The Times - 15 November 2023

Suella Braverman has launched a blistering attack on Rishi Sunak, accusing him of duplicity, weakness and a betrayal of the country over illegal migration. In a three-page letter following her sacking, the former home secretary accuses the prime minister of “manifestly and repeatedly” failing to fulfil pledges he made to her when she backed his leadership campaign last year. She claims that Sunak never had any intention of taking the action needed to stop the small boats in the Channel. “Your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time,” she said. “You need to change course urgently.” Braverman deliberately delayed the da i ly n e w s pa p e r o f t h e y e a r Wednesday November 15 2023 | thetimes.co.uk | No 74524 publication of her letter for a day to maximise the impact before a critical judgment by the Supreme Court today on the legality of the government’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda. Victory would be a huge boost for Sunak’s pledge to stop the boats, but MPs on the right of the Tory party are already warning that they will join Braverman’s rebellion if the courts block the Rwanda plan. No 10 believes that the backlash is confined to a handful of malcontents, but some of Braverman’s allies think that as many as 60 MPs are ready to support her. Downing Street issued a terse response to Braverman’s three-page attack, saying that Sunak believed in “actions not words” and defending the government’s record on tackling illegal migration. In a pointed rebuke to Braverman’s months of clashes with No 10 over migration policy, her use of provocative language and the policing of pro-Palestinian protests, a spokeswoman said the reshuffle had produced “a strong, united team, focused on delivering for the British people”. No 10 refrained from criticising Braverman directly, but the former Tory leader Lord Howard of Lympne — a close ally of Sunak — accused her of “insubordination”, writing in The Daily Telegraph: “Thinking of the common good requires one to put the common good before personal ambition and pique. Mrs Braverman has failed to live by those words. The government is better off without her.” In her letter Braverman says for the first time that she struck a secret deal with Sunak in exchange for her support in last year’s leadership election, an endorsement that was key to stalling Boris Johnson’s comeback. She said Suella Braverman outside her London home. She said that Rishi Sunak had failed to meet conditions she set for her support last year in the Tory leadership contest Braverman: PM lied to me and betrayed Britain that her backing was “pivotal” to Sunak becoming prime minister as she derided him for “having been rejected by a majority of party members during the summer leadership contest and thus having no personal mandate”. She said her conditions included reducing legal migration to below 245,000, legislating to allow Britain to disapply the European Convention on Human Rights in asylum cases, and issuing guidance to schools over the provision of single-sex spaces. Braverman claimed that Sunak had “manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies”, adding: “Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.” She said that she had written Sunak NHS chief pledges end of cervical cancer cases Eleanor Hayward Health Correspondent The NHS has vowed to wipe out cervical cancer in England by 2040, saving the lives of thousands of women. The disease is on track to be eliminated within two decades, under a drive to boost the uptake of both cervical screening and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. Cervical cancer affects 3,200 women each year in Britain, killing 850, most of them in their thirties. Almost all cases are caused by certain types of HPV. Since the HPV vaccine was introduced by the NHS in 2008 it has been shown to reduce cervical cancer by up to 87 per cent. The jab is offered to all schoolchildren in Year 8, when they are aged 12 or 13. Amanda Pritchard, chief executive of NHS England, is to announce a “truly momentous” plan to eliminate the disease entirely at the NHS Providers conference in Liverpool. This will include offering the HPV vaccine in libraries and sports centres as part of a catch-up programme for anyone aged 25 and under who has missed it. The NHS will also embark on a drive to increase the uptake of cervical screening, which saves 5,000 lives a year. At present, one in three eligible women miss their smear tests, which are offered to all women aged between 25 and 64. Pritchard said: “To eliminate cervical cancer would be an incredible achievement and through a combination of our HPV vaccination programme, and our highly effective cervical screening programme, it could become a reality in the next two decades. “Vaccination and screening are the key tools, which mean we are one step closer to achieving this and the NHS is already making it easier than ever before for people to protect themselves and their families — whether it’s through community outreach in areas of lower uptake or expanding the NHS app so that everyone has their vaccine history and booking options in the palm of their hand. “As ever, the public can play their part by coming forward for their vaccines and screening appointments when invited ... it could save your life.” Many strains of HPV can be transmitted through sexual contact and some of those are responsible for causing 99.7 per cent of cervical cancers, as well as rare types of throat and mouth cancer. Figures for 2021-22 show that 87 per cent of girls and 82 per cent of boys have had the vaccine by age 15. Since September, children have been receiving a single dose of the jab when they are in Steven Swinford Political Editor Oliver Wright Policy Editor 6 Letter accuses Sunak of immigration failure 6 Rebellion looms if court blocks Rwanda plan £2.80 £2.00 to subscribers (based on a 7 Day Print and Digital Subscription) 2G The low-sugar treat guide Look, no sleeves! Does your gilet pass the INSIDE fashion test? TIMES2

2 2GM Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times News had abandoned red wall voters and was “sacrificing” seats in the north to retain support in the south. Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, co-chairs of the New Conservatives, said they were concerned that the reshuffle represented a “major change” in the government’s approach. extremism in a way not seen for 20 years”. She said: “I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs ... As on so many other issues, you sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself. In doing so, you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else.” Right-wing Tory MPs said that Sunak “numerous letters” making proposals and policies that were often met with “equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest”. She added: “Your rejection of this path was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop the boats.” She accused Sunak and his team of “magical thinking” over legal challenges despite warnings that the government faces defeat, adding: “You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices.” As home secretary she argued that the government should legislate to disapply the European Convention on Human Rights from illegal migration cases, an approach that she said was rejected. “I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary,” she said. Even if the government won at the Supreme Court, she claimed it would struggle to remove people from Britain because it is “vulnerable” to further legal challenge. She also attacked Sunak for what she claimed was his “failure to rise to the challenge” of “increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism” on Britain’s streets since the attacks in Israel on October 7. She said that she had become “hoarse” urging him to use legislation to “ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion”. Braverman argued that Britain now faced the threat of “radicalisation and Year 8 rather than the two doses given previously. Under the plan, health professionals will target areas with low uptake by offering “one-stop shop” vaccine services in places such as libraries and community centres. The NHS said that more women would be invited for cervical screening, which checks for any abnormal cells. It would also expand plans for selfsampling, where women use a kit to collect their own samples at home. Professor Peter Johnson, the Today’s highlights 8.45am 10am 12pm 2pm 3.30pm Jeremy Hunt is eyeing £2 billion of further welfare savings as he banks £4 billion from previous benefit reforms to help to fund possible tax cuts. The chancellor is considering using last month’s inflation figure to set the increase for working-age benefits next year, instead of the September figure that is traditionally used, as he tries to find room for manoeuvre. The Treasury has long been considering real-terms cuts to benefits, and the October figures due today are expected to show inflation falling below 5 per cent, down from 6.7 per cent in September. Using the lower figure would hit about nine million households, many of them in work, Bloomberg reported. Treasury sources insist that full upgrading in line with inflation remains on the table, with a decision depending on the cost of other measures. Welfare reform is expected to form a central part of the autumn statement a week today as ministers seek to tackle the million job vacancies. Hunt promised in his party conference speech last month to clamp down on benefit claimDecision on welfare benefits could save Hunt extra £2bn Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor ants who refused to look for jobs. Separately, Mel Stride, the work and pensions secretary, announced plans in September to make hundreds of thousands of people with mobility and mental health problems look for work they can do from home that will also cut their benefits by up to £4,680 a year. After a leak to the BBC, it has emerged that the government expects these reforms to save about £4 billion over four years from 2025. Ministers insist the changes to the work capability assessment are not to save money but to reverse a steep rise in the proportion of those judged unfit for any work, which has tripled in a decade to 65 per cent of claimants. “The system is clearly not dealing well with the growing number of mental health claims, like social anxiety, and too often assumes people who are slightly less mobile cannot work,” a government source said. However, the savings that officials believe the reforms will contribute will be a boost for Hunt as he looks for room to cut taxes in his statement next week. He has been resisting pressure from the Conservative right for giveaways. In the Commons yesterday, Dame Priti Patel appealed to Hunt “to look at lowering the rates of personal as well as business taxation, particularly in the areas of business rates and corporation tax”. Hunt said he would “focus on increasing business investment”, in the latest hint that he will extend a threeyear policy that allows businesses to set the full cost of investment in equipment such as IT and machinery against tax. “We’re proud of what we introduced in the spring budget and we will continue to see whether it is possible to extend it further,” he told the Commons. “One of the reasons our productivity is 15 per cent lower than, for example, Germany’s is because they invest more as a proportion of their GDP every year — about 2 per cent more than we do in the UK. So improving the rate of business investment is one of the most effective ways we can boost productivity and people’s real disposable income.” Separately a group of economists backed by Liz Truss urged Hunt to cut the minimum wage, saying it was “destroying jobs”. The Growth Commission calls for tougher tests to claim benefits, more infrastructure investment and corporation tax to fall to 15 per cent. Wet in Scotland and the north of England; mostly dry with sunny spells elsewhere. THE WEATHER 15 15 31 9 11 11 12 11 10 9 T O D AY ’ S E D I T I O N COMMENT 27 THUNDERER 28 LEADING ARTICLES 31 MARKETS 46-47 REGISTER 51 COURT CIRCULAR 53 SPORT 58 CROSSWORD 68 TV & RADIO TIMES2 FOLLOW US thetimes timesandsundaytimes thetimes ‘Sin-bin’ plan for football The International FA Board is to consider trials of sin-bins for dissent in professional football and adopting rugby’s rule where only the captain can approach the referee. It is feared that officials are being driven out of the game by abuse and assaults. Mass grave at Gaza hospital The bodies of scores of patients, including babies, have been interred in a mass grave in the al-Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, after it ran out of generator power, shutting down the mortuary and intensive-care units. City bosses want ‘UK Isa’ A group of investors, brokers, City grandees and chief executives have called on Jeremy Hunt to use the autumn statement to create a “British Isa”, putting the £70 billion invested each year in the tax-free accounts “to work on behalf of the UK”. OFFER Save up to 30% with a subscription to The Times and The Sunday Times THETIMES.CO.UK/SUBSCRIBE Gareth Davies, Treasury minister Matt Chorley on the Supreme Court ruling over the legality of Rwanda deportations PMQs Unpacked: Tim Shipman and Lara Spirit analyse the exchanges between Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer Ann Patchett on being nominated for the Waterstones Book of the Year award Jane Garvey and Fi Glover speak to the “Bad Feminist” Roxane Gay, right days since Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was detained in Russia #FreeEvan 231 DAB RADIO l ONLINE l SMART SPEAKER l APP Analysis N o 10 believed it had pulled off a coup (Steven Swinford writes). After days of headlines about Suella Braverman, the dominant story was the return of David Cameron to the front line of British politics. It proved, however, to be the briefest of respites. Braverman deliberately delayed publishing her letter to the prime minister for a day, choosing her moment to maximise the impact. Both the letter, a 1,300-word direct assault on Rishi Sunak’s character and policies, and the timing on the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision on the government’s Rwanda policy, was explosive. Braverman backed up her rhetoric with revelations. She and Sunak, she disclosed, had agreed to a secret deal in exchange for her support in the Tory leadership. She made it personal, suggesting that Sunak was too weak and indecisive to be prime minister. The implicit suggestion was she would do a better job. The question is how much support Braverman commands within the party, something that will depend in part on events. Should the Supreme Court rule in the government’s favour, then even staunch Braverman allies suggest that her case against Sunak will be significantly weakened and that her support is likely to be relatively limited. But should the government lose, Sunak could have a problem on his hands. Those on the right believe it could reignite that section of the party, thrusting the European Convention on Human Rights to the centre of the political debate. Court win over neighbour noise A couple who said they lived in a state of “torture” because of noise made by a banker’s young family living above them in west Kensington have won damages at Central London county court. Wooden floors were central to the dispute. Chickenpox jab call for young A vaccine against chickenpox — the varicella jab — should be given to youngsters in two doses when they are aged 12 months and 18 months, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises ministers, has said. BBC inquiry into Brand claims The BBC has said that it is investigating five complaints about Russell Brand’s behaviour while he was one of its most popular radio presenters as it called for more people to come forward. He denies all the allegations. continued from page 1 Braverman attacks Sunak national clinical director for cancer at NHS England, said: “It’s tremendous news that we are on track to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040 in this country. But alongside the success of the HPV vaccine for both boys and girls, regular cervical screenings for women are still essential to stop the development of cancerous cells in their tracks. “A third of women do not take up the offer of cervical screening when invited, which is still a big risk for our plans. Cervical cancer often causes no symptoms during the early stages of the disease, so it is especially important that people attend their tests when invited by the NHS and that those who are eligible get vaccinated against HPV.” Eliminating cervical cancer will mean that fewer than four in every 100,000 women in the population develop the disease, in line with a definition from the World Health Organisation. England is one of the first countries to set such an elimination pledge within the next two decades. Australia expects to be the first country in the world to eliminate the disease by 2035. continued from page 1 Cervical cancer campaign

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 3 News Addressing an avid audience on social media, a former property lawyer named Nikki Vasconez shares insights she has gained from communicating telepathically with people’s pets. This is now her day job. She does not come to your house; instead, she looks at a photograph of your cat or dog. Clients receive an audio recording of the 90-minute session, in which they can hear her asking a question and then a pregnant pause, followed by Vasconez’s voice again, describing the pet’s response. It costs $550 (£440). “I really wanna know what my ferret thinks about me,” wrote one viewer, beFind your pet hates with Mystic Mog side one of her videos. “I wanna do this for my three horses,” said another. Jennifer Buck, 42, an estate agent from South Carolina, has three German shepherds and two cats. “I thought: ‘Well, I would love to know what they say and what they think,’” she said yesterday. “I thought, I will try it out. Worst case, I lose a couple of hundred bucks. Best case, I find out what they are thinking.” Vasconez, 34, is part of a burgeoning industry catering to people who want to know the thoughts of their animals. “It’s something that I didn’t know existed or think was possible until I was 28 years old,” she said. “A massage therapist at a wellness centre near me mentioned that she could talk to animals.” The massage therapist told Vasconez she had been walking along the side of a road one day when “she heard this voice in her head saying: ‘We are going to grandma’s house.’” A moment later a car passed and she saw a dog with its head poking from a passenger window. “A week or so later, she heard in her head: ‘Keep up! Keep up! You’re falling behind.’ A minute later a bunch of crows flew overhead and there was a bunch of baby birds behind them.” Vasconez believed the masseuse had revived within herself a latent ability that ancient humans possessed before they developed speech. “In our modern world, we are raised to think that it’s not possible,” she said. “But animals in the wild communicate through telepathy all the time.” She prefers not to meet the animal in person, but to look at a photograph. She says this reassures her clients that she is genuinely communicating with their pet, rather than simply inferring their personality after meeting them. Speaking from Thailand, where she had just spent a week volunteering at an elephant sanctuary, she said: “I receive thoughts or images in my mind or an ache or a pain in my body for the animal to describe what they like, need or desire.” The animal in question may be dead, she said. “I experience those messages and then I explain them to the owner.” She works from home, in a small town north of Philadelphia, for clients all over the world. It is not necessarily more lucrative than being a lawyer, she said, who might be paid $550 for 90 minutes but handles up to eight clients a day. “I just do one session a day, and not even every day of the week.” This is not for lack of demand. Buck was convinced by the first session and has since bought three more, though they have become harder to secure. “Nikki has become quite popular,” she said. Jeff McGregor, 49, who runs a construction equipment rental business in Las Vegas, joined her waiting list after his dog Bailey had just died. He and his girlfriend were “a little sceptical”, McGregor said. But there was good news. Bailey told Vasconez that she had struggled to walk before she died but was now able to run around freely. There was also a message about how McGregor’s partner “makes really weird noises at random times”. “My fiancée’s a singer,” McGregor said. “She does vocal warm-ups in the bathroom. There is no way anyone would know that.” He still talks quietly to Bailey at night before he goes to bed, he said. Vasconez mentioned this too. “She said Bailey hears your whispers.” Nikki Vasconez says she knows what animals are thinking, and charges owners $550 to find out, Will Pavia writes E very year New Zealanders cast their votes in one of their nation’s most hotly contested competitions: the bird of the year pageant (Bernard Lagan writes). This year, however, the competition has been plagued by allegations of global interference and outsider lobbying in what some have likened to high-level election tampering. The furore led to a delay in announcing a winner as some of the vote counters cry foul. But on Wednesday morning, local time, a few days later than planned, the winner was announced — an obscure water-bird, known to New Zealand’s native Maori people as the puteketeke. The clumsy creature, which makes a barking sound and offers weeds to potential mates, also goes by the name of the Australasian Crested Grebe. The reason for the delay was a campaign of interference caused by the British comedian and US television host John Oliver, who had picked the puteketeke. “What we saw from Mr Oliver reminded us a little bit of how the Russians interfered in [the] US election previously,” said Scott McNab, a conservationist with the tour company RealNZ. After discovering a loophole in the rules that allowed anybody with a valid email address to cast a vote, Oliver unleashed a global campaign for the puteketeke. “Even the name is just a dance in your mouth,” he told Jimmy Fallon on NBC’s Tonight Show this week, during which he wore a puteketeke costume. New Zealand is now home to fewer than 1,000 of the diving water birds, which are known for their slender neck and what the campaign team describes as a mullet. “They have a mating dance where they both grab a clump of wet grass and chest bump each other before standing around unsure of what to do next,” Oliver said in a video promoting the campaign. “I have never identified with anything more.” Oliver had a billboard erected for “The Lord of the Wings” in New Zealand’s capital, Wellington. He also put up posters in Paris, Tokyo, London, and Mumbai. He had a plane with a banner fly over Ipanema Beach in Brazil. “After all, this is what democracy is all about,” he said on his show. “America interfering in foreign elections.” Usually billed Bird of the Year, the annual event by the conservation group Forest & Bird is held to raise awareness about the plight of the nation’s native birds, some of which have been driven to extinction. This year, the contest was named Bird of the Century to mark the group’s centennial. Forest & Bird said vote checkers had been forced to take an extra two days to verify the hundreds of thousands of votes that had poured in by Sunday’s deadline. “It’s been pretty crazy, in the best possible way,” said Nicola Toki, the group’s chief executive. Oliver ruffled more feathers in New Zealand when he told a Wellington radio host he had no time for other leading contenders that include the kerer, a native pigeon, and New Zealand’s emblematic Kiwi — a flightless nocturnal bird. Oliver described the Kiwi as a “rat carrying a toothpick”. It is not the first time, however, that the contest has been embroiled in controversy. Election scrutineers in 2020 discovered about 1,500 fraudulent votes for the little spotted kiwi. And two years ago, the contest was won by a tiny bat, which was allowed because it was considered a bird by early Maori. Toki said that when the contest began in 2005, they had a total of 865 votes, which organisers considered a great success. That grew to a record 56,000 votes two years ago, a number that was surpassed this year within a couple of hours of Oliver launching his campaign. This time, more than 350,000 people from 195 countries voted. Toki said Oliver contacted the group earlier this year asking if he could champion a bird. They had told him to go for it, not realising what was to come. “I was cry laughing,” Toki said after she watched Oliver’s segment. Feathers ruffled as Oliver’s army hijacks bird vote John Oliver dressed up as the puteketeke, above, and put up billboards to champion the species as New Zealand’s bird of the year. He dismissed its rival, the kiwi, as “a rat carrying a toothpick” Nikki Vasconez believes she has revived an ability humans once possessed

4 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times News C C D D E E E E E H I I J L M M M N N N O O O O P R S S T U U V Solve all five concise clues using each letter underneath once only 1 Musical speed (5) 2 Programming expert (5) 3 Members of a S Asian religion (6) 4 Thin clear soup (8) 5 Immature (8) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Quintagram® No 1786 Solutions see T2 MindGames p15 Cryptic clues T2 MindGames p14 Double take Jean-Etienne Liotard created his pastel masterpiece The Lavergne Family Breakfast in 1754. Twenty years later he painted an exact replica in oils. Now, for the first time in 250 years, the two will be on display side by side. Art lovers can spot the difference at the National Gallery’s exhibition in London until March 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 Toddlers should all be routinely vaccinated against chickenpox in the UK, health officials have said. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), which advises the government, said the vaccine should be given to youngsters in two doses when they are aged 12 months and 18 months. They said the vaccine, known as the varicella jab, would dramatically reduce circulating chickenpox and prevent most severe cases and deaths in children. The JCVI has also recommended a temporary catch-up programme for older children, warning that pandemic restrictions suppressed chickenpox so there is a larger than usual pool without immunity. The chickenpox vaccine has been given in other countries, including the US and Australia, for many years but the NHS has always said there is a worry that introducing it in the UK could increase the risk of chickenpox and shingles in adults. They had feared that a childhood chickenpox vaccination programme might mean that unvaccinated children would go on to get chickenpox as adults, when cases can be more severe. However, latest scientific evidence suggests that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks, and the Department of Health and Social Care will now look at the best ways to implement the JCVI recommendation. It means that the chickenpox vaccine is likely to be added to other routine childhood vaccinations, such as MMR. Millions of children could be offered the chickenpox vaccine under the new programme. There are about 700,000 one-year-old children in the UK who will be eligible for the jab, while 3.7 million aged one to five may be eligible under the catch-up programme. The JCVI will also investigate if it would be cost-effective for children aged six to 11 to get the jab, which would mean another 4.8 million would be eligible. Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, JCVI chairman, said: “Chickenpox is well known, and most parents will probably Bowel cancer has overtaken lung cancer to become the third most common form of the disease following a rise in cases blamed on poor diets. NHS statistics show than 41,596 people were given a diagnosis of bowel cancer in England in 2021, compared to 39,635 cases of lung cancer. Bowel cancer cases have risen by 10 per cent compared to 2019, and it is the first time this century that rates are higher than lung cancer. The most common cancer in England is breast cancer, with 49,772 people being told they had the illness in 2021. This is followed by prostate cancer, with 43,378 cases. Lynn Dunne, from Bowel Research UK, said: “There are indications of a rise in the number of people under 60 being detected and treated for bowel cancer. This is possibly related to lifestyle issues such as poor diet. Obesity and smoking also play a role.” Bowel cancer kills about 16,800 people a year in the UK, and more than nine in ten cases are in those over 50. Lifestyle factors, including eating lots of red meat, obesity and drinking alcohol, increase the risk of the disease. The NHS is expanding its bowel cancer screening programme so that everyone aged 50 to 74 will receive home testing kits. The tests correctly identify about nine in 10 people with colorectal cancer. Professor Peter Johnson, the NHS national clinical director for cancer, said: “Often symptoms of bowel cancer don’t appear until later stages of the disease but catching it early increases the chances of survival.” Give chickenpox vaccine to all children on NHS, urge experts consider it a common and mild illness among children. But for some babies, young children and even adults, chickenpox or its complications can be very serious, resulting in hospitalisation and even death. Adding the varicella vaccine to the childhood immunisation programme will dramatically reduce the number of chickenpox cases in the community, leading to far fewer of those tragic, more serious cases. We now have decades of evidence from the US and other countries showing that introducing this programme is safe, effective and will have a really positive impact on the health of young children,” Dr Gayatri Amirthalingam of the UK Health Security Agency said: “Introducing a vaccine against chickenpox would prevent most children getting what can be quite a nasty illness — and for those who would experience more severe symptoms, it could be a lifesaver. The JCVI’s recommendations will help make chickenpox a problem of the past and bring the UK into line with a number of other countries.” Chickenpox, or varicella, is a highly infectious disease caused by the varicella zoster virus. It mostly affects children but can be caught at any age. Most varicella cases in children are relatively mild. However, in rare cases it can cause encephalitis, a swelling of the brain, pneumonitis, an inflammation of the lungs and stroke, which can result in hospitalisation and death. Newborn babies are more likely to experience serious illness, as are adults. Pregnant women are particularly at risk as it can cause complications in both mother and foetus. Eleanor Hayward Health Correspondent Bowel cancer surge linked to poor diet Eleanor Hayward Behind the story I t is that rarity: a festivity that won’t be missed (Tom Whipple writes). The chickenpox party is, if JCVI advice is followed, at an end. But why are we only just catching up, a quarter of a century after the US introduced the vaccine? Partly because it has taken that 25 years of data to allay some key fears. When you introduce a vaccine you disrupt an ecosystem. When you disrupt an ecosystem, you can get odd effects. One potential odd effect concerned what would happen to the unvaccinated. When Greece introduced the MMR vaccine in 1975 coverage was patchy, and 20 years later many unvaccinated girls got pregnant without any rubella immunity. A disease that would have been mild had they caught it as children was now extremely serious and there was an epidemic of miscarriages, stillbirths and birth defects. Chickenpox, too, has these theoretical intergenerational dynamics. For most children, chickenpox is merely annoying. For adults catching it for the first time it is more severe. If we vaccinated at scale, and slowed transmission among children, how many of the unvaccinated would catch it later as adults? Then there is shingles. After infection, chickenpox virus remains latent — but can emerge as shingles, which causes chronic pain and can result in admission to hospital. There was an idea that a constant circulation of chickenpox boosted the older population against shingles. Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, chairman of the JCVI, said that these were reasonable concerns, but the US has shown they were unfounded — neither shingles nor adult chickenpox has risen. He said a vaccine here would be wonderful. “For most, it’s a mild disease, but you see thousands of GP consultations, severe cases and deaths every year. It will be amazing to see that disappear.”

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 5 News Domestic abuse victims will be protected under new legislation that will ensure their aggressors serve time in jail, even as fewer offenders in total are locked up. The Sentencing Bill, which was set out in the King’s Speech and introduced in the Commons earlier this year, seeks to avoid people serving repeated short sentences, which the government says can increase criminality. The government confirmed yesterday, however, that domestic abusers and rapists would continue to face time in prison and more murderers would serve whole life sentences. Those in court for breaching an order such as a restraining or stalking prevention order will not be eligible for the changes to short jail stints, as the government pledged to keep the safety of of a BBC investigation into the handling of sexual harassment claims at a hearing of the business and trade committee, he said: “I’m deeply troubled by many of those testimonies and I certainly apologise unreservedly to anyone who has been affected.” Macrow added that the testimonies from staff members alleging abuse or harassment at work were “truly horrific” and “hard to listen to”. He said: “I am absolutely determined to root out any of these behaviours, to identify individuals who are responsible for them and make sure they are eradicated from our business.” However, Macrow conceded that “there are some shifts in some restaurants where we are not achieving the standards that we wish to achieve”. BBC premises and urinated in bottles. One complaint related to a woman who accused Brand of exposing himself to her in 2008 at a building used by the BBC in Los Angeles, before going on air and laughing about what he had done. Three of the five complaints were made before the Times investigation was published. Two were made while Brand was a BBC presenter and the complaint from the woman in Los Angeles was made to the BBC in 2019. The two most recent complaints, made after publication of the Times investigation, are understood to relate to Brand’s workplace conduct and the BBC reported that they were not believed to be of a serious sexual nature. Johnston said: “Our investigations so far indicate a total of five complaints directly to the BBC: two individuals raised complaints and concerns during 2006-08 and raised these issues again after Russell Brand left the BBC. A separate complaint was made by another individual after Brand had left the BBC in relation to the 2008 allegation in LA. Two further complainants have come forward since the review began. “It is also clear from audience feedback that there was a wider concern about the tone and content of some of Russell Brand’s shows.” Johnston said the BBC had undertaken “significant work” to investigate the allegations but that the passage of time made this a challenging task. He said that investigators had heard accounts that Brand did have access to a car service provided by third parties for the BBC, but that it had not yet been able to identify records or specific bookings. The investigation includes assessing how the complaints were addressed at the time and whether the BBC’s actions were appropriate. Johnston said: “It would appear that no disciplinary action was taken against Russell Brand during his engagement with the BBC in 2006-08 prior to his departure.” Brand resigned from the BBC in 2008 after he and his co-presenter, Jonathan Ross, made prank calls to Andrew Sachs, which resulted in more than 42,000 complaints. The pair referred to Brand having sex with the actor’s granddaughter. The Times and The Sunday Times gave Brand eight days to reply to the allegations about his treatment of women. His lawyers said that we had posed a “large litany of questions” and had intentionally chosen to anonymise the names of the women. Pressed to provide a full response, the same lawyers did not reply. When asked again to respond, Brand broadcast a statement on his YouTube channel saying that “amidst this litany of astonishing, rather baroque attacks are some very serious allegations that I absolutely refute”. The BBC said that it could be contacted confidentially via bbc.investigation. [email protected]. The BBC has confirmed that it is investigating five complaints about Russell Brand’s behaviour while he was one of its most popular radio presenters as it called for more people to come forward. Two of the complaints were made between 2006 and 2008 while Brand was a presenter for Radio 2 and 6 Music but he faced no disciplinary action from BBC bosses at the time. Another of the complaints was made to the BBC four years ago and the remaining two were reported in the past two months, after a review of Brand’s time at the corporation. The BBC review was prompted by a joint investigation by The Times, The Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches that revealed that Brand was facing allegations of rape, sexual assault and emotional abuse during a sevenyear period at the height of his fame. Four women alleged sexual assaults between 2006 and 2013, including one who claimed that he raped her. Others made a range of accusations about Brand’s controlling, abusive and predatory behaviour. Brand has denied the Russell Brand’s career at the BBC ended when he and Jonathan Ross made prank calls on Radio 2, top left. Today Brand streams his opinions in a show on Rumble BBC bosses investigate five complaints about Brand allegations and insists that all his sexual relationships have been consensual. Complaints also related to Brand’s time as a BBC presenter, including that he had sex with competition winners and used a corporation car service to collect a 16-year-old girl from her school and take her to his home. Serious questions were raised about how Brand’s most explicit and misogynistic shows were allowed to be broadcast. Tim Davie, the BBC’s directorgeneral, said that he had been appalled when listening back to Brand’s BBC shows and that some of the material was “completely unacceptable”. After publication of the findings, the BBC announced that it was “urgently looking into the issues raised”. The Metropolitan Police is also investigating allegations from several women on their treatment by Brand over the past two decades. On Tuesday the BBC published an update on its review from Peter Johnston, the director of editorial complaints and reviews. Johnston said he was investigating complaints about Brand while he was a presenter, including allegations about his use of the BBC car service, as well as accusations that he exposed himself on Charlotte Wace, Rosamund Urwin Paul Morgan-Bentley McDonald’s gets weekly sexual harassment claim Tom Saunders Prison terms to protect abuse victims women and girls “at the heart of the criminal justice system”. Judges will have discretion to lock up what the government described as “any tormentor who puts an individual at significant risk of psychological or physical harm”. Alex Chalk KC, the lord chancellor and the secretary of state for justice, said: “We want domestic abuse victims to know this government is on their side, so we will do everything possible to protect them from those who cause harm, or threaten to do so. That’s why we are ensuring that judges retain full discretion to hand down prison sentences to domestic abusers — to give victims the confidence to rebuild their lives knowing their tormentors are safely behind bars.” The new legislation will mean that whole life orders will be handed down for any murder involving sexual or sadistic conduct, and sexual offenders will spend their full custodial term in prison. There will, however, be a presumption on the courts to suspend custodial sentences of 12 months or less. This is based on statistics showing that offenders who serve a sentence of less than six months are more likely to commit another crime than those who serve more than 12 months. Instead, offenders will be punished with community service, licence conditions and electronic monitoring, overseen by the Probation Service. Emma Yeomans McDonald’s faces one or two sexual harassment claims from employees each week, according to its UK and Ireland chief executive. Since the fast food company launched an independent helpline in July, it has received 407 complaints relating to safe workplaces, Alistair Macrow said. Of those, 157 have been fully investigated and 75 resulted in disciplinary action, including 17 dismissals for sexual harassment. McDonald’s is investigating a further 79 cases of sexual harassment at its restaurants. “We typically would see between 20 and 25 contacts per week, of which one or two are sexual harassment,” Macrow told MPs. Presented with the findings Alex Chalk is giving judges greater sentencing powers

6 2GM Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times News Rishi Sunak will press ahead with plans to send migrants to Rwanda regardless of the outcome of a ruling by the Supreme Court today as he faces a backlash from right-wing Tory MPs. The UK’s most senior court will rule whether the government’s policy to deport migrants to Rwanda is lawful. The verdict will prove critical for Sunak’s flagship pledge to “stop the boats”. Should it approve the plans the Home Office has lined up 370 migrants for removal. If the Supreme Court rules against the government, ministers will explore a series of contingency plans. A senior government source said the government would stand by the plan, regardless of the outcome. The Home Office has drawn up plans to start deportations to Rwanda as soon as possible if it gets the green light. It has identified 370 migrants, all of whom arrived by small boats, who are eligible for removal having arrived in the UK from a “safe” third country. They have been accepted by Rwanda PM braced for Rwanda ruling Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor Steven Swinford Political Editor through emergency legislation that allows the government to overrule the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The government would tweak the Human Rights Act to allow deportations even if it breached people’s rights under the ECHR. The contingency plans would need to be signed off by James Cleverly, the new home secretary, who replaced Suella Braverman on Monday. Refugee charities have warned that the plans would undermine Britain’s history of helping refugees. Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “Instead of outsourcing our international commitment to provide safe haven to those fleeing for their lives ... we should be focusing on operating an orderly, humane and fair asylum system, and on expanding safe routes to the UK.” A Home Office spokesman said: “Our relationship with Rwanda is strong and we remain completely committed to delivering this policy to prevent more lives from being put at risk in the Channel. We await the outcome of the Supreme Court hearing.” under the terms of the Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda (MEDP) and could be removed by January. A source said: “Over 350 have been accepted by the Rwandan government to be taken under the memorandum of understanding agreement that predated the Illegal Migration Act.” If the policy is ruled unlawful the Home Office will turn to a series of plan B options. One proposal is for Britain to seek a new deal with Rwanda that addresses aspects of the agreement deemed unlawful. That deal would then be ratified in parliament to put it on a stronger legal footing. A source described it as a “Brexitstyle manoeuvre” pitting “parliament versus the judges”. There are also plans to send Home Office officials to train asylum case workers in Rwanda in order to bolster their asylum system. This would address concerns that were raised by Court of Appeal judges over the lack of experience and resources of officials in the country. A more radical option is rushing Suella Braverman’s letter to Rishi Sunak after her sacking is one of the most brutal in memory. She goes for the jugular, accusing Sunak of betrayal, duplicity and weakness. He is, she suggests, unfit to be prime minister. the deal Braverman’s central allegation is that Sunak struck a secret deal with her to win the Tory leadership election last year, on which he reneged when he became prime minister. Sunak was hoping to succeed Liz Truss but was facing a challenge from Boris Johnson. Braverman’s decision to back Sunak was critical in allowing the former chancellor to enter No 10 without a vote among Tory members, which many predicted he would lose. Braverman’s letter reveals the existence of what she describes as a “document” setting out in “clear terms” what Sunak pledged to do in office in order to win her support. This, she says, included four specific promises. The first was to cut legal migration to 245,000 a year in line with the 2019 Tory manifesto by reducing the number of international students and increasing salary thresholds for work visas. The second was to introduce legislation to exclude the operation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and other international legal treaties from Britain’s asylum law. The third was a promise to override the government’s Brexit deal on Northern Ireland and scrap all European Union laws still in British legislation. Finally, she says he agreed to issue unequivocal statutory guidance to schools that protect biological sex, safeguard single-sex spaces and empower parents to “know what is being taught to their children”. What is certainly true is that if Sunak did make what she describes as “firm assurances”, the reality is that he did not fulfill them. Legal migration policy has not been significantly tightened — and in some cases loosened — since Sunak came to office. The prime minister also shied away from splitting the party on the contentious issue of the European Court of Human Rights. On Northern Ireland he negotiated a compromise deal with the EU rather than choosing a path of confrontation and so far the government has not announced plans for statutory guidance on transgender rights in schools. However, Braverman is yet to provide evidence of the document she claims exists or witnesses to the agreement. How much damage her claims will do to Sunak may depend on what evidence she can deploy. the betrayal Braverman says Sunak has manifestly and repeatedly failed to keep his word on every single one of these key policies. She says: “Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises.” Braverman draws a direct line between her priorities and the Brexit vote, arguing that Sunak is breaking a promise to the nation. “Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged,” she says. She was clear “from day one” that if Sunak was unwilling to leave the ECHR then he must act to “block off” the effects of the international framework in law. “Your rejection of this path was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation News Politics Braverman goes for the jugular that you would do ‘whatever it takes’ to stop the boats.” the supreme court Braverman is gloomy about the government’s prospects of winning in the Supreme Court today. “At every stage of litigation I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win,” she says. “I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat. You ignored my arguments. You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices.” Sunak’s approach, she says, is irresponsible, has wasted time and left Britain in an “impossible position”. She says that if the government loses in court it is “back to square one” because there is no credible plan B. She says she wrote to Sunak on “multiple occasions” with proposals but received no reply. “I can only surmise this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and ... no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people,” she says. Even if the government wins in court, she argues that it will “struggle to deliver” because the illegal migration legislation is “far from secure against legal challenge”. The European Court of Human Rights, she says, could intervene to grant interim injunctions. Downing Street insists it does have a plan B if the Supreme Court rejects the government’s appeal. extremism and antisemitism Braverman accuses Sunak of “failing to rise to the challenge” of “increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism” in the UK since the Hamas attacks. Referencing her article in The Times, which contributed to her dismissal, she says Sunak failed to listen to her private warnings of the need to give the police greater powers to tackle the protests. “I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion,” she writes. She adds: “I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs. Rather than fully acknowledge the severity of this threat, your team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing.” It is certainly true that the Home Office was more enthusiastic about trying to ban last Saturday’s march than Sunak but, in the aftermath, Downing Street is looking at what new powers the police might need in future. However, legislating at short notice before the event would have been complex and controversial. the attack and the warning Braverman ends with an attack on his leadership, accusing Sunak of putting off “tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself” which in the case of protests had “increased the very real risk these marches present”. She says: “You were given an opportunity to lead our country. It is a privilege to serve and one we should not take for granted. Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good. It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself. “Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently.” Ominously, there is a warning: “I will ... continue to support the government in pursuit of policies which align with an authentic conservative agenda.” Oliver Wright, Steven Swinford Dear Prime Minister, Thank you for your phone call yesterday morning in which you asked me to leave Government. While disappointing, this is for the best. It has been my privilege to serve as Home Secretary and deliver on what the British people have sent us to Westminster to do. I want to thank all of those civil servants, police, Border Force officers and security professionals with whom I have worked and whose dedication to public safety is exemplary. I am proud of what we achieved together: delivering on our manifesto pledge to recruit 20,000 new police officers and enacting new laws such as the Public Order Act 2023 and the National Security Act 2023. I also led a programme on reform: on anti-social behaviour, police dismissals and standards, reasonable lines of enquiry, grooming gangs, knife crime, non-crime hate incidents and rape and serious sexual offences. And I am proud of the strategic changes that I was delivering to Prevent, Contest, serious organised crime and fraud. I am sure that this work will continue with the new ministerial team. As you know, I accepted your offer to serve as Home Secretary in October 2022 on certain conditions. Despite you having been rejected by a majority of Party members during the summer leadership contest and thus having no personal mandate to be Prime Minister, I agreed to support you because of the firm assurances you gave me on key policy priorities. Those were, among other things: 1. Reduce overall legal migration as set out in the 2019 manifesto through, inter alia, reforming the international students route and increasing salary thresholds on work visas; 2. Include specific ‘notwithstanding clauses’ into new legislation to stop the boats, i.e. exclude the operation of the European Convention on Human Rights, Human Rights Act and other international law that had thus far obstructed progress on this issue; 3. Deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol and Retained EU Law Bills in their then existing form and timetable; 4. Issue unequivocal statutory guidance to schools that protects biological sex, safeguards single sex spaces, and empowers parents to know what is being taught to their children. This was a document with clear terms to which you agreed in October 2022 during your second leadership campaign. I trusted you. It is generally agreed that my support was a pivotal factor in winning the leadership contest and thus enabling you to become Prime Minister. Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP Member of Parliament for Fareham HOUSE OF COMMONS

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 7 News the European Convention on Human Rights and, although this move is unlikely, it would put the government in a quandary. In these circumstances one option, favoured by right-wing Tories, is for the government to legislate and strip out asylum cases from the remit of the Human Rights Act that incorporates the Convention on Human Rights in British law. This would, in effect, make the Supreme Court’s judgment null and void, allowing flights to go ahead. However, the UK is still a signatory to the convention and in such circumstances Strasbourg would certainly intervene, putting the government on a collision course with the European court that could ultimately lead to Britain pulling out of the convention altogether. Given this would have profound political and legal implications for the UK — not least on the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland — this is not a route Downing Street wants to go down. However, not all Tory MPs, including it is believed the former home secretary Suella Braverman, are of the same opinion. be ratified in parliament to put it on a stronger legal footing. The new agreement would stipulate in detail what Rwanda must have in place to ensure it is a safe country for asylum seekers relocated from the UK. This would include extra provisions for legal oversight of migrants who wish to appeal against any decision on their asylum claim in Kigali. There are also plans to send Home Office officials to train asylum case workers in Rwanda next week to bolster their asylum system. This is designed to address concerns that were raised by the Court of Appeal judges over the lack of experience and resources of officials in the African country to process the complexity and magnitude of migrant cases they would be faced with from the UK. The problem is that all this would take time. However, ministers are hopeful that if they can get a treaty ratified — which includes the safeguards — then this would be enough to satisfy the courts that flights can start. court rejects plan entirely The Supreme Court could rule that the scheme in its entirety breaches theory at least, the Strasbourg judges could issue what is known as a rule 39 order barring deportations from taking place before the full court has considered the case. This is seen as an unlikely and provocative move given that the same issues have already been considered in detail by the UK courts. In these circumstances the government would almost certainly begin deportations even while awaiting a final ruling from Strasbourg. supreme court wants more safeguards Court of Appeal judges rejected the Rwanda scheme because of what they said were deficiencies in the country’s asylum system, which meant there was a real risk people would be returned to their home countries when they had a good claim for asylum. Even if the Supreme Court agrees with that, the government is confident that it has a plan B to address these concerns. Under one of the proposals, Britain would seek to agree a new treaty with Rwanda that addresses aspects of the agreement deemed unlawful by the courts. This would Ministers may have to take new route on judgment day Analysis supreme court gives the go-ahead When the case was initially heard in the High Court the judge ruled that the Rwanda scheme was lawful and that deportation flights could go ahead. It was only the Court of Appeal that rejected this position by a majority of two to one, and on specific grounds rather than the general principle of legality. It is perfectly possible the Supreme Court will side with the High Court and give the go-ahead for the first flights to Rwanda. If the court does back the government position, ministers will move quickly to get flights under way. About 370 migrants, all of whom arrived by small boats, have been lined up by the Home Office for removal to Rwanda. The first deportations could take place before Christmas but are more likely to be early next year. strasbourg calls for delay Even if the Supreme Court sides with the government, it would still be open to lawyers for those facing deportation to take their case directly to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. In F ive Supreme Court judges will hand down their ruling today on the legality of the government’s Rwandan deportation scheme, which will help to determine if Rishi Sunak can meet his target to “stop the boats” before the next election (writes Oliver Wright). The court’s ruling, however, is unlikely to be a black and white judgment. Rather, the judgment is expected to be nuanced and potentially allow the government to push ahead with the scheme if it can satisfy the court that its concerns have been dealt with. So what are the likely scenarios? News and says Sunak isn’t fit to lead For a year, as Home Secretary I have sent numerous letters to you on the key subjects contained in our agreement, made requests to discuss them with you and your team, and put forward proposals on how we might deliver these goals. I worked up the legal advice, policy detail and action to take on these issues. This was often met with equivocation, disregard and a lack of interest. You have manifestly and repeatedly failed to deliver on every single one of these key policies. Either your distinctive style of government means you are incapable of doing so. Or, as I must surely conclude now, you never had any intention of keeping your promises. These are not just pet interests of mine. They are what we promised the British people in our 2019 manifesto which led to a landslide victory. They are what people voted for in the 2016 Brexit Referendum. Our deal was no mere promise over dinner, to be discarded when convenient and denied when challenged. I was clear from day one that if you did not wish to leave the ECHR, the way to securely and swiftly deliver our Rwanda partnership would be to block off the ECHR, the HRA and any other obligations which inhibit our ability to remove those with no right to be in the UK. Our deal expressly referenced ‘notwithstanding clauses’ to that effect. Your rejection of this path was not merely a betrayal of our agreement, but a betrayal of your promise to the nation that you would do “whatever it takes” to stop the boats. At every stage of litigation I cautioned you and your team against assuming we would win. I repeatedly urged you to take legislative measures that would better secure us against the possibility of defeat. You ignored these arguments. You opted instead for wishful thinking as a comfort blanket to avoid having to make hard choices. This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position. If we lose in the Supreme Court, an outcome that I have consistently argued we must be prepared for, you will have wasted a year and an Act of Parliament, only to arrive back at square one. Worse than this, your magical thinking - believing that you can will your way through this without upsetting polite opinion - has meant you have failed to prepare any sort of credible ‘Plan B’. I wrote to you on multiple occasions setting out what a credible Plan B would entail, and making clear that unless you pursue these proposals, in the event of defeat, there is no hope of flights this side of an election. I received no reply from you. I can only surmise that this is because you have no appetite for doing what is necessary, and therefore no real intention of fulfilling your pledge to the British people. If, on the other hand, we win in the Supreme Court, because of the compromises that you insisted on in the Illegal Migration Act, the Government will struggle to deliver our Rwanda partnership in the way that the public expects. The Act is far from secure against legal challenge. People will not be removed as swiftly as I originally proposed. The average claimant will be entitled to months of process, challenge, and appeal. Your insistence that Rule 39 indications are binding in international law - against the views of leading lawyers, as set out in the House of Lords will leave us vulnerable to being thwarted yet again by the Strasbourg Court. Another cause for disappointment - and the context for my recent article in The Times - has been your failure to rise to the challenge posed by the increasingly vicious antisemitism and extremism displayed on our streets since Hamas’s terrorist atrocities of 7th October. I have become hoarse urging you to consider legislation to ban the hate marches and help stem the rising tide of racism, intimidation and terrorist glorification threatening community cohesion. Britain is at a turning point in our history and faces a threat of radicalisation and extremism in a way not seen for 20 years. I regret to say that your response has been uncertain, weak, and lacking in the qualities of leadership that this country needs. Rather than fully acknowledge the severity of this threat, your team disagreed with me for weeks that the law needed changing. As on so many other issues, you sought to put off tough decisions in order to minimise political risk to yourself. In doing so, you have increased the very real risk these marches present to everyone else. In October of last year you were given an opportunity to lead our country. It is a privilege to serve and one we should not take for granted. Service requires bravery and thinking of the common good. It is not about occupying the office as an end in itself. Someone needs to be honest: your plan is not working, we have endured record election defeats, your resets have failed and we are running out of time. You need to change course urgently. I may not have always found the right words, but I have always striven to give voice to the quiet majority that supported us in 2019. I have endeavoured to be honest and true to the people who put us in these privileged positions. I will, of course, continue to support the Government in pursuit of policies which align with an authentic conservative agenda. Sincerely, Rt Hon Suella Braverman KC MP Member of Parliament for Fareham

8 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times News Chinese state media has heralded the appointment of Lord Cameron as foreign secretary and claimed it will “breathe new life into the China-UK relationship”. An opinion piece in the Global Times, an English language communist party-run newspaper, said that he had a “unique understanding” of China that critics would use to attack him. It said: “David Cameron’s appointment as Britain’s new foreign secretary has the potential to breathe new life into the China-UK relationship which has in recent years experienced some serious setbacks. “As a former British prime minister whose administration focused positively on fostering closer and mutually beneficial ties with Beijing, he is well positioned to engage with a country he came to comprehend well during his time in Downing Street.” The Global Times is part of the same group as the People’s Daily, the party’s flagship mouthpiece. Cameron has been placed under pressure to declare all of his financial dealings, including what he was paid for promoting a China-funded port in Sri Lanka. He has also faced questions about how he will hold Beijing to account given that, as prime minister, he heralded a “golden era” in relations with President Xi Jinping’s regime. Cameron cannot be scrutinised in the same way as other ministers because, as he is no longer elected, he will not face questions in the House of Commons. Andrew Mitchell, the minister of state for the Foreign Office, yesterday claimed that Cameron believed it was essential MPs could properly examine his work. Mitchell told the Commons: “The foreign secretary, the business managers and I all believe it is essential this house properly scrutinises the work of the foreign office, especially as we face such a daunting set of challenges across the world.” He said he would deputise for Cameron answering questions and making statements in the Commons and “of course the foreign secretary will appear before the House of Lords and relevant committees regularly”. On Monday Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, revealed he had commissioned the clerks to work on methods to make Cameron “properly accountable”. MPs have already called on the foreign secretary to disclose more information about his financial dealings and relationship with China. His appointment caused dismay among China hawks given his hosting of President Xi on a state visit in 2015 and his “golden era” declaration. After leaving office Cameron became vice chairman of the £1 billion ChinaUK investment fund, which ultimately struggled to get off the ground because of rising tensions. Nonetheless in July the parliamentary intelligence and security committee questioned whether Cameron’s role was “in some part engineered by the Chinese state to lend credibility to Chinese investment, as well as to the broader China brand”. The committee concluded that successive governments, including Cameron’s, had failed to address the threat from Beijing because economic interests trumped security concerns. Cameron takes over the foreign office at a difficult time amid alarm at Beijing’s increased aggression in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait and concerns about prolific espionage activities in the UK. Last month Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, warned that Chinese spies have targeted more than 20,000 Britons on A t a party last summer a senior Tory told a story about the prime minister to journalists (Kate McCann writes). Rishi Sunak, the minister laughed, is such a micro-manager that he even tells his driver which route to take when he’s being driven home. He thinks he could do that job better than the guy who is paid to do it, he added. As with many anecdotes it may not be completely accurate, but it’s the whiff of truth that made it so appealing. Because Sunak never really stopped being chancellor, he just moved down the corridor and changed the sign on the door. That’s the accusation levelled at the prime minister by senior figures in his party, who fear that although Gordon Brown’s downfall should make another ex-chancellor worry he has an eye for detail and a work ethic like few others in government, Sunak is fundamentally failing as a leader because nobody knows what he stands for. It is also why the appointment of Lord Cameron as foreign secretary may be the greatest risk the PM has taken, and not for the reasons most in Westminster assume. Inviting someone who exudes credibility as a leader into the same room risks exposing Sunak’s weak spot in a very visible way. If Sunak is still the chancellor, Cameron is the substitute prime minister. Critics warn that Sunak has failed to distil his political vision, first in a conference speech heavy on detail but light on narrative thread and then in the King’s Speech last week. His reshuffle, brought forward thanks to Suella Braverman, was another opportunity to answer that looming question. A political vision is more than economic prudence and the perception of unity, as Gordon Brown found out in 2010. Both he and Sunak are former chancellors who took office after a charismatic leader and in the midst of a financial crisis. Brown was criticised for his failure to see further than the immediate economic problems facing the country; Sunak could yet repeat the pattern. Economic credibility will form the basis for many people’s decision at the general election but it is not the only thing that matters. A plan to make the most of the benefits is the key to party confidence and votes — the electorate wants a leader, not a competent chancellor, in No 10. Cameron faces criticism but he had a driving force — a desire to recentre the Conservative Party — and his pursuit of policies such as gay marriage formed an early legacy before Brexit loomed large. Allies have talked up the idea that his political heft will prove that Sunak’s government is a marked change from the Johnson and Truss administrations. Although that does matter, it still doesn’t answer the question: once the roof is fixed — if it is — what comes next? After Brown brought Peter Mandelson back into his cabinet in 2008 in an effort to shore up his own weak spot, the budding chancellor George Osborne wrote: “It was always going to be a problem for the man who had been chancellor for ten years, but ‘let the work of change begin’ was his message on the steps of Downing Street. Bringing back Peter Mandelson to the cabinet for the third time, and attacking his opponents for being novices was the final nail in the coffin. He has made his fundamental strategic choice for the next election. He will be the candidate offering more of the same. And by deciding not to ditch him this autumn, the Labour Party has also made that choice. I believe they have made a huge mistake.” Sunak doesn’t have as long as Brown did to change the narrative. The promise of an improving economy won’t be enough without explaining what he plans to do with it. Without that, like Gordon Brown, Sunak may find himself out of both No 10 and No 11 in just a few months’ time. Kate McCann is Times Radio political editor Analysis Lord Cameron, who is facing demands to disclose how much he was paid to promote a Chinese-funded port in Sri Lanka, News Politics Cameron a man we can work with, says China Fiona Hamilton Chief Reporter Higher prices have cost workers the equivalent of a 3p rise in income tax over the past two years, new research suggests. An analysis by the House of Commons library found that for 22 months of the past two years, average salaries increased by less than the rising cost of living. Researchers calculated that a worker earning £28,400 in October 2021 was now £697 worse off than they would have been if pay had kept pace with inflation. For someone earning £55,000 a year the loss was even greater, with average salaries now £1,348 less than might have been expected. The research, commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, comes as the Office of National Statistics is expected to say that the inflation rate fell last month to 4.8 per cent — 0.2 percentage points lower than Rishi Sunak’s target. Inflation equal to 3p tax rise Oliver Wright Policy Editor

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 9 News The head of the NHS has said reports that the health service is becoming less productive are a “misunderstanding” and insisted that figures used by the government do not show the improvements she is making. Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, said productivity figures were “a blunt tool” that ignored improvements in diagnostic services and local care and focused too much on hospitals. The Times revealed that NHS England had brought in the management consultancy McKinsey to discover why it was not carrying out more operations than before the pandemic, despite having more staff and money. A ten-week review is under way as NHS bosses come under pressure from the Treasury to improve efficiency as LinkedIn alone and said that economic espionage presented the greatest threat to UK interests since the Cold War. Cameron has faced calls to declare how much he was paid for promoting the port city in Sri Lanka that has prompted concerns it would give Beijing a significant foothold in the IndoPacific. Luke de Pulford, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, tweeted a video of Cameron saying that even though the Chinese had invested in the project, “the fact is it is owned by Sri Lanka, it will be governed by rules made by Sri Lanka”. De Pulford said Cameron should declare how much he was paid and by whom, adding “it is clearly a matter of public interest”. November is probably the worst time of year for anyone to become health secretary. Victoria Atkins, who has just been appointed into the post in Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle, will be flung headfirst into the traditional NHS winter crisis. Her first few months in office are likely to be dominated by horrific tales of deadly ambulance delays and elderly patients stuck for hours in trolleys on A&E. On top of the thankless task of navigating the NHS through its annual winter meltdown, Atkins must reach a settlement with the militant doctors’ union to bring an end to the most damaging NHS strikes in history. Once that is sorted out, she can make a start on longer-term issues, including social care reform and public health policies to tackle the obesity epidemic. It is a monumental in-tray, but any remaining Conservative hopes of winning the general election depend upon Atkins making a success of it. Below are the five key areas in which she needs to make progress. strikes Negotiations with the British Medical Association (BMA) will be the first item on the agenda when Atkins walks into the Department of Health. After months of hugely disruptive NHS walkouts, forcing the cancellation of more than a million appointments and operations, a ceasefire has been reached between the BMA and government. The two sides have been locked in talks for the past few weeks, with no further strike dates yet scheduled. There are tentative hopes of a deal with hospital consultants, who could be offered a “disguised” pay rise, with extra money in the form of performance bonuses. Having been promoted after a stint as financial secretary to the Treasury, Atkins will have to persuade her former colleagues to dig out some money to give to senior doctors. It will be harder to make progress with the more hardline junior doctor wing of the BMA — and Atkins must persuade the union’s idealistic young leaders to drop their demand for a 35 per cent pay rise. waiting lists In January, Sunak made reducing NHS waiting lists one of his government’s NHS boss denies productivity slump closer to home. She said there was “a misunderstanding about the state of NHS productivity, because it’s measured in a way which doesn’t fully reflect either what happens in acute trusts or the quality investments [made to improve standards] and, crucially, doesn’t reflect what’s happening in community care”. Ben Zaranko, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said although there was a kernel of truth in Pritchard’s point that official figures did not show everything, “there is definitely a problem”. He added: “There are clear issues around productivity.” Professor Sir Stephen Powis, the medical director of NHS England, argued that savings made by treating patients at home remotely or using online appointment booking were not included in productivity figures. part of a wider review of productivity across the public sector. Pritchard’s comments suggest she does not think the problem is as bad as some in government believe. She insisted NHS staff were finding ways to make the most of each pound. She also said she had told Victoria Atkins, the new health secretary, that she must resolve doctors’ strikes as the NHS heads into “a really challenging winter”. NHS chiefs have previously suggested that bed shortages, lack of modern technology and buildings, less experienced staff, continued Covid admissions and problems in social care have all made it harder to increase the number of treatments. Pritchard told the health select committee that productivity figures were “a fairly blunt tool” that were overly focused on hospitals rather than care Chris Smyth Whitehall Editor Conflict of interest fear over Barclay Chris Smyth The new environment secretary is married to a water company senior executive, provoking fresh claims of conflicts of interest at the top of government. Steve Barclay, who was moved from his job as health secretary in this week’s reshuffle, finds widespread public anger about sewage pollution by water companies at the top of his in-tray. His wife Karen Barclay is head of regional engagement for Anglian Water, which was fined £2.65 million this summer for dumping untreated sewage in the North Sea. At the time, Rebecca Pow, the water minister, who now reports to Barclay, insisted that “water companies must not profit from environmental damage”. Barclay declared his wife’s job to the Cabinet Office propriety and ethics team and is understood to be planning to recuse himself from any discussions involving Anglian Water, with decisions made by another minister. The Daily Mirror first reported that Barclay had listed his wife’s job in the register of ministers’ interests. Tim Farron, rural spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: “I do worry about the possible conflict of interest here for the man charged with forcing the water companies to clean up their act. We need to make sure [he] is fully committed to doing everything in his power to stop the sewage scandal.” Barclay was replaced as health secretary by Victoria Atkins, whose own husband runs one of Britain’s biggest sugar companies. A government spokesman said: “All Defra ministers declare their interests in line with the ministerial code.” was welcomed by Rishi Sunak to his first cabinet meeting as foreign secretary Winter is coming for new face at health department News Eleanor Hayward Health Correspondent more people are unhappy with the service than satisfied with it. This collapse in mass support is rooted in difficulties seeing a GP, who act as the main interface with the public. Campaigners say that GPs are now an “elusive species”, forcing thousands of people to turn up at A&E instead, while in many areas of the country it has become impossible to find an NHS dentist. More funding is needed to help reverse a decline in the number of fulltime GPs, as well as a new settlement for NHS dentistry to halt the exodus of dentists to private practice. social care Social care is often the neglected twin of health. But Atkins, the new secretary of state for health and social care, cannot afford to ignore it. By 2050, one in four people in the UK will be over the age of 65 and the care sector is dismally equipped for this ageing population. Stretched local authority budgets mean about 2.6 million people over 50 are already going without the care they need, leaving some unable to wash, get dressed or prepare food themselves. This has knock-on effects on the NHS and hospitals. About 12,500 patients, many of them elderly, are stuck in hospital beds because there is no community care available. Social care leaders say the biggest problem is staff shortages, with 152,000 job vacancies, and are calling for a “minimum carer wage”. Before the next election the Conservatives will have to come up with some sort of a plan for substantial long-term reform of the sector. This has been the downfall of previous governments, including Theresa May’s ill-fated “dementia tax” proposals for the 2017 election manifesto. five key pledges. So far, this promise is going terribly. The overall hospital waiting list stands at a record 7.8 million patients — up from 7.2 million in January and 4.4 million before the coronavirus pandemic. The NHS has already effectively abandoned hopes of meeting key government waiting list targets for elective hospital treatments after the Treasury refused a £1 billion bailout to cover the financial cost of strikes. Atkins will have to find ways to drive productivity improvements in NHS hospitals, which are not treating any more patients than before the pandemic despite higher budgets and more staff. If she fails, the Conservative Party will be going into the next election with waiting lists topping 8 million — something that is unlikely to end well for the party at the ballot box. public health and obesity The appointment of Atkins raised eyebrows among health chiefs after it emerged her husband, Paul Kenward, is chief executive of the biggest sugar producer in Britain. It will be interesting to see how she approaches demands for tougher public health measures — including expanded sugar taxes — to tackle obesity. Two in three adults in the UK are obese or overweight, costing the NHS about £6.5 billion a year, due to a rise in related conditions such as type 2 diabetes. Her predecessor as health secretary, Steve Barclay, made clear he was opposed to “nanny state” measures such as banning junk food advertising and promotions. Atkins will also be responsible for pushing through historic legislation that will phase out smoking for younger generations, a ban that is opposed by some Tory MPs. access to gps and dentists The British public is rapidly losing faith with the NHS. For the first time, polls show Victoria Atkins arrives facing a long list of challenges

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 2GM 11 News Hundreds of Britons who own homes in France are writing to members of the French parliament imploring them to support a change in the law to allow them to stay in the country for longer than 90 days at a time. Since Brexit, Britons have had their freedom of movement curtailed and are allowed to stay in the country for up to only 90 days in any 180-day period. The rules mean the estimated 60,000 Britons who own a property in France are unable to live at that home for extended periods. However, there is now hope that the strict rules may be relaxed. This week the French Senate agreed to amend the law to allow British second homeowners the automatic right to a long-stay visa. The amendment was tabled by Martine Berthet, a French senator,who said British property owners had been A couple who claimed they lived in a state of “torture” because of the noise made by a banker’s young family living above them have won damages from their neighbours. Sergey Grazhdankin, 42, and his wife, Maria, said their lives in a £1 million apartment in a gated art deco development in west Kensington became a misery after the family moved in upstairs. At the centre of the row, which incurred lawyers’ fees of £250,000, was the installation of wooden floors by Medhi Guissi and his wife, Meriem El Harouchi. The Grazhdankins claimed that their three-bedroom flat had previously been quiet. They told Central London county court that the installation of wooden floors upstairs shattered their peace and left them feeling as if they were in a flatshare. They said they constantly heard children playing and crying as well as noisy conversations between Guissi and his family. The couple sued their neighbours over the alleged nuisance caused by the noise, with Judge Tracey Bloom awarding the Grazhdankins more than £16,000 in damages. She rejected nuisance and breach of covenant claims that they had additionally brought against the freeholder of the building, North End House Ltd. The court was told that refurbishments by Guissi and his wife included replacing carpets with wooden boards, with a floating acoustic barrier installed to try to dissipate noise. The Grazhdankins claimed that this was incorrectly fitted, with nails being driven through it and into the joists, against the makers’ instructions. The Grazhdankins had been “clearly distressed” by the noise, the judge found. The couple said they found the noise “unbearable”. Bloom said: “I am quite satisfied and accept all of the experts’ evidence that the floor was put in incorrectly. The effect was that the layer that should have provided an acoustic barrier was squashed and the effectiveness of the floor was in effect nullified. It was no better than a piece of plywood across the floor.” Sergey Grazhdankin had previously told the court that “during the week, we are woken up daily between 5.30am and 7.30am and we can hear the floor making creaking sounds, walking sounds and the sound of moving furniture right above our main bedroom”. He added: “Living in our apartment feels like living in a shared apartment with another family. It is impossible to have our peace and live in our own rhythm. Living with this every day ... is torture.” His wife said the only time they were free from the noise above was after Guissi and his family went to bed, which could be after 10pm at night. “It feels depressing because I do not have a feeling of privacy, peace and quiet in my own home,” she said. Grazhdankin said his wife had been badly affected and suffered from stress and insomnia. Mark Lorrell, who represented the Grazhdankins, told the court that the acoustic floor manufacturers had warned that any penetration of the floating floor by nails or screws could result in “acoustic failure”. Following complaints and a previous court hearing, Guissi and his wife installed carpets, but the noise was still present. “The problem is not the installation of wooden floors in itself,” Lorrell said. “It is that these wooden floors were not fitted properly and, for a whole host of other reasons, the work was not ‘conveniently done’ — that is, done with regard to their neighbours, because they did not install a proper floating floor which would have guarded against excessive impact and airborne noise.” Guissi and el-Harouchi denied liability and argued that their neighbours were oversensitive to the normal sounds of family life, having lived for years with only an elderly woman above them. Tom Morris, who represented the Grazhdankins’ neighbours, said their behaviour represented “ordinary residential occupation” and were “not done maliciously or with the intention of disturbing” anyone. Couple ‘tortured by noise’ win legal fight over wood flooring Kieran Gair Medhi Guissi’s wooden floors in his London apartment left his downstairs neighbours Sergey and Maria Grazhdankin complaining their peace had been shattered a rest centre for those in difficulty, although it was unable to say how long they would have to stay there. A council statement said: “The length of this temporary arrangement is dependent on a further survey of the building ... No evidence has been presented to suggest there is any immediate risk to health and life.” Avon Fire and Rescue said the decision was “appropriate and proportional”. Let us remain, plead Britons in France “punished by Brexit”. However, the new rules still need to be agreed by France’s National Assembly. The French government has indicated it will not support the move because Britons can already apply for a long-stay visa. To counter this, British homeowners are writing to members of the National Assembly to explain the problems they encounter under the existing system. The letters are being co-ordinated from a Facebook group called France Visa Free, which has attracted thousands of members. Judy Evans, who owns a house boat moored in Auxerre, Burgundy, has written to Daniel Grenon, her local representative. saying: “It has been suggested that the clause is not necessary because UK tourists have the option [of a long-stay visa]. In reality, however, the present system remains a major obstacle ... The procedures for obtaining the extended visa are long, complicated and expensive. The entire process has to be undertaken afresh each year.” However, Grenon wrote back: “It is indeed regrettable that since 2021 the freedom of visit for British owners has been restricted by the European Union ... However, I can’t say I’ll be supporting Madame Berthet’s amendment.” The number of Britons who own properties in France has been steadily falling in recent years. As recently as 2013 more than 93,000 people from the UK owned a property in the country but last year this had dropped to 60,000, according to the English Housing Survey. Joanna Leggett, head of the French estate agent Leggett Immobilier, said: “It is fair to say that a relaxation in rules would boost British sales.” Eric Bocquet, chairman of the France-UK friendship committee, said: “British homeowners are very welcome in France. They are perfectly integrated and their presence is very positive.” Andrew Ellson, Adam Sage More than 400 people living in a tower block in Bristol have been told to leave after the council discovered “major structural faults”. Bristol council has declared a major incident after building surveys showed that Barton House, in the Redfield area of the city, would not be safe in the event of a fire or large impact. The council is urging residents to stay with friends or family as a “temporary measure”, but many say they have nowhere to go. Nuh Sharif, who lives in the block with his family, told the BBC: “I have two special needs kids and I don’t know what will happen to them. I am worried where they are going to stay. How am I going to get them to school?” The council said that it had prepared Families leave tower block after structural faults found Laurence Sleator Residents evacuating Barton House

12 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times News Twitter fails to remove hateful Gaza messages Twitter/X has failed to remove almost 200 antisemitic, Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian posts made in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war amid a warning that bigots have “free rein”. The social media giant continued to host 98 per cent of 200 messages after being alerted to their presence by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) after Hamas’s attack on Israel. Some support Hitler and deny the Holocaust. Others use offensive terms to describe Palestinians. The hateful posts, which together have been viewed 24 million times, were reported using X’s moderation tools on October 31 but remained online a week later. They were drawn from 101 accounts. Just one has since been suspended, with a further two locked. Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the CCDH, criticised Elon Musk, X’s owner, for raising a “bat signal” to individuals who had previously been banned. In July, X Corp filed a lawsuit against the CCDH over its reporting of the rise in hate and disinformation on the platform under Musk. The CCDH has described the move as “straight out of the authoritarian playbook”. Alex Farber Media Correspondent Ceasefire Labour MPs face the sack Geraldine Scott Senior Political Correspondent Sir Keir Starmer is ready to sack shadow frontbenchers who defy the Labour line to back a ceasefire in Gaza. The party is expecting the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, to select a Scottish National Party amendment to the King’s Speech, which would force a vote on whether or not to back a ceasefire. However, Starmer will table his own motion in a bid to keep party unity. It is understood he believes that voting to back a ceasefire, which is not the party’s line, would be “incompatible” with continuing on the frontbench. The Labour leader has instead backed humanitarian pauses to allow aid to reach Gaza and for people to leave, and has argued that a full ceasefire would embolden Hamas. David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, has met Labour MPs to attempt to calm tensions, as the left launched a pro-ceasefire campaign. Starmer admitted last week that the split in his party over the calling of a ceasefire was “not a usual divide”. It will be for the Speaker to decide if any of the amendments are selected, which would pave the way for a vote. The son of one of the world’s foremost literary critics has been identified as a leader of a mob that intimidated Michael Gove during the Armistice Day protests. Oliver Eagleton pursued the levelling-up secretary through Victoria station, with some pro-Palestinian activists jostling with police. His father, Terry Eagleton, is a former Warton professor of English at the University of Oxford. The protesters surrounded Gove and chanted “shame on you” as officers ordered them to “get back”. Gove escaped by being bundled into a police van and later thanked officers for “getting me home safely”. Eagleton, 26, a New Statesman columnist, has condemned “politicians enabling [Israel’s] genocidal war”. He described the events of October 7 as the Al-Aqsa Flood, the term used for the attacks by Hamas. In an article for the New Left Review, he argued that “Hamas’s attack aimed to unravel a political conjuncture in which the apartheid regime had become convinced that it could repress any serious resistance to its rule”. His father’s best-known book, Literary Theory: An Introduction, published in 1983, has sold more than 750,000 copies. In 2007 he published a book that portrayed Jesus as a Palestinian insurgent. He is now an emeritus professor at Lancaster University and lives in Northern Ireland. In an article published by the UnHerd website earlier this month and illustrated with a picture of a Palestinian protester, Terry Eagleton, 80, wrote: “The target of terrorism is usually the state, but many states were themselves born in the blood and fire of invasion, Pole position This 1962 GTO Ferrari — the only one of its kind to have been raced by Formula 1’s Scuderia Ferrari — has sold at auction for $51.7 million, a record price for the Italian marque and the second highest price ever fetched for a car Literary critic’s son led mob that targeted Gove David Brown dispossession, forcible occupation or extermination.” Oliver Eagleton did not respond to a request for comment. His father could not be contacted for comment. Separately, a Jewish woman attacked for displaying an Israeli flag during Saturday’s pro-Palestinian march in London has called for Jews to defend themselves amid a rise in antisemitism. Wendy Henry, 70, described being physically assaulted and verbally abused while silently standing alone at Hyde Park Corner as protesters passed. A woman in her 20s used a megaphone to encourage the crowd to abuse Henry and described her as a “baby killer”. Henry, a former editor of the News of the World, said: “There was so much hatred. I found it was the young women who were the most hateful, which was disturbing.” A youth aged 16 or 17, who was with his parents, slapped her on the back as they passed. A police officer who witnessed the assault confronted the teenager, Henry said. The officer gave him a verbal caution before allowing him to continue on the march. Scotland Yard has appealed for help identifying 11 men suspected of supporting a proscribed terrorist group or inciting racist hatred during Saturday’s march and earlier pro-Palestinian protests. They include a protester with a placard reading “I fully support Hamas” and two others chanting in favour of the group. Oliver Eagleton has attacked politicians for “enabling [Israel’s] genocidal war”

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 13 News The Red Arrows have been placed in “special measures” after a recent report revealed a catalogue of inappropriate behaviour towards women, a defence minister has said. Andrew Murrison said the RAF display team had been “put on notice” and would now face “the most intense scrutiny”. An internal investigation, published this month, found that over a four-year Red Arrows put on notice after predatory behaviour exposed period women were hounded for sex, plied with alcohol and subjected to predatory behaviour, with male pilots regarding female colleagues as their “property”. Speaking to the defence committee in parliament yesterday, Murrison was asked about the report’s findings. He said: “The Red Arrows have been put on notice — there’s no question about that. I think they are best described as being in ‘special measures’ following this performance. Now they are subject to the most intense scrutiny, I think, of any part of defence at the moment, and none of them can be under any misapprehension about what is expected of them.” Two pilots, Damon Green and Will Cambridge, were sacked as a result of the two-year inquiry and a further nine members of the aerobatics display team were handed lesser sanctions. Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, chief of the air staff, said he was appalled by the findings and apologised after the release of the report. Murrison added: “I’m comforted in the knowledge that there has been significant churn since this happened — so we have a fresher slate of people who now populate this organisation.” The report was published after The Times revealed details of a scandal in the Red Arrows last year following allegations from more than 40 people. It also said that members of the Red Arrows flashed their genitals on at least two occasions and women adopted a system called “shark watch”, in which one would monitor the advances of men at social events because they were so accustomed to predatory behaviour. The Red Arrows display team features nine pilots, Red 1 to Red 9, and is known as the “Diamond” because of the formation in which it often flies. There are about 140 people in the support team, of which about 10 per cent are usually women. The RAF was contacted for comment. Laurence Sleator Hibbing, Minnesota, this month, Wolfe read out a letter to him, saying: “You’re such a special person, you have the best sense of humour, the biggest heart, the quickest wit and the kindest soul. You’re unbelievably loyal, dedicated and smart. You’re so, so smart.” She continued: “Whether it came to school or life in general, you just seem to have it all figured out, which gave me so much peace and comfort, and made me feel like we could do anything, or be anything, and we’d be OK. We’d be happy. To me you were everything. You were my home, my best friend, my sounding board, my rock, my safe haven and the love of my life.” Kari Johnson, the player’s aunt, said that her nephew had bought an engagement ring and was planning to propose. “We were all really excited because we were really looking forward to their Pool player quits final in protest about trans rival Ali Mitib A female pool player was cheered by the crowd after she forfeited the final of a national tournament in protest at having to play a transgender woman. Lynne Pinches, 50, was supported by spectators after she packed up her cue and told the referee that she would not compete against Harriet Haynes in the final of the Ladies Champion of Champions in Denbighshire, northeast Wales. Haynes reacted with confusion before picking up the trophy by default. Pinches told The Daily Telegraph that walking out on Saturday was the “toughest thing I’ve ever had to do in the game in my life”. She said: “I have played 30 years and I’ve never even conceded so much as a frame, never mind a match. “This was only my fourth final ever but the trophy or money meant nothing to me without fairness, and that’s what I said to the tournament director afterwards.” Pinches, who received £500 as the runner-up in the English Pool Association event, is among a group of female players who have opposed guidance by the World Eightball Pool Federation and Ultimate Pool Group that allows trans and non-binary players to participate in the women’s series. Pinches’s action came after players claimed they had received reassurances that they would not have to compete against trans or non-binary players. “The devastation I have felt, I can’t even explain,” Pinches, from Norwich, said. “I didn’t eat or sleep properly for two days. I was crying until 3am. I was devastated. “I don’t care about the money or the title or the trophy. I care about fairness. If they hadn’t done that U-turn we wouldn’t be here now. We were all so elated when they originally said they were going to have a strict category for biological females.” The player said she had trans friends and that her protest was not “to cause any hurt feelings”. She added: “I would never ever do that to embarrass anybody but no one cares how humiliating it is for us as women.” Her brother, Barry, voiced his support for her decision on social media. He said: “Full credit and great respect to my sister Lynne Pinches yesterday for taking a stand and not playing in the biggest match of her pool-playing life because she feels it’s so unfair to have to compete against a trans woman. “I completely agree with her view that it is totally unfair to expect women to compete against trans women in pool or any other sport for that matter.” future and he didn’t get a chance to ask her,” she told KSTP-TV, a local news station. At Johnson’s inquest a coroner called for neck guards in ice hockey to be mandatory and expressed concern that further fatalities could occur should action not be taken. The English Ice Hockey Association has said that neck guards will be mandatory from next year and in the meantime urged players to start using them. Johnson, who previously played in North America’s National Hockey League for the Pittsburgh Penguins and signed for Nottingham in August, was not wearing a neck guard. Tanyka Rawden, the coroner, said the inquest, which was opened and adjourned this month, would “consider whether a neck guard or protector could have prevented Mr Johnson’s death”. Ryan Wolfe said Adam Johnson, her boyfriend, was a “sweet angel”. He died after the skate blade of Matt Petgrave, left, slashed him across the neck during a match. Below, fans left floral tributes An ice hockey player has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter as police investigate the death of an opponent whose throat was cut by a skate blade during a match. Adam Johnson, 29, a forward for the Nottingham Panthers, died after the blade of Matt Petgrave, from Sheffield Steelers, slashed him across the neck and severed his carotid artery on October 28. Johnson, from Minnesota, collapsed on the ice in the 35th minute during the televised match at Utilita Arena in Sheffield before being taken to hospital, where he died from his injuries. A statement from South Yorkshire police, which did not name Petgrave, said that a man had been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. He remains in custody. Detective Chief Superintendent Becs Horsfall said: “We have been speaking to highly specialised experts in their field to assist in our inquiries and continue to work closely with the health and safety department at Sheffield city council, which is supporting our ongoing investigation. “Adam’s death has sent shockwaves Police arrest ice hockey player over match death through many communities, from our local residents here in Sheffield to ice hockey fans across the world.” The force also asked the public not to speculate on the circumstances of the death. On Sunday the Sheffield Steelers played their first home game since the incident. More than 8,000 fans observed a moment of silence to remember Johnson. There was also a minute’s applause with the players banging their sticks on the ice. Petgrave, 31, who did not play in the match, was given a standing ovation by some fans when his picture appeared on the big screen. Westin Michaud, 27, one of Johnson’s team-mates, said after the incident that the Panthers “wholeheartedly stand with Matt Petgrave”. The incident has been described by the team as a “freak accident”. Johnson’s girlfriend, Ryan Wolfe, 24, was in the stands when the incident took place and rushed on to the ice to be with him. The players formed a protective ring around him to provide privacy as paramedics came on to the ice. Afterwards Wolfe paid tribute to her “sweet angel”. Speaking at his funeral, which took place in his home town of Laurence Sleator

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 2GM 15 News LeBlanc pays tribute to co-star Ali Mitib Matt LeBlanc has paid tribute to his Friends co-star Matthew Perry in the first statement from one of the stars of the hit American sitcom since the actor died last month at the age of 54. LeBlanc wrote: “It is with a heavy heart I say goodbye. The times we had together are honestly among the favourite times of my life. It was an honour to share the stage with you and to call you my friend ... Spread your wings and fly brother you’re finally free. Much love. And I guess you’re keeping the 20 bucks you owe me.” LeBlanc played Joey Tribbiani alongside Perry’s Chandler Bing in the show, which ran from 1994 to 2004. He was among 20 mourners at Perry’s funeral this month along with his costars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow. Perry died in his hot tub in Los Angeles on October 28. In a statement at the time, the co-stars said: “We are all so utterly devastated ... We were more than just cast mates. We are a family.” After LeBlanc’s tribute Cox, who played Monica Geller, fondly recalled the start of her on-screen love story with Perry. She said on Instagram: “I am so grateful for every moment I had with you Matty and I miss you every day.” Perry had a long battle with alcohol and drug addiction. The cause of death has yet to be confirmed. T he King has marked his 75th birthday by dispelling a myth about the royal family — contrary to popular belief, he does carry money (Valentine Low writes). Charles was launching the Coronation Food Project, an initiative to support charities feeding the nation with unwanted food, when he surprised a Big Issue seller with his donation. At the end of the visit with the Queen to the South Oxfordshire Food and Education Alliance, part of FareShare, a network of charitable food redistributors, he was introduced to Kelvin. Given that Kelvin was ready with the Big Issue featuring the King on the cover, and an article by him on food waste inside, Charles naturally took one. He gave £10 for the £4 magazine and told him to keep the change. Kelvin, 61, who has been homeless on and off since he was a teenager, joked: “He gave me cash, that does prove something — he does carry money.” Kelvin, whose pitch Charles shows cash is king as he turns 75 The King hosted a reception for NHS nurses and midwives and bought a copy of The Big Issue with him on the cover is outside Somerset House, central London, added: “He asked if I was in accommodation and about selling the Big Issue. I said it’s got me through the bad times and it has a positive social message.” He said about the food project: “I think it goes to show he cares, he’s reaching out to the public.” Last night it was reported that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex telephoned the King to wish him happy birthday. The BBC had earlier quoted “well-placed sources” saying that any phone call might be seen as an olive branch after Harry declined an invitation to attend a soirée at Clarence House for Charles’s close friends and family. The two are thought to have not spoken in person since last September. Buckingham Palace declined to comment and Harry’s Archewell organisation did not respond to a request for comment. The King’s birthday was marked with a 41-gun salute by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery in Green Park and a 62-gun salute by the Honourable Artillery Company at Tower Wharf, the Tower of London. He later hosted a reception for NHS nurses and midwives at Buckingham Palace.

16 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times News A ten-day weather forecasting program powered by artificial intelligence has matched the abilities of the present state-of-the-art system, promising a revolution in meteorology. The program, designed by Google DeepMind, was able to provide a more accurate forecast than that given by the leading global institute, using a small fraction of the computing power. Matthew Chantry, from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), said the model, called GraphCast, was “likely the beginning of a revolution in how weather forecasts are created”. “[GraphCast] has a legitimate claim to have equalled and sometimes outperformed the physical models, the deterministic forecasts,” he said, referring to the conventional approach. Conventional forecasting seeks to predict the weather using physics. By applying equations to a model of the atmosphere, mathematicians project its evolution forwards. DeepMind’s approach was fundamentally different. Rather than attempting to understand the physical processes, the scientists used historical weather data to train their program to DeepMind a better weather forecaster than the experts spot patterns. By learning how in the past these have led the atmosphere to evolve, the program is able to map these findings on to present conditions. Despite not being told the laws of fluid dynamics, when it was tested against the forecasting tool used by the ECMWF it did even better, according to a paper in the journal Science. Ninety per cent of the time, across 1,300 different measures, it came up with a better prediction. The DeepMind system was also able to predict extreme events such as tropical cyclones, which is one of the key uses of forecasting — but was an area in which it was believed traditional methods would retain the upper hand. Although it took a lot of time to train the system, which will be made available for users, once the scientists had done so it was hugely more efficient. The ECMWF system takes hours to produce a ten-day forecast on a supercomputer, while DeepMind produced its own in a minute. Chantry said that, for now at least, he and his colleagues at the ECMWF would still be in a job. One of their primary roles is not merely to predict the weather but to assign probabilities to different outcomes, something GraphCast cannot do. Tom Whipple Science Editor Big increase in bosses using AI to hire graduates The number of employers using artificial intelligence to recruit graduates has trebled in the past year, according to a report. It found that 26 per cent of companies that employed graduates were using AI as part of their hiring processes, up from 9 per cent last year. The Institute of Student Employers (ISE) said the most frequent use of AI — by 16 per cent of respondents — was in conducting or analysing psychometric tests. Eight per cent said they used AI to pre-screen candidates and 7 per cent to analyse video interviews, while 1 per cent used it to screen CVs. Members of the ISE include the Cabinet Office, the Bank of England, Fujitsu, HSBC, the BBC, Deloitte, BT, Network Rail and Marks & Spencer. The industries making most use of AI in recruitment included engineering, tourism and retail. The survey asked employers to share their insights about the benefits and drawbacks of using AI in their hiring processes. For those in favour, 83 per cent reported that using AI increased speed and efficiency in the recruitment process and 64 per cent said it increased their ability to analyse large volumes of data, while 17 per cent said it was cheaper than using people. Others said it enabled repetitive tasks to be automated. However, 70 per cent of employers reported that they preferred a more people-centric approach in the recruitment process. Sixty-three per cent had concerns about the reliability of using AI and 55 per cent worried about its potential for bias. Handling data securely was also an issue for 33 per cent. The institute said there were 86 job applications per vacancy this year, up 23 per cent on last year, meaning that employers were looking for quicker and more efficient ways of managing high volumes of candidates. Limited budget and resources as well as lack of capability to implement AI systems were cited as the main reasons that it was not used more widely. Georgia Greer, head of insights at the ISE, said: “AI is creating opportunities for employers to do things differently in a more effective way. With the rise in job applications, the increased speed and efficiency is attractive. It should improve the candidate experience too. “It can be a juggling act for recruiters who want the efficiencies but are questioning the ethics and whether they’re comfortable removing human interaction from the process. As AI evolves and improves, confidence will grow and some of those concerns should fall away. “From a candidate’s perspective, they may be asked to use tools like ChatGPT to answer questions and play back their experience at interview. “But, at the moment, AI is mainly being used to assess performance in the process, so it’s not something candidates will always be aware of or can prepare for.” In a related development, about 40 per cent of teachers are using ChatGPT and other large language models to help with school work, MPs were told yesterday. The profession has become less attractive as there are limited opportunities for home working or shorter hours, experts said in evidence before the Commons education select committee, at a hearing about teacher recruitment and retention. Philip Nye, a data scientist at the Institute for Government, said: “Teaching, I think, historically, has been seen as quite family-friendly, but now, perhaps compared to other non-public sector roles, it is not as flexible as it once was.” Nicola Woolcock Education Editor Bright idea Lasers illuminate the palm house at Kew Gardens in preparation for the Christmas light trail, which starts today

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 17 News A “stolen” copy of a British princess’s sculpture that lay hidden in an attic for a century has sold for nearly a quarter of a million pounds (David Sanderson writes). The original bronze of Lord Nelson was created in 1906 by Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, the daughter of Queen Victoria. It is held by the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth. Unbeknown to the princess, however, the company that supplied the bronze persuaded the foundry to “run off a secret second copy”. Recently a descendant of its original owner approached Charles Miller, an auction house specialising in maritime collectables. The sculpture was estimated to fetch £3,000 to £5,000; however, it sold to an overseas buyer for £229,400. Charles Miller, the auction house’s founder, called the statue a “cheeky copy” commissioned by James Harradine of Bermondsey, south London. “They were so terrified of the royal discontent that they kept it secret,” he added. Princess Louise, who attended the National Art Training School, is perhaps the most successful royal artist. Her statue of her mother stands near Kensington Palace. She also created a Boer War memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral. Secret copy of bronze by princess revealed The unauthorised copy of Princess Louise’s bronze statue of Lord Nelson was kept hidden for over a century, for fear of upsetting the royal family A senior scientist has called for an urgent ban on cats being brought into the UK from Cyprus and southeast Europe to prevent the spread of a highly infectious and potentially deadly feline virus. The bug, a type of coronavirus called FCoV-23, is estimated to have killed 8,500 cats in Cyprus in the first half of this year. One cat brought from Cyprus has tested positive in the UK so far. Three more suspected infections, all with links to Cyprus, are being investigated. The virus is not thought to be dangerous to humans. However, Dr Christine Tait-Burkard, of the University of Edinburgh, who oversaw the team who confirmed the first case, has called for a temporary ban on cats from countries where the virus is circulating, among them Greece and Lebanon. “There are several weekly flights that are importing cats [from Cyprus] to the UK,” she said. “So the risk of spreading this virus is very high.” She added: “It’s not the moment to panic but we know from Covid that we need to react at this stage and not three months down the line.” Import ban urged to stop cat coronavirus Rhys Blakely Science Correspondent Restrictions on foreign cats could avoid the need for tougher measures, such as cat owners having to keep their pets indoors. The owner of the first cat to test positive opted to pay for treatment with an antiviral drug, which can cost several thousand pounds. Tait-Burkard has been in talks with the Animal and Plant Health Agency, and a meeting of the government’s chief veterinary officers is planned. The UK government has no requirements for quarantine or testing for cats that may have been exposed to the virus overseas. An official for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said it was “continuing to gather information on the risk”. FCoV-23 is a type of cat coronavirus that can cause an illness known as feline infectious peritonitis (FIP). Not all cats will develop FIP after being infected, but if left untreated FIP is almost always fatal. Most cats with the illness get a swollen belly which becomes filled with fluid. They often stop eating and look miserable. Some develop symptoms caused by the virus replicating in their brain, for example wobbly walking, twitching, collapsing, or seizures. More rarely, they may find it difficult to breathe as fluid builds up around their lungs. If a cat shows some of these signs, they need to see a vet immediately. Treatment for FIP can be prohibitively expensive

Children as young as 15 are working as delivery app riders thanks to a black market in app accounts. An investigation by the BBC found that food delivery apps including JustEat, Deliveroo and UberEats allow delivery riders to lend their accounts to others, a process known as substitution. This has fuelled an illicit market for accounts, with users renting them to young people who would not otherwise be allowed to work on the apps. One teenager, Leo, died on a borrowed motorcycle while working for Deliveroo. He was 17, whereas the company requires workers to be 18. “Leo wanted to be a millionaire. Whatever it took, he just wanted to earn money and hustle,” his stepfather, Patrick, said. In an interview with the BBC, Leo’s family said they feared revealing their surname in case they faced a backlash from riders who illegally rent accounts. The family have not been contacted by Deliveroo since Leo’s death. Patrick said: “They wouldn’t even know he existed. No one’s accountable, they just take the money. It’s not right.” In June The Times revealed that some of those renting out their accounts kept the wages rather than pass them to their substitute drivers. The investigation also found that sellers made no effort to ensure that substitutes had the right to work in Britain. One undocumented migrant who arrived in the back of a lorry said he had 18 2GM Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Children working as food delivery riders been renting Deliveroo accounts for several years. He told The Times in June: “Your life is in their hands ... You’re working hard doing deliveries but you know that at any time someone can take back their account.” Accounts for various apps have been available for rent on Facebook and the classified adverts site Gumtree. A bicycle account for Deliveroo costs between £60 and £90 a week, based on posts seen by The Times. A BBC reporter posed as an underage customer and contacted people selling their accounts. One replied: “They don’t check age.” Another said: “I want to help you. Age does not matter.” Robert Jenrick, the Home Office minister, said Deliveroo’s substitution rules enabled illegal working. He said: “This is not a victimless activity. We’ve seen a young person die doing a job that he shouldn’t have been doing.” Deliveroo told the BBC: “We take our responsibilities extremely seriously and we continue to work in close collaboration with relevant authorities.” Just Eat said it had “high standards” for couriers, adding: “Self-employed independent couriers have the legal right to use a substitute. Legally the courier account-holder is responsible for ensuring their substitute meets the standards to deliver on our network.” Gumtree said two listings had been removed and added: “Our trust and safety team has been made aware and further attempts to list an account for any food app will be blocked.” Emma Yeomans Close encounter Ellie Smith’s intimate image of the singer and actress Lily Allen is on the shortlist for the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain awards News Dentists urge expansion of sugar tax Eleanor Hayward Health Correspondent Dentists are demanding that the sugar tax be extended to more drinks and food after a study found it has prevented thousands of hospital admissions for tooth decay. Research led by the University of Cambridge found that the number of children needing teeth extracted fell by 12 per cent after the soft drinks levy was introduced in April 2018. They said this equated to nearly 3,000 hospital admissions a year avoided because of tooth decay. The greatest reduction was in children under nine years old. Tooth extractions are the biggest cause of hospital admissions in young children and last year 42,000 children and teenagers were admitted to hospital with decay. The study, published in the journal BMJ Nutrition, Prevention and Health, concluded that the sugar tax had been successful in preventing tooth decay. The levy adds 18p per litre to the price of soft drinks with more than 5g of sugar per 100ml. It has led drinks companies to reformulate their product. Eddie Crouch, chairman of the British Dental Association, said the levy should be expanded to products such as milk-based drinks, biscuits, cakes and sweets. “The sugar levy is delivering the goods in the fight against decay, so it’s time to double down,” he said. “When voluntary action has clearly failed, this shows government must force industry’s hand on cutting sugar.”

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 19 News Australia may have retained the Ashes this summer, but a GP from Dorset plans to take revenge through a lesserknown sport — competitive mullet growing. Alastair Bush is hoping to make his country proud via fashion’s most dubious haircut. The doctor has been growing his locks in preparation for the World Mullet Growing Championships in Australia, a contest which he said was “widely considered to be the Everest of the competitive mullet growing world”. Having won his international heat at Mulletfest in New South Wales in February, he is gearing up for the final. Should he win, he plans to cut off his mane, burn it and put it in an urn, kickstarting another rivalry between the two countries. “The Aussies may have retained the Ashes in cricket but 2023 is going to be the year the UK beats them in competitive mullet growing,” he said. The annual contest sees people of all ages flocking to Kurri Kurri for the chance to compete for the best mullet styles in categories such as grubby, ranga, vintage and extreme. Bush, 45, who works on a British army camp, has always had a “short back and sides” but decided to grow a mullet during the pandemic. These days his hair is 12in long at the back and comes down to his shoulder blades. He is able to get away with the Mullet man aims to be cut above the Aussies Constance Kampfner “business at the front, party at the back” haircut because the soldiers he works with “are mainly in their 20s and find the mullet funny”. “I would not have grown it if I had regular patients,” he added. While the mullet is associated with either Australia or, thanks to the Beastie Boys, with 1980s America, the hairstyle is said to trace its roots to Roman-era Britain. In 2018 a figurine with a neat front and sides and a long tail of hair at the back was found during excavation work in Cambridgeshire. Archaeologists said that the discovery might have offered a glimpse into ordinary Britons’ appearance at the time. However proud he is of his mullet, Bush admitted that he was looking forward to returning to his regular look once the competition was over. He is raising funds for Testicular Cancer UK. “Many of my patients are in the at-risk age group for developing testicular cancer,” he said. “If diagnosed early it can be easily treated so raising awareness is essential.” To donate, go to justgiving.com Alastair Bush grew his luscious locks during lockdown TMS [email protected] | @timesdiary Duke’s knack for romance Queen Elizabeth II was known for her emotional reserve, but the actor Michael Ball once saw her upper lip unstiffen. He sang People Will Say We’re in Love at a Royal Variety Performance and, as the royal couple met performers afterwards, it was clear that HMQ had been quite moved. She remembered the song from her courtship with Prince Philip. “The Queen came up, misty-eyed, and said ‘Thank you, that was beautiful’,” Ball tells Yours magazine. Her husband, though, always found it easier to express his thoughts and spoilt the romance by shouting “What was the song you were singing? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it in my bloody life!” Many were amused by Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg’s reaction to the news that Esther McVey had been made the minister for common sense. He was unimpressed by the title. “I don’t believe in tokenistic phrases for government posts,” said the former minister for Brexit opportunities. agonising uncle’s advice Michael Palin’s Great Uncle Harry is a thorough biography of his relative with him finding everything from war records to childhood reading material. Palin perused the Boy’s Own Paper, where he found its agony uncle column for Victorian lads. “Spots, masturbation and fears of weediness seem to predominate,” he told The Oldie’s literary lunch. The boys’ initial letters were not published, so Palin, above, could only wonder at what inspired responses like “Are you not constantly told that such practices ruin the lives of thousands?” and “By all means remove your moustache if you’re only five feet high”. Oldie lunches used to be hosted by the late Barry Cryer, but it was his son Bob who took to the stage yesterday. Cryer Jr told me that, though his dad was generous of spirit, he could do withering putdowns. If he found someone irritating, he would often say “He’s a difficult man to ignore, but I’m told it’s worth the effort.” hard tackle for cooper As reviews pour in for her latest book, Tackle!, Jilly Cooper knows it can’t get much worse than an early panning from the Daily Mail. They said that she was “such a bad writer, she made Jeffrey Archer look like Dostoevsky”. Surely that’s the only time those two have been mentioned in the same breath, unless the subject was crime and punishment. fans drink in experience The immersive production of Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, which is being staged at the title character’s Soho boozer, has seen audience members get into the spirit(s) of things. Some have passed out at the bar, with one of Bernard’s real-life drinking buddies being stretchered out mid-performance. “Not the first person to be taken out of the Coach and Horses feet first, I have to say,” said Robert Bathurst, who plays Bernard. The play’s title quotes the excuse The Spectator would run if Bernard had been too drunk to file his column, but Bathurst tells the Break Out Culture podcast that they didn’t always use it, occasionally choosing: “Jeffrey Bernard’s column will not be appearing this week as it is remarkably similar to that which he wrote last week.” jack blackburn

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 21 News A senior Metropolitan Police officer involved in the original investigation into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence was allegedly corrupt, according to an internal report. Ray Adams was a commander in the Scotland Yard unit responsible for investigating the 18-year-old’s killing in Eltham, southeast London, in April 1993. He was directly involved in the case for a short period before retiring in August that year. Gary Dobson and David Norris were jailed for the teenager’s murder in January 2012. Three other suspects remain at large. The original murder investigation was derailed by claims that corrupt officers had sought to protect Norris, whose father, Clifford Norris, was a known drug dealer. Adams, 81, has denied corruption allegations. He was cleared by an internal anticorruption investigation in the 1980s after a “totally fictitious” account was given by a man linked to the family of Lawrence police officer corrupt, says Met report one of Stephen’s killers, BBC News reported. Adams was quizzed about corruption in 1998 during the public inquiry into Lawrence’s death but no mention was made of his link to the informant. The inquiry, chaired by Sir William Macpherson, said that it saw nothing to suggest Adams was corruptly involved in trying to hold back the murder investigation. However, the BBC claimed a secret Met report in 2000 found that the informant must have been “coached” by Adams or another officer, with the informant’s false account discrediting a witness against Adams. Imran Khan KC, who represents Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, the murdered teenager’s mother, called the allegations “dramatic, disturbing and shocking”. Khan said he had written to the Met to demand they “apologise for not telling Baroness Lawrence and her family about what they knew. I want them to apologise to Sir William Macpherson’s inquiry and to admit that they misled that inquiry”. Macpherson’s landmark report, published in February 1999, concluded that institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers hampered early efforts to bring Stephen’s killers to justice. The Met said that a number of claims in the BBC report relate to Operation Probitas, a six-year investigation led by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) into whether corruption played a part in the investigation into Stephen’s murder. In 2021 the police watchdog referred a file to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider charges against four retired officers accused of making mistakes in the initial murder investigation. Adams was not one of these officers. In July this year prosecutors announced that the officers will not face criminal charges. Scotland Yard said that its directorate of professional standards will write to the BBC and “request access to any material in their possession that supports allegations of police corruption”. David Woode Crime Correspondent One of the killers of James Bulger made a new bid for freedom yesterday, while the toddler’s mother begged the authorities to keep him in prison. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were ten when they tortured and killed James, two, after abducting him from a shopping centre in Bootle, Merseyside, in February 1993. The pair were jailed for life but released in 2001 on licence with new identities. Thompson has not re-offended but Venables was recalled to jail in February 2010 and sentenced to two years in prison after he admitted downloading and distributing indeBulger killer in fresh bid for freedom cent images of children. He was freed in July 2013 but found himself back in prison in November 2017 after being caught with more indecent images. In February 2018 he was sentenced to 40 months after admitting possession of more than 1,000 indecent images of children. Last month a challenge to an original decision to hold the hearing in private was lodged by The Times along with other media organisations and James’s mother. It was argued that there was legitimate public interest in how Venables would be managed in the community. The arguments put forward stated that his identity could still remain protected. However, the Parole Board ruled that the two-day hearing, which started yesterday, should take place in private. Caroline Corby, chairwoman of the Parole Board for England and Wales, refused to grant the public access in respect of a longstanding order that bans Venables from being publicly identified. Denise Fergus, James’s mother, said she hoped the Parole Board “will see what this man is capable of”. She told the Daily Mirror: “Venables has had so many chances in the past and he’s blown them all. He doesn’t care. He seriously doesn’t care about anybody.” A decision by the Parole Board is expected to be made within 14 days of the hearing’s conclusion. David Woode Francesca Whyatt, far left, took her own life in 2013 while being treated at the Priory Hospital in Roehampton, despite concerns being raised A woman who killed herself at the Priory Hospital was a victim of “unsafe practices”, her sister said, as Britain’s leading mental health clinic was fined £140,000 (David Brown writes). Francesca Whyatt, of Knutsford, Cheshire, who was one of quadruplets, killed herself in 2013 a week after her 21st birthday while a patient at the Priory Hospital Roehampton in southwest London. The consultant psychiatrist in charge of her unit had warned the clinic’s director that he had “serious concerns” about patient safety, Southwark crown court was told. Whyatt’s sister Jessica, 31, told the court yesterday: “Being a quadruplet was something my sisters and I were so proud of ... Now it feels like that has been stolen from us.” A Times investigation last year revealed that the Priory Group, which has 290 facilities in the UK, had been repeatedly criticised for failings in care of at least 30 patients who died. Priory Healthcare pleaded guilty to breaking health and safety law by failing to ensure that Whyatt was not exposed to the risk of suicide. Whyatt’s sister Jessica told the court: “We feel Francesca fell victim to the Priory’s unsafe practices ... Hearing about similar deaths makes [it] even more painful.” Dr Adrian Lord, the consultant psychiatrist responsible for the unit, told the hospital director 12 days before Whyatt killed herself: “This last week to ten days has been an utter shambles ... There has been a litany of basic errors.” He said he had “no confidence in the staff to maintain safety”. Judge Tony Baumgartner fined Priory Healthcare Ltd £140,000. He said her death occurred “because of a freak combination of events”. The Priory said: “We are deeply sorry this tragic incident occurred. The ward where Francesca was a patient closed in 2014 ... we have invested £15 million into improving the services, environment and staffing at Roehampton Hospital.” Priory fined £140,000 over woman’s suicide

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 2GM 23 News Strong winds from Storm Debi made this waterfall look more like a geyser in Mynydd y Gwyddel, north Wales. Heavy rain, top, took a toll on roads in Essex The Environment Agency has slashed the number of homes it expects to protect from flooding over the next five years as higher costs have forced it to scale back projects. It had pledged that its six-year flood and coastal erosion programme would protect 336,000 properties from the risk of flooding by 2027. But a report from the National Audit Office has revealed this will be cut to 200,000. The NAO added that the agency had removed 500 of the 2,000 new flood defence projects originally included in the programme, despite the governFewer homes can expect protection from floods Oliver Wright Policy Editor ment doubling its capital funding in England in the six years to 2027 to £5.2 billion. The report also said that the agency was failing to meet its maintenance targets and had not “mapped out any concrete plans to bridge the gap between its shorter-term actions and long-term objectives”. A spokesman for the Environment Agency said: “Inflationary pressures and delays brought about by the pandemic mean we must look again at the targets set out in our £5.2 billion programme. We will consider the [NAO’s] recommendations as we continue to deliver our record investment to protect hundreds of thousands of homes from floods.” Dame Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons’ public accounts committee, said failures to tackle flooding and coastal erosion were putting “lives, livelihoods and people’s wellbeing at risk”. She called for urgent action. “Government must decide what level of flood resilience it wants to achieve and how it can make long-term investment decisions that provide the best protection for citizens and businesses,” she said. Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said that despite recognising the “growing dangers from flooding” there was a significant shortfall in the funding needed to tackle the issue. “The capital funding is forecast to better protect only 60 per cent of properties that were promised when the programme was launched in 2020, while inflation and other programme risks mean the Environment Agency could deliver even fewer than that,” he warned. The report said that on current estimates about 5.7 million properties were at risk of flooding, which could also damage food production and destroy natural habitats. It said this figure had increased by 500,000 in a year while Met Office projections indicate more extreme weather events, including more intense rainfall. “This, when combined with other factors such as more housing development, will increase flooding risks if mitigating actions are not taken,” it said. Kaya Burgess Religious Affairs Correspondent It will be an “immense challenge” for the Church of England to reach net zero by its target date of 2030, church leaders have said. The finance body of the church is pumping in £190 million in an attempt to hit the target, but General Synod members have questioned the level of investment after it emerged that the same amount could pay for 530 priests. A proposal was brought to the synod for the church to set a date of 2045 but some members wanted to be more ambitious and voted to bring it forward. A number of parishes said they are struggling to afford green alternatives to their fossil-fuelled heating systems. A survey by The Times of 1,200 active Church of England priests in August found that 65 per cent of respondents felt their church would fail to hit the target. Jonathan Baird, a lay member of the synod, asked the Archbishops’ Council whether the 2030 date seemed “hopelessly unrealistic”. Carl Hughes, chairman of the finance committee, said it had set in motion a number of schemes to support churches but conceded that the target was an “immense challenge”. Church leaders lack faith in net zero target Mortgage rate cuts take deals to less than 5% George Nixon Money Reporter Some of the UK’s biggest lenders have announced mortgage rate cuts, widening the choice for borrowers searching for deals under the 5 per cent mark. First Direct announced rate cuts of up to 0.40 percentage points from yesterday. Halifax will cut its mortgage rates by up to 0.46 percentage points from today. This includes cutting a fiveyear fix for borrowers with a 10 per cent deposit by 0.24 percentage points to reach 4.97 per cent. Halifax will also reduce a five-year fix for borrowers with a 40 per cent deposit by 0.20 percentage points, to 4.53 per cent. Both offers have a £999 fee. HSBC UK is also expected to make widespread reductions to its mortgage rates today, although details have not yet been announced. First Direct is also offering a rate as low as 4.74 per cent for new and existing customers looking for a five-year fixedrate deal with a 40 per cent deposit. A new bank has launched unusual fixed-rate loans of up to 40 years where homebuyers will be able to borrow up to six times their salary. Perenna, which was authorised by the Bank of England last year, said the loans would be available at up to 95 per cent loan-to-value.

24 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times News A murder victim known as “the woman with the flower tattoo” has been identified 31 years after her body was discovered in a Belgian river. The woman, who had been stabbed multiple times, was found against a grate in a river in Antwerp on June 3, 1992 but police were unable to identify her or her attacker. She was buried in Antwerp and remained unidentified for more than three decades, despite having a tattoo on her left forearm of a black flower I N T H E T I M E S T O M O R R O W PATRICK HOSKING The NHS’s fairytale pension scheme MAIN PAPER BUSINESS TIMES2 RIGHT ROYAL? The truth about the new season of The Crown PULLOUT JAMES MARRIOTT The smartest minds of our generation are being wasted MAIN PAPER COMMENT Flower tattoo murder victim is British woman with green leaves, with “R’Nick” written underneath. She has now been identified as Rita Roberts, who had moved to Antwerp from Cardiff earlier that year, when she was 31. The breakthrough came this year when Belgian, Dutch and German police launched an appeal with Interpol in May called Operation Identify Me, attempting to identify 22 women who are believed to have been murdered. When the appeal was reported in the British media, a relative of Roberts saw the details about her distinctive tattoo and contacted police. Roberts had moved to Antwerp in February 1992. Her last contact with relatives had been via a postcard sent in May that year. After contacting Interpol, her family travelled to meet with investigators in Belgium, where they formally identified her through “distinguishing personal identifiers”. The family, who do not wish to be identified, said in a statement: “The news was shocking and heartbreaking. Our passionate, loving and free-spirited sister was cruelly taken away. There are no words to truly express the grief we felt at that time, and still feel today. “Rita was a beautiful person who adored travelling. She loved her family, especially her nephews and nieces, and always wanted to have a family of her own. Wherever she went she was the life and soul of the party. We hope that wherever she is now, she is at peace.” Now that her identity is known, the authorities in Belgium are calling on the public for any information they may have on Roberts or the circumstances surrounding her death. People who allegedly knew Roberts have been interrogated but “this has not yet led to a breakthrough”, police said. Kristof Aerts, of the Antwerp public prosecutor’s office, said: “We are not giving up, we are going to do everything we can. A murder has been committed and we want to know who is responsible for it.” Will Humphries Southwest Correspondent Bruno Waterfield Brussels Rita Roberts, who had moved to Antwerp from Cardiff in February 1992, had a distinctive tattoo on her arm

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 25 News Tarantula prank train driver unfairly sacked clear that the female driver disliked spiders and “creepy crawlies” including snakes. It heard that Richardson, who worked out of the Bletchley depot for West Midlands Trains from 2018, had hoped to get a momentary shock reaction followed by relief that the exoskeleton was not a live tarantula. Instead, she was distressed by the incident and a colleague had to remove the tarantula for her. When she saw Richardson later, she called him a “f***ing twat”, the panel heard. The tribunal heard the female driver told Richardson she did not want to receive objects like the exoskeleton, but a month later Richardson placed a shed snakeskin in her pigeonhole. The panel heard he intended it as a joke but the female driver told investigators that she felt “intimidated, bullied and harassed”. She raised a complaint and Richardson was dismissed for gross misconduct. Throughout proceedings, Richardson maintained that his actions were meant as a prank and insisted that he had not appreciated her feelings or understood her request to stop. The tribunal has now concluded that Richardson was unfairly and wrongfully dismissed. A remedy hearing will be held at a later date. Judge Hunt, the panel chair, said that Richardson had performed “two ill-judged pranks”. He said that the exoskeleton was “distressing” to the female driver but was “ultimately harmless and easily disposed of”, while the snakeskin was “less disturbing”. He added that Richardson did not intend to upset or intimidate the female driver, had misunderstood her request to stop and “promptly apologised” when he realised he had done wrong. A train driver was found to have been unfairly sacked for two “illjudged pranks” in which he put a tarantula exoskeleton and a snakeskin in a female colleague’s work pigeonhole. Jon Richardson was dismissed for gross misconduct after 20 years in the rail industry on the basis that he bullied a female driver. An employment tribunal has now found that Richardson was unfairly dismissed as the pranks were “ultimately harmless” and not been done with the intention to upset the female driver. A Watford employment tribunal heard that after the female driver told Richardson that she disliked insects and spiders, he decided to play a prank on her by placing a tarantula exoskeleton in her pigeonhole in August 2022. The panel said it was Seren Hughes A cheesemaker that supplies Waitrose has been fined more than £20,000 after repeatedly polluting the waterways around its farm. Alvis Brothers Ltd, which makes the Lye Cross Farm cheeses that it supplies to Waitrose and Ocado on its farm near Cheddar, in Somerset, admitted causing the discharge of poisonous, noxious or polluting matter into a tributary of the Congresbury Yeo river. It is the third time the farm has been prosecuted for polluting the watercourse. Bristol magistrates heard Environment Agency officers went to a tributary of the river in September 2020 after reports of pollution. It was Cheesemaker fined for polluting river caused by a blockage in a pipe taking wash water from Alvis Brothers Ltd’s facility to onsite treatment works. District Judge Lynne Matthews said that this was another case of the company failing to report a pollution incident to the Environment Agency. When Nick Green, the firm’s operations director, was asked under oath how many times they had reported a pollution incident, he replied “zero”. Judge Matthews said that because of the company’s history, she was not surprised that the Environment Agency rejected their offer of paying an environmental undertaking sum. Jo Masters, of the Environment Agency, said: “We will take action where offending is repeated.” The company was fined £20,000, ordered to pay costs totalling £3,520 and a victim surcharge of £190. In 2021 the farm was fined £37,184 for polluting the same tributary. In 2019, the Environment Agency found slurry pollution had caused a chronic impact on aquatic invertebrates. Alvis Brothers Ltd said in a statement: “The company offers its sincere apologies to the Environment Agency and those members of the public who have been affected.” An Ocado spokeswoman said conversations with Alvis Brothers Ltd were taking place. A Waitrose spokesman said: “We expect all our suppliers to act responsibly, and have been in direct contact with Alvis Brothers. They’ve since made improvements to avoid this issue from happening again, but we continue to monitor the situation.” Will Humphries Southwest Correspondent cousin, but the captivating power of Phoenix’s performance, delivered in his American vernacular, is that it hovers in a twitchy, shifty, grey zone between imperious outbursts, wounded vulnerability and puckish charm. He sometimes combines all three, as when the emperor throws a foot-stamping tantrum at the perceived superiority of his British foes. “They think they’re so great!” he says, hands in fists, toddler-style. “Because they’ve got boats!” He is smartly balanced by Kirby as Joséphine, who emerges from prison soon after the Terror with punishment pixie cut and survivor’s rage and sees in this “low-bred Corsican thug” a fellow outsider and an easy path back towards the upper echelons of Parisian society. The relationship between the pair forms the emotional backbone of a film that also includes six sternumrattling battles that begin with the siege of Toulon and end with Waterloo. They are so maximalist (horses! Explosions! Cannonballs! Cannonballs exploding horses!) that their impact can feel overwhelming, if not deadening. The vaguely sadomasochistic parameters of the pair’s bond are outlined early in a courtship scene with a cheeky nod to Basic Instinct, and soon after in an argument that culminates in a brutal conjugal encounter and Joséphine’s demand that Napoleon declare his subservience with a cry of “I am nothing without you!” The public pressure to produce an heir, accompanied by the ever-present threat of divorce, only compounds the destructive dynamics of this especially twisted love story. The battles elsewhere continue apace as our diminutive hero marches towards his appointment with destiny in 1815 in a field in Belgium. And here Rupert Everett pops up as a fabulously salty Duke of Wellington, giving the film a deliciously acerbic jolt just when it needed it most. In cinemas from November 22 Film Kevin Maher Joaquin Phoenix is a beguiling Napoleon in a film that combines a twisted love story with bone-shaking battle scenes Napoleon HHHHI All hail Phoenix’s captivating emperor Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby are the double act from heaven trapped in a marriage from hell in this eye-gouging spectacular epic from Ridley Scott. It’s a shamelessly ambitious 32-year gallop through the second and third acts of the life of Napoleon (Phoenix), beginning with a startling shot of the future emperor, standing and scowling at the foot of the guillotine in 1793, just as Marie Antoinette is beheaded. Pedants, beware: this is not a painstakingly accurate history lesson but an impressionistic portrait, built upon conspicuous visual references to sources as varied as Abel Gance’s 1927 biopic Napoléon, the 19th-century painting Bonaparte Before the Sphinx and even his own Gladiator — which also starred Phoenix as a troubled emperor with a poisonous personal life. This protagonist, thankfully, is less odious than his Roman screen

Venezuela can be model for toppling dictators Roger Boyes Page 28 has made his own account of his fall clear in Nadine Dorries’s ridiculous book. Truss is still promoting the genius of her month in office. And Braverman will doubtless make her case too, explaining why the police are “woke” and the homeless enjoy camping. The prime minister shouldn’t just ignore them. He should answer back. He should use their opposition as a way to define himself, to make an argument for orderly government, civilised discourse, sensible fiscal policy and calm mature leadership. “Cameron return sparks backlash from Tory right,” read the headlines. “Former minister says she has lost confidence in Sunak.” But everything — breathing, for instance — sparks a backlash from the Tory right, and the people who say they have lost confidence never had it in the first place. It’s all probably too late for the Tories, and the public have long ago, understandably, lost patience. And afterwards the right will blame the disaster they’ve created — the circus tent which they erected and supplied with tightrope walkers and clowns — on the rest of us. We can all see it coming from a mile away. But in the meantime Rishi Sunak, with David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt at his side, can at least try to give the country the sort of leadership it deserves and has been crying out for. For as long as it lasts, he may as well. Sunak should take reshuffle one step further Ditching the populist right from his cabinet frees the PM to speak out against the records of Johnson and Truss working. So it’s obviously sensible to move away from this, assuming (as it surely must be) that this is now Sunak’s plan. Better by far to try to go to the country as the man who has brought (or tried to bring) calm continuity back to the Conservative Party and who is offering good and stable government of the centre right. This means understanding that the populist right of the party will never be Sunak’s friends, will never fully accept him no matter what he does. That is because he resigned from Boris Johnson’s government, opposed Liz Truss’s irresponsible tax-cut offer and has now sacked Braverman. He may as well turn towards all those of us who think these things were to his credit. He may as well talk publicly about the fact that he did these things and why. Johnson Rishi Sunak can now define himself against the legacy of Boris Johnson party. He appointed capable people who had no defined position within Labour. In May 2021 he picked sides. He appointed to his top team, including his shadow chancellor, figures associated with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and tacked hard away from followers of Jeremy Corbyn. This has proven successful because, having picked, Starmer has remained consistent. He set a course and he has stuck to it. If he wins office and sticks with it his reshuffle will have been consequential and successful. Will Rishi Sunak’s choice be similarly consequential? In returning Cameron to high office and parting company with Suella Braverman, he has made a choice. One that has echoes in his choice of Victoria Atkins as health secretary and Laura Trott as Treasury chief secretary. With, just for example, Jeremy Hunt as chancellor, Gillian Keegan already education secretary and Oliver Dowden as deputy prime minister, this is distinctly a cabinet of the centre right. Esther McVey’s appointment as Cabinet Office minister is a classic move to ensure party balance, but it shouldn’t obscure the fact that Sunak has picked sides. The question now is whether he will stick with it. Asking Cameron to be foreign secretary is a startling, even if (in my opinion) welcome, change since Sunak’s party conference speech. In it he promised a break with the past and attacked Starmer as “the walking definition of the 30-year political status quo I am here to end”. I should think voters asked to identify the walking definition of the 30-year political status quo would be more likely to name David Cameron. I never thought that pitching the Tories as the “time for a change party” had the remotest chance of W hen David Cameron was running for the Tory leadership, he asked if I might come and interview him, throwing my hardest questions at him to test his mettle before a big interview on Newsnight. I was a hopeless substitute for Jeremy Paxman but I worked hard at a line of questioning that might trip Cameron up. I got nowhere. I realised within about three exchanges that Conservative moderates had found someone who was in every way up to the job he was seeking. So Rishi Sunak has appointed to his cabinet the most articulate of modern Conservatives, and someone with a very clear idea of what he stands for and is trying to say. The question now is whether the prime minister will take advantage of the opportunity he has created for himself. Cameron was not a big fan of reshuffles when he was himself in No 10. I was visiting him every month recording his thoughts and recollections for later use in his memoirs, and the subject of shuffling the pack naturally came up several times. He thought it did little good politically, produced more losers than winners in the parliamentary party and, most important of all, disrupted the working of government. Newly appointed ministers took time to establish themselves. Pressure groups, civil servants and MPs sought to reopen decisions, and choices that had been made were unmade. It was all unsatisfactory. So reshuffles were something he tried, with only partial success, to avoid. I share this scepticism, with the additional observation that the last thing this government needs is more turmoil. The refreshing of faces in the cabinet has become more wearisome even than the faces. The instability has been epic. Yet there are moments when reshuffles are worthwhile. When they really matter. These are moments when the leader does something really bold, makes a political choice, defines themselves, sets their leadership on a path. Such a reshuffle was Margaret Thatcher’s in September 1981. It was her second of the year but the first had been limited, with its centrepiece the replacement of one person who she didn’t like and who didn’t like her (Norman St John-Stevas) with someone else in the same position (Francis Pym). Exactly the sort of pointless reshuffle worth avoiding. After the subsequent budget, a radical statement of policy, she sacked all those who dissented from it. The reshuffle established that her government would not, as so many had predicted, U-turn on the economy and trade unions. Once it was over, no one doubted the course Mrs Thatcher was on. Forty years later Sir Keir Starmer embarked on a reshuffle of his shadow cabinet that may one day be seen as having similar significance. His first shadow team had been designed to avoid him having to pick between the left and right of the Thatcher’s reshuffle in September 1981 left no doubts about direction Comment Daniel Finkelstein red box For the best analysis and commentary on the political landscape @dannythefink the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 27

28 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Comment Finkelstein’s Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival, which he narrates himself. If (like me) you thought you knew all about the Holocaust and didn’t need reminding, read it. You’ll be by turns gripped and horrified. You’ll learn something about Russia, too. This was well before the Hamas atrocities and the Israeli response in Gaza. By the time we reached Darwin we hadn’t finished the book, so on a long drive in Catalonia last week we did so — but in changed circumstances, the news now being from Israel and Gaza. We were hearing Danny’s family story with altered perceptions. I cannot tell you how much of a difference this made. I suppose the key to the change is indicated by the word “insecurity”. Were I a Jew, knowing at a personal, familial level what happened not so long ago — remembering, as his parents and grandparents will have remembered, how apparent security slipped almost imperceptibly away as, time and again, Jews tried to reassure themselves that this would all blow over soon — then I would feel now as many Jewish friends feel: raw, exposed, jumping at shadows (or are they shadows?), half expecting the next shock, unready to give an inch to forces that, by definition, my family only just survived last time. I started that last sentence with “Were I a Jew”. I am not a Jew. I have not reached the same conclusions as many in Israel and some in Britain have. I’m not here arguing for or against their conclusions or mine. I’m just saying that Danny’s book has shown me that there isn’t a lot of use arguing. Where there’s no trust, argument is pointless; and if you had experienced what Danny’s family experienced, how could you trust? Healing music A midst catastrophes of an almost cosmic kind, quieter, smaller efforts by good people to make the world better continue; and the grass keeps on growing. Over the years I’ve had some association with the Zimbabwe Academy of Music in Bulawayo and visited its college, a calm and happy place celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, where music both classical and indigenous echoes from the studios and floats among the musasa trees. Look the S ix days ago, and with no inkling of the coming weekend’s astonishing cabinet reshuffle, I had a dream. At some kind of reception an acquaintance tapped me on the shoulder: “Expect a call from Downing Street. They’re going to offer you the post of foreign secretary.” Taken aback, I thought “Why me?” Then I thought “Why not?” and told my partner, who was also at the reception. “You wouldn’t be any good at it,” he said. Then I woke up. My partner was beside me. “Julian,” I said, “I just dreamt they were going to offer me the foreign secretary’s job!” “You wouldn’t be any good at it,” he said. Jewish fears M onths ago, driving thousands of miles in Australia, we started listening to the audio book of my colleague Daniel Venezuela can be model for toppling dictators Lifting of US sanctions may lead to free elections, with a valuable lesson from eastern Europe because of trumped-up charges. And that’s another headache for Maduro: Machado has just won an opposition primary with a landslide 92 per cent of the vote. She is more than capable, in other words, of uniting the opposition. The Biden team has its eye on east European history — the way in which Poland’s Solidarity movement was encouraged to enter round-table talks with a wounded communist regime in 1989. A power-sharing deal was reached, partially free elections were held and the country ended up with Lech Walesa rather than the sinister General Jaruzelski as president. That arrangement was reached partly because western sanctions were hurting an increasingly lame communist regime and partly because the communist elite saw a way of turning power into cash in the future privatisation of state assets. Venezuela, if it works, could become a model for other autocrats. It hinges on their greed, their readiness to go into a well-padded retirement. Much depends on the political stamina of Machado. She will need to be sustained by a largescale peaceful revolt, one that can’t be used by Maduro as an excuse for another round of bone-crushing suppression. It’s worth her reading Gene Sharp’s definitive resistance textbook featuring sick-ins (where everyone calls in sick), silent marches, rent strikes, and infiltration of the police so they think twice before opening fire. The book is entitled From Dictatorship to Democracy and, if it were smuggled into, and read in, 88 countries the world would be a better place. clique as an opportunity for personal enrichment. What has changed in this equation is a potentially credible challenger to Maduro. María Corina Machado is a free-marketeer, a moderniser and reformer who is not afraid of publicly identifying the many failings in Maduro’s governing style. The Biden administration thinks it has spotted a potential winner — and is willing to fine-tune its sanctions regime to bring that day closer. Last month Maduro representatives met secretly in Barbados with members of the opposition and agreed on some of the conditions under which free and fair elections could be held. The next day the US Treasury announced it would lift most of the restrictions on Venezuelan oil, banking and mining. The US, in other words, accepted that its sanctions were not working. Worse, that Maduro was blaming the daily misery of Venezuelans on American cruelty. For its part, the Maduro regime saw dollar signs; the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East mean there is a robust global market for Venezuelan oil and gold. As for the agreement to work towards free elections, the Maduro team is probably cynically calculating that it can split the opposition and rule more or less as before. But nobody is keen to be hoodwinked by the Venezuelan leader. The US sanctions are being lifted initially for six months pending real progress. Maduro has until November 30 to start the rehabilitation of Machado and other opposition inhabilitados — potential leaders barred from public office S ome 88 countries are ranked as closed or elective autocracies. They rule over 70 per cent of the global population. It’s a toxic imbalance yet little brain power has been invested in how dictators can be nudged towards democracy, how liberties can be restored, how people can be helped in standing up to thuggish leaders. The struggle to unseat Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, who is celebrating ten years of miserable and cruel governance, may prove a test case. He has weathered street protests about water, electricity and medicine shortages, hunger riots, a drone assassination attack, hyperinflation and the desperate emigration of millions. Human rights organisations say the former bus driver has been committing crimes against humanity, arresting and disappearing critics of the regime: it’s the full tyrannical package, including Cuban-trained police torturers and special courts. These provide a crude explanation of how he has survived. So too do the political machinations: Maduro’s rewriting of the constitution, the rigged elections, the playing off of one opposition group against another, the slavishly loyalist tone of state-controlled TV. The West has few levers available. While many of America’s neighbours to the south have shifted leftwards and are enthusiastic about Chinese investment (left-wing populist Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva has replaced right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil; Gustavo Petro in Colombia — these are not natural US allies) their countries do at least have solid democratic institutions. For an allout dictatorship like the one crafted by Maduro (and his predecessor Hugo Chávez), the only coercive instrument in modern times is a barrage of sanctions designed to force the leader to change his spots. Those sanctions have certainly been piled on Caracas — for supporting Hezbollah, for breaching narcotics control agreements and for a long catalogue of anti-democratic actions. The Maduro family has been hit, including the dictator’s pampered son, the defence minister, judges, governors, and the oil and shipping industries. Yet, helped by Russia, China and Iran, Maduro has made a nonsense of sanctions. Using go-betweens, Venezuelan oil is sent to independent refineries in China. Ships switch off their transponders and transfer loads at sea; oil is sold at a discount but it keeps the so-called Boliburgues — the bourgeois Bolivarian revolutionaries — in Patek Philippe watches. Sanctions hurt Venezuela but are also seen by the Maduro Maduro and his clique view sanctions as an opportunity for riches academy up! Though Matabeleland is having a dreadful time, beauty and talent persist — but oh, how the academy struggles to keep financially afloat. To raise funds it has assembled from among British supporters a really notable array of talent for a concert this coming Sunday afternoon, November 19, at the World Heart Beat centre in Nine Elms, London. The violinist Tasmin Little CBE is introducing a chamber concert, Dame Felicity Lott is singing, and there’s Beethoven, Richard Strauss and jazz, and pianists, cellists, violinists … and I can’t wait. There are about 40 tickets left, so help me fill the place! Should I claim? M y train got me to Matlock an hour late on Monday because, on the first leg of our journey, to Derby, we were stuck behind a goods train for much of the way. Passengers were informed we could claim a refund; I’m entitled to my whole fare and I intend to claim because I think this delay was the railway company’s fault. On the other hand I lost an hour the other day because a would-be passenger had jumped the barriers at London’s St Pancras and was refusing to get off. I didn’t claim for that one because it really wasn’t the railway’s fault. Am I just being silly? Matthew Parris Notebook The cheek of it . . . David Cameron has taken my job We need a reality TV show that sorts facts from fiction Elisabeth Braw S ince the Ukrainian and Gazan conflicts erupted, information — which was already under siege — has come under constant fire from falsehoods. Disinformation reporters valiantly try to keep socialmedia feeds clean but they’re no match for the untruths and distortions arriving from all sides. We are all going to need better training in sifting what’s true from what’s false, and it could come from an unlikely quarter. Russia has long used platforms such as Twitter/X, YouTube and Facebook to spread lies. Then came homemade falsehoods featuring everything from Covid vaccines to QAnon conspiracies, not to mention the 2020 US election. When Russia invaded Ukraine, social media users once again found themselves in the midst of a torrent of conflicting information. Because the vast majority of us lack information-literacy skills, those receiving updates about targets hit, weapons used and soldiers captured posted and shared away. And then, as if matters couldn’t get any worse, the Israel-Hamas conflict erupted. Everyone received updates they were unable to verify but that left them feeling compelled to have an opinion anyway. Facts didn’t stand a chance. Indeed, facts won’t stand a chance until the vast majority of us have been given information-literacy training. Such training, alas, is unlikely to be rolled out for anyone past school age. The answer lies in harnessing the power of reality television. We need a reality TV show where contestants compete not to eat worms (sorry, I’m a Celeb) but to identify falsehoods. Instead of watching Matt Hancock enduring grotesque trials in the jungle, you could watch him test his brainpower by competing against assorted other celebrities to spot what’s untrue in the daily news feed. The contestant identifying the fewest falsehoods would be expelled from the information island, and so it would go on until the information champion remained. It would be compelling entertainment and indispensable public education. With AI advancing, conflicts erupting and general disorientation spreading, who’d want to waste their time watching politicians play games with spiders when they could become immersed in contests about the challenges that really matter? Information literacy is unlikely to be taught to anyone past school age Roger Boyes @rogerboyes

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 29 Comment Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826 Farmers deserve better than Calamity Coffey As countryside waves off the ‘worst environment secretary ever’ the tenth incumbent in 13 years has his wellies full result, many are struggling financially and many have quit. Last year Sir James Dyson, one of the largest farmland owners in England, wrote to Coffey to ask how the government thought farmers could produce food profitably while protecting wildlife. He received no answer. Barclay saw the president of the National Farmers Union, Minette Batters, yesterday (he is her sixth environment secretary). She explained that farmers can’t become glorified park-keepers, they also need to produce food, and that Britain shouldn’t rely on food imports in an increasingly unstable world. Barclay must ensure that the new Environmental Land Management scheme (Elm) encourages the 300,000 agricultural workers to promote sustainable regenerative methods and nature-friendly policies alongside food production. At the moment the myriad proposals look like a slurry pit. In their last manifesto the Tories promised “the most ambitious environmental programme of any country on earth”. They have scaled back their ambitions for net zero but they could still outlaw horticultural peat, ban disposable vapes and plastic wet wipes, and tax extreme C02 emitters such as private jet users. Barclay will have to roll up his sleeves and give it some welly while Tiz and Liz drive off into the sunset. map. Barclay must now force the polluting water companies to come up with a long-term plan to stop dumping human waste 300,000 times a year and lean on the regulator Ofwat to start imposing tougher fines, otherwise the general election really will become a shitshow. Barclay has voted against measures to prevent climate change on 26 occasions but he also used his maiden speech in 2010 to call for rural areas to get their fair share of resources and is patron of the Conservative rural forum, so he has some goodwill. He’ll quickly need to decide how to enforce the ban on XL bully dogs before it comes into effect in January. But his priority must be nature restoration and food production. Defra is failing to deliver on the biggest shake-up of agricultural and environmental policy since 1973. Seven years after the Brexit vote, farmers still don’t know what will replace the EU’s subsidies. The government dithers over whether it wants farmers to care for the countryside or feed the nation. As a He appeared disappointed with his eighth ministerial job, which he plainly sees as a demotion from health secretary to a muddy backwater. But Rishi Sunak, who loves being invited by farmers in his Yorkshire constituency to watch the milking, finally appears to have realised that he has lost much of the farming vote as well as the wild swimmers, tree huggers, nature lovers, foodies and wilders. It’s quite a feat for a party supposed to champion the countryside and conservation. Meanwhile the King, celebrating his 75th birthday yesterday, managed to rally the sometimes fractious farmers and environmentalists to help cut his cake as they praised his new initiative to help reduce food waste and support those living in food insecurity. As Ben Goldsmith, a former Defra adviser, told me: “The department should be a good news factory rolling out policies to restore our depleted countryside.” The new environment secretary is MP for North East Cambridgeshire in the Fens. His wife is head of major infrastructure planning at Anglian Water, which might be tricky. Toxic raw effluent helped to lose the Tories hundreds of seats in the last local elections. Yesterday excrement poured into the sea along Cornish and Devon beaches, according to the Surfers Against Sewage interactive S he trundled up Downing Street, stopping only to stroke Larry the cat, all smiley and relaxed. Two hours later, Thérèse Coffey was being hustled out “via the back passage as is befitting the person who oversaw the public destruction of fresh water and tidal habitats by the water companies”, posted one sewage campaigner. A leading environmentalist described her to me as “the rudest and most uninterested politician” they had met. Farmers named her “the worst environment secretary ever” when all she could say about the devastating recent storms was that her department was ill prepared for “rain from the east”. From Pig World magazine to Grocery Gazette, The National Trust, the RSPCA, the Country Land and Business Association and the fishing industry, no one lamented her demise. Senior civil servants called her “sullen, haughty and divisive”. The right to roam advocate Guy Shrubsole uttered the only kind words: “May you roam freely into the political wilderness, although the beavers might complain.” In her resignation letter, Coffey said: “I am proud to have delivered for people, the planet and prosperity.” But it is astonishing how many of these people the karaokesinging, cigar-chomping, pig-hugging Defra secretary managed to alienate in a year without resolving any major issues. Even when asked on BBC TV’s Breakfast how she would personally tackle climate change, she could only mumble about using “permanent cups” rather than turning down her thermostat or switching off her lights. This is a woman who has a PhD in chemistry from Oxford but appeared to like nature even less than her best friend Liz Truss, who called environmental charities part of “the anti-growth coalition” and preferred to import the nation’s burgers and chicken nuggets rather than champion homegrown produce. As the latest storm lashed the countryside, Steve Barclay was appointed Britain’s tenth Tory environment secretary in 13 years. Steve Barclay’s wife has a major role at Anglian Water; could be tricky First priority must be nature restoration and the production of food Alice Thomson @alicettimes

30 Wednesday November 15 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 cleaning up the party, the government and the country after the disgusting mess left by Boris Johnson. I gave up membership the day Johnson was made leader; I knew what would happen and I was right. Well done Rishi Sunak for bringing some decency back to the Conservatives. Judith Humphrey Tickton, E Yorks Sir, Rishi Sunak has informed the country that not one of 349 Tory MPs possesses the necessary qualifications to be Britain’s foreign secretary. In so doing, he has inadvertently ordered the country to vote Labour at the next general election. This is a thoroughly embarrassing shambles for Sunak. Sebastian Monblat Surbiton, Surrey Sir, Steve Barclay, the seventh environment secretary since 2017, inherits the portfolio when the UK has shifted from leader to laggard on the environment. With a background of the City, Sandhurst, health, and EU negotiations, he is an eclectic and somewhat odd choice for the role, perhaps illustrating the lack of priority the government gives to the portfolio. Countries leading the charge on sustainability are increasingly giving environmental ministerial roles to those who have qualifications and experience in the field, rather than simply handing it out as a second-class role for someone who has been demoted. Laurence Wainwright University of Oxford Sir, Rachel Maclean has become the latest casualty of the benighted post of housing minister — she was the 15th since May 2010. Housing matters to everyone, but we have the fiasco of a revolving door with middle-ranking politicians briefly taking Buggins’ turn while the housing crisis gets worse. Mark Bogard CEO, Family Building Society Sir, As minister without portfolio, Esther McVey is said to have been appointed “minister for common sense”. She faces the political challenge of clarifying what on earth that means, as well as trying to counter the general experience that this commodity is rarely sensible and never common. Alec Synge Etchingham, E Sussex Bob’s your . . . father Sir, It was wonderful to see the celebrations of the remarkable Sir Bobby Charlton’s life (Sport, Nov 14). I overstayed my welcome in 1993 aged 18 in Turkey and was about to miss my bus back to Sofia because the border guards wanted a $500 penalty that I didn’t have. It was nearing midnight and I faced spending a night in a cell in the middle of nowhere (nothing but threatening guards around). One noticed my name in my passport and asked if I knew Bobby Charlton. In a flash I responded that he was, in fact, my father. I was waved through the border immediately, and got back on the bus just as it was leaving. Phew. I’ll always be thankful to Sir Bobby for 1966, and for 1993, too. Imogen Charlton-Edwards Dunsfold, Surrey Sir, Westminster Abbey bears memorials to 3,300 great Britons, from 37 different occupations. Codebreakers, explorers, playwrights. Jane Austen, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin. There is just one “sportsman” (the designated category): Sir Roger Bannister. Surely, with the passing of Sir Bobby Charlton, it is now time to put that right. Michael Aitken Wigan, Greater Manchester Not so light reading Sir, With regard to “Schools urged to celebrate working-class cultural heroes” (news, Nov 13; letters, Nov 14), I’m not sure how effective EM Forster’s Howards End will be in encouraging young readers. The main lower-class protagonist, Leonard Bast, dies in part as a result of a falling bookcase. Dr Andrew Walker Worcester Grocer’s grammar Sir, Booths is in a class of its own, not only for ditching self-service tills (news, Nov 11). It has, or used to have, a notice by some tills declaring, “Ten items or fewer”. Jennifer Galton-Fenzi Totnes, Devon Sir, Along with David Williams’s delight on his age being checked when buying alcohol (letter, Nov 14), I am gleeful when I am asked on my dental form if I could be pregnant. I’m 67. Lesley Russell Kingston upon Thames Up their street Sir, One of the best examples of imaginative street naming (Sathnam Sanghera, notebook, Nov 13; letter, Nov 14) is the address for the South Yorkshire Police Operations Complex: Letsby Avenue, Sheffield. Robert Evans Weybridge, Surrey 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 by email to [email protected] or by post to Feedback, The Times, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF NHS productivity Sir, reports that management consultants have been brought in to boost productivity in the NHS, despite higher budgets and more staff, highlight deep-rooted management challenges (news, Nov 13; leading article & letters, Nov 14). While managers are often portrayed as a burden, the truth is that good managers run organisations effectively. Research from the Chartered Management Institute and the Social Market Foundation found that, on average, 43 per cent of NHS hospitals scoring above average in management practices achieved “high quality” outcomes — better patient care — compared with 14 per cent of those below average. Embedding a pipeline of skilled managers into the NHS, through proven routes such as degree level and senior leader management apprenticeships to upskill existing, knowledgeable and hardworking staff, is crucial if we are serious about finding a longer-term fix to the productivity problem. Anthony Painter, policy director Chartered Management Institute Sir, A management consultancy can surely only address management. This approach may have relevance to business, but only where healthcare itself is a business can measures of productivity be easily defined and become an arbiter of good function. The NHS is not a business. It is a public service, and while the number of services it produces is one measure, the quality, accessibility, and reach of those services is at least as important and may not be captured in a business-focused review. Professor Tony Redmond Stockport Ramifications of Sunak’s cabinet reshuffle Sir, There are great advantages in having a foreign secretary in the Lords, where, by avoiding constituency burdens, David Cameron will have more time to reflect on foreign policy problems (news, leading article & letters, Nov 14). These advantages are particularly great when the incumbent is a former prime minister with considerable international experience. The Speaker is right, however, to ask how the Foreign Office will be accountable to the Commons. The experiment works best when there is a junior minister, preferably of cabinet rank, with sufficient weight to carry conviction with MPs. Under the foreign secretaryships of Lord Halifax (1938-40) and Lord Carrington (1979-82) that condition was not met and those experiments ended in failure. In the case of Lord Home (1960-63), Edward Heath, lord privy seal, answered Foreign Office questions in the Commons. That experiment proved a success. Sir Vernon Bogdanor Professor of government, King’s College, London Sir, Today I have rejoined the Conservative Party as a result of Rishi Sunak’s new cabinet. He is Investing in Britain Sir, The chancellor has made long-term decisions and boosting investment the cornerstones of his economic strategy. Public equity markets are the mechanism for fulfilling these pledges. They direct capital to growth companies, support growth and retain a world-class ability to attract talent and intellectual property to the UK. However, a downward spiral of investment and lower valuations has taken hold, resulting in companies being taken private and looking to international markets, stifling growth and affecting the tax revenues crucial for funding public services. Reforming Isas at next week’s autumn statement would help reverse this by putting the £68 billion a year invested into Isas to work on behalf of the UK economy. A major oddity of the present Isa regime is that it offers the same incentives for savers to invest in overseas as domestic businesses. A new British Isa or “Brisa” would, from next year, give taxpayers the chance to invest their full £20,000 allowance in growing the economy and supporting British companies. This from the times november 15, 1923 HITLER CONFINED IN A FORTRESS thetimes.co.uk/archive Biblical rain Sir, These named storms surely provide scope for something less wimpy than Debi, Agnes or Minnie. Why not plunder the Old Testament and name them Methuselah, Meshack, Shadrack or Abednego among others? Perhaps the next one could be Ezekiel. Those names sound like proper storms and would lend them gravitas. Clare Hallam Crosby Garrett, Cumbria Gaza death toll Sir, It’s hard to comprehend the scale of destruction and loss of life Gaza is experiencing under Israel (world, Nov 14), but there has been no clear response, or even acknowledgment by our political leaders, to condemn the “collateral damage” as Binyamin Netanyahu puts it. There is massive dissonance between what the public are demanding, and what our political leaders and media are peddling. This is making a mockery of what little trust we place in them. We live in a time where you can experience news in real time and in all its ugly, visceral truth. The British public have been exposed to the true scale of what the average Gazan is going through. And with each delay in a ceasefire, the live updates have only grown more desperate and violent. Many of us believe in “never again”, and a vast majority of us understand that this should be never again for anyone. Gouljan Arslan New Malden, Surrey Sir, When I catch up on the day’s news I just want to weep: for the poor hostages held in Gaza by evil barbarians; for suffering Palestinians who want an ordinary life free from Hamas oppression; and for Jews worldwide, like me, who thought genocidal antisemitism had been consigned to history. If I believed in God, I’d be praying to one now. Greg Ruback London N3 Letters to The Times must be exclusive. Herr Hitler is confined in the fortress of Landsberg, about 35 miles west of Munich. Landsberg is by no means an unpleasant place of confinement. The prisoners are mostly political offenders and are allowed a considerable amount of personal liberty, books to read, special food and opportunities for exercises and sport, practically the only restriction being that they may not leave the grounds of the fortress. The trial of Herr Hitler is not likely to be held until after Christmas at the earliest; by that time public sentiment in his favour will probably have abated. When it is held the trial will not be before a jury but before a bench of judges. If found guilty of high treason, Herr Hitler could be sentenced to death, but it is probable that a term of imprisonment in the fortress in which he is now confined will be considered sufficient. General von Epp is being mentioned as a possible successor to Herr von Kahr. The General has a considerable reputation as a fighting soldier, but little administrative experience. He retired on account of age last October. Previously he held a Bavarian Reichswehr command under General von Lossow. Herr von Kahr, if he can live down the present feeling of unpopularity, is likely, however, to remain in office. The Munich companies of the Reichswehr are still confined to barracks, and discontent is said to be spreading among all ranks. The feeling among both officers and men is that they are prepared to execute loyally orders issued by the responsible authorities, but they feel that an agreement should be reached between opposing factions, and that while the welfare of Bavaria is said to be the sole aim of all concerned, it appears curious that order should have to be maintained by detachments brought in from Saxony or elsewhere. 6 News in brief: The Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to the Irish writer, Mr William Butler Yeats. Mr Yeats is unquestionably a great lyric poet and poetical dramatist. “The Wind Among the Trees” contains some of his best lyrics, which are of an extraordinary and haunting beauty. In later years he has become interested in the belief in survival after death, especially in connexion with necromancy and magic. revel in this elegant book showing times readers at their most whimsical and droll would drive interest from a wider pool of investors and create a multiplier effect, reviving interest in raising equity in the UK, driving economic growth, spreading prosperity and boosting tax revenues. Investors could still put money into overseas businesses, just without the support of an overt tax break. Andy Gregory, CEO, British Growth Fund; Steve Pearce, CEO, Singer Capital Markets; John Ions, CEO, Liontrust Asset Management; Rich Ricci, CEO, Panmure Gordon; Tim Warrilow, CEO, Fevertree Drinks; Baroness Altmann, House of Lords; Judith MacKenzie, chairwoman, Quoted Companies Alliance; Lord Leigh of Hurley, senior partner, Cavendish Corporate Finance. Plus a further 85 signatories at thetimes.co.uk/letters

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 31 Leading articles Diplomats often cleave to ambiguity but it can be harmful. If an American diplomat had been clearer with Saddam Hussein that invading Kuwait would result in war the Iraqi dictator might never have done so. British foreign policy has too often been adrift since 2013 when David Cameron, then prime minister, failed to secure parliament’s support for a strong response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Brexit, which also occurred on Lord Cameron’s watch, kicked away one of the two main props of British foreign policy: integration with the European Union. And a Britain unable to steer discussions in Brussels undermined the other prop: influence in Washington. For a time, this led to a failure of confidence and drift. The prime minister appears to want to restore that confidence. In his speech he described Russia and Hamas as: “the past trying to stop the future being born”. Putin feared a thriving democracy on his doorstep and was determined to turn the clock back to the spheres of influence policy of the Tsarist and Soviet regimes. Hamas, meanwhile, perpetrated the October 7 massacre to stop Israel normalising relations with pro-western Arab states. Mr Sunak should place Britain in the forefront of democracies seeking this better future. That means championing democracy where it is most threatened, as in Ukraine and Taiwan, and not waiting for other powers, principally the United States, to make the running. By committing to aiding Ukraine to the bitter end Mr Sunak is providing much-needed leadership and resolve. In America isolationism is taking hold in the Republican Party, with members questioning the vast cost of the Ukraine commitment. Britain has a direct security interest in thwarting aggression on its home continent and, as one of the leading military powers in Europe, has the weight to steady the waverers. In the Middle East it can use its soft convening power as a friend of all parties to bring Israelis, Palestinians, Saudis and others together in talks leading to a durable settlement for the Palestinians. America will always be the ultimate guarantor but that does not mean others cannot begin to drive the process. An active foreign policy is a form of self-belief. Cynics may ask: why Britain? The answer is: why not? This country has the world’s sixth-biggest economy, one of the few militaries capable of deploying globally and first-rate diplomatic and intelligence services. It has many friends and many connections born of history. Force for good has become a cliché in British foreign policy manuals but that is indeed what Britain should be. enough, Gibb changed the curriculum and set aside money for textbooks and training. His foray into pedagogy was unusual. Previous ministers had focused largely on the structure of the educational system. This change required years of attention to detail; he was able to give it the backing it needed only because he had the focus, the dedication and, crucially, enough time in the job. The approach paid dividends. At a time when the country has been rising in few international league tables, England’s ten-year-olds came fourth out of 43 countries in the Progress in International Literacy Reading Study, after Singapore, Hong Kong and Russia — up from eighth in the previous cycle five years ago, and its highest ranking ever. Contrast this with the government’s achievements in housing. Its ambition, set out in the 2019 manifesto, is to build 300,000 homes by the mid2020s. That’s more than it has ever achieved, and it is highly unlikely to be met. This year’s total will be about 225,000. The shortage of supply has contributed to the decreasing affordability of housing, and falling home-ownership rates among young people. That’s a trend of which the Conservative Party, with its historical commitment to property owning democracy, should be especially ashamed. This failure is perhaps not surprising, given the contrasting time-horizons of the housing industry and housing ministers (15 of them in 13 years). Some, like Rachel Maclean, who was sacked this week, have been good. Some have not. Some, like Chris Pincher, have caused problems beyond their immediate remit. But none has been able to deliver the housing the country needs. That’s hardly surprising. The planning system is excruciatingly slow and complex. Any minister seeking to speed it up would need years in the job, not the average nine months in post since 2010. With an election next year, the latest appointee, Lee Rowley, will be lucky to beat that. Given the legacy of the financial crisis, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, this government has faced plenty of headwinds. But the problems caused by excessive ministerial churn are entirely of its own making. Let us hope that this tranche of ministers is the last before the next election, and that whichever party forms the next government does not repeat this obvious mistake. Thereafter our psychic conversation progressed quite smoothly. Certainly, it was easier than most of those I have with cats, which are mainly about how they want to go out, but also stay in, but also go out, but also stay in. Whereas this was more straightforward. First, to set your mind at rest, Fido volunteered no extra information about that thing you’re worried he saw you doing with your husband in the kitchen. Although as a dog himself, he may not have found it particularly unusual. Also, before I forget, he really hates the postman, not for any particular reason, but because he just does. The purpose of our consultation, however, was to establish why Fido is limping. To this end, Fido told me a long story about a romp through a nearby park, which culminated in his chasing a squirrel under a rosebush. Fido now says there is a thorn stuck in his paw, which is causing the problem. Finally, Fido confessed that he was baffled why you couldn’t have figured this out yourself, and needed to pay somebody several hundred pounds to supposedly read his mind, apparently like thousands of other people are doing, too. Although I told him it’s only animals that I can understand, and humans are still a mystery. Active Diplomacy Britain’s hesitant foreign policy has undermined its international influence. This country can help shape events if it is clearer about its principles, goals and intentions The soap opera of Monday’s cabinet reshuffle, with the brutal dispatch of the central female character and the bombshell return of the old male lead, distracted from a significant foreign policy intervention by Rishi Sunak later that day. Mr Sunak used the prime minister’s address at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in the City of London to do something refreshing in this age of evasive political waffle: he addressed the two dominating issues of the day, Ukraine and Gaza, and said exactly what his government would do. On Ukraine Mr Sunak was uncompromising. President Putin had led his country into a “strategic calamity” by invading its neighbour. Russia could not win. Speaking of the Ukrainians he said: “We will stand with them until they prevail.” On Gaza Mr Sunak backed Israel’s right to defend itself but with caveats. Israel was required to take all possible steps to protect civilians and curb extremist violence on the West Bank, he said. “Too many civilians are losing their lives,” added the prime minister. Humanitarian access to Gaza was essential. Looking ahead, there was one solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict: a sovereign Palestinian state. Britain would redouble its efforts to make it a reality. Nothing new but clear, concise and assured. And all the more effective for it. Merry-Go-Round Tory performance on schools and housing shows how ministerial churn matters The traditional Remembrance Day photograph of prime ministers past and present at the Cenotaph — eight, compared with four in 2015 — was a handy visual reminder of the political instability of recent years. This churn has had a damaging effect not just in Downing Street but also on the work of individual departments. The government’s performance in schools and housing, both of whose ministers departed in this week’s reshuffle, provide a graphic illustration of that. Nick Gibb, sacked twice and reappointed twice, was schools minister for ten of the 13 years of Tory tenure so far. He left government this week, announcing that he would resign his seat at the next election, and that he was looking forward to being considered for an (unspecified) diplomatic job. Gibb is responsible for the government’s most indubitably successful, and probably least celebrated, achievement: the introduction of phonics — reading taught by breaking words down into sounds — into schools. Persuaded by a study that phonics was far more effective than the widely used “whole-word” approach, which expects children to grasp words by looking at them often Doctor Do Little If you want to know what is wrong with your pet, why not just pay a psychic to ask? Dear Mrs Smith. It was a pleasure to communicate psychically with Fido during our telephone consultation this evening. Fido is a small Jack Russell terrier, with an interest in barking and astronomy. Most likely, you didn’t know the astronomy bit. Fido tells me you have never let him use the telephone before. You would be amazed how often dogs tell me this. Fido also tells me that he has not had dinner, and in fact you never feed him, ever. This could have surprised me, especially given that he was literally eating during the call. Fortunately, as I said, Fido is not the first dog I have spoken to. UK: Staff at 11 colleges across England who are members of the University and College Union strike over pay and working conditions; Stop the War demonstration outside parliament as MPs debate a Middle East ceasefire motion tabled by the SNP. The “crecking” call of the corncrake once formed the soundtrack to summer nights in much of Britain. Most meadows and cornfields had a corncrake, and warm nights reverberated with the species’ harsh but melodious song. Known as “the king of the quails”, corncrakes were even heard regularly at Tooting, and on Streatham Common into the 1890s. Then came the decline. Unable to cope with intensive agriculture, corncrake numbers gradually dwindled. These days only small populations remain on a few coastal areas and islands in Scotland and Ireland. But some good news has just been released by RSPB Scotland. The Scottish population is slowly rising. Last summer, 870 calling males were recorded. jonathan tulloch In 1920 Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets had its first complete public performance, with Albert Coates conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. On September 29, 1918, an invited audience of 250 people attended its premiere. Petula Clark, pictured, singer, Downtown (1964), 91; Dawn Airey, chairwoman, National Youth Theatre, FA Women’s Super League and FA Women’s Championship, chief executive, Getty Images (2015-18), 63; Sarah Atherton, Conservative MP for Wrexham, minister for defence people, veterans and service families (2022), 56; Daniel Barenboim, pianist and conductor, music director of the Berlin State Opera (1992-Jan 2023), 81; Jenny Beavan, costume designer, three-time Oscar winner, A Room with a View (1987), Mad Max: Fury Road (2016), Cruella (2022), 73; Prof Georgina Born, musician and anthropologist, 68; Andrew Castle, TV and radio presenter and former tennis player (winner, 1988 Seoul Open), 60; Jimmy Choo, fashion designer, 75; Joe Cokanasiga, rugby union player, Bath and England, 26; Derrick Evans, fitness instructor, “Mr Motivator”, 71; Lilian Hochhauser, impresario, 97; Anni-Frid Lyngstad (Princess Anni-Frid Synni of Reuss, Dowager Countess of Plauen), singer, Abba, Waterloo (1974), 78; Paul Manduca, chairman, St James’s Place, Prudential (2012- 20), TheCityUK advisory council (2015-19), 72; Alexander O’Neal, singer, What Is This Thing Called Love? (1991), 70; Peter Phillips, son of the Princess Royal and Capt Mark Phillips, 46; Gillian Reynolds, radio critic, The Sunday Times (2018-21), The Daily Telegraph (1975-2018), 88; Tommy Stack, National Hunt champion jockey (1974-75, 1976-77), and trainer (1986-2016), 78; Josh Tongue, cricketer, Worcestershire CCC and England, 26; Sam Waterston, actor, The Killing Fields (1984), 83. “Once you’re head of a public company you are expected to perform; you’re like an unpaid greyhound on a racetrack called the stock market.” Sir Alec Reed, charity donor, businessman, founder of Reed Executive Ltd, The Business Times Online (2012) Nature notes Birthdays today On this day The last word Daily Universal Register

32 2GM Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times World out him. “Of the four founders, two of us have been called up, but luckily the other one isn’t on the tech side,” he said. “A big chunk of our employees are now in uniform as well, but everyone else is putting in extra shifts so we can be here.” Colonel G, a tour guide in Jerusalem, is now a brigade warfare director running the operations centre. “Reservists do things differently,” he said. “We’re not as well trained with the new systems or as fast as the conscripts when we turn up. But when we get going, we’re better. We bring all our experience and thoroughness to the job.” The other two armoured divisions The bodies of scores of patients, including newborn babies, were interred in a mass grave in the al-Shifa hospital yesterday after it ran out of generator power, shutting down the mortuary and intensive care units. The grim task got under under way in the grounds of the sprawling hospital complex, the largest in the Gaza Strip, as debate raged over Israel’s claim it is being used as cover for a Hamas command and control centre in bunkers built ten metres underground. Yesterday the US backed Israel when John Kirby, spokesman for the White House national security council, said it had intelligence that Hamas and another Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, “operate a command and control node from al-Shifa”. Hamas Mass graves dug as denies the allegation and said Kirby’s comments were a “green light” to Israel to commit “brutal massacres” targeting medical facilities in the territory. Israeli tanks have surrounded the hospital, trapping hundreds of patients, medical staff and civilians who have sought shelter there from the fierce fighting. Conditions at Shifa have deteriorated after days without power, with hospital staff saying at least three infants born prematurely have died, along with 27 intensive care patients. Dr Adnan al-Bursh, head of the orthopaedic surgery department, said it took 100 of the hospital’s medical team six hours to bury the dead. Bodies “have been left for days until decomposed” he told the BBC, but could not be buried because of the fighting. Hospital staff “were not able to open the windows because of the bad smell coming out of the courtyard”. Palestinian authorities have proGaza Amal Helles Khan Younis Catherine Philp Jaffa Ten miles from the front line in the north of Gaza, Israeli operations officers stare at tactical screens and reach out through encrypted communications to their troops and tanks on the ground. The constant buzz of activity inside and outside, as convoys prepare to make their way into the war zone and soldiers relax on short breaks from the battlefield, speaks of Israel’s lightning push into the coastal territory in its effort to eradicate Hamas. Yet a close observer could perhaps tell this headquarters is unlike others. The officers have more comfortable waistlines. Their haircuts are strictly non-regulation in length. This is the headquarters of the 252nd Division, one of three armoured divisions operating in and around Gaza City, but unlike the other two, it is made up almost entirely of reserve soldiers and officers. These are men and women who six weeks ago were leading civilian lives, some far from Israel. They are a tiny fraction of the 360,000 reservists called up by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), most of whom have been sent to bolster the country’s northern border, reinforce units in the West Bank or support intelligence and logistical bases. But they are the main formation of reservists fighting on the ground in Gaza and the first full Israeli reserve division to be in combat in more than 40 years, since the invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982. “There are things you never imagine having to do as a reservist,” said Major B, whose full name cannot be used for operational security reasons. He is one of the commanders of a brigade reconnaissance team. “You just don’t expect to ever have at your disposal most of the types of firepower we’re using now. But just in the space of a few days we’ve been calling in all types of covering fire, from attack helicopters, fighter jets, guided missiles, the lot.” As the chief technology officer of a start-up in Tel Aviv, Major B is more accustomed to using advanced technology in his civilian job. The IDF has some of the world’s most advanced weapons systems, but they are mainly used by the regular combat units and normally take many years to reach the reserve brigades. Their use now by reservists is another sign of the resources Israel is pouring into its operation against Hamas in Gaza. His work colleagues have to do withIsraeli reservists join the surge to eradicate Hamas have made their way into the centre of Gaza City but the reserve division is operating in northeastern towns near the border with Israel, going from house to house and locating and destroying Hamas tunnels before they can be used to launch rockets and ambushes. The IDF said yesterday that two brigades had captured several Hamas government buildings in Sheikh Ijlin and Rimal, neighbourhoods south of Gaza City, while its fighter jets targeted Hezbollah sites across the border in southern Lebanon. Brigadier General Benny Ben Ari, the IDF’s chief reserve corps officer, credits Israel’s reservists with having prevented a second front of the war opening up with Lebanon’s Iranianbacked militant group. “By the evening of October 7 [the day that Hamas launched its terrorist attacks] we already had two fresh combat battalions deployed on the northern border, in a clear signal to Hezbollah. Many more have followed.” On the first afternoon of the war a reserve paratrooper battalion was rushed to Kfar Aza kibbutz and engaged in close-combat fighting with Hamas and began rescuing families holed up in their homes. “We have an advanced smartphonebased mobilisation system, but when we activated it that day, many of the reservists were already on their way to their bases,” Ben Ari said. “It was clear to them they were needed.” Once mobilised, the reservists are under the command of their units. Ben Ari’s principal task is to ensure that the General Staff are aware of any issues, including organising emergency payments for those with small businesses that are struggling, as well as discussing with employers and trade unions which reservists need to be released because they work in essential public services. The new academic year in Israeli universities has been postponed but when it begins — possibly in late December — arrangements will have to be made for the large number of reservists who are students. There is already a trend on social media of reservists posting photographs of themselves in uniform catching up on their studies during lulls in the fighting. With the defence ministry paying reservists the salary they would have received in their civilian jobs, the government has to consider the financial burden. The mobilisation is thought to be costing Israel about £200 million a day. A decision on when demobilising can begin will be based on the intelligence assessment of the likelihood of war with Hezbollah, and any need to scale down the ground operation in Gaza, probably due to international pressure. For Ben Ari, the military’s position is clear. “Without reservists, the IDF cannot fulfil its mission.” 360,000 ‘civilians’ have been rushed to the Gaza front line, writes Anshel Pfeffer President Biden has raised hopes of a deal to release some of the estimated 240 hostages still being held by Hamas. Asked at the White House if he had a message of hope for those abducted during the terrorist attacks of October 7, he replied: “Hang in there, we’re coming.” Earlier in the day, however, it was announced that one of those abducted, Noa Marciano, 19, a corporal in the Israeli army, had died, with Hamas claiming that she and 50 other hostages were the victims of Israeli airstrikes. Her mother, Adi, said she had spoken to her daughter, below, on the morning of the attack, shortly before she was kidnapped. The militants published an image of Marciano, bound with three others, a week after the massacre, and later released a video showing her, apparently reading from a script, urging Israel to stop the bombardments. Israel condemned the video as “horrific and evil and clearly psychological warfare”. Hamas has released four of the hostages, and Israel has rescued one. Islamic Jihad has released video of two hostages, Yagil Yaakov, a young boy, and Hannah Katzir, an elderly woman. Among the hostages is a pregnant woman who, on October 7, was at full term. Biden: We will rescue hostages Melanie Swan Video showed Israeli soldiers operating in a location given as the Gaza Strip; in

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 2GM 33 The painted pout that speaks volumes to TikTokkers Page 36 Paris clears migrant camps from the streets before the Games Page 35 final battle for hospital looms posed a Red Cross-supervised hospital evacuation, with health officials saying it is the only way to save three dozen premature newborns put at risk when power to the ward’s incubators was lost. The IDF said it had offered portable, battery-powered incubators so the babies could be moved, but hospital staff said they had not been contacted. “We have no objection to having the babies being moved to any hospital, in Egypt, the West Bank or even to the occupation [Israeli] hospitals. What we care most about is the wellbeing and the lives of those babies,” Ashraf alQidra, Gaza health ministry spokesman, said. Israel has said it is providing a route for civilians to flee south but hospital officials say the fighting between the two sides around the complex is too intense to allow anyone to leave, or for them to reach a small supply of fuel delivered to the hospital by the Israeli army. More than 200,000 people have fled northern Gaza in the past ten days using a route which has been open for several hours a day. Muhammad Shehada, one of the last to make it out of Shifa over the weekend, described a “terrifying” escape along the route to reach the south. “In Shifa we were surrounded by soldiers and tanks for three days, with no food or drink,” he said after reaching al-Shati camp. “The dead and wounded were mounting up, the place smelled of death. We were terrified to leave but also too afraid to stay.” Along the route “the destruction we saw in the streets is unimaginable, even the road was full of tanks, soldiers and random shooting”. Doctors Without Borders said bullets were fired into one of its premises near the hospital yesterday where more than 100 people, including 65 children, were sheltering. It appealed to the IDF and Hamas to create a safe passage for them to leave the “epicentre of intense fighting”. It added: “Thousands of civilians, medical staff and patients are currently trapped in hospitals and other locations under fire in Gaza City. They must be protected and afforded safe passage if they wish to leave. Above that, there must be a total and immediate ceasefire.” Yasmine Ahmed, the UK director of Human Rights Watch, told the international development committee in Westminster that even if Israel’s claim that Hamas was using civilians in hospitals and schools as human shields was true, the burden was on the “attacking party” to evacuate them. “We know all roads out of Shifa are blocked,” she said. “There is no way for people to leave.” António Guterres, the UN secretarygeneral, said he was “deeply disturbed” by the situation in several of Gaza’s hospitals and called for a ceasefire “in the name of humanity”. Kherson paying a terrible price for its dream of liberation The artillery shell slammed into an advertising hoarding with a bang that echoed through the desolate streets of Kherson, the southern Ukrainian city where Russian missile attacks have become a grim and deadly fact of life. Shrapnel from the explosion cracked our car’s windscreen and dented the front of the vehicle. The driver put his foot down and we sped away — unhurt, but shaken. A year earlier Ukraine’s armed forces had swept triumphantly into Kherson, liberating the city after eight long months of brutal Russian occupation. Grateful residents, some in tears, crowded the main square to greet their triumphant soldiers as they drove into city. “Putin Kaput!” read one hastily scrawled sign. Amid the euphoria, it seemed that Ukraine would push on, perhaps all the way to Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014. But those hopes soon faded as President Putin’s troops dug into defensive positions on the opposite side of the Dnipro, the mighty river that cleaves the wider region, also called Kherson. Since then Russia has terrorised the city with relentless artillery attacks and powerful aerial bombs. At night the unlit streets are a cacophonous landscape of wailing air sirens, exploding Russian missiles and baying packs of stray dogs whose owners have either been killed or fled the city. Today the city is a ghost, Halyna Luhova, who was the mayor until March, said. “We all want to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But so far we can see only a few thin rays.” Power cuts are frequent and only a few shops remain open; the rest are boarded up or bombed out. On Saturday, the first anniversary of Kherson’s liberation, Russia’s forces intensified their attacks on the city centre, firing missiles at civilian targets, apparently at random. Less than a third of the prewar population of 300,000 remains in the city. Death or injury can come at any time, making life a daily lottery with the highest possible stakes. More than 400 people have been killed across the region by Russian missiles in the past year, including 12 children. Almost 1,700 have been injured, including a woman who was treated in hospital after the shelling that narrowly missed our vehicle. On Monday a 64-year-old man was killed, his adult daughter lost both her legs and her two-month-old baby was admitted to hospital after their car was hit by a missile. Two other people also died in strikes on the centre of Kherson. “There are no military objects in the city,” Anton Yefanov, the city’s deputy head, said. “These attacks are partly revenge by Russia, but mainly this is pure terror.” Amid the misery some have taken refuge in religion, but even prayer is dangerous. Last week an artillery shell crashed through the roof of an Orthodox church barely 30 minutes after the day’s service had ended. “If worshippers had still been here many people would have died. It was a miracle that they weren’t,” Father Ioann said. The Kherson region’s sufferings were exacerbated in June when a powerful explosion, thought to have been set by Russian saboteurs, destroyed the Kakhovka dam and floodwaters swept away homes, often with people still inside. The official death toll from the flooding is 76. However, Bishop Nicodemus, who escaped Russian occupation on the left side of the Dnipro, said he believed that at least 1,000 people had died in areas controlled by Moscow. “No one is ever going to be able to count them all,” he said. Kherson’s unsung heroes are council workers who brave the shelling to carry out vital repair work or prepare the city’s infrastructure for winter. “It’s nerve-racking and stressful work,” said Oleksandr, at the end of another work day under fire. “Body armour won’t save you from shrapnel. But who is going to keep the city running if not us?” In a war-ravaged village near Kherson The Times found that almost every house had been destroyed or badly damaged in fighting last year. Some families are still living in the husks of their homes, huddling together in the least-damaged rooms. Volunteers from a local church recently raised money for a mobile library to provide some distraction for the village’s children, and to try to keep them from straying into fields that were heavily mined by Russian troops. Last week the village was shelled again. “I hide in our basement when there is shelling,” a small girl said. “We don’t have a basement,” said another, her eyes swollen with misery. “We take shelter between walls.” The Ukrainian army is now trying desperately to establish a permanent bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnipro, a herculean undertaking that involves transporting military hardware across water while under constant fire from Russian artillery. Soldiers in the region are tight-lipped about the operation, but there is a cautious optimism among local residents that their troops may be able to succeed in at least pushing Russian forces out of artillery range of the city. Marc Bennetts reports from the city where euphoria at freedom has turned to fear Dnipro River Nova Kakhovka Kakhovka dam UKRAINE Five miles Russian-held territory Ukrainian counterofiensive Kherson Krynky Kyiv Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, the victims included children; and buildings at Jabalia refugee camp were reduced to rubble

34 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times World Google Maps will remove a route to one of South Africa’s most violent townships from its navigation system after a number of tourists were directed into danger. A spate of incidents in Nyanga, which is only a few minutes’ drive from Cape Town’s international airport, prompted the change, Google said. An American tourist survived being shot in the face in Nyanga this month after picking the shortest route to his holiday accommodation. In August a British surgeon was shot dead at the wheel of his hire car after being provide digital support to the tourism ministry. The detour nearly killed Walter Fischel, 55, a fortnight ago when, after collecting his airport rental car, he opted for his navigation app’s fastest When the last Chinese leader but one, Jiang Zemin, visited America he played the ukulele. His predecessor, Deng Xiaoping, went to the rodeo and wore a giant cowboy hat. When their successor, President Xi, meets Joe Biden in San Francisco today there will be no music or fancy dress. This will be a businesslike meeting with modest goals: not to turn around relations between the world’s richest countries, but simply to prevent them getting any worse. The two men will talk about joint measures to slow climate change. They are expected to announce a deal to tackle the manufacture and trafficking of the deadly drug fentanyl, and Biden will hope to persuade Xi to restore direct communications between their armed forces. The success of the summit will depend on how they negotiate the matters Storm over president’s £5m yacht Nigeria Richard Assheton Lagos President Tinubu of Nigeria has become embroiled in a row over spending after budgeting £5 million for a presidential yacht in a cost of living crisis. Voters were alarmed to see provisions for the yacht in a £2.3 billion supplementary budget that Tinubu signed off this month. They sat alongside £29 million for his presidential villa, including new bulletproof cars for himself and his wife, and a presidential office complex. The presidential fleet of planes will get a £13 million upgrade Sixty per cent of people in Nigeria live in poverty. They are suffering from soaring costs and a sharp depreciation of the naira currency after Tinubu imposed austerity measures, including ending a longstanding petrol subsidy. MPs have approved Tinubu’s budget, which the government says is necessary to bolster defence and security, but rejected the allocation for the yacht. They voted to move the money into Nigeria’s student loan budget, doubling it. Shehu Sani, an activist and former senator, said: “The poor can’t be struggling for survival in a canoe while their leader is yachting.” A special adviser claimed the yacht had been ordered by Just a quick bite This tiger shark, one of the most dangerous of the species, was bravely fed at Tiger beach in the Bahamas by Ken Kiefer, a tourist from Houston the navy and was not for Tinubu’s use. Google Maps to erase danger routes into South African township South Africa Jane Flanagan Cape Town rerouted into the township to avoid road closures. New security alerts will be built into Google Maps to help to safely navigate in one of the world’s most unequal societies. After landing at Cape Town’s airport, tourists choosing the shortest route to its best hotels and beaches must pass Nyanga, one of the country’s worst hotspots for gangs and violent crime. Blocking Nyanga as a recommended route to avoid traffic on the main N2 motorway from the airport was the first priority, Professor Alistair Mokoena, Google’s South Africa director, said at the signing of a deal, under the terms of which the tech company will route. By the time he realised that Nyanga “was not the greatest” part of South Africa, he had been caught up in congestion and approached by four men, one of whom shot him. Bleeding from the face, Fischel, who is from Connecticut, tried to put up a fight but the gunmen robbed him of his cash and drove away in his car. “While I tried looking for help, I spat out a couple of my teeth and the bullet as well,” Fischel told the News24 website from his hospital bed after surgery. Google and other GPS developers are coming under increasing pressure to update routes after being accused by users of putting them in danger. Google is being sued by the family of a driver whose car plunged off a collapsed bridge in North Carolina while following a route on its map service. The bridge had collapsed nine years previously and was never repaired, according to filed documents, and a local person had alerted Google. In 2020 an 18-year-old Russian motorist froze to death after he and a friend were stranded for a week after following a Google Maps route. Scotland’s mountaineering authorities recommend that visitors rely on a traditional map and compass to tackle Ben Nevis as Google Maps may direct them toward “potentially fatal” trails that would force them to trek over cliffs and rocky, steep terrain. Three miles CAPE TOWN N2 N1 SOUTH AFRICA Cape Town airport Nyanga City centre Strictly business for Xi and Biden on which they do not agree, above all Taiwan, East Asia’s most dangerous potential flashpoint. If it goes to plan they will re-establish a practical working relationship before what is likely to be a rocky year for the world. The last time Xi visited was in the dawn of Donald Trump’s presidency in 2017. The election of Biden at first looked good for USChina relations — he knows Xi better than any other western leader, having had repeated encounters with him as a senator and as Barack Obama’s vice-president. However, China’s aggressive claims to ownership of disputed islands in the South China Sea, and the US’s dispatch of naval vessels to traverse these areas, eclipsed any personal connection between the leaders. The navy and air force of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) made menacing incursions around Taiwan. Then in August last year Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the US Congress, visited Taiwan in solidarity with its government, provoking the largest and most menacing PLA exercises. It was after this that the PLA broke off direct communication with the US military, a channel designed to prevent misunderstandings and crises from spinning out of control. This year Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, was about to go to Beijing in the hope of mending relations when a Chinese spy balloon was detected drifting across America, making a rapprochement impossible. Blinken and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi have visited one another’s capitals to lay the ground for their bosses. Briefings by both sides make it clear that no big breakthroughs are expected. Biden will ask Xi to put pressure on Russia, North Korea and Iran. Xi, whose economy is foundering, will push for an easing of the restrictions on imports of US technology. He will later dine with US business leaders, who are skittish about investing in China after the arrests of foreign employees. The central problem, however, is Taiwan. Within three quarters of a century the island has established itself as a wealthy and vigorous democracy whose people express a strong wish to avoid falling under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party. For Beijing, though, the unity of Taiwan and the mainland is a “core interest”, on which compromise is unthinkable. The US continues to articulate its longstanding “One China” policy: recognition of the government of Beijing as sole authority over China, and acknowledgement of its claim to Taiwan. But it opposes any use of force in changing Taiwan’s political status, and supplies weapons to the island to deter the PLA. Biden has also gone further than any other president in making a commitment to send US troops to defend the island against invasion. The test of Xi and Biden’s reconnection will come later. In January Taiwan holds a presidential election that is likely to elect William Lai, whom China regards as a supporter of independence. In a year’s time Biden faces an election in which his Republican opponent will use against him any hint that he is insufficiently robust over Taiwan. United States Richard Lloyd Parry Asia Editor Taiwan is the test for talks beween President Biden and President Xi

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 35 World The riot police arrived before daybreak, striding through the darkness down the embankment of the Seine. The migrants in a makeshift camp along the quayside were mostly asleep — although they soon woke up, emerging from tents with alarm on their faces. Few had a clear idea of what was going to happen to them next. All, however, understood that the presence of several dozen riot police officers signalled that the camp that had been home to 300 migrants for months was about to be cleared. “I don’t know where I’m going,” said Yussef, 21, a Sudanese man who had arrived in France last week after travelling across Libya, Tunisia, the Mediterranean, Italy and Switzerland. “I only hope they give me a bed somewhere.” The raid is part of a programme described by the government as a humanitarian response to the migration crisis that has left thousands of Africans, Afghans, Albanians, eastern Europeans and others sleeping rough in Paris. Charities are sceptical. They say A fine day for a bike ride, the caption by Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, said on an Instagram video of herself pedalling by the Seine under a blue autumn sky. The green-minded city leader was, however, not in Paris but 10,000 miles away on a south Pacific island. The 64-year-old Socialist is struggling to quell a storm triggered by her initially discreet three-week jaunt to the French Pacific islands and worsened by disastrous handling of what has become a scandal. As Hidalgo faced angry questions at a council session yesterday, Rachida Dati, leader of the conservative opposition, called for prosecutors to investigate the mayor’s alleged use of public funds for private trips. “It is up to the justice system to determine the legality of this trip,” Dati, a former justice minister, said. The row began last month when it emerged that Hidalgo was not hard at work in Paris, as her social media posts suggested, but on an unpublicised “working trip” to French Polynesia and New Caledonia followed by a two-week holiday on an island where her daughter lives. It cost €60,000 for air fares and accommodation for the mayor and her Paris clearing out migrant camps ‘before the Games’ President Macron’s goal is to remove unsightly camps from the capital before the start of the Paris Olympics next summer, just as favelas were bulldozed in Brazil before the Rio Games and the poor were displaced by Chinese officials before those in Beijing. The clearance of migrant camps in Paris is nothing new — there have been about 400 such operations since 2015 — but the rate has accelerated in recent months, charities argue. Also, there has also been a shift in the policy: homeless migrants used to be directed to shelters in and around the capital, but since March more than 2,800 have been sent to towns such as Bordeaux, Strasbourg or Lyons, where they stay for three weeks while permanent lodgings are found — in theory. In practice, there is often no housing available, with the result that they return to sleeping rough, but in provincial towns and cities whose councils complain that they are overrun. “The aim is to take the migrants far away from Paris,” said Eve Derriennic, general co-ordinator in Paris for Doctors of the World, a French charity. “The trouble is that many end up on the streets in towns in the provinces where they have less support than in Paris.” Harmonie Lecerf-Meunier, deputy mayor of Bordeaux, told France Info, the state radio station: “We are saturated, over-saturated. We’ve got families in the streets, shanty towns and squats. We cannot take any more people.” The government’s supporters say ministers are doing their best in the face of acute difficulties, with France receiving 131,254 asylum claims last year, compared with 81,130 in the UK. With fewer than 50,000 beds in centres for asylum seekers, tens of thousands are in hotel bedrooms booked by the state. But many low-cost hotels in Paris are refusing to take homeless migrants as they undergo upgrades before the Olympics, when they will earn more money from sports fans. The loss of several thousand hotel rooms has added to the number of migrants on the streets, charities say. A housing ministry spokesman insisted that the camp clearances had “nothing to do with the Olympics. The aim is to enable people to build a life for themselves in Bordeaux or wherever.” Trouble in Tahiti for mayor who took selfie on work trip Charles Bremner France Adam Sage Paris delegation of five. The criticism was fed by Hidalgo’s decision to stay on the beach while tensions rose in Paris between the big Jewish and and Muslim communities amid the Israel-Gaza war. Her team insisted she was meeting local officials and was mainly in Tahiti to inspect the venue of the surfing events for next year’s Paris Olympics. However, she left that visit to a deputy. Hidalgo’s office initially said the council paid for Hidalgo’s return flight, then that she paid from her own pocket. The council’s ethics commission, which reports to Hidalgo, was called in to review the spending and concluded that no public funds were abused. The opposition dismissed the finding as a whitewash. Hidalgo, a former labour inspector who keeps a tight rein on her team, said yesterday that she was the victim of “the constant harassment, attacks on private life, slander, denigration, attacks on legitimacy and death threats” that are inflicted on leftwing and Green women politicians. “It’s been going on for 20 years for me and it got worse after I became mayor,” she told the leftwing newspaper Libération. Hidalgo, who was first elected in 2014, faces no immediate threat to her job. The next election is in 2026. Bolshoi finds tech a tough nut to crack Russia Maxim Tucker Nothing defines Russian new year holidays quite like Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, with a night at the Bolshoi’s spectacular ballet considered the pinnacle of festive cheer. However, this year Muscovites are being forced to join a queue for a place in the actual queue to buy tickets for the performance which, with the limits on foreign entertainments enforced by the war in Ukraine, has become more popular than ever. Sadly for Russians, Bolshoi Theatre’s artistic achievement is not matched by that of the backroom staff. After a series of computer crashes, theatre staff decided to ease pressure on box office cashiers, often elderly aficionados of the arts, by handing out numbered bracelets that entitle wearers to then queue for tickets. Buyers are limited to two tickets per person and only on presentation of their passport. The bracelets have to be distributed manually, creating a second queue for the proof that the wearer is entitled to join the box office queue — neither of which guarantees a ticket. Ticket sellers manage about 350 sales a day before they shut the box office to the hundreds thronging the streets around the Bolshoi, who have stood for hours in the freezing cold. Those unfortunates will need to start the process from scratch again the next day. This stoic feat of endurance is being embraced by many in Moscow, where the importance of pilgrimage and penance is deep-rooted in a culture still conditioned by the Orthodox Church. Buying a ticket then brandishing it for an Instagram photograph is considered a badge of dedication to the arts. Other theatregoers were less satisfied with the experience however, comparing it to having to queue to buy “American jeans or Finnish boots” during the Soviet Union era. Bad drivers with vroom to improve Germany Oliver Moody Berlin “You can’t treat a car like a human being — a car needs love,” the German rally driver Walter Röhrl once said. It seems that an increasing number of his compatriots have lost their love for both. From tailgating and undertaking to barging into queues, German motorists are becoming more aggressive, according to a study carried out for the insurance industry. The number of drivers who admit to selfish or risky manoeuvres has risen in all 16 categories assessed in the report. One third of men and half of women said they did not feel safe on Germany’s roads. “Acting with reckless disregard for the danger you might injure or even kill others out of irritation or for your own advantages is entirely unacceptable,” said Siegfried Brockmann, head of the Insurers’ Accident Research institute, which commissioned the poll. “In the light of these findings, everyone in a position of responsibility should ask themselves how this situation can be improved.” The survey of 2,000 road users found almost universal consensus on the biggest causes of accidents: speeding, aggressive behaviour, drink-driving and driving too close to other cars. Yet it is precisely these habits that appear to be on the rise — 21 per cent of the respondents said they “probably” drove while over the legal blood alcohol limit, up from 7 per cent in 2019. The proportion who confessed to habitual tailgating rose from 32 per cent to 39 per cent. Conversely, 44 per cent said they would tap the brakes in front of a tailgater “to annoy them”, up from 30 per cent seven years ago. Other bad habits included jumping a queue waiting to turn off at a junction, accelerating to prevent being overtaken and feeling “really good” about zooming down country roads. Grain of truth Land contours in Mu Cang Chai, Vietnam, have led to the rice-growing area being called the Ladder Fields

36 2GM Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times World declined to list hospitality they have received and details of meetings they have held with political officials. The new rules codify for the first time that a “justice should not allow family, social, political, financial or other relationships to influence official conduct or judgment”, for example. It does not ban the nine justices from accepting gifts, but cautions that they ought to be conscious that these activities do not “detract from the dignity of the justice’s office”. Daniel Epps, a law professor at Washington University in St Louis, told The New York Times that the code was an acknowledgement that the court had to do something, but that it fell short. “It’s good they felt some obligation to respond,” he said. “In terms of the content, it doesn’t move the ball much.” Lesbian mothers in court to fight Meloni’s attack on gay families Italy Tom Kington Rome as the legitimate parents of a child and recognise only the biological parent. The rule cited a recent supreme court ruling that denied two men the right to both be recognised as fathers to a child they had through a surrogate pregnancy. In Milan, officials obeyed the circular and stopped registering both partners in gay couples as parents. In Padua a local magistrate went further and asked a judge to backdate the ban to 2017, leading to the trial, which will decide what to do with couples who already have children. “The court has been called on to rule on whether these children will have one of their two mothers — the one who did not give birth to them — cancelled,” Michele Giarratano, a lawyer, said. Couples warn that if a biological parent dies, the other partner will have no rights over the child. With no legal ties to the child, the non-biological parent cannot be involved in the child’s medical care, or even pick them up from school. Italy does not permit gay marriage and forbids same-sex couples from adopting children, lesbian couples from using IVF to get pregnant with donor sperm and male couples from using surrogate mothers in Italy to have children. Meloni’s government is now pushing to fine couples up to €1 million if they use a surrogate mother overseas. One of the first lesbian mothers to appear in court yesterday was Elisa Barbugian, 38, a nurse who has four children with her partner, Sara Quinto, 35, a web marketing consultant. “They should give us a prize for increasing the birth rate, but instead the state is trying to punish our children,” she said. Barbugian and Quinto each gave birth to two of their children using IVF and donor sperm in Denmark. “I would never have imagined they would have sought us out like thieves to exclude us from the lives of the children we didn’t give birth to, but have loved and cared for since their birth,” she added. A ll artists, regardless of the success they achieve in their lifetimes, must wish that their work will find new audiences after they are gone (Keiran Southern writes). For Auguste Toulmouche, a 19th-century French painter who studied upper-class Parisian women, a new audience 130 years after his death has emerged in the most unlikely of places: the social media app TikTok. One work has achieved a particular resonance with women, being repurposed and shared as a meme with a feminist message. Toulmouche’s 1886 painting, The Hesitant Fiancée, depicts a young woman staring at the viewer, looking unimpressed at the husband her family has picked for her. Her gaze has now been interpreted as carrying a contemporary message of female independence and feminism. Jenn Ficarra, 32, a screenwriter in Los Angeles, said the painting began appearing on her TikTok page last week. Ficarra made her own video featuring the painting in which she imagines responding to a sexist comment. She said women can identify with the frustration in the French socialite’s face as she ignores the three friends surrounding her. “It honestly feels like a scene from a Friday night with your friends,” she told The New York Times. She was not previously a fan of Toulmouche but the lavishly dressed subject in The Hesitant Fiancée struck a chord. Born in Nantes in 1829, Toulmouche was known for his elegant depictions of well-off Parisian women. His work was celebrated during his time and Napoleon III, the emperor of France, bought one of his paintings. He married Claude Monet’s cousin and gave career advice to the younger painter but his work failed to endure as impressionism has. That has not stopped The Hesitant Fiancée from finding a modern audience. It may be partly down to the fact that the bride-to-be’s sullen stare was unusual for the time, according to Therese Dolan, a professor emerita of modern and contemporary art at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia. “You don’t often get this in 19th-century painting — this kind of independent streak,” Dolan told The New York Times. “She’s actually showing the emotion of not wanting to get married to the person that her wealthy family has picked out.” Toulmouche died aged 61 in 1890. His work can still be seen in American galleries, including at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts. Pouting fiancée gets a TikTok fan club The sullen stare of The Hesitant Fiancée by Toulmouche Auguste has been taken up on social media as a feminist meme Dozens of lesbian couples bringing up children in Italy were sent to trial yesterday accused of violating new restrictions on same-sex parenting issued by Giorgia Meloni’s government. The 33 families in Padua in northern Italy risk seeing the partner in each couple who did not give birth to their child or children being denied the status of “mother” in Meloni’s crackdown. “The world is watching as Meloni’s focus on ‘God, family and fatherland’ becomes more evident and she chooses ideology over the life of Italians,” said Alessia Crocini, head of Rainbow Families, an association of Italian same sexparents. Many of the couples joined a sit-in outside the Padua court where the trial is being held, reading out the names of the 37 children concerned and chanting: “We are all families.” With no law in Italy specifically allowing the registration of both partners in gay couples as the parents of a child, mayors have responded to the legal grey area by allowing it, including in Padua, where the mayor, Sergio Giordani, registered both partners as mothers in 33 lesbian family cases. However, Meloni, after coming to power last year with promises to defend the “traditional family”, has sought to end the practice. Her government has ordered local officials to stop registering both members of same-sex couples Elisa Barbugian and Sara Quinto say the state is punishing their children No sleaze please: Supreme Court’s code of conduct Katy Perry has won a legal victory over Alistair Dawber Washington a military veteran who accused her of taking advantage of him to buy his mansion in Southern California. Carl Westcott, 84, a millionaire from Texas, agreed to sell an estate in Montecito for $15 million in cash in July 2020. However, he later tried to back out of the deal and claimed that his judgment was impaired by surgery and pain medication. After a trial in Los Angeles, a judge has issued a tentative ruling in favour of Perry and her husband, the British actor Orlando Bloom. “The evidence shows that Mr Westcott breached the contract for no other reason than he had changed his mind,” Superior Court judge Joseph Lipner said last week. The ruling becomes final ten days after it was issued, although the two Katy Perry will keep her $15m mansion sides can file objections before then. A lawyer for Perry welcomed the verdict and said it was proved during the trial that Westcott, who made his fortune from a flower business, knew what he was doing when selling the estate. Eric Rowen, Perry’s lawyer, said Westcott “was of perfectly sound mind when he engaged in complex negotiations over several weeks with multiple parties to transact a lucrative sale of the property that netted him a substantial profit”. Rowen said he was looking forward to a hearing in February that will determine damages as Perry and Bloom say they lost $2.7 million in rental income because of the row. Perry, 39, who rose to fame with the song I Kissed A Girl, is expected to testify. Westcott, who has Huntington’s disease and lives at an assisted-living facility in Texas, bought the house, near the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s home, for $11.25 million in May 2020. Months later he agreed to sell the house to Perry and Bloom, 46. After trying to back out of the deal he sued Perry’s business manager, Bernie Gudvi, who filed a countersuit. Westcott’s family accused Perry of taking advantage of a vulnerable grandfather. Chart Westcott, Westcott’s son, said that the family had accepted the ruling. United States Keiran Southern Los Angeles Its judgments can take hours to read, but the US Supreme Court’s first published code of conduct is only nine pages long and even then, it is not clear what actions might break the rules. After pressure from Congress, the court has adopted the new code “to set out succinctly and gather in one place the ethics rules and principles that guide the conduct of the members”. How it would be enforced was still being considered, it said. Adoption of the guidelines comes after months of stories about Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving judge, who has been accused of accepting lavish hospitality from wealthy Republican donors. He has denied wrongdoing. Other members of the court have Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 37 Business Jeremy Hunt should create a “British Isa” in next week’s autumn statement to end a “downward spiral of investment and lower valuations” on London’s markets, business leaders have said. In a letter to The Times, a group of investors, brokers, City grandees and chief executives call on the chancellor to launch a dedicated incentive for backers of UK-listed companies that would put the £70 billion invested each year into the tax-efficient savings accounts “to work on behalf of the UK”. Individual savings accounts, or Isas, are used by about 12 million people to shelter money from income tax and capital gains tax and come in cash and stocks-and-shares varieties. People can invest up to £20,000 a year tax-free. Signatories, including asset managers with £35 billion under management and listed companies collectively employing more than 150,000 people, say it is an “oddity of the current Isa regime” that it “offers the same incentives for savers to invest in overseas as domestic businesses”. They say that restricting stocks-and-shares Isas to UK-listed companies would reduce the risk of UK markets losing companies to private equity or international rivals. “A new British Isa would give taxpayers the chance to invest their full £20,000 allowance in growing the UK economy and supporting her companies ... reviving interest in raising equity in the UK, driving economic growth, spreading prosperity and boosting tax revenues,” they write. The campaign comes amid concerns A Thai company is set to take control of Selfridges in a debt-for-equity swap that dilutes the stake of its struggling co-owner. Central Group, which is controlled by the billionaire Chirathivat family, bought Selfridges with Signa Group, founded by René Benko, an Austrian property magnate, in a £4 billion deal last year. However, the future of the Hunt urged to encourage domestic investment Bosses want ‘UK Isa’ to lift economy James Hurley about the poor performance of Britain’s stock markets. A recent report by Shore Capital said UK indices had “substantially underperformed all other major international indices” since the Brexit referendum in June 2016, as funds flowed away from London’s markets, undervaluing many British companies. Simon French, chief economist at Panmure Gordon, the broker, said: “The UK pension and savings industry has moved from a position of overallocation to its home market in the early 1990s to chronic under-allocation today. “Everyone understands the problem and clearly any policy solutions come with trade-offs, but, in a world where sovereign governments are subsidising their own corporate sector, it’s odd that UK taxpayers are subsiding the cost of capital for firms with no link to the UK economy.” A British Isa could be contentious as it would restrict choice for savers and could reduce returns. The extent to which the idea would boost the UK economy may also be open to question, since UK-listed companies are often not focused on Britain. The letter was co-ordinated by BGF, the venture capital investor owned by high street banks, and Singer Capital Markets, an investment bank. It has 93 signatories. The Capital Markets Industry Taskforce, chaired by Julia Hoggett, the London Stock Exchange chief executive, also has written to the chancellor calling for measures to boost domestic investment, including a British Isa. Net gains On Holding, the Swiss running shoe company backed by Roger Federer, has recorded its strongest quarter yet. Quarterly net sales rose by 46.5 per cent to about £432 million, driven by strong demand in the Americas and Asia-Pacific Thai group set to take controlling stake in Selfridges empire Isabella Fish Retail Editor 50-50 joint venture became uncertain this month after Signa replaced Benko, 46, with a restructuring expert as a financial crunch threatened the indebted business. The sale of Signa’s stake in Selfridges was among options to provide the business with cash to appease lenders, according to The Sunday Times, which reported that Central Group was among the companies to provide its partner Signa with a loan. Central Group said yesterday that it had exercised its right to convert a loan provided by one of its subsidiaries to the Selfridges group into equity. The conversion means that Central will become the majority shareholder and will gain control of the joint venture for the operating companies within the Selfridges Group. Signa will retain a minority stake in the group, which comprises the well-known department stores Selfridges in the UK, Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland and De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands. The financial turmoil casts a cloud over the future of the company behind London’s famous Selfridges store, which has set the standard on the high street since Harry Gordon Selfridge opened on Oxford Street in 1909. Before it sold the company, the Weston family, who owned Selfridges for almost 20 years, had emphasised the importance of selling to responsible owners who would honour their legacy of long-term stewardship. It also raises questions over Signa’s plans to develop a hotel next to the Selfridges Oxford Street store and to overhaul its food hall. There has been no tangible progress on either since plans were announced in August last year. A source close to Selfridges is reported to have said recently that this was due to the long-term nature of the projects rather than Signa’s ability to fund them. Our record is appalling, says water chief Robert Lea Industrial Editor The chief executive of Southern Water has admitted that his company has had an “appalling” environmental record, even as the struggling utility proposes raising household bills by 55 per cent. Lawrence Gosden said that customers in Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex and Hampshire would have to help to fund his proposals, with average bills increasing from £439 to £681 in 2030, before inflation. He was speaking ahead of an announcement due this week of Southern’s detailed plans to clean up rivers and beaches along the south coast and to provide financial stability for the utility’s future. Asked why four million people across the south should bear the brunt of decades of underinvestment by the company, Gosden said increasing bills was the “natural process” if people wanted Southern to meet environmental standards. “Southern has been an appalling industry performer,” he said. “The company took short cuts in its investment programme to try to save money [and] stopped investing at a time of population growth when we needed greater capacity at our wastewater treatment works.” Gosden, 54, who became chief executive 18 months ago, added that there had been pressure from Ofwat, the regulator, to keep bills down: “The company was trying to juggle very difficult [price] determinations.” On Southern being fined a record £90 million in 2021 for illegally dumping sewage and misleading investigators, Gosden said: “There were some people that did some stupid things. There were unethical practices. The industry is under significantly more pressure than people understand to meet constantly improving performance standards with multiple regulators and at the same time to reduce costs. When that pressure is too great, it puts people in a position where they take short cuts.” Oct 17 24 31 Nov 7 14 Oct 17 24 31 Nov 7 14 Oct 17 24 31 Nov 7 14 Oct 17 24 31 Nov 7 14 Oct 17 24 31 Nov 7 14 Oct 17 24 31 Nov 7 14 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 7,440.47 (+14.64) 8,500 8,000 7,500 7,000 world markets Brent crude (6pm) $82.68 (+0.01) Dow Jones 34,827.70 (+489.83) $ £/$ $1.2482 (+0.0214) £/€ €1.1493 (+0.0027) ¤ (Change on the day) 120 100 80 60 Gold $1,962.56 (+15.37) 37,500 35,000 32,500 30,000

38 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Business Nippon Steel and Posco will acquire the other 23 per cent in a total $9 billion deal. The acquisition does not require a vote of approval from either company’s shareholders, but completion is not expected until the third quarter of next year and must still clear regulatory approvals in Canada, home to Teck’s coal assets, and could face resistance despite Canada-friendly commitents from Glencore. Assuming the deal is completed, Glencore is expected then to need approval from a simple majority of its shareholders for the coal demerger. It aims to reduce its debt to desired levels to conduct the demerger within two years; analysts at UBS reckon it could be ready to implement it by 2025. Nagle said its listing venue choices reflected the fact that investors in America were “very eager to be able to buy this cash-yielding company. We believe we’d get [a] better valuation, the best demand for this business, listed in New York than we would in London.” The biggest questions for Nagle remain over the shape of the remaining Glencore. One obvious possibility is a fresh attempt to acquire the remainder of Teck, comprising its metals assets. Nagle insisted that yesterday’s deal was not a “second prize” to April’s plans to Glencore coal assets 110mt Own sourced coal production Thermal coal sold 103.3mt 2022 2021 2022 2021 80.9mt 72.3mt continents countries 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 00 05 10 15 20 2025 Global coal consumption Rest of the world European Union United States Other Asia India China Profits by division Trading Other industrial activities Copper Zinc Coal 2021 37% 12% 7% 20% 2022 17% 4% 6% 20% 53% 24% Million Estimate tonnes Source:IEA million tonnes 6 35 employees and contractors 140,000 1 The number of graduate employers using artificial intelligence to recruit people has trebled in the last year, a new report claims. It found 26 per cent of companies are using AI in their hiring processes, up from 9 per cent in 2022. The Institute of Student Employerssaid the most frequent use of AI by 16 per cent was for conducting and analysing psychometric tests. 2 Children as young as 15 are working as delivery app riders thanks to a black market trade in app accounts. A BBC investigation found that major food delivery apps including JustEat, Deliveroo and UberEats allow delivery riders to lend their accounts to others. 3 Jeremy Hunt should create a “British Isa” in next week’s autumn statement to end a “downward spiral of investment and lower valuations” on London’s markets, business leaders have said. They called on the chancellor to launch an incentive that would put the £70 billion invested each year into tax-free savings “to work on behalf of the UK”. 4 A Thai company is set to take control of Selfridges in a debt-for-equity swap that dilutes the stake of its struggling co-owner. Central Group bought Selfridges with Signa Group, founded by René Benko, an Austrian property magnate, in a £4 billion deal last year. 5 The boss of Southern Water has admitted his company has an “appalling” environmental record. Lawrence Gosden said that customers would have to help to fund his proposals, with average bills increasing from £439 to £681 by 2030. 6 Glencore has set out plans to break itself up after striking a deal to buy the majority of Teck Resources’ coal business for $7 billion. The FTSE 100 commodities group said it aimed to demerge the combined coal business within two years. 7 The cross-border money transfer business, Wise said it was trying to pay more cash back to its clients as the profit it made on customers’ balances had leapt by 848 per cent to £158 million in the six months to the end of September. 8 Global markets staged a rally after US inflation in October was lower than forecast at 3.2 per cent, fuelling investor bets that an era of interest rate rises was over and borrowing costs may soon start to fall. 9 The revival of Vodafone is “starting to bear fruit” after the telecoms group reported a rise in service revenue, a key benchmark, of 4.2 per cent in the six months to end of September, helped by price rises and by Germany, its biggest market, returning to growth. 10Union leaders have accused Morrisons of “fleecing” its workers as it plans to cut pension contributions. The store wants to reduce its 5 per cent contribution to 3 per cent and to raise the amount staff pay from 3 per cent to 5 per cent. Need to know Wise looks to pay back clients as balances boom Wise insisted yesterday it was trying to pay more cash back to its clients as it disclosed that the profit it made on customers’ balances had leapt by 848 per cent to £158 million in the six months to the end of September. The cross-border money transfer business, one of Britain’s biggest financial technology companies, said it was constrained by the terms of its licences in many jurisdictions and was talking to regulators to find ways to return more money to clients. Rising global interest rates have transformed the economics of holding customer balances, which at Wise jumped by 33 per cent to £12.3 billion in the period. Wise received £211.1 million of interest on the balances, but paid out only £53.3 million of it back to clients. That 25 per cent payback percentage is a fraction of the 80 per cent of interest income that Wise says it “aspires” to pass to clients. While conventional banks have been accused by consumers and MPs of profiteering from customer balances and of not passing on rate increases, the appeal of Wise seems to have been barely dented by keeping its windfall. It increased its active customer numbers to 7.2 million in the latest quarter. Pretax profits were up by 280 per cent to £194.3 million. Wise was founded in 2011 as a cutprice way for people to transfer money between different currencies. It was floated in London in 2021 and is valued today at £7.3 billion. However, it is not a member of the FTSE 100 or other indices because of an unconventional share structure, which gives Kristo Kaarmann, its founder, iron control of the company. Because it does not have a banking licence and the ability to take conventional deposits, Wise relies on different licences depending on the jurisdiction in which it operates. In the UK, it has an “e-money licence”, which it says precludes it from paying interest. “We can’t attract customer deposits by saying we will pay interest,” said Harsh Sinha, the chief technology officer, who is standing in as chief executive for three months while Kaarmann, 43, takes a career break. Instead, Wise pays back some money through cash-back arrangements or by enabling customers to set up separate Assets accounts, through which their money is ring-fenced and put into money market funds. In the UK, its Assets service pays 4.9 per cent, with customers allowed instant access to their cash. In the period it launched its Assets service in Germany and France. Unlike bank deposits, this money is not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, which in Britain guarantees conventional savings up to £80,000. Sinha said Wise was taking on the traditional payments industry, which was “expensive, slow, inconvenient and opaque”. However, it has temporarily stopped accepting new business clients in Europe to beef up its anti-money laundering and compliance systems. In August the firm was censured by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation after allowing a customer targeted under sanctions against Russia to make a £250 cash withdrawal. There was no update on the Financial Conduct Authority’s investigation into Kaarmann, who was declared a deliberate tax defaulter and fined £366,000 in 2021 for being late with his tax return in 2018. Shares in Wise rose 4.9 per cent, or 34p, to 722½p. Patrick Hosking Financial Editor Big Teck coal deal sets up the demerger of Glencore Emily Gosden Glencore has set out plans to break itself up after striking a deal to buy the majority of Teck Resources’ coal business for $7 billion. The FTSE 100 commodities group said it aimed to demerge the combined coal business within two years of completing the acquisition, which comes after the rejection of its $22.5 billion bid for all of Teck, of Canada, earlier in the year. The standalone coal business, comprising Glencore’s thermal coalmines and coal trading operations and Teck’s steelmaking coalmines, will be listed in New York, with secondary listings in Toronto and Johannesburg. Gary Nagle, Glencore’s chief executive, said the plans would create “two world-class companies”, both of which should enjoy enhanced valuations. Investors in the United States had “very, very strong appetite” for the coal company, while the remaining Glencore business, which is expected to remain listed in London, would become “the go-to metals transition company in the world”. After several months of public wrangling and private talks since Glencore announced its $22.5 billion offer for Teck in April, Nagle acknowledged that it had been “quite a long process” to reach yesterday’s deal. An even longer process now lies ahead, however, as the 48-year-old South African seeks to complete the Teck deal, implement the demerger and define the shape of Glencore for years to come. Glencore, valued at £54 billion, reported record profits of $17.3 billion last year. Its mining business is a heady mix of thermal coal, the single biggest contributor to global warming, and of metals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and zinc that will be critical for the transition to cleaner energy sources. It also has a huge trading business that deals in energy, metals and agricultural commodities. After succeeding the long-serving Ivan Glasenberg, 66, in 2021, Nagle initially rejected calls to ditch its coalmining operations, insisting that “spinoffs are the wrong scenario” and that retaining the business and running the mines down over decades was the “responsible strategy for both our business and for the world”. That changed in April when Glencore announced its bid for the Vancouver-based Teck, which produces copper, zinc and steelmaking coal. Glencore said that, after the proposed takeover, it planned to separate the combined company into two businesses: one focused on metals and one on coal. Although its approach was rejected by Teck and faced strong opposition in Canada, the genie could not be put back into the bottle. “There seemed to be quite a lot of feedback from the market that they felt that a bigger, better coal company potentially wpould have some sort of value uplift, having separated coal from our metals business,” Nagle said. “We felt if that’s where the market thought there was value-creation to be had for our shareholders, it’s something worth pursuing.” Under yesterday’s agreement, Glencore will acquire a 77 per cent interest in Teck’s coal business for $6.93 billion, while Gary Nagle, Glencore’s boss, said that both companies’ valuations would be enhanced

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 39 Business The star stockpicker behind the Fundsmith investment business took home a smaller pay package this year but still earned at least £31 million. Accounts filed at Companies House show that profits at Fundsmith LLP, the asset manager run from Mauritius by Terry Smith, slid to about £50 million in the 12 months to the end of March from a record £58.2 million a year earlier — the first drop in annual earnings since 2016. Its assets under management also fell to £36.4 billion from £39.5 billion in 2022 “as a result of performance and net redemptions”. This weighed on the amount earned by Smith, 70, who is believed to have been in line for the lion’s share of the partnership’s profits. The accounts show that the profits handed to the member with the largest entitlement acquire the entire company, but did little to quell speculation it might have another go, saying it had not succeeded in acquiring the metals assets “at this stage, through this process”. Glencore has agreed a two-year “standstill”, preventing it making an unsolicited bid for that time from the deal closing, unless another party bids for it. Analysts at Jefferies said that the demerger would leave Glencore “positioned to pursue M&A in metals. Acquisitions of metals assets in low-risk regions could lead to divestitures of metals assets in high-risk regions for Glencore.” Nagle insisted that it already had a “best-in-class base metals business” so did not need to “go out there and buy or sell anything. At the moment we’re very happy with our portfolio, but, of course, if there’s an opportunity to do something that makes sense, we would look at that.” Industry sources have speculated over the potential for Glencore to merge with Vale’s base metals business, which the Brazilian company has talked about listing, or even with Anglo American, which also has ditched coal as a business stream. There is also the possibility that Glencore becomes prey for a much larger company, such as BHP or Rio Tinto, both of which are seeking to Is there more where this came from? N ot for nothing is Gary Nagle in the commodity trading biz. Who better than the Glencore boss to have sussed out all the permutations from his $7 billion Teck Resources deal? A key puzzler: is it simply a bulk-up-to-break-up rating play, or the start of the UKlisted miner’s long goodbye? Nagle has just delivered what he’s already called his second-best option: a deal to acquire 77 per cent of Elk Valley Resources, Teck’s stash of coking coal used in steelmaking that’s more investor-friendly than Glencore’s thermal sort. His No 1 option? A $23 billion tilt for the whole of the Canadian miner, including its “green” minerals, such as copper and zinc. However, that buy-and-break-up effort got knocked back in the spring, not least by Teck’s controlling investor Norman Keevil, who insisted “we’re not about to be swallowed up” by Glencore. Back then Nagle said: “Buying their coal business standalone is a distant second in terms of potential benefits.” Yet what other pragmatic option did he have? And while bulking up in coal looks counterintuitive, it makes strategic sense, as the 4.5 per cent rise in Glencore shares to 450p implied. Nagle will merge the Teck business, producing 21.5 million tonnes of coking coal last year and ebitda of C$7.4 billion ($5.4 billion), with Glencore’s largely thermal coal wing, which dug up 110 million tonnes and $17.9 billion ebitda in what was a blowout year. Then he’ll spin it off — at least once he’s halved Glencore’s net debt to $5 billion, which may prove less than his mooted two-year job. His chosen arena? The liquid markets of New York, with secondary listings in Toronto and Johannesburg. Noting that he’d get a “better valuation” than in London, he pointed to feedback showing that investors in the United States are “very eager to ... buy this cash-yielding company”. Many London investors refused to touch Anglo American’s thermal coal spin-off, Thungela Resources, whose shares are since up 350 per cent. Maybe it says something about misunderstandings around coal that Nagle felt obliged to spell out that the steelmaking sort was vital for everything from “ocean-going vessels” and “rail bridges” to the stuff crucial to “energy transition”, such as “wind turbines”. Whatever, he thinks his spin-off will deliver “material value creation” and not least by splitting a “bigger, better coal company” from the rest of Glencore. It’s here that the intrigue begins. It will turn the group into not only a coal-free zone but what he called “the go-to metals transition company in the world”. Its key minerals — copper, zinc, nickel and cobalt — are key to the net zero shift, while it also has a growing recycling wing. Of course, after the expiry of a two-year “standstill”, Glencore could come back for another pop at the rest of Teck, but it is just as likely that a group valued at £55 billion will become a target for far bigger rivals, such as BHP or Rio. Since 2011’s float Glencore shares have only briefly been above their 530p listing price, not helped by regulatory run-ins over bribery. However, Nagle has cleaned it up and pretty soon it’ll be coal-free — and commodity traders, including his predecessor Ivan Glasenberg, who still holds a 10 per cent stake, wouldn’t be in a job if they didn’t know when to sell. Nagle’s coal deal may yet unearth a bigger one. Wrong number C rossed wires are a hazard of the telecoms industry. The Vodafone internal bet was that the shares would go up on the halfyear figures. What happened? They fell 5.5 per cent to 73¼p. You can understand why (report, page 42). Yes, the chief executive Margherita Della Valle, who took charge with the shares at 85p, has been trying to dial up change since only January. To go with her moves to merge the UK mobile wing with Three and get out of Spain for €5 billion, she’s popped up with a “return to growth” in the group’s key Germany market. Service revenue in the nation where Voda makes two fifths of its money rose 1.1 per cent in the second quarter. Yet, in a sea of adjusted numbers, that was a rare bright spot. Yes, organic service revenue rose 4.2 per cent, even if it fell by €589 million to €18.6 billion. But ebitdaal — a metric from the local curry house that also strips out leases — fell in all key European markets. It was down 5.6 per cent in Germany, 5.3 per cent in Britain, 15 per cent in Italy and 11.6 per cent in Spain. In a lossmaking half, free cashflow was also worse than expected: a €2 billion outflow. Voda continues to destroy capital. Its 6.4 per cent pretax return badly lags what Voda admits is its high single-digit per cent cost of capital. To add to the fun, a 10.7 per cent dividend yield is signalling another cut. Yes, it’s early days for Della Valle, whose strategy is set on eliminating “customer pain points”. Voda held its full-year guidance — and the new finance chief, Luka Mucic, has bought 1.1 million shares — but the shareholder pain points are still coming over loud and clear. Bank brainboxes F orget Ben Bernanke’s forecasting review. Look at this from Michael Fish world. GraphCast, a beast from the Google DeepMind artificial intelligence stable, has trumped conventional methods at predicting weather around the world for up to ten days. How can we get it adapted for the Bank of England, home of Andrew Bailey and the Nostradamuses who gave us such “transitory” inflation it took 13 rate rises to bring it down? The same ones who this time last year were forecasting the worst recession in 100 years if rates hit 5.25 per cent, or where they are now. It’s hard to think the forecasts will get any worse if we swap guv’nor Bailey for AIley. [email protected] business commentary Alistair Osborne Fundsmith star’s pay slips to ‘just’ £31m slipped to £31.2 million, from £36.4 million in 2022. However, Smith’s earnings are likely to have been topped up by profits from a Mauritian company that supports the UK-based partnership. Fundsmith Investment Services Limited charged the British business £185.7 million during the year for the provision of services including trading, investment research and administrative functions. It is unknown how much of that sum ultimately went to Smith. In 2022, the Mauritian company charged Fundsmith LLP £251.7 million. Despite the fall in Smith’s earnings, his profit share cements his status as one of the industry’s best-paid investors, even amid turbulent wider market conditions that have knocked his investment performance. His main Fundsmith Equity Fund, which manages £22.3 billion of assets, lost 13.8 per cent last year as Smith’s growth-investing style was hit by volatile markets, hit by high inflation and fears about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, while it was down 1.9 per cent last month, it returned 4.5 per cent in the year to the end of October and 504.1 per cent since its inception. This strong long-term performance has made Fundsmith Equity Britain’s biggest retail fund. Smith rose to prominence in the 1980s when, as an analyst, he published a “sell” note on Barclays within days of starting a job at its investment banking business. He gained more recognition in 1992 when he wrote a book criticising accounting practices at a host of British companies, which led to him losing his job at UBS Phillips & Drew, the stockbroker. A spokeswoman for Fundsmith declined to comment on its accounts. Ben Martin Banking Editor expand in such “future-facing” metals, or even for Tesla, which is eager to secure supplies of battery metals for its electric vehicles and was said to have held exploratory talks over taking a stake in Glencore in 2021. Asked about becoming a target, Nagle insisted that “the base metals Glencore standalone is still a massive company” that was expected to “trade at a higher multiple” than it does now. However, with Glencore boasting “some of the best future-facing metals assets in the world”, few would be surprised if the Teck deal and coal demerger were to pave the way for even bigger deals to come. Miners wash their hands of the black stuff Behind the story A s concern over climate change has risen up the agenda and constrained the choices of some investors, big diversified mining companies have taken different approaches to their increasingly divisive coal businesses (Emily Gosden writes). Rio Tinto quit coal altogether in 2018. BHP said in 2020 that it was abandoning thermal coal, only to make a U-turn two years later after failing to find a buyer at an acceptable price, opting instead to keep its remaining Australian coalmines and to run them down over the rest of this decade. Anglo American chose to spin off its thermal coal business into a standalone company, Thungela Resources, with a primary listing in Johannesburg and a secondary listing in London, where it began trading at 150p per share in June 2021. Though Thungela fell on the first day of trading as Anglo investors unable or unwilling to invest in the coal spin-off dumped the company, its shares rode soaring coal prices to highs of more than £18 by last September as profits surged. They have fallen back since then as coal prices have receded, but are still above 700p, proving a handsome investment for those that retained the shares. While Thungela is far smaller than the proposed Glencore coal spin-off, its example provides food for thought for Glencore investors debating whether to back the demerger — and whether to retain exposure to the polluting, lucrative assets via its new overseas listings.

40 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Business Wages continued to grow at one of the fastest paces on record in the three months to September, underlining that inflation will take time to return to the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target. Regular pay excluding bonuses increased by 7.7 per cent, down slightly from an upwardly revised 7.9 per cent growth rate in the previous three months, according to the Office for National Statistics. The figure was in line with City expectations. It is also the third month in a row that pay has risen faster than inflation, meaning that real wages have expanded by 1.3 per cent over the past quarter. However, real pay still has some way to go to recover fully from the near-two-year-long cost of living crisis. Including bonuses, wages climbed by 7.9 per cent, well above forecasts of 7.3 per cent growth. Darren Morgan, the ONS’s director of economic statistics, said that “our labour market figures show a largely unchanged picture ” and that “real pay is now growing Inflation could be more persistent than expected, the chief economist of the Bank of England warned yesterday, with official figures set to show that consumer prices growth has fallen to the lowest level in two years. Huw Pill said it was more likely that inflation would remain stubbornly above its official 2 per cent target. “One of the risks looking forward is that the underlying perStock markets worldwide rallied yesterday after inflation in the United States in October was lower than forecast, fuelling bets that an era of interest rate rises is over and that borrowing costs may start to fall soon. The fall in American inflation eased price pressures that in turn have cast doubt on whether the Federal Reserve is finished with lifting interest rates. The rate of prices growth fell to 3.2 per cent on an annual basis last month, from 3.7 per cent in September, according to the latest official figures. The number was below Wall Street expectations of 3.3 per cent. A 5.3 per cent contraction in petrol prices contributed to the inflation decline. New and second-hand car costs also fell. On Wall Street, the technologyheavy Nasdaq share index closed up 2.4 per cent at 14,094.38, while the more broadly based S&P 500 rose 1.9 per cent to 4,495.70. In London, the FTSE 100, which had begun the day in negative territory, The Fed is seeking a so-called soft landing, with inflation falling sustainably to typical levels Markets given boost by lower US inflation Jack Barnett Economics Correspondent sistence in inflation may be a bit more sustained because what we are seeing is a slowdown in activity, which is more supply-driven than demand-driven,” he told the Festival of Economics, in Bristol. His comments came ahead of the release of October inflation data today, which is expected to show a decline in annual prices growth to 4.8 per cent, the lowest level since 2021. The drop has been driven by energy prices falling out of the inflation calculation, so the government is on course to hit its at its fastest rate for two years”. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said: “It’s heartening to see inflation falling and real wages growing, keeping more money in people’s pockets. Building on the labour market reforms in the spring, the autumn statement [next week] will set out my plans to get people back to work and deliver growth for the UK.” Low response rates to the statistics office’s labour market survey have raised doubts over whether it is an accurate reflection of the employment and pay situation in Britain. It has suspended the publication of its usual data and instead has used alternative sources of information, such as benefit claimants and HM Revenue & Customs payroll numbers, to generate an unemployment estimate of 4.2 per cent, unchanged compared with the previous quarter. The agency said it would resume publishing its usual labour force data in Decemberg. The absence of robust ONS data has posed challenges for the Bank of England, which is trying to bring inflation back to its 2 per cent target. The Bank’s base interest rate has been lifted at the quickest pace since the 1980s to 5.25 per cent, a 15-year high, in order to curb inflation. New ONS figures are expected to show that inflation dropped to 4.8 per cent in October, its lowest level in two years. Vacancies fell by 58,000 to 957,000 in the three months to October and now are far below their peak of over a million. An additional 54,000 people entered employment in the three months to September, compared with a reduction of 80,000 over the previous quarter. The economic inactivity rate, a measure of the share of the population out of the workforce altogether, was broadly unchanged at 20.9 per cent. Company collapses set for new high Helen Cahill The number of corporate collapses is on course to hit the highest level on record as interest rate rises kill off “zombie” companies and businesses still struggling after the pandemic. The number of registered company insolvencies in October was 2,315, 18 per cent higher than the 1,954 in the same month last year and higher than pre-Covid numbers. Corporate insolvencies are on track to surpass last year’s total to reach 25,000, surpassing last year’s total of 22,128, according to an analysis by Azets, the accountancy group. It said company failures had reached 20,865 in the year so far. The worst year for insolvencies since records began was in 2009, when the total reached 24,036. Corporate failures have been driven by rising interest rates, putting pressure on businesses reliant on cheap financing and struggling under heavy debts. There have been high-profile insolvencies this year, including the collapses of Tuffnells Parcels Express, Flybe and Paperchase. Wilko, the general merchandise chain, became the largest casualty on the high street since Debenhams when it fell into administration in August. Nicky Fisher, of R3, the insolvency trade body, said: “Businesses are being battered from all sides. If the Christmas trading period doesn’t bring a wave of new income, we could see insolvencies continue to rise in the new year.” Wage rises continue at record pace Jack Barnett target to halve inflation by the end of the year. Pill said that inflation at the 5 per cent mark was still double the Bank’s 2 per cent target and was not a reason for ratesetters to begin easing monetary policy. The government has been criticised for making halving inflation one of its priorities, because inflation-targeting is the sole preserve of the independent Bank. Pill said he would not “comment on what the government is doing and what it chooses to celebrate”. Price increases are ‘likely to be stubborn’ Mehreen Khan Economics Editor rebounded after the American inflation figures were published and closed up 0.2 per cent at 7,440.47. The CAC 40 in Paris finished 1.4 per cent higher and the Dax in Frankfurt rose by 1.8 per cent. Thomas Hayes, the chairman of Great Hill Capital, the hedge fund, said the inflation data was “telling us that the Fed is done, there’s nothing left for it to do here”. Bond yields on both sides of the Atlantic fell sharply as markets began pricing in cuts to interest rates next spring. Sterling rose by more than 1.4 per cent to touch $1.25. Inflation in the US had returned to an upward trend over the past couple of months, having declined from a peak of 9.1 per cent in June last year, the steepest rate since 1981. The series of high inflation readings had raised bets on the Fed further tightening its monetary policy to ensure inflation returns to its 2 per cent target sustainably. Core inflation in America, regarded as a more accurate indicator of underlying price pressures, remains high at 4 per cent, but that reading was also weaker than analysts had forecast and was down from 4.1 per cent previously. On a monthly basis, headline and core inflation dropped to 0 per cent and 0.2 per cent, respectively, both lower than analysts’ predictions. Jerome Powell, chairman of the Fed, and the rest of the central bank’s ratesetting federal open market committee have lifted the federal funds rate to a range of 5.25 per cent to 5.5 per cent, the highest in more than two decades. Andrew Hunter, at Capital Economics, the consultancy, said that the new inflation reading “kills off any remaining chance of a December rate hike from the Fed”. The Fed is trying to marshal the world’s largest economy towards a “soft landing”, in which inflation returns to its target without a recession. Over the third quarter and on an annual basis, the American economy expanded by 4.9 per cent, while unemployment remained low, suggesting that the central bank is on course to achieve that goal. Jobs growth in Europe Eurozone businesses are continuing to hire and retain workers despite the bloc moving towards a recession, official figures suggest (Jack Barnett writes). Employment across the bloc has expanded by 0.3 per cent over the past three months, up from the 0.1 per cent rise registered in the previous quarter, according to data from Eurostat. Analysts at Citigroup said: “Despite job growth having come to a standstill in Germany and France in the third quarter, employment continued to expand at a lively pace in Spain [1.3 per cent quarter-onquarter] and in Italy [0.4 per cent], driving the eurozone aggregate figure higher.” GDP across the region contracted 0.1 per cent, another estimate showed, signalling the bloc could slip into recession in the final months of this year. 7.7% Increase in regular pay, excluding bonuses

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 41 Business NHS England is seeking advice on improving productivity Hunt needs to look at spending, not tax cuts, in his autumn statement A mong headline-grabbing threats to elections and hostility from Russia, China and Iran, the rising number of ransomware attacks loomed large in this week’s National Cyber Security Centre annual report. This, the technology branch of GCHQ said, was “one of the most acute cyberthreats facing the UK” and the spooks urged that “all domestic organisations should take action to protect themselves from this pervasive threat”. Holding something valuable to ransom in exchange for cash is almost as old as time, but ransomware brings it into the digital age, with criminals taking sensitive data and threatening to splash it all over the dark web unless an organisation pays up. It is, in the cyber security centre’s words, “a well-developed business model” with low barriers to entry. And, as the threat increases, so should the debate on banning ransomware payments to break this vicious but lucrative cycle. All too often, when they are over a barrel, companies cough up. In its own annual ransomware report, a global snapshot for the first three months of the year, Sophos, the British cybersecurity specialist, showed that in 2023 two thirds of businesses were hit by ransomware attacks and the average payment doubled to $1.54 million. Almost half paid the ransom. This goes against government guidance, but many, understandably, see it as an instant solution to an intractable problem. Some criminals comically boast of their trustworthiness when it comes to payments. Clop, a group of Russian hackers, told victims of a serious cyberbreach in May that it was experienced and absolutely would delete data if its victims complied. “We show video proof, we have no use for a few measle [sic] dollars to deceive you,” it promised. It won’t surprise you that not all stick to their word. According to Sophos, one in ten businesses that paid up did not get their data back and 40 per cent were targeted again. “His Majesty’s Government does not condone the making of ransomware payments,” is the official line, published in February. “Ransomware payments to the criminal groups behind these attacks perpetuate the threat and does not guarantee victims will regain access to their data.” Furthermore, according to the advice, there is a risk to businesses that making a payment could breach financial sanctions. These, though, remain guidelines only, but there are movements in the direction of an outright ban. This month, the 48 countries that belong to the Counter Ransomware Initiative, including Britain, the United States and in the European Union, pledged not to pay ransomware demands from central government funds. Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, said it was an important announcement because “crime shouldn’t pay”. Nevertheless, ransomware continues to — and pays well. This week, a member of the LockBit gang said that Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China’s biggest lender, had paid up after it was attacked. “Deal closed,” the hackers said. Not the kind of transaction one imagines the bank wanted. Granted, an outright ban on businesses paying hackers is not going to be straightforward. It could “criminalise being a victim”, according to Toby Lewis, global head of threat analysis at Darktrace, and would “drive the payments underground, or force attackers to find alternative mechanisms”. Felicity Oswald, the cyber security centre’s chief operating officer, believes that paying online criminals “makes the threat landscape worse for everyone”. So we must give businesses a better case to say no. Ransomware attacks are happening on an industrial scale and without intervention in the economics of cybercrime, the merry-go-round will continue. David Smith Katie Prescott All the talk in the run-up to next week’s autumn statement from the chancellor has been about how much he might be able to eke out for tax cuts, either now or later. That is understandable, though the belief that small tax cuts would rescue a government well behind in the polls is touchingly naive. All that talk, however, should be about the amount the government is spending, how much that has increased in recent years and how it is possible to combine that with underdelivery and widespread dissatisfaction with public services. Jeremy Hunt knows the numbers. Less than four years ago, on the eve of the pandemic, public spending, defined by total managed expenditure, was £888 billion in cash terms, or 39.6 per cent of gross domestic product. This year, 2023-24, the Office for Budget Responsibility database points to a spending total of £1,189 billion, so almost £1.2 trillion, a cash increase of just over £300 billion and equivalent to 46.2 per cent of GDP. History buffs might like to know that this is within a whisker of the proportion in 1975-76, after which the UK had to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. That is not on the cards again this time, but it provides some useful perspective. This cash increase in spending is, of course, boosted by inflation. Adjusted for inflation, there has been a 17 per cent rise in real terms, in a period when the economy as a whole has barely grown. Only a few years ago, people would have had difficulty believing these figures. In March 2020, when Covid-19 was emerging but the OBR had not had time to incorporate it into its forecasts, it predicted that public spending would trundle along at just over 40 per cent of GDP, rising by 8 per cent in real terms between 2019-20 and 2023-24. However, this was split between a 6 per cent increase in day-to-day spending and a 50 per cent rise in capital spending, including infrastructure. That capital spending increase is still in the plans, though recent outcomes have been disappointing, but it is now accompanied by a much bigger increase in day-to-day spending at more than 16 per cent. Even during the pandemic, the assumption was that spending would rise sharply because of measures introduced to ameliorate its impact, as well as huge medical costs and quite a lot of waste, but would subside quickly afterwards. Such hopes were thrown off course by the cost of living crisis and the energy support provided by the government. Yet even after all this has passed through, spending stays high. It is assumed to settle at about 43.5 per cent of GDP in 2027-28. And while these figures are subject to change, with the new official forecasts to be published next week alongside the autumn statement, the inescapable conclusion is that events so far in the 2020s have ratcheted public spending permanently higher, by about 4 per cent of GDP. Even late 2020s’ projections are based on what look to be implausibly tight spending indications, with public spending planned to rise by less than 2 per cent in real terms, in total, over the next four years. Meanwhile, and this is the nub of the problem, the extra money going into public services is not improving performance or public satisfaction. And while the government has been keen to pin some of the blame on public sector strikes, it goes deeper than this. The latest NHS figures show that there were 7.77 million waits for nonemergency care, affecting 6.5 million people. About a million people are on waiting lists for more than one treatment. Hospital managers say they are scaling back plans for extra winter beds because of financial pressures. The most recent British Social Attitudes survey showed only 27 per cent satisfaction with the NHS, the lowest ever recorded in a survey that goes back to 1983. Satisfaction with social care was even lower, at 14 per cent. NHS England, under criticism for the length of waiting lists and its failure to increase patient numbers treated in line with its additional resources, has called in McKinsey, the management consultancy, to advise on improving productivity. As was reported this week, the number of doctors is up by about 16 per cent compared with pre-pandemic levels, while there are 15 per cent more nurses. The NHS workforce plan envisages an overall increase in staff of more than 50 per cent by the mid2030s, to one in eleven of all workers. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, which has highlighted the discrepancy between increased NHS “inputs” and treatment, has said that “the government is right to be unimpressed that the extra resources don’t seem to be buying much”. A separate review, of productivity across the public sector, was being conducted by John Glen, the chief secretary to the Treasury until he was demoted in this week’s reshuffle. It had not been finalised, but was said to be examining whether artificial intelligence can play a role in lifting performance. He will continue his work on government efficiency as paymaster general in the Cabinet Office. One thing is clear: the present combination of a record tax burden and inadequate public services is not politically or economically sustainable. It used to be said that Britain was trying to combine European levels of public provision with American levels of taxation. That is no longer the case. Figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that tax revenues in the United States are about 26.6 per cent of GDP, roughly ten percentage points lower than in Britain. The UK looks to have the worst of both worlds, with high and rising taxation but a state that falls short and, despite generous spending increases in recent years, it faces a squeeze that will put further pressure on services. It is not a happy combination. ‘‘ ’’ David Smith is Economics Editor of The Sunday Times [email protected] Katie Prescott is Technology Business Editor of The Times [email protected] Company bosses need help in getting off the ransom merry-go-round ‘The payment of online criminals only makes the threat landscape worse for everyone’

42 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Business The revival of Vodafone is “starting to bear fruit” according to its chief executive after the telecoms group reported a rise in service revenue helped by Germany, its biggest market, returning to growth. The FTSE 100 company — which is in the midst of a restructuring that Morrisons accused of pensions raid Isabella Fish Retail Editor Union leaders have accused Morrisons of “fleecing” its workers as it plans to cut its employer pension contributions for tens of thousands of staff. The supermarket chain wants to reduce its 5 per cent pension contribution to 3 per cent and to increase the amount that staff pay from 3 per cent to 5 per cent by 2025. The changes will affect 60,000 hourly paid employees. Senior managers and directors who are not hourly paid will not be affected. The company’s rationale is that its pensions contributions will increase under new legislation. The government is proposing to extend rights under automatic enrolment schemes in its pensions bill, which would mean that there would no longer be a lower earnings limit of £6,240. Morrisons said: “Colleagues currently contribute 3 per cent of their salary above £6,240 to their pension and the company contributes 5 per cent. The proposal is that in March 2024 this will move to 4 per cent contribution from both parties and in March 2025 to 5 per cent for colleagues and 3 per cent from the company. “There will be a formal consultation process lasting until early January 2024, but it’s important to note that the amount of money Morrisons is putting T he owner of Earls Court in London has promised to build fewer skyscrapers in an attempt to win support from local residents and councillors for a £6 billion redevelopment of the famous venue (Tom Howard writes). The Earls Court Development Company, which bought the 40- acre site for £425 million just before the pandemic, originally had intended to build 4,500 homes, ranging from affordable Earls Court set to have a lower profile Germany leads the way as Vodafone talks of recovery Alex Ralph includes a planned merger in Britain with Three, the sale of its Spanish business and large job cuts — announced a 4.2 per cent increase in group service revenue, a key industry benchmark, in the six months to the end of September, helped by price rises. Growth increased from 3.7 per cent in the first quarter to 4.7 per cent in the second. When stripping out Turkey, which is contending with hyperinflation, service revenue rose by 2.3 per cent during the first half. Total group revenue fell, however, by 4.3 per cent to €21.9 billion, weakened by the separation and stake-selling of Vantage Towers, its European infrastructure business, and of Vodafone Hungary and Ghana last year. Vodafone is one of the world’s biggest telecoms groups, but it has been hampered by the weight of its debts, intense competition, high costs and weakness in markets including Germany, where it has struggled since the €18.4 billion acquisition of cable assets from Liberty Global in 2019. It is in the process of consolidating and exiting markets to focus on Europe and Africa. Margherita Della Valle, 58, replaced Nick Read, 59, as its chief executive in April, amid investors’ frustrations over the speed of the overhaul. Vodafone reached a deal in June to merge its British business with Three, owned by CK Hutchison, the Hong Kong-based conglomerate. Last month it agreed a €5 billion sale of its Spanish business to Zegona Communications, a London-listed investment vehicle. In Italy, which remained in decline, albeit with a slight improvement quarter-on-quarter, Vodafone said it was looking at a range of options. The troublesome Italian market is among those that Vodafone believes would benefit from consolidation and where it is facing competition from Iliad. Xavier Niel, 56, the French telecoms billionaire and owner of Iliad, has built a stake in Vodafone. Della Valle, who has worked at Vodafone for about 30 years, said that the company had “delivered improved revenue growth in nearly all our markets” and that “transformation is progressing. Our focus on customers and simplifying our business is beginning to bear fruit, although much more needs to be done.” In the UK, which represents 15 per cent of group revenue, organic service revenue rose by 5.6 per cent, helped by a higher average customer base and annual price increases in its consumer business. In Germany, service revenue was down 0.1 per cent, with trading improving from a 1.3 per cent decrease in the first quarter to 1.1 per cent growth in the second as higher revenues per user were offset by customer losses. Vodafone reiterated its full-year forecasts, of earnings to be “broadly flat” at about €13.3 billion and of adjusted free cashflow of about €3.3 billion. Its adjusted earnings rose by 0.3 per cent to almost €6.4 billion in the first half of the year, but operating profit declined by 44.2 per cent to €1.7 billion owing to disposals and adverse foreign exchange rates. Shares in the group, which hit 20- year lows this year, rose in early trading on the London Stock Exchange, but closed down 4p, or 5.5 per cent, at 73¼p.

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 43 Business into colleague pensions will actually be going up when the auto enrolment changes come in.” However, A pensions expert said he “could not see how workers won’t be much of the research and development at the 69-year-old site will end. Pfizer said: “We are proud of our heritage of breakthrough science in the UK and we will retain a scientific presence in the UK including at our Discovery Park location in Sandwich.” Other roles at the site include analytical and testing laboratories and packaging and labelling. Pfizer said that “other functions at our Sandwich site will continue with a different size”. Over the years Pfizer has cut back its operations in Sandwich, which once employed 2,400 people. In 2011 it announced large job cuts and the following year it sold the freehold to the site to a private consortium. This has led to other life sciences companies operating on the site. Pfizer has racked up record sales in recent years and topped $100 billion last year, driven by the success of Comirnaty, the Covid-19 vaccine. However, the group announced a $3.5 billion cost-cutting programme last month, including unspecified job cuts, and fell to its first quarterly loss since 2019 as demand waned. It has also announced job cuts in the US and Ireland. Pfizer said yesterday that it was in “consultation with the affected colleagues” at Sandwich and would share information about the global programme “over the coming months”. rental flats to multimillion-pound penthouses. However, in an updated masterplan, the company has said that it will look to build 4,000 homes, with only one building — a block of flats — being more than 31 storeys high. It had envisaged that there would be four skyscrapers, but two have had their heights reduced, while another has been dropped altogether. The tweaks are part of a wider commitment to reduce the total amount of development by 10 per cent after “open dialogue with a broad spectrum of community groups and stakeholders”. Rob Heasman, 59, the company’s chief executive, said: “There is no other central London site like this. This is our chance to build sustainably and innovatively for the future.” In addition to the 4,000 homes, Earls Court will have 2.5 million sq ft of workspace, which will support 12,000 new jobs, and 200,000 sq ft of retail and dining space. Three new venues, including a 600-seat performance area, will act as “cultural anchors”. Instead of buildings, local residents had said they wanted more open space. The development company has responded by increasing the amount of land given over to parks, squares and gardens by a fifth. It expects to submit a planning application next summer. If all goes to plan, it would hope to begin the initial phase of construction in 2026, with the first residents moving in before the end of the decade. The updated scheme for Earls Court in London includes more green space than had been planned originally worse off. The rationale is all smoke and mirrors.” Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, said the grocer was “planning to fleece workers by hiking their pension contributions while slashing its own. This is blatant profiteering and a disgraceful new low for this well-known supermarket. “The pension schemes are in surplus and the company is in profit. There is no justification for this attack. Unite will support its members in whatever action they choose to take and strike action is a distinct possibility.” Morrisons was bought by Clayton Dubilier & Rice, the American private equity firm, for £7 billion at the end of 2021. The deal left the retailer with £6.6 billion of debt. Its underlying earnings fell by 10.7 per cent to £394 million in the six months to the end of April. 6 Asda reported a quarterly slowdown in sales growth, as poor summer weather hit demand for clothing and general merchandise. Like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, rose by 2.8 per cent over the third quarter of 2023, compared with the same period last year, with revenue of £5.4 billion for the period. That represented a significant slowdown after the group achieved a 9.6 per cent sales increase in the second quarter. Asda also said that it had repaid a £200 million loan facility used to buy 132 petrol stations and adjoined shops. Pfizer to shed half of workforce at Kent site Alex Ralph The US drugs company Pfizer plans to cut about 500 roles at its site in Kent, more than half the workforce there, in the latest retrenchment from a facility behind the discovery of Viagra. Pfizer plans to end its so-called pharmaceutical sciences small molecule operations in Sandwich, which includes development labs, pilot manufacturing of active pharmaceutical ingredients and drug manufacturing. Work will be consolidated at two other existing sites in Connecticut in the US and Chennai in India. Pfizer employs about 940 people at Sandwich and the proposals mean that

44 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Business Unit Trusts 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 | Wednesday November 15 2023 45 Business People in Margate protest in 2021 against repeated releases of sewage into the sea off the Kent coast by Southern Water Southern Water wants its customers to swallow a minimum 55 per cent increase in their household bills to shore up its finances and fund environmental clean-up plans. The company, which serves 4.6 million customers in Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex and Hampshire, also will use some of the proceeds from raising the average annual household bill from £439 to £681 to restart payouts to its shareholders. It has put forward the proposition to Ofwat, the industry regulator that has regularly blown the whistle on Southern’s mismanagement. The charge sheet against Southern over the past decade is long, culminating in its pleading guilty to deliberate, illegal discharges of raw sewage in areas stretching from the oyster beds of north Kent to the pleasure beaches of the south coast. Its record of environmental failures helped to push Southern close to collapse in 2021. It escaped a fall into administration only after a £1.65 billion bailout by Macquarie, the Australian powerhouse investor. Southern could not afford the £350 million in penalties it faced without an emergency financial injection. Lawrence Gosden, Southern Water’s chief executive, justified its customers having to dig deep to help to keep the business going by saying that “we are not here running a normal company. This is a turnaround job.” He said the cash from Macquarie would not save the company, but was enough to put Southern in a “credible position” through to the next five-year regulatory period starting in April 2025, when Southern resets its funding in a new settlement with Ofwat. Part of Macquarie’s £1.65 billion has cleared outstanding fines, while £300 million has been used to reduce borrowings on £5.6 billion of net debt. The other £1 billion is ensuring that Southern delivers its investment commitments and pays wages and energy bills through to April 2025. For the 2025 reset, Southern wants to raise and spend £7.8 billion, about four times as much as for any previous five years. Of that figure , £3.3 billion covers the operating and maintenance costs of the business. The other £4.5 billion is for what Gosden calls an environmental plan like nothing seen before. It will be spent on preventing storm overflows — the excess rain that floods sewers, leading to discharges of effluent — through works from civil reengineering of streets and roads to the introduction of smart water butts in homes catching water from roofs and allowing natural soakaway. Investment is Household bills set to soar under Southern Water turnaround plan Robert Lea Industrial Editor needed to upgrade infrastructure to prevent mechanical failure and to cope with the phosphates and sulphates that enter the system from farming and household products. “We want to take on the surface water at the head of the problem, diverting it straight into the environment as clean water rather than letting it go into a sewer where it gets dirty and then overflows,” Gosden, 54, said. On water delivery, Southern says it will invest in securing future supply by building water recycling plants and by funding the £340 million construction at Havant Thicket in Hampshire of Britain’s first new reservoir in more than 30 years. “We are planning significant strategic investment oriented toward the most environmentally sensitive areas,” Gosden said. “The system as it is designed cannot cope.” To raise that £7.8 billion, Southern wants Ofwat to allow it to increase bills to bring in £4.5 billion from customers. The average household bill will leap from £439 to at least £555 from April 2025 and then to at least £681 in 2030, the latter figures being subject to upward revision depending on the rate of inflation. It said another £500 million would come from not paying the level of dividends it might ordinarily distribute. Crucially and potentially controversially, it is setting aside £150 million to reward shareholders, the vast majority of which will go to Macquarie, which now owns 82 per cent of the business. The other £2.8 billion of the £7.8 billion will be raised on debt markets. Gosden has been chief executive of Southern for the past 18 months, having started his career at the company as a pipe-laying subcontractor before becoming a graduate engineer. He subsequently took up a senior position at Thames Water, where he got to know Macquarie, its then owner, whose stewardship of Britain’s largest water company up to 2017 has been muchcriticised, not least for the £1.1 billion of dividends it extracted. Of the pain that Southern expects households to bear, he said: “This is investment to get ahead of the game and protect against the impact of climate change. Southern has been an appalling industry performer and that is what the current turnaround plan is addressing. But to get the company to where it should be, the level of future change is transacted through the natural process of raising customer bills. Ofwat will thoroughly test whether customers will support it, its cost and efficiency and whether it is needed in the way we say it is needed.” For people who will struggle to pay the increased bills, Gosden said he expected Southern to help with discounts to up to 180,000 customers. That effectively would be paid for by other customers, who can expect a £15-a-year levy on their bills. Lawrence Gosden, chief executive of Southern Water

46 Wednesday November 15 2023 | the times Business Markets news in brief Axiom Ince arrests The Serious Fraud Office has started an investigation into Axiom Ince, the collapsed law firm, with the arrest of seven individuals and raids on nine sites. The operation involved 80 investigators from the SFO, who were accompanied by police officers. Axiom Ince was closed down last month by the Solicitors Regulation Authority when it emerged that about £66 million in clients’ money was missing. Nick Ephgrave, director of the fraud office, said: “There are a number of significant questions that need to be answered.” BT cuts pension deficit The shortfall in BT’s pension fund has shrunk from £8 billion to £3.7 billion, according to a triennial review. The telecoms group, which has put in £4.26 billion of repair payments, said that the plan would be fully funded by 2030 as it pledged to pay £780 million each year. While other defined-benefit pension funds have benefited from rising gilt yields, the BT scheme has received less of a boost because it was hedged. BT shares fell 2.7 per cent, or 3½p, to 119½p. Orsted executives leave Two senior executives at Orsted, which operates much of the North Sea’s wind industry, have left with immediate effect two weeks after the Danish wind farm developer reported a $5.6 billion writedown in the United States. The search for replacements for Daniel Lerup, the chief financial officer, and Richard Hunter, the chief operating officer, will begin immediately. Mads Nipper, the chief executive, said: “We need new and different capabilities.” Imperial lifts dividend Imperial Brands, the owner of Lambert & Butler cigarettes, is on course to have returned almost half its market value to investors over four years. The tobacco group declared a 4 per cent increase in its annual dividend to 146.82p a share alongside its fullyear results and confirmed plans for a £1.1 billion stock buyback. It said it would have returned about £7.3 billion to shareholders over the four years to the end of next September. Its shares rose 13½p, or 0.8 per cent, to £18.01½. 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. leases were agreed ahead of passing rents. Liquidity is not a problem. The company has £2.1 billion in cash and undrawn debt facilities, with no need to refinance until 2026. Issuing a green bond and tapping more of its variable borrowings meant its average cost of debt rose from 2.7 per cent to 3.3 per cent, which is still a respectable rate. Refinancing debt, issued at ultra-low rates before last year, will eventually weigh on earnings, though. Land Securities has sold £2.5 billion of a planned £4 billion in disposals being targeted. Over the next six months to a year the business will focus on selling its continue to decline in value, but Land Securities has helped itself by tilting its office estate in a more favourable direction. Offices in London’s West End account for about a quarter of its office portfolio, down from half at the onset of pandemic lockdowns in March 2020. Occupancy rates have held up better in the west of the capital compared with the City. The underlying value of Land Securities’ West End offices fell by 3.1 per cent in the first half of the year, compared with a 9.3 per cent fall in the Square Mile portfolio. Big retail assets, such as shopping centres, fell by 1.3 per cent. However, for the first time in six years, new T he boss of Land Securities thinks the bottom could be in sight for prime offices. Investors, however, do not agree. The steep discount embedded into the shares remains at 28 per cent of the commercial landlord’s net asset value at the end of last month. The net asset value fell another 5 per cent in the latest six-month period to 899p a share. Analysts think the trough will come in March, at 876p a share. Both its office and retail portfolios Emma Powell Tempus Buy, sell or hold: today’s best share tips Events and Informa make a comeback S ome industries may be struggling to convince the market of their relevance after the pandemic, but Informa is making its case successfully. The events juggernaut has upgraded its annual guidance for a second time on the heels of a faster recovery from the global lockdowns that caused its profits to more than halve in 2020. Revenue this year is expected to be north of £3.15 billion, 3 per cent better than the £3.05 billion previously anticipated. An upgrade of much higher magnitude was issued for adjusted operating profit, which is now expected to be upwards of £840 million, from £790 million. That should leave revenue and profits ahead of 2019 levels, even after the sale of its Pharma Intelligence business last year. Progress has been reflected in the FTSE 100 constituent’s valuation. The shares trade at more than 15 times forward earnings, in line with those before the pandemic. The £1.9 billion disposal of Intelligence has left Informa bettercapitalised and more focused. Trade events account for almost 80 per cent of revenue. Maintaining a dominant market position is key if events are to avoid being seen as dispensable to trade attendees. The upgrade to sales forecasts is reassuring as companies have tightened their budgets. A shaky wider economic picture remains a risk, but Informa does have a degree of visibility over future revenue. Between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of its events are sold a year in advance. About £1 billion of revenues for next year are in the bag, which would equate to almost 30 per cent of the consensus prediction. And the indicators are promising. Its core events business has rebounded by 65 per cent in the first ten months of the year, a consequence of the reopening of economies worldwide. With the pandemic skew removed next year, analysts expect a rise in revenue of more than 9 per cent. The timing of the Intelligence sale proved fortuitous. The transaction price translated to 29 times earnings. It is now buying businesses at an average earnings multiple nine. Informa is capable of bulking out its business through bolt-on deals. Leverage is expected to be 1.3 times earnings before interest, taxes and other deductions at the end of the year, compared with a range of Staging a recovery Share price Source: FactSet 2020 2021 2022 2023 0 200 400 600 800 1,000p Adjusted operating profit £m 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 guidance 2024 forecast £757m 268 388 535 840+ 927 Revenue £bn 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 guidance 2024 forecast £2.89bn 1.66 1.8 2.39 3.15+ 3.41 between 2 and 2.5 times before the pandemic. Free cashflow is expected to be upwards of £575 million this year, another reason that the share buyback programme was extended by £150 million, taking total returns to £1.15 billion by March. Taylor & Francis, its academic publishing business, operates in an inherently low-growth market. The target is to improve annual revenue growth by 4 per cent organically. In the first ten months it edged closer towards that, at 3.2 per cent. Technology groups are still circumspect over spending, which means that revenue for events within the sector is growing in the low single digits. That is weaker than guidance for a mid-to-high-singledigit increase at the half-year. Group margins are still behind the levels before Covid, due to come in at 26.7 per cent on base guidance this year, versus 32.3 per cent in 2019. The sale of the higher-margin Intelligence division is one reason, but so is the expansion to new countries, which is a drag on profits in the early stages. Informa also has been prioritising attendee volumes over raising prices, while cost inflation has risen rapidly. There is scope for margins to fatten as newer areas mature and inflation eases. The consensus for margins has been pegged to 28 per cent next year and 30 per cent by 2025. There is also a fair degree of operating leverage, which means that growth in revenue should have a bigger impact on profits. ADVICE Buy WHY An improvement in margins could help to push the shares higher hotels and leisure assets, which have been slower to recover in value since the pandemic. There is progress, but fundamental questions around the future need for office space have not gone away. The discount attached to Land Securities versus its forward asset value long preceded the pandemic and persisted for eight years. It will take signs of real growth to substantially close that. ADVICE Hold WHY The NAV continues to fall, justifying caution informa Market cap £9.65bn Revenue growth (10 months) 31.7% land securities Dividend yield 6.1% Half-year loss £193m

the times | Wednesday November 15 2023 47 Markets Business 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 Monday. Money rates % Sterling spot and forward rates W orking from home is slowing the delivery of infrastructure projects, a leading industry figure has warned (Lottie Hayton writes). Nick Smallwood, chief executive of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, a government body that supports the delivery of big projects, told the Treasury select committee on infrastructure that the fashion for people to work at home was extending the design phase of significant projects by nine to twelve months. Smallwood said that remote working and inflationary pressures after the pandemic had contributed to the authority describing the first phase of HS2 as “unachievable”. The authority’s rating came before the government announced that it was axing the Birmingham to Manchester leg of HS2 after the cost of the phase rose by a fifth in less than six months, but he said phase one of the line was still “flashing red”. Sir John Armitt, Jazz global licensing deal swings IP Group shares Jessica Newman Market report T he prize for runaway best share price performer in the mid-cap index yesterday went to IP Group after one company in its investment portfolio bagged an exclusive global licensing deal worth up to $770 million. Shares in IP, which invests in emerging ventures spun out of university laboratories, rose by 5¼p, or 11.4 per cent, to 51p after it was revealed that Autifony Therapeutics had signed an agreement with the Nasdaq-listed Jazz Pharmaceuticals. The investment group owns a 26.3 per cent undiluted beneficial holding, valued at £4.6 million, in Autifony, which was spun off from GSK in 2011. It is focused on the development of two ion channel targets that treat neurological disorders and other serious brain diseases. Autifony will receive an upfront payment from Jazz and will be eligible for royalties from future sales. London’s markets rose after a bigger than expected drop in US inflation last month bolstered bets that the Federal Reserve has finished raising interest rates. Despite a sharp rise in the value of the pound weighing on the FTSE 100’s dollar-earning constituents, the index broke out of the red to finish 14.64 points, or 0.2 per cent, higher at 7,440.47. The more UK-focused FTSE 250 rose by 622.48 points, or 3.5 per cent, to 18,536.13, its best day since mid-July. Rate-sensitive stocks were catapulted up the risers’ board, with Ocado rising 51¾p, or 10.1 per cent, to 564½p; Segro by 49½p, or 6.4 per cent, to 816¾p; and Barratt Developments by 22¾p, or 5.1 per cent, to 473p. DCC was another standout performer, adding 582p, or 12.5 per cent, to reach a 15-month high of £52.48 after the Irish conglomerate unveiled its largest acquisition in Germany alongside strong half-year results. Less spectacular but still impressive, Convatec advanced 10¾p, or 5.2 per cent, to 219½p after the medical equipment group upgraded its annual organic revenue growth forecasts. Elsewhere, shares in Oxford Instruments rose 131p, or 6.8 per cent, to £20.55 after the scientific instruments maker boosted its interim dividend by 6.5 per cent to 4.9p a share, having delivered strong revenue and profit growth in the first six months of the year. Among the tiddlers, the appetite for DP Poland increased as the business, a Domino’s Pizza franchiser in Poland, reported robust sales growth in the third quarter. The update sent the shares 1¼p, or 15.6 per cent, higher to 9¼p. The market also liked what it read into half-year results from Cake Box, which revealed higher profits and revenues and a bigger cash balance. Its shares rose 6½p, or 4.6 per cent, to 146p. Not all of yesterday’s updates went down a storm, though. Vesuvius fell 10½p, or 2.5 per cent, to 412½p after the company, which supplies products to the steel and foundry industries, said there had been a “gradual deterioration in most foundry end markets outside India”. M&G failed to get involved in the wider market rally after RBC reduced its rating on the fund managerto “sector perform”, dragging the shares down 4¾p, or 2.3 per cent, to 202¾p. Entain suffered a similar fate, falling 10¾p, or 1.2 per cent, to 880¾p after Jefferies downgraded it to a “hold”. Small-cap investors dumped shares in Renalytix after the Aim-listed developer of diagnostic systems for kidney disease reported revenue of only $459,000 for the first quarter, half of what it generated in the same period last year. The shares closed at a record low of 27½p, having declined 10p, or 26.7 per cent. Wall Street report Inflation figures being lower than expected boosted hopes the Federal Reserve can tame consumer prices without hurting the economy, a socalled Goldilocks scenario. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 489.83 points, or 1.4 per cent, to 34,827.70. The day’s biggest movers chairman of the National Infrastructure Commission, also said the planning system was “not working. “We haven’t built a reservoir since the mid-1980s. You’ve got to go through extensive planning issues. There’s always been resistance,” he said. Armitt said there were five times as many judicial reviews of planning decisions compared with 2010 and a 60 per cent increase in the time it took to get approval. Key projects ‘held up by remote staff’ Babcock finally off the defensive engineering B abcock International will pay its first dividend this decade as a three-year turnaround of the defence contractor nears completion (Robert Lea writes). The recovery has been led by David Lockwood, 61, the chief executive, who joined the business in 2020. Within months, Babcock had plunged more than £1 billion into the red as Lockwood tore apart its accounting, writing off the value of previous acquisitions and recognising losses on certain contracts. A thousand managers were laid off and the new boss criticised a poisonous culture at the shipbuilder and submarine servicing group, which also provides aerial firefighting in Italy. Yesterday it reported a 27 per cent increase in operating profits to £154 million on revenues up marginally at £2.1 billion in the six months to the end of September, as profit margins, at 7.1 per cent, moved towards the 8 per cent target. It is paying an interim dividend of 1.7p. Lockwood said he expected dividends to rise as the company hits margin targets. He said its biggest strategic move was its growing collaboration with HII, an American shipbuilder. Shares in Babcock rose by 15¾p, 3.9 per cent, to 425½p. The contractor has been fighting fires within the company — and in Italy The first phase of HS2 was “unachievable” because of the extent of homeworking

48 Wednesday November 15 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 v Health 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 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 | Wednesday November 15 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 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 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 v 12 month Price High Low Company (p) +/- Yld% P/E v 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 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 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