diocese told the Catholic News Agency. Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello, who had allowed the video, said he had looked into Carpenter’s career and found nothing “questionable” before granting the permit “in an effort to further strengthen the bonds between the young creative artists who make up a large part of this community and the parish”. Despite writing to parishioners to seek forgiveness, he was relieved of his duties and a “Mass of Reparation” was held to “restore the sanctity” of the church. Priest loses his job over pop singer’s saucy video Sabrina Carpenter, 24, sought the blessing of Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello before she was filmed frolicking around a Catholic church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn Raffaele Imperiale says the artificial island he bought is now worth €60 million

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 37 Business Katie Prescott Technology Business Editor The head of one of the world’s most influential investment firms has called for “consistency” in the government’s business strategy, pointing out that Britain has had six chancellors and four prime ministers since 2019. On stage with Rishi Sunak at the government’s global investment summit at Hampton Court Palace yesterday, Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone, the private equity group, said: “Something that people in the government may not be as sensitive to is that people like us need consistency. We need to be able to trust what’s going to be happening.” Blackstone, which has assets under management worth $900 billion, has invested $27 billion in Britain over the past two decades and is the biggest provider of affordable housing in the UK. It owns Madame Tussauds and the London Eye tourist attractions in the capital and is also the biggest warehouse owner in Europe. Ministers rolled out the red carpet for the world’s business leaders, trumpeting deals worth £30 billion in the culmination of a campaign to promote Britain as an investment destination. This included £2.5 billion from Microsoft in artificial intelligence infrastructure and £5 billion from Aware Super, an Australian fund. Other business leaders attending the summit included Ruth Porat, the chief financial officer of Alphabet, Google’s parent company; Ignacio Galán, the executive chairman of Iberdrola, the Spanish energy group; Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England; and Rene Haas, chief executive of Arm Holdings, the chip designer based in Cambridge. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JP Morgan, cast a pall over proceedings with a gloomy outlook for the global economy, calling the global political situation a “dangerous cocktail mix”. The Wall Street powerhouse employs 20,000 people in Britain and is the world’s biggest bank by market capitalisation. Dimon told the audience, which included Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, that there was no easy answer to the conflict in Ukraine: “We could easily be sitting here three, four, five years from now and this is still going on. It could expand somewhere else — bad things can happen.” He described American fiscal stimulus as “drugs in the system” that gave everyone false confidence. “We are spending a lot of money, and that money is like heroin.” Dimon added: “What I’m really worried about is geopolitics. We’ve all been through recessions, we can deal with recessions. We can’t deal with the book written 40 years from now saying how the West lost. We don’t share those worst-case scenarios with people, but you can imagine we deal with every single possibility. You can’t rely on any one thing or any one country.” Hunt responded: “I’m not quite sure if that was meant to cheer us up.” Also present at the summit was Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the managing Oct 30 Nov 6 13 20 27 Oct 27 Nov 3 10 17 27 Oct 30 Nov 6 13 20 27 Oct 30 Nov 6 13 20 27 Oct 30 Nov 6 13 20 27 Oct 30 Nov 6 13 20 27 1.400 1.300 1.200 1.100 1.300 1.200 1.100 1.000 commodities currencies $ $ 2,200 2,000 1,800 1,600 FTSE 100 7,460.701 (-27.50) 8,500 8,000 7,500 7,000 world markets Brent crude $79.60 (-1.52) Dow Jones 35,333.47 (-56.68) $ £/$ $1.2608 (+0.0006) £/€ €1.1532 (+0.0003) ¤ (Change on the day) 120 100 80 60 Gold $2,009.69 (+9.01) 37,500 35,000 32,500 30,000 The market value of The Daily Telegraph’s parent company has more than halved after it unearthed a tax liability of almost £30 million. The value of the holding company has been cut from £47.8 million to £20 million after it failed to properly book tax owed by its publications over a number of years. A fund backed by Abu Dhabi that is Value of Telegraph’s parent company plummets after tax error Helen Cahill, Richard Fletcher bidding to buy the newspaper will have to plug the tax hole if it negotiates a takeover deal with the Barclay family. RedBird IMI, a joint venture part-funded by the United Arab Emirates, is trying to take control of the Telegraph by refinancing the family’s £1.2 billion debt to Lloyds Bank. Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, has warned that the government may launch an investigation into the transactions, amid fears that the Abu Dhabibased backers may limit free reporting at the paper. Press Acquisitions, which owns Telegraph Media Group, found in March that it had failed to book £27.8 million owed to the taxman. It said an accounting error had “resulted in a material understatement of tax on profit” and so it had been forced to make a substantial restatement of the value of its net assets — from £64.6 million to £30.1 million for the year to January 2, 2022. Paul Monaghan, chief executive of the Fair Tax Foundation, a campaign group, said the error was a “shocking oversight”. The company said it had made the mistake when it moved to the FRS 102 accounting standard. Its accounts show that it first moved to FRS 102 accounting in 2013. Monaghan said: “Tens of thousands of small businesses across the UK operate to the same FRS 102 accounting standard without such mistakes. Press Acquisitions Limited transitioned to the FRS 102 standard back in 2013 and it really is embarrassing that it has taken so long for them to bring their accounts into line and make this sizeable correction to their net asset position.” One accounting source said it was “remarkable” for a big company to make such a significant accounting error. The Barclay family declined to comment. RedBird IMI did not respond to a request for comment. Jeremy Hunt at the government’s global investment summit. He was looking for reasons to be cheerful after a speech by Jamie Dimon, the JP Morgan boss Rate cuts not on horizon, says Bailey Mehreen Khan Economics Editor The Bank of England will not cut interest rates for the “foreseeable future”, Andrew Bailey has said, warning that it is “too soon” to discuss the prospect of large-scale monetary easing. On a visit to northeast England, the Bank’s governor said that the battle to reduce inflation from its present 4.6 per cent to the 2 per cent target would be “hard work”, insisting that price pressures were not sufficiently low for Threadneedle Street to consider bringing down borrowing costs. “I’m very conscious of the position of the less well-off, but we do have to get [inflation] down to 2 per cent and that’s why I have pushed back of late against assumptions that we’re talking about cutting interest rates or we will be cutting interest rates in anything like the foreseeable future because it’s too soon to have that discussion,” Bailey told The Chronicle newspaper. “By the end of the first quarter next year, when a lot of that [inflation] unwind will have happened, we may be a bit under 4 per cent, but we’ll still have 2 per cent to go, maybe. “The rest of it has to be done by policy and monetary policy. And policy is operating in what I call a restrictive way at the moment — it is restricting the economy. The second half, from there to 2 per cent, is hard work and obviously we don’t want to see any more damage.” The Bank has maintained its base interest rate at 5.25 per cent since September, while inflation has fallen steadily to the lowest level since October 2021. Latest figures show that prices growth is easing on the back of large drops in energy prices this year and some weakening in goods and services costs. Bailey and other ratesetters at the Bank have pushed back against market speculation that forecasts at least two rates cuts before November next year, taking the base rate to about 4.75 per cent. “I’ve very much used this analogy of a game of two halves. They’re not Blackstone chief gives warning at London summit UK strategy is unstable, Sunak told

38 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times Business compared with the £245 million delivered in 2022. Rightmove is expanding its mortgage business to offer broker advice to home buyers via its website and targets £25 million from the unit by 2028, it said yesterday. The company said it “took an impor1 Graduates in professional roles have seen their pay fall fastest relative to inflation. Analysis of the graduate outcomes survey, which polls graduates 15 months after university, finds those in professional and managerial roles have seen the largest slump in pay compared with 2015. 2 Germany has been forced to patch together an emergency budget and declare a renewed fiscal “crisis” after a court ruling torpedoed spending plans. The verdict tore a €60 billion hole in the public finances and left a shortfall of €18 billion for the 12 months ahead. 3 Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone, the private equity group, has called for “consistency” in the UK’s business strategy, pointing out the UK has had six chancellors and four prime ministers since 2019. 4 The Bank of England will not cut interest rates for the “foreseeable future”, Andrew Bailey has said. The Bank’s governor said the battle to reduce inflation from its present 4.6 per cent to the 2 per cent target would be “hard work”. 5 The market value of The Daily Telegraph’s holding company has more than halved, from £47.8 million to £20 million, after it unearthed a tax liability of almost £30 million owed by its publications. 6 Rightmove’s position as Britain’s go-to property search website is “unassailable”, its chief executive has claimed. Johan Svanstrom said the business would continue to grow even if OnTheMarket, its smaller rival, was taken over by property data group CoStar. 7 One of Britain’s biggest insurers is expanding in Canada through a £100 million deal to buy a provider of vehicle replacement cover. Aviva said it had struck an agreement to acquire Optiom O2 Holdings from Novacap, a private equity firm, and other minority investors. 8 Retail sales volumes have fallen on an annual basis for a seventh consecutive month in November and companies are braced for another decline next month, a survey suggests. Sales were described as “disappointing” for the time of year. 9 A lukewarm response to a new video game has forced Frontier Developments to cut its annual revenue forecast to between £80 million and £95 million, from £108 million. The games developer launched Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin for PCs and consoles on November 17, but sales have been weaker than expected. The company said it expected sales to “build over time”. 10The managers of the £800 million Chrysalis Investments Trust are to leave Jupiter Fund Management, its parent company. Richard Watts and Nick Williamson will set up their own entity to continue to manage the vehicle once they leave at the end of March. Need to know Rightmove bullish despite high rates and rival threats Tom Howard Rightmove’s position as Britain’s go-to property search website is “unassailable”, its chief executive has claimed. Johan Svanstrom, who has been running Rightmove since the spring, sought to reassure shareholders at an investor day yesterday, saying that the business would continue to grow even if OnTheMarket, its smaller rival, was taken over by a rich American property data group. CoStar has promised to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in OnTheMarket should its takeover go through, sparking concerns that Rightmove’s dominance may be coming to an end. “Today, literally nothing gets done unless it touches the internet. Rightmove is a brand at the heart of that, going on 24 years now,” Svanstrom, 51, said. “We’re in a strong and resilient position and have built network effects that we think are unassailable. “Users specifically look for Rightmove, the brand. Rightmove is the place they come to first and return to most.” Even with the prospect of increased competition, Rightmove expects to grow rapidly. It promised to deliver revenues of more than £600 million by 2028, almost double what it achieved last year. Its nascent commercial property and mortgages division should account for 10 per cent of revenues by then, it said, while an operating profit in excess of £420 million is being targeted tant strategic step” by launching its first broker product last week after working with Nationwide Building Society. Giles Thorne, an industry analyst at Jefferies, said the projections were “eye-catching”, but added: “The onus will now be on management to convince on how 10 per cent compounded growth in operating profit can be achieved when we’re on the verge of a material change in competitive intensity.” Rightmove is the dominant property search site in Britain for people looking to move home. Last year, people spent more than 16 billion minutes looking at listings on its site and estate agents and developers have been paying more than expected to get their properties in front of people. On average, the FTSE 100 company’s 19,000 or so customers spent £1,314 a month pushing their listings through the Rightmove website in 2022. Bosses had expected that figure to rise by between £103 and £105 a month this year. However, Rightmove now expects its average monthly revenue per advertiser to grow by between £112 and £116 in 2023. On the whole, housebuilders have been struggling to sell their houses and flats for much of this year as high interest rates have crimped the spending power of would-be buyers. To drum up interest, Rightmove said developers had “extended their usage” of adverts on search result pages and on the company’s “advanced” listing package. It said that the financial outlook for 2023 “remains at least in line with our previous guidance”. Revenues are expected to rise by between 8 per cent and 10 per cent; operating profits should increase by between 7 per cent and 8 per cent; and the underlying margin is likely to be about 73 per cent. Analysts nudged up their annual forecasts as a result. Reflecting that, and the reassuring words from Svanstrom, Rightmove shares closed up 24½p, or 4.8 per cent, at 533½p. The shares remain almost 10 per cent below where they were before CoStar Group announced plans to buy OnTheMarket for £99 million last month. CoStar, which owns Homes.com in the US, intends to spend heavily on marketing to turn OnTheMarket, the third largest property portal in Britain, into “a leading player”. Rightmove’s high fees have created resentment among agents and developers, who feel they have little choice but to pay up, given that most people, when looking for a home, go straight on to its website. CoStar will look to take advantage of that to tempt customers away from Rightmove. “Your customers should be allies, not your detractors,” Andy Florance, CoStar’s founder and chief executive, said when the deal was unveiled. “If you find a market in which customers are being taken for granted, I think that creates opportunity.” Rightmove’s backers believe that the brand’s awareness among UK consumers will make it difficult for OnTheMarket — or anyone — to dislodge it. A leading British central banker will become the Reserve Bank of Australia’s new deputy governor as the Albanese government embarks on the biggest overhaul of the institution in decades (write Bernard Lagan in Sytdney and Ben Martin). Andrew Hauser, 53, the highly regarded executive director of the Bank of England’s markets division, will become second-incommand of the Australian central bank early next year, under Michele Bullock, its newly appointed first female governor. He is filling a position left vacant after Bullock took charge in September. Hauser will be the first foreigner to hold such a high position within Australia’s central bank and his appointment comes after an independent review concluded that the Reserve Bank of Australia’s promotion of insiders had led to insularity and overconfidence among some I’m off to a Bank down under, says BoE executive Sellers forced to cut prices It is now a buyers’ property market, Zoopla has claimed, with would-be sellers accepting 5.5 per cent below their initial asking prices to get deals over the line (Tom Howard writes). With the number of homes on the market at a six-year high and higher mortgage rates still pricing people out, the few would-be buyers that are still active are able to secure an average discount of £18,000, the largest amount in more than five years, according to the online property search website. In London and the southeast, where property prices are highest, the average discount being achieved is closer to £25,000. “These are the best conditions for homebuyers for some years, with more homes to choose from and with sellers more prepared to negotiate on price to agree a sale,” Richard Donnell, executive director at Zoopla, said. Zoopla estimates that, on average, house prices have fallen by 1.2 per cent over the past year. New challenge GDP Australia UK $1.55tn $3.13tn Base rate Australia UK 5.25% CPI inflation Australia UK 4.35%

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 39 Business One of Britain’s biggest insurers is expanding its business in Canada through a £100 million deal to buy a provider of vehicle replacement cover. Aviva said it had struck an agreement to acquire Optiom O2 Holdings from Novacap, a private equity firm that is the Canadian group’s controlling shareholder, and other minority investors for C$170 million. The takeover will bolster Aviva’s position in Canada, where the British company is already the second-largest provider of general insurance products. The deal is expected to be completed in the first quarter of next year. It strengthens Aviva’s commitment to Canada. Until recently Aviva was a sprawling company with operations in countries around the world, as well as being Britain’s largest composite insurer that provides both life and general cover. However, under Amanda Blanc, its chief executive since 2020, the group has been significantly streamlined to focus on its core markets of the UK, the Republic of Ireland and Canada. This process has involved a string of business disposals overseas — including Italy, France, Poland, Turkey, Vietnam and Singapore — which have raised over £8 billion, of which more than £5 billion has been returned to Inflation defeated? Not yet it isn’t A ndrew Bailey is right to warn that interest rates won’t be cut in the foreseeable future. The governor of the Bank of England needs to lean hard against a growing narrative that the defeat of inflation has been largely accomplished and that the monetary brakes can start to be eased. Rishi Sunak’s triumphant claim to have met his target for halving inflation has added to the impression of a job mostly done. That was a political stunt. Price stability isn’t his responsibility and, arguably, having a separate target from the Bank merely muddied the waters. The dramatic fall in the headline annual rate of inflation from 6.3 per cent in September to 4.6 per cent in October was very welcome news this month, but it fostered the illusion that we can get back to the 2 per cent target relatively easily. The reduction was mostly to do with the timing of the energy price cap and had less to do with a big shift in economic forces. Yet it unleashed a wave of speculation about the future path of the base rate, including one view from Goldman Sachs that we could see the first cut from 5.25 per cent as early as February. There is not enough evidence yet that firms are being sufficiently restrained in their pricing to justify that doveish approach. The latest purchasing managers’ index snapshot of the economy last week showed both input costs and average selling prices increasing at faster rates this month than in October. In the services sector, companies reported the sharpest rise in their average charges since July, largely because of the need to pass on higher staff costs. The game of leapfrog played by business and the labour force shows every sign of carrying on. It may yet require a recession to end it. The looming general election won’t help. Those cuts to national insurance and incentives to investment spending announced by the chancellor last week will stoke aggregate demand. Other preelection goodies will make the Bank’s job more difficult, too. The 9.8 per cent rise in the minimum wage may not of itself be very inflationary (only about 1.6 million, or 5 per cent, of the workforce is on minimum wage), but it could have a bigger impact if employers start to push up wages of higher-paid workers to restore differentials. There is one other factor: the delayed effect on mortgage payers and businesses on floating rate loans. Only now — 23 months after the first rise in the base rate — is the full impact of higher borrowing starting to be felt. Public pressure for rate relief is going to intensify. Overly optimistic expectations of an imminent return to lower rates are getting baked in. Far from getting any easier, monetary policy could be about to get harder. Leaving gift T he jackpot-hitting duo from Jupiter Fund Management are jumping ship (report, page 45). Nick Williamson and Richard Watts raised eyebrows when they bagged themselves and Jupiter a £117 million payday in 2021 from managing Chrysalis Investments, the unicornhunting investment trust. Now they are quitting to set up their own business and are taking the client with them. That colossal “perfomance” fee was badly structured and totally undeserved. It was based on what proved to be ludicrously optimistic valuations of Chrysalis’s investments. The fund managers were able to pocket the fees while none of the paper profits to investors were actually crystallised. Even the most gravy-hungry corners of private equity don’t behave like that. Every single one of the Chrysalis investors who put in £830 million in a string of capital-raisings between 2018 and 2021 has lost money. This episode has done the investment trust sector damage, while the embarrassed silence from wealth managers who put their clients into Chrysalis is unedifying. The original board of Chrysalis deserves most of the blame for sanctioning such a dreadful fee structure. But Jupiter is not innocent. Williamson and Watts at least agreed to take their £60.5 million wad in Chrysalis shares and have suffered the consequences. Jupiter took its loot in cash and never paid back a penny. Metro’s credit line W hile many of the world’s biggest institutional investors were rubbing shoulders with Rishi Sunak at Hampton Court yesterday and making polite, non-binding promises to plough more into the UK, one Colombian billionaire was preparing to splash out hard cash. Metro Bank shareholders have now cleared the way for Jaime Gilinski Bacal to put £102 million of fresh equity into the bank, boosting his holding from 9 per cent to 53 per cent. The refinancing, in which bondholders were required to take a 40 per cent haircut, stabilises the bank, removes a headache for the Bank of England and even gives Metro the firepower to open a few more of its marble-clad branches, possibly in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Leeds and Chester. Yet consumers, however much they lament branch closures, are not visiting them as much as they did. This is a big personal wager on a business model that has largely run out of believers. Golden buoys G old climbed to a six-month high yesterday and is flirting with its all-time peak of $2,075 an ounce (report, page 45). Bitcoin, which for its adherents is “digital gold” — boasting the same property of being an uncheatable and rare store of value — has also been climbing and at $37,000 is its highest for 18 months. Keynes’ barbarous relic and its modern-day counterpart are both still being worshipped. [email protected] Alistair Osborne is away business commentary Patrick Hosking Aviva branches out with £100m deal Ben Martin Banking Editor Aviva’s shareholders. Aviva already works with Optiom by providing underwriting capacity to the Canadian company. Optiom sells insurance that covers the shortfall a driver is likely to face if they write off their car and want to replace it with a brand new vehicle. This shortfall occurs because cars lose their value as soon as they are bought and leave a dealership’s forecourt and motor policies typically cover only the cost of replacing a vehicle at its current market value. Tracy Garrad, the chief executive of Aviva’s business in Canada, said: “The acquisition strengthens our offering and distribution capabilities in a highly attractive segment of the Canadian insurance market. We know Optiom well through our existing relationship and are excited about what we can do together to better serve our brokers and customers.” Aviva shares rose by 1p, or 0.2 per cent, to close at 425½p. Tesla sues in Sweden over postal strike A court in Sweden has ruled that the country’s transport authority must find a way to get licence plates to Tesla that are being blocked by postal workers. The decision comes hours after the US electric car maker sued the agency and the state-run PostNord because postal workers had stopped delivering plates for its new cars. Last week PostNord workers joined industrial action aimed at forcing Tesla to sign a collective bargain agreement for mechanics in Sweden, and the transport agency refused to deliver the plates by other means, saying it was contractually bound to use PostNord. However, Norrkoping district court ruled the agency must get the plates to Tesla within seven days or pay a fine of 1 million Swedish crowns ($95,000). “It is correct that a decision has been made, siding with Tesla’s claim,” Johannes Ericsson, Tesla’s lawyer, told Aftonbladet, the newspaper. The district court, transport agency, Tesla and its lawyer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Tesla has sued PostNord and the transport agency in two separate lawsuits. IF Metall, Sweden’s biggest manufacturing union, is locked in a fight with Tesla to achieve a collective bargaining agreement for the company’s mechanics in Sweden. IF Metall put the workers on strike on October 27, refusing to service Tesla’s cars. Since then members of other unions, including dockworkers, electricians and cleaners, have joined in sympathy actions. The American electric car company has a policy of not signing collective bargaining agreements and has said the terms of its employees are as good as, or are better than, than those the Swedish union is demanding. The union said it was vital to the Swedish labour market model that all companies have collective agreements. In its court filing, Tesla called the transport agency’s decision not to allow it to pick up the licence plates “a unique attack on a company operating in Sweden”. In 2022, Tesla delivered more than 9,000 electric vehicles to Swedish customers. staff. The findings, which were released in April, have kick-started a restructuring of the Reserve Bank and have come amid wider scrutiny of the performance of central banks in fighting inflation, including in Britain, where the Bank of England has faced criticism for its failure to accurately forecast price rises in the economy. Yesterday the House of Lords’ economic affairs committee published a series of proposals to shake up the Bank of England, including a recommendation that it fosters greater diversity of thought within its ranks. In Australia, the government headed by Anthony Albanese, the prime minister, will introduce legislation this week giving effect to the key recommendations in its recent review, including the creation of specialist boards for setting interest rates and governance, as well as refining the central bank’s inflation and employment mandate. Hauser will work alongside Bullock to guide the Reserve Bank through the overhaul, which is expected to result in a central bank that more closely resembles its advanced economy peers. Bullock, 60, said she looked forward to collaborating with Hauser. “He has great experience and will bring a welcome external perspective to the bank and the Reserve Bank board,” she said. Hauser is a veteran of the Bank of England, which he joined in 1992. He has held a series of senior positions at Threadneedle Street before taking his present job, in which he played a key role in the Bank’s handling of the gilt market sell-off last year triggered by Liz Truss’s illfated mini-budget in September 2022. The Bank stepped in with an emergency gilt-buying programme that succeeded in restoring calm to the market. The sharp drop in gilts caused chaos for British pension funds that had been using leveraged liabilitydriven investment strategies to manage risks. In appointing Hauser, Australia’s treasurer, Dr Jim Chalmers, and his cabinet colleagues over-looked the RBA’s leading internal candidates. The review of the Reserve Bank of Australia, conducted by a panel that included Carolyn Wilkins, an external member of the financial policy committee of the Bank of England, made 51 recommendations to overhaul the way Australia’s central bank works. Andrew Hauser’s appointment will help to ease a culture of apparent overconfidence at Australia’s central bank Aviva’s acquisition sells a specialist insurance to drivers in Canada 4.6% GDP growth (Q2) Australia UK 0.2% 5.4% 2.1%

40 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times Business Annual shop prices inflation is at its lowest level since June 2022, a survey suggested yesterday. Shop prices in early November were 4.3 per cent higher than they had been a year earlier, down from the 5.2 per cent inflation reported in October and from the peak of 9 per cent inflation recorded in May, according to the latest data from the British Retail Consortium and NielsenIQ. Food prices inflation fell to 7.8 per cent, down from 8.8 per cent in October and marking the seventh consecutive month of decline. Food prices inflation is now less than half its peak rate of 15.7 per cent, recorded in April 2023, and is the lowest since July 2022. Non-food inflation fell to 2.5 per cent in November from 3.4 per cent in October, continuing a downward trajectory from a peak of 5.8 per cent in May. However, looming cost pressures threaten to push inflation back up again next year, the retail consortium warned. Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the trade body, said that retailers faced “new headwinds in 2024, from government-imposed increases in business rates bills to the hidden costs of complying with new regulations. Combining these with the biggest rise to the national living wage on record will likely stall or even reverse progress made thus far on bringing down inflation, particularly in food.” The consortium’s figures, based on information for the first week of November, show that inflation was steeper for “ambient foods” — those stored at room temperature, such as tins — at 9.2 per cent than it did for fresh foods, where inflation fell to 6.7 per cent. Dickinson said this reflected a larger proportion of ambient foods being imported and affected by the weak pound, whereas lower energy prices had cut input costs for fresh dairy products, in particular. She said the wider fall in inflation reflected retailers competing “fiercely to bring prices down for customers ahead of Christmas”, but “while health and beauty products saw price cuts as retailers rush to shift stock before Christmas, clothing prices increased as some retailers continued to hold off on promotional activity”. Emily Gosden Food prices rise at slowest pace in 17 months Retail sales volumes have fallen on an annual basis for a seventh consecutive month in November and companies are braced for another decline next month, according to an industry survey. Sales were described as disappointing for the time of year and trade is expected to fall short of the activity retailers normally would expect in the weeks before Christmas, the CBI has found. With price pressures in the sector said to be “acute”, retailers also reported a reduction in staffing numbers in the year to November. The few positive signs in the business group’s survey included a sales decline that was less marked than the previous month and an indication that retailers expect another narrowing in the pace of decline in December. Confidence among retailers also recovered in November, with respondents expecting their business situation to improve slightly over the next three months, while the reduction in headcount this month was milder than previously and employment levels are expected to be broadly unchanged in December. “Retail sales have languished in negative territory for much of 2023, reflecting the impact of strained household finances on the sector’s fortunes,” Martin Sartorius, principal economist at the CBI, said. “Though sentiment has picked up slightly, firms do not feel that a revival in activity is imminent. Given the weakness in trading conditions, it’s little surprise that firms are scaling back on their investment ambitions.” In another sign of weak trading, retailers cut back on orders placed with suppliers in the year to November, albeit to a lesser degree than in the previous month. Businesses reported that stock positions were too high and were set to remain similarly so next month, which risks straining their cashflow. Internet sales volumes continued to fall rapidly in the year to November, but the contraction has moderated compared with a record rate of decline in October. Sartorius said there was disappointment among industry leaders at the lack of help from the government with business rates. Large retailers, factories, offices and other organisations with large physical premises face an estimated £1.6 billion of extra costs from next year as the commercial property tax is due to rise with inflation. Small companies were helped with their rates bills in last week’s autumn statement, but there was no assistance for those with large commercial properties. “Retailers had hoped the chancellor’s autumn statement would offer a reprieve from next year’s hike in business rates. While prioritising relief for [smaller companies] and key sectors is understandable, many retailers are being left to contend with another increase in costs at a time when they are least able to afford them.” Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, has said that rising rates bills risk undermining the recent fall in the rate of inflation, particularly in food. The CBI survey included 131 respondents, of which 53 were retailers. Theatreland off to a flyer Shops, bars and restaurants in London’s theatre district have made a “strong start to the Christmas trading period”, with footfall and sales tracking comfortably ahead of last year (Tom Howard writes). Even as the economy flirts with recession, Shaftesbury Capital, which owns more than 40 acres of land around Soho, Chinatown and Covent Garden, said people were still flocking to London’s theatre district and spending their money. On average, its tenants’ sales are up 12 per cent versus last year and are now 16 per cent higher than in 2019. With a vacancy rate of 2.2 per cent, Shaftesbury has pretty much no space available to rent out in its portfolio. Ian Hawksworth, Shaftesbury’s chief executive, said that there had been “excellent leasing momentum”. Shaftesbury shares rose 4¼p, or 3.7 per cent, to close at 120¾p. Retailers suffer fresh setback for winter James Hurley CBI retail sales Retail sales volumes compared with previous year Source: CBI Jan 2023 Apr Jul Oct −50 −40 −30 −20 −10 0 10 20% director and chief executive of Mubadala Investment Company, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund that owns Manchester City FC. Praising Britain for its strong universities and regulatory environment, he said the fund was focused on investments in the green transition, technology, life sciences and digital infrastructure. Echoing remarks by Hunt that more should be done to fund promising young businesses, Mubarak urged the government to support investment for companies during the early stages of growth. Brian Armstrong, the chief executive of Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, said: “The prime minister is excited about technology, that’s my read. He recognises that it’s the source of economic growth and it’s a really refreshing message.” Another theme was the role of China in UK investment. Lord Johnson of Lainston, the minister for investment, called the country’s involvement “crucial” to achieve net-zero goals. “A constructive and engaged relationship with China on a commercial front is very important. That doesn’t mean to say we cannot have conversations about areas where we have disagreements,” he said. Schwarzman, who was present at a recent meeting between presidents Xi and Biden, said that relations between China and America appeared to be thawing. He described the recent summit involving the two leaders as a “reasonably successful” meeting, saying there was “good interaction” between the presidents, with more of a “we want to engage” attitude from the Chinese side. Commenting on the government’s approach to China, Sunak said: “Our strategy can be summarised in three approaches: it’s to protect, align and engage. “We have got to protect the UK against the risks, where they manifest themselves.” Investment ‘key to net-zero goals’ equal, but a lot of what we’re seeing at the moment is the unwinding of these inflationary effects of these external shocks,” he said. The governor added to warnings from Huw Pill, the Bank’s chief economist, that the supply side of the economy, which includes the availability of labour, could keep inflation stubbornly high over the coming years. “If you look at what I call the potential growth rates of the economy, there’s no doubt it’s lower than it has been in much of my working life.” ‘No rate cuts on horizon’

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 41 Comment Business Austerity in Europe has huge consequences for its politics Geert Wilders has exploited his nation’s economic uncertainty T he UK has long been one of the premier listing venues in the world for companies to access growth capital, yet an honest appraisal of the present landscape for London’s small and midcaps reveals a market that is failing to correctly price companies and to attract the capital and hence the liquidity needed to deliver efficient markets. It is a vital component of the economy, helping smaller companies to list, access capital, deliver innovation, create jobs and grow. But it is shrinking. Charles Hall, of Peel Hunt, has highlighted that the number of companies in the FTSE Small Cap index has shrunk by 10 per cent this year alone and, excluding funds, has reduced by 30 per cent over the past five years. Last week there was a continuation of this trend, with Hotel Chocolat accepting an offer from Mars at a 170 per cent premium to the market value. Some will argue that this is a mispriced offer, but the number of deals going through at strong premiums to market values implies it may be the market that is failing to price companies correctly. There is increasing concern that the UK equity market is sleepwalking its way into mediocrity and, unless we act with urgency, we risk relegation to second-tier status, a parochial market that used to matter. The government is keenly aware of the decline and is seeking to reverse this trend with its Edinburgh Reforms. One such example is the UK Investment Research Review, commissioned by the Treasury, delivered by Rachel Kent and accepted by Jeremy Hunt back in July. It made a range of bold recommendations, which, if implemented, could cement the UK as the world leader for the availability and depth of high-quality information on companies. At the heart of this is an ambition to ensure that all the companies listed in the UK have enough research coverage, with a healthy balance between “independent” and “connected” research, such as issuersponsored or house broker research, that is widely and freely available to all investors. This equilibrium between independent and connected research is vital to foster balanced debate in the market, attracting liquidity and improving pricing, but it is almost entirely absent for all but the largest companies. There is almost no widely accessible independent research written on the smallest 1,000 companies. To be clear, there is a lot of value in connected research, much of it is well-written and providing fair assessment of the risks and opportunities, as well as giving the investor a crucial view of what a company’s closest advisers expect it to deliver over the next few years. But a healthy market needs both sides and out of that debate emerges more efficient pricing. How are these problems to be addressed? The two boldest recommendations are: first, to greatly expand research coverage and create viewpoint balance through a new funding mechanism of a small levy on trading activity; and, second, to ensure broad accessibility through the creation of a research platform to manage this process and maximise effective dissemination. The funding mechanism ensures there is a sufficient and continuing economic incentive to foster research coverage across the market. The research platform ensures that distribution of that research is widely available to all interested investors rather than to only the large institutions that can afford the cost. For eight years, we have built our Research Tree platform towards the same objectives. If these reforms are adopted, we could witness a seismic shift: a resurgence in research coverage, a democratisation of market information and the rebirth of the UK as a global financial hub, attracting a wave of companies eager to list in a market that is fair, informed and liquid. The moment for action is now. Robert Mundy Europe’s political establishment has been shaken by events in Germany and the Netherlands and the aftershocks are rippling through the rest of the Continent. On November 15, Germany’s powerful constitutional court struck down the government’s funnelling of €60 billion of unused pandemic emergency cash to finance a federal climate fund, saying it violated the country’s strict constitutional debt limit. Berlin’s three-party coalition has been thrown into disarray and faces a budgetary black hole of €100 billion until 2027. Then last week Geert Wilders stormed to victory in a Dutch general election in which the far-right leader won 50 per cent more seats than his nearest rival, marking the biggest triumph for his anti-migrant, antiIslam Freedom party. Both events in founding European Union countries could have sizeable consequences for the union’s politics and economics in 2024. In Karlsruhe, a court case brought by the opposition Christian Democrats (the party of Angela Merkel, the former chancellor) has forced the German government to announce an emergency resuspension of the Schuldenbremse debt brake for 2023 and has thrown 2024’s budgetary plans into chaos. The sacrosanct debt brake, a fiscal rule enacted in 2009, places a strict 0.35 per cent limit on the federal government’s annual deficit. The brake was suspended in 2020, when the government declared a pandemic emergency, but its subsequent return limited the new three-party coalition’s room for fiscal manoeuvre after elections in late 2021. The court ruling threatens more than purely climaterelated spending. Last year the government siphoned €45 billion into an off-budget instrument to fund energy subsidies for households and businesses. It means Germany is now facing a €105 billion budgetary black hole over the next four years, with €30 billion to €50 billion earmarked for 2024. The immediate impact is likely to be sizeable fiscal consolidation in an economy that is wobbling near recession. A forecast tepid recovery in gross domestic product of about 0.3 per cent in 2024 is now likely to be a -0.2 per cent contraction, according to Deutsche Bank. Households won’t be the only ones to feel the pinch from the austerity drive; the government had offered blandishments worth €10 billion to Intel, the American technology powerhouse, to set up a chipmaking plant in the country and billions in subsidies to TSC, the Taiwanese semiconductor group, as part of its expansive industrial policy. This spending has been thrown into doubt along with the future of the debt brake. In Britain, fiscal rules are rightly pilloried for being rewritten at the chancellor’s whim and for promoting short-term policies to make the numbers add up. Germany, however, has an iron-clad fiscal rule that still manages to produce similarly damaging incentives. Years of fresh spending cuts in Europe’s largest economy will matter for its politics. Before the court judgment, Berlin’s political establishment was fretting over the popularity of the hard-right Alternative for Germany, which won its biggest share of the vote to date in a regional election last month. In the epoch-defining debate over what causes people to vote for extremists, there is new evidence that shows fiscal policy really does matter. An MIT study covering more than 200 European elections between 1980-2015 found that deep fiscal consolidation “leads to a significant increase in extreme parties’ vote share, lower voter turnout and a rise in political fragmenta-tion”. The paper estimated that a 1 per cent reduction in regional public sending translated into a three percentagepoint increase in the vote share of extremist parties. The researchers noted that centre-left governments paid the biggest political price for their austerity drives — a finding that should worry Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor. This leads us back to Wilders, who is scrambling to find coalition partners to form a new Dutch government. His electoral result smashes through the previous high watermark for the far-right in the Netherlands. So is austerity to blame? It is reductive to answer a categorical “yes”, but there is anecdotal evidence from the Netherlands that reinforces the MIT study’s findings: the country is not included in the paper. The Dutch embarked on massive public spending cuts between 2009 and 2018 to restore fiscal probity after bailing out their banks. A series of governments have been at the fore of pushing strict fiscal limits in Brussels while refraining from stimulus at home. In recent years, a nationwide benefits scandal and housing shortages have been attributed to years of abstemious government spending. Last week’s election was contested by a record 26 parties, confirming the Dutch as world champions in political fragmentation. Focusing on economics does not necessarily undermine the counterclaim that “cultural” factors feed the anti-migrant, nationalist far right in richer parts of Europe. It seems more sensible to suggest that economic precarity increases the salience of identity politics, something that Wilders has long exploited. The Netherlands could become a Petri dish for how the far-right behaves in power and Germany an experiment in whether unwarranted austerity feeds extremists on the left and right. For the rest of the EU, a potential Wilders-led Netherlands and an asphyxiated Berlin will push frugality on to the eurozone, wiping out hopes for bigger common borrowing instruments or largesse in the next EU budget. The political fallout of these political shifts could be felt as early as next summer’s European parliament elections and studied for years to come. ‘‘ ’’ Mehreen Khan is Economics Editor of The Times Robert Mundy is founder of Research Tree We must stop sleepwalk into mediocrity for London’s stock market Mehreen Khan ‘Unless we act with urgency, we risk second-tier status, relegation to a parochial market that used to matter’

42 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times Business Business Email briefing Inflation may be starting to come down but the UK economy is still struggling to grow. Despite the latest decision to hold interest rates, markets remain wary of further increases and are questioning whether the cost of borrowing will stay higher for longer. Access to the latest news and analysis has never been more important. Get our latest economics and business coverage at 8am and 12.30pm each weekday, direct by email from the Business Editor Richard Fletcher and the Business News Editor Martin Strydom. Sign up at home.thetimes.co.uk/ myNews Molten Ventures has agreed to buy Forward Partners, a rival, in a £41 million deal as venture capital funds face “market dislocation and depressed valuations”. It is raising £50 million through an accompanying share sale to invest in its enlarged portfolio. BlackRock, Forward Partners’ largest shareholder with a stake of 70 per cent, has committed to buying half the new shares issued. Molten is raising its equity at an issue price of 270p, which represents a 3.4 per cent discount to its closing price last Friday. The stock-based deal for ForMolten Ventures agrees £41m deal for rival Helen Cahill ward Partners represents a 7.3 per cent discount to its closing share price of 33½p on Friday. Molten’s existing shareholders will hold about 91.2 per cent of the combined group and Forward Partners’ shareholders the remainder. Molten, formerly known as Draper Esprit, is a listed venture capital firm with offices in London, Cambridge and Dublin. It invests in technology companies such as Crowdcube, Lyst and Thought Machine and swung to a net loss of £243 million in its most recent financial year. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and on Euronext Dublin. Forward Partners, which was floated in London in 2021, also invests in technology start-ups. Its portfolio of 43 assets includes cybersecurity, payments, legal technology and ecommerce businesses. In its announcement to investors, Molten said the venture capital market had faced “pressures driven by continued global macroeconomic instability”. It said fundraising, selling assets and making new investments were taking longer owing to “increased levels of due diligence” and warned that rising interest rates and inflation “continue to weigh upon” the company and its portfolio of investments “This landscape for the venture market, where investors are more cautious and founders are seeking to manage costs and lengthen runways, has not changed meaningfully in recent months and, while there are signs of stabilisation in the wider macroeconomic environment and some cause for cautious optimism, the Molten board believes that such conditions are likely to exist for at least the short to midterm,” it said. Molten’s share price closed down 12¼p, or 4.4 per cent, at 267½p. Martin Davis, 61, chief executive of Molten, said: “Historically, of all vintages, investments made in a downturn have yielded the greatest returns for technology investors and this fundraising reflects both the scale of our ambition to support innovation and our desire to offer investors exposure to fast-growing privately owned technology assets.” Nic Brisbourne, 50, Forward Partners’ chief executive, said: “Over the last ten years, Forward Partners has built a strong and resilient portfolio and, despite the turbulent market, I’m pleased to note that growth remains strong and our companies remain a force for good in the world. This merger will provide the resources, support and time they need to fully realise their potential.” British start-ups have attracted $15 billion in investment from venture capital firms this year, according to HSBC Innovation Banking, with American investors being the biggest source of funding. The government is planning to increase domestic sources of funding with a series of measures aimed at unlocking an extra £75 billion in capital from the British pension fund industry. Ministers have secured a voluntary pledge from nine of Britain’s largest defined-contribution pension providers to invest at least 5 per cent of the assets in their default funds in unlisted equities by 2030, in an agreement dubbed the “Mansion House Compact”. The Treasury has estimated that if the rest of the country’s defined-contribution schemes made a similar commitment, this would provide as much as £50 billion in capital. UK is biggest destination in Europe for tech investment Britain remains Europe’s biggest destination for investment in technology companies, but other countries are snapping at its heels and are increasing their share, a report has found. Amid a downward trend in investment worldwide and a fall in American investment in European technology, the latest annual State of European Tech report by Atomico found that overall there was a marked drop in the amount of capital flowing into technology businesses after a period of growth in 2021. In 2023, investment levels in the UK are forecast to fall by almost 50 per cent to $12.7 billion, down from $24.7 billion in 2022 and far from the $36 billion of 2021. France is expected to suffer a 40 per cent drop to $7.9 billion of investment this year, from $14 billion in 2021, while Germany will raise $7.8 billion, a 26 per cent drop from the $10.8 billion it brought in last year. The number of so-called down rounds, when companies raise funds at a valuation that was lower than at a previous round, quadrupled. There were 50 companies in Europe previously valued at more than a billion dollars, earning them the soubriquet “unicorns”, which fell below that threshold after a funding round. Atomico dubbed them “dehorned unicorns”. Access to capital was the No 1 concern among respondents to Atomico’s survey, while the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East made political upheaval the second biggest worry. When it came to raising funds, artificial intelligence companies attracted the most capital at an early stage. While America remains well ahead of Europe when it comes to funding technology companies, the number of people moving to Britain to work in such firms was net positive, up by 88,000, as more people came here than left for the other side of the Atlantic. Tom Wehmeier, a partner at Atomico and co-author of the report, said: “This year’s report shows that founders and talent in Europe are taking risks and tackling the hardest problems, like AI, climate and health. We now need to spread the risk-taking and embrace more of the potential at our disposal.” Katie Prescott Technology Business Editor

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 43 Business A lukewarm response to a new video game has forced Frontier Developments to cut its annual revenue forecast. The games developer launched Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin for PCs and consoles on November 17, but sales have been weaker than expected. In the unscheduled trading update, the Cambridge-based company said it expected sales of the title to “build over time” as it continues with post-release content, including paid options for downloads. Nevertheless, weaker sales of Realms of Ruin prompted Frontier to cut its revenue forecasts for the full year to the end of May to between £80 million and £95 million, against expectations in the City of £108 million. The updates wiped more than fifth off Frontier’s share price, which fell 40p to a close of 156p, its lowest level since November 2013. The company was floated on Aim, the junior stock market, at 127p in July of that year. Frontier said its revenue performance would depend on sales throughout its portfolio during the remainder of the financial year, including contributions from new platform releases for Frontier feeling the strain as weak sales ruin revenue hopes existing games. However, amid costcutting through a company shake-up launched last month, Frontier said it could still hit City forecasts of losses of about £9 million if it generated revenue towards the upper end of its guidance. Its portfolio has grown to include the Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo and Jurassic World Evolution franchises, which it said “continue to perform well”. Frontier also announced the departure of David Wilton, 61, its chairman over the past 12 months, to “concentrate on other interests”. Ilse Howling, 58, an existing non-executive director, has taken on the role. Frontier was founded in 1994 by David Braben, dubbed the “godfather of gaming” and the co-creator of the Elite space exploration series. Braben, 59, remains on the board as president and retains a third of the company. The company was boosted by the pandemic lockdowns, lifting its shares to a high of more than £33 in 2021, when it was valued at more than £1 billion. But it has struggled with what Braben called a “turbulent and difficult” year. It unveiled an annual loss of £4.6 million in September, on an adjusted earnings basis, on revenues down 8.2 per cent at £104.6 million. Analysts at Peel Hunt, Frontier’s adviser, said: “After dedicating more than Alex Ralph three years and about £20 million developing Realms of Ruin, seeing the reviews, ratings and usage is disappointing. The biggest factor appears to be price, a lesson Frontier has learnt going forward.” However, the broker added: “All is not lost.” Shares in Team17, Frontier’s listed rival known for Worms, its 1990s hit video game, slumped last week after it issued a profit warning. They were up 5p, or 2.8 per cent, at 185p last night. Hopes for a blood cancer treatment developed by GSK have been revived after the drugs group announced encouraging trial results, a year after it had suffered a heavy setback. The FTSE 100 company hailed positive headline results from an interim analysis of a late-stage trial of Blenrep as a treatment for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. The Dreamm-7 study of Blenrep in combination with another drug met its main target for the time that patients lived with the disease without it getting worse. The strength of the results meant the trial was stopped early, after a recommendation from an independent monitoring committee. The analysis will be presented at a scientific meeting and will be shared with regulators. It represents a boost for patients and for GSK, which last November announced disappointing trial results for Blenrep as a sole treatment for a later stage of multiple myeloma. That led to the drug being removed from the American market. Blenrep had been considered a potential blockbuster and since then analysts have largely discounted the drug from forecasts. Analysts at Citi said: “Given we have removed Blenrep from our forecasts, we see only upside for this molecule.” Shares in GSK closed up 8½p, or 0.6 per cent, at £14.14¼. Blood cancer trial gives GSK a boost Alex Ralph The new Warhammer video game took three years and £20 million to develop Frontier Developments Share price £12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Source: FactSet Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 2023

44 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times Business The Times unit trust information service Sell Buy +/­ Yld Sell Buy +/­ % Yld Sell Buy +/­ % Yld Sell Buy +/­ % Yld Sell Buy +/­ % Yld % Sell Buy +/­ Yld % British funds Data as shown is for information purposes only. No offer is made by Morningstar or this publication This is a paid for information service. For further details on a particular fund, readers should contact their fund manager.

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 45 Business The managers of the £800 million Chrysalis Investments Trust are to leave Jupiter Fund Management, its parent company, in a move ending a relationship that had drawn scrutiny in the City over its unusual fee structure. Richard Watts and Nick Williamson, the pair who run its investment portfolio, will set up their own entity to continue to manage the vehicle once they leave Jupiter at the end of March. The changes “will allow investment in added resources for the management team”, Chrysalis said. In July 2020 Chrysalis, a listed investment trust that backs unquoted, high-growth companies, became part of Jupiter through the latter’s takeover of Merian Global Investors. However, the move has been contentious. There was controversy in January last year when it emerged that unorthodox fee arrangements at Chrysalis had resulted in the trust paying about £117 million in performance and management fees to Jupiter, with Watts and Williamson sharing £60.5 million. The scale of the fees raised eyebrows in the City, even though Watts and Williamson received their payout in shares, which subsequently fell in value. The arrangements were overhauled a year ago to cut the performance fee, weeks after Matthew Beesley, 48, had become Jupiter’s new chief executive. Beesley has made sweeping changes at Jupiter to try to revive the company, which has struggled to stem years of outflows from its funds. The Chrysalis managers buy stakes in companies that they believe have the power to disrupt industries and that are privately owned but nearing a listing. The trust’s portfolio includes investments in Klarna, the unlisted Swedish “buy now, pay later” group, and Starling Bank, as well as Wise, the moneytransfer business that was floated in London two years ago. While the trust’s assets were valued at about £800 million at the end of September, its share price trades at a sharp discount to its net asset value, leaving Chrysalis with a stock market valuation of £405 million. The stock has slumped since late 2021 as interest rates worldwide have risen, putting pressure on the once-lofty valuations commanded by the type of high-growth private companies on which Chrysalis is focused. Andrew Haining, the Chrysalis chairman, said that both Jupiter and the trust had agreed that the split “was the most constructive way forward” and that last year’s controversy over fees had not been a factor. “We’re not a core investment strategy for Jupiter,” he said, adding that despite Jupiter’s strengths, it was “probably not recognised for its private capital, private equity asset management. In the balance, what Matt is trying to do with Jupiter and what we’re trying to do with Chrysalis is slightly different.” The changes, which have been drawn up after a consultation with Chrysalis’s shareholders, are subject to an investor vote. Jupiter thanked Watts and Williamson for their contribution to the company. It said Watts also had stood down from its UK Mid Cap Fund and had been replaced by Tim Service. Chrysalis trust managers break link to Jupiter Ben Martin Banking Editor Warehouse fund could close A property fund that owns more than €400 million of warehouses throughout Europe is to “consider more fully” the possibility of winding itself up (Tom Howard writes). Abrdn European Logistics Income, which owns 26 warehouses in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain and Poland, has launched a review to try to unlock “maximum value for its shareholders”. In addition to winding up, other options are on the table, including finding a buyer or merging with a rival fund. Another potential outcome is that the fund continues but with a reduced dividend target. “While we retain a strong conviction in the strategy, [the] decision to launch a strategic review largely reflects the unprecedented macro backdrop that real estate companies are operating against and provides greater optionality to deliver shareholder value,” Tony Roper, its chairman, said. Such is the uncertainty in the commercial property market that the shares of many companies in the sector trade at a sharp discount to the value of their buildings. In Abrdn European Logistics Income’s case, while its portfolio is valued at about €411 million, its stock market value is less than £250 million. G old prices hit six-month highs amid forecasts that the precious metal could rise to as much as $2,400 an ounce next year if the US Federal Reserve cuts interest rates (Emily Gosden writes). Spot gold prices exceeded $2,017 per ounce, the highest level since May 16, driven up by a weaker dollar and expectations of an end to US interest rate rises. A fall in the value of the dollar tends to benefit gold since it is priced in the US currency. Gold is usually regarded as having an inverse relationship with interest rates because higher rates make bonds or other yield-paying haven investments relatively more attractive compared with the metal, which Gold prices highest for six months does not offer a yield. However, there have been questions over whether that relationship still stands, with gold prices staying strong despite higher US rates, in part driven by political concerns over the Israel-Hamas conflict. Analysts at Bank of America said there was still a strong correlation between gold prices and rates, but “changes in direction” were “more important than the actual levels”. They said that “gold has a lot to gain on a Fed pivot, whenever that comes”, but “until the end of the hiking cycle is reached, gold prices will remain capped”. Gold’s existing peak of just over $2,070 an ounce was set in 2022 in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Gold price $2,100 2,000 1,900 1,800 1,700 Jan Apr Jul Oct Source:FactSet 2023 Spot gold prices have passed $2,017 an ounce and forecasters say they could go higher

46 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times Business Markets news in brief Volkswagen to cut jobs Volkswagen will make job cuts in a €10 billion programme to reduce costs. Thomas Schäfer, the brand chief, said high costs and low productivity meant the German carmaker was losing ground to rivals. “With many of our pre-existing structures, processes and high costs, we are no longer competitive,” he told a staff meeting at its headquarters in Wolfsburg. The company said previously that it planned to take advantage of the “demographic curve” to reduce its workforce, having pledged that it would not carry out dismissals until 2029. Law firm fined £100k A national law firm with offices in the City has been fined £100,000 for money laundering compliance failures, even though no financial crime occurred. Ashfords was hit with the fourth largest fine ever imposed by the Solicitors Regulation Authority over three commercial property transactions, between 2017 and 2018, that were valued in total at nearly £7 million. Regulators said the law firm had not registered source of funds information or due diligence documentation. Metro rescue backed Shareholders in Metro Bank backed a rescue deal that hands majority control to Jaime Gilinski, 65, a Colombian billionaire. The deal is highly dilutive to equity investors, but Metro had warned that if they did not support it the lender was likely to fall into the hands of the Bank of England, which could have resulted in shareholders being wiped out. Sky News reported that Barclays was in talks to buy a £3 billion mortgage portfolio from Metro. US home sales fall Sales of new single-family homes in America fell by more than expected last month as higher mortgage rates squeezed out buyers. The commerce department said they had dropped by 5.6 per cent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 679,000. The decline was in line with a deterioration in homebuilder sentiment, as the rate on popular 30-year fixed mortgages approached 8 per cent. September’s sales were revised down from 759,000 to 719,000. Commodities PRICES Major indices London Financial Futures © 2021 Tradeweb Markets LLC. All rights reserved. The Tradeweb FTSE Gilt Closing Prices information contained herein is proprietary to Tradeweb; may not be copied or re-distributed; is not warranted to be accurate, complete or timely; and does not constitute investment advice. Tradeweb is not responsible for any loss or damage that might result from the use of this information. For the 26 weeks to October 2, Young’s reported a 12 per cent increase in adjusted pre-tax profit to £28 million on revenue 5.4 per cent better at £196.5 million, compared with the same period last year. Likefor-like sales in central London were 8 per cent higher, partly because customers traded up to cocktails. The interim dividend grew from 10.26p a share to 10.88p, though half-year basic earnings per share slipped from 32.66p to 29.75p. The real benefits of the City Pubs deal are the extension of Young’s geographic coverage and the increase in its bedroom tally by 29 per cent to 1,065. But in the short year in which the two companies are together, which is the 12 months beginning next April. However, that requires some heroic assumptions about savings from synergies, bulkbuying and combining head offices — set against an unpromising backdrop as the group’s younger, affluent customers struggle with higher rents and mortgages. Despite its name, Young & Co’s Brewery has not brewed a drop of beer for 12 years. Instead, it presides over 220 pubs in London and more well-off parts of southern England, many with bedrooms and/or roof terraces, while outsourcing beer production to Marston’s. Y ou have to hand it to Clive Watson. No stranger to selling pubs, he has extracted a pretty price for his Aim-listed City Pub Group, persuading Young & Co to pay £162 million for 42 mainly freehold pubs from East Anglia to Wales, an average of £3.85 million each. Naturally, Simon Dodd, Watson’s counterpart at Young’s, was quick to claim that the deal would be earnings-enhancing in the first full William Kay Tempus Buy, sell or hold: today’s best share tips Is Sage progressing, or has it peaked? T he outlook for Sage Group has been a hot topic among analysts since its annual results last week, firing up the share price to a record £11.30 before it eased back again, albeit slightly. The stock closed up again yesterday. You need only look at the numbers to see why. For the year to the end of September, the accounting, human resources and payroll software provider, which boasts nearly half of Britain’s small businesses on its books, said its subscription income (known as annualised recurring revenue) had risen by 11 per cent to £2.2 billion. It reported that underlying profit before tax had increased by 20 per cent to £424 million. Meanwhile, the penetration of its Sage Business Cloud offering rose from 75 per cent to 84 per cent, hooking more customers into the Sage network, while accountancy firms have flocked to Sage for its Accountants package. Profit margins were reported at 20.2 per cent, suggesting that rivals are being kept at bay. Does that all portend continuing bounty, or is this as good as it gets? While the bulk of Sage’s income comes from the United States and Canada, the measures announced in Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement mean that many smaller British businesses will gain from higher tax write-offs on investments and will want to offset the raised national living wage. Sage should benefit on both counts. Steve Hare, the group’s chief executive, said that America “continues to be resilient”, while in Britain there was strong momentum, although he added: “We’re hopeful that the environment will continue to be strong, to encourage investment, because that’s what small businesses really need to do. We expect organic total revenue growth in the 2024 financial year to be broadly in line with 2023.” That suggests growth in Europe is still elusive. Jefferies sums up the uncertainty among analysts, envisaging scenarios that could take the shares anywhere from 720p to £16.20. At the lower end, the investment bank frets about increased competition catching up on Sage, but in the best case it sees research and development driving stronger growth, backed by higher sales from cross-selling, upgrading and reactivating ex-customers. Bank of America Securities is perhaps Sage’s biggest fan, seeing more customers, stronger customer loyalty, higher prices, higher margins Growing uncertainty Share price Source: FactSet Revenue £12 11 10 9 8 7 Jan Apr Jul Oct 2023 Recurring Year ending Sept 2023 Other £944m £29m £466m £5m £541m £43m £145m £11m North America UK & Ireland Europe Africa & Asia Pacific and a low share value compared with rivals. The bear argument is that Sage is beginning to mature, growth is likely to taper and competitors are circling. Johannes Schaller, of Deutsche Bank, argues that momentum is slowing, noting that while North America has continued to outperform, the UK and Ireland, as well as Europe, have been slower. Canaccord Genuity claims there is an increased risk of organic recurring revenue growth slowing to no more than high-single-digit percentages, which could lead to a derating of the shares. Artificial intelligence could fuel another growth phase. A tour around Intacct reveals a few mentions of AI and Sage is testing a digital assistant to “deliver real game-changing benefits for small to mid-sized businesses”. That could be transformational, but the impact is hard to quantify. JP Morgan sees Sage’s adjusted earnings per share rising from 31.76p to 48.32p over the next three years, taking the price-earnings ratio down from 31.4 for the year just ended to 20.6 for 2025-26. That would imply annual earnings per share growth moderating from last year’s 24.8 per cent into the mid-teens. The company increased its annual dividend by 5 per cent to 19.3p this time, equivalent to a 1.9 per cent yield at the present price, and that should grow to 2.2 per cent for the 2025 financial year. Not quite an income stock yet, but veering toward the value stock category. ADVICE Hold WHY A maturing business that could be rejuvenated by AI term, it will have to absorb the national living wage increase and the impact of continuing high interest rates on customers’ mortgages. Douglas Jack, at Peel Hunt, sees adjusted and fully diluted earnings per share taking a slight dip to 59.7p this year, then rising to 66.5p for the year to March 2026. That would equate to a 16.3 price-earnings ratio at the present price. ADVICE Hold WHY Progress facing shortterm economic headwinds sage group Market cap £11.6bn Annual revenue £2.2bn young and co’s brewery Market cap £633m Dividend yield 2.2%

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 47 Markets Business O ctopus Energy’s generation business has acquired a stake in a wind farm in the Irish Sea as it expands its renewables portfolio (Emily Gosden writes). The group said it had bought 12.5 per cent of the Walney Extension wind farm from AIP Management, the investment manager for a Danish pension fund, for an undisclosed sum. Walney Extension ranks among the top ten offshore wind farms globally with capacity of 660 megawatts, generating enough electricity to power nearly 600,000 homes. The 87-turbine project is majorityowned by Orsted, the Danish offshore wind giant. The deal is Octopus’s sixth offshore wind investment since last year as it seeks to rapidly expand its generation business. Octopus is most widely known for its household energy supply business, which was founded in 2015 by Greg Jackson, its chief executive. It has grown rapidly and is poised to become Britain’s second biggest domestic energy franchise than they had thought previously. On Aim, Team17 received a muchneeded boost after some heavy boardroom buying signalled a strong show of confidence in the aftermath of last week’s profit warning. Shares in the video games publisher improved 5p, or 2.8 per cent, to 185p, after it was disclosed that Frank Sagnier, the chairman-designate, had bought shares worth £205,200 shares on Friday, the same day the stock slumped by 43 per cent. Epwin Group rose 4p, or 6 per cent, to 70p after the window manufacturer said resilient trading in the second half had put the company on track to achieve its full-year targets. An update from Concurrent Technologies, revealing that revenues for the six months to the end of September was expected to be “substantially higher than any other half-year in the company’s history”, pushed shares in the computer products maker up 3p, or 4.2 per cent, to 75p. Entain turns into a losing bet for its former fan Jessica Newman Market report I t has hardly been the best year for Entain, with nearly two fifths wiped off the value of the gambling group’s shares since January. The shares were under pressure again yesterday, prompted by a swift U-turn by former fans of the Ladbrokes and Coral operator. Admitting that they had “been wrong” on the stock, Ben Andrews and his team of analysts at Goldman Sachs felt that the investment case had changed for several reasons. First, Entain has delivered disappointing online growth, amid a mix of regulatory headwinds, unfavourable sports results and fierce competition, which the analysts argue will continue into next year. Then there’s BetMGM, Entain’s American online joint venture, which is losing market share in the United States. And finally a £585 million settlement with HM Revenue & Customs, larger than had been expected. All this gave Andrews enough reason to remove his “buy” recommendation on the stock and to hit the “sell” button, while slashing the bank’s price target from £14.50 to 820p. Unless external catalysts materialise, for example a possible bid approach, Andrews expects Entain “to be a relative underperformer within our coverage”. The shares ended the session 6¾p, or 0.8 per cent, lower at 852¼p. There was a subdued start to the week for the wider markets, with the FTSE 100 falling 27.50 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 7,460.70 and the FTSE 250 closing down 19.55 points, or 0.1 per cent, at 18,438.55. AstraZeneca was another heavy faller after Jefferies told clients that clarity over the drugs group’s margins was “sorely needed for the stock to work”. The shares closed down 204p, or 2 per cent, at £99.76. Another drop in oil prices pushed Ceres Power down 7½p, or 3.8 per cent, to 188p and weighed on Ithaca Energy, which gave up 4¾p, or 3 per cent, to close on 154½p. Moving the other way on the FTSE 100 were the goldminers as prices of the precious metal, a haven, rose to a six-month high. The bounce gave a lift to Fresnillo, up 22¾p, or 4.3 per cent, at 551½p, and Endeavour Mining, which rose 26p or 1.5 per cent, to £17.60. A tier below, Centamin added 2p, or 2.3 per cent, to 92¼p, while Hochschild Mining picked up 3¼p, or 3 per cent, to 111¾p. Rightmove, the online property portal, was also on the up, gaining 24½p, or 4.8 per cent, to 533½p after it lifted its annual forecasts. Johnson Matthey came away with a gain of 44½p, or 2.9 per cent, to reach £15.90½ on the back of an upgrade from Bank of America. Analysts advised their clients to buy shares in the industrial technology company as they believed more value could be extracted from its clean air BT drops musicMagpie talks retail B T has confirmed that it does not now plan to make an offer for musicMagpie, sending shares in the Aimlisted online retailer down sharply. The announcement comes a week after musicMagpie told investors that early stage talks were being held with the telecoms group, as well as Aurelius, the pan-European private equity firm. On Friday, Aurelius, which owns The Body Shop, Footasylum and Lloyds Pharmacy, said it also was not going to make a formal offer for the reseller of electronics and other gadgets. That news that BT had taken part in early discussions came weeks after it announced plans to move into retail. MusicMagpie said that it “continues to seek potential buyers” for the business and “as such, remains in an offer period”. Founded in 2007 in Macclesfield, Cheshire, for people to sell old CDs, musicMagpie now resells refurbished smartphones, tablets and game consoles. Since it was floated in 2021 at 193p a share, the price has fallen by nearly 90 per cent amid a rout in technology stocks and weaker consumer demand. The shares fell a further 3¼p, or 16.5 per cent, to close at 16½p. MusicMagpie resells smartphones, tablets and game consoles Wall Street report Weak housing data hit sentiment and indices before Thursday’s inflation data, which could offer a clue on when the Federal Reserve may cut rates. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 56.68 points, or 0.2 per cent, to 35,333.47. The day’s biggest movers supplier when it completes the takeover of Shell’s household supply business. Octopus Energy’s generation division is an asset management business, investing cash from pension funds and others into wind and solar farms. It has £6 billion of assets under management across 16 countries. Zoisa North-Bond, chief executive of Octopus Energy Generation, said: “The UK is already a world leader in offshore wind and we’re confident this secure and homegrown energy source will play an even bigger role in the country’s energy mix.” Octopus extending its reach Dollar rates Exchange rates Other Sterling Data as shown is for information purposes only. No offer is made by Morningstar or this publication Gold/Precious metals European money deposits % Because of a technical issue, the gold fix prices are from Friday. Money rates % Sterling spot and forward rates

48 Tuesday November 28 2023 | the times Business Equity prices 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Health v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Construction & property v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v Consumer goods v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Engineering v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E Automobiles & parts Banking & finance v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v Investment companies 12 month Price Yld Dis(-) High Low Company (p) +/- % or Pm v 12 month Price Yld Dis(-) High Low Company (p) +/- % or Pm v Dividend yields Please note that the information in the dividend yields column has been suspended due to technical problems at Morningstar, the provider. 12-month high and low High/low prices for UK equities are based on closing prices. Investment trust high and low prices are based on intra-day figures.

the times | Tuesday November 28 2023 49 Equity prices Business Data as shown is for information purposes only. No offer is made by Morningstar or this publication u s t 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Telecoms v v v v Transport v v Utilities v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v Real estate Retailing v v v v v Technology v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Professional & support services v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v Industrials v v v v v v v v v v Leisure v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Media v v v v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v Natural resources v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v v