..and other animal welfare issues.

Lord Goldsmith, a Tory peer and former environment minister, said anybody who “cares even one jot” about the issue should choose another party, claiming the prime minister “could not care less”.

Full text reads:

The Conservative Party’s Action Plan for Animal Welfare promised the greatest shake up & improvement for generations.  It was signed off by Boris Johnson’s govt and was happening. 

We had already begun legislating to ban for example: 

 -live exports of farm animals;  

-keeping monkeys as pets;  

-importing hunting trophies from endangered species;  

-the import of shark fins.  

We were introducing measures to clamp down on pet smuggling;  

The #ActionForAnimals plan also committed us to addressing issues like cages for farm birds, farrowing crates for pigs, advertising of cruel animal experiences overseas, imports of fur and fois gras, introducing closed seasons for UK wildlife like hares.

When he was looking for votes, Rishi Sunak promised to deliver the plan and woolly headed conservative MPs chose to believe him (or pretended to).

Today almost every single part of that plan has been ditched … by Rishi Sunak. 

The stark truth is that anyone who cares even one jot about animal welfare will need to look elsewhere at the next election.  The current PM simply could not care less.

Martin Shaw seatonmatters.org 

In 2016, I added up the contributions that the local community had made to the hospital. It came to over £2.8 million in constant prices, which represented over £4 million at 2016 prices. I have now used the Bank of England’s inflation calculator to produced an updated estimate. The local donations amount to £5,251,830 at September 2023 prices – and that’s not counting donations since 2016.

A hospital built with over 50 per cent local contributions should never have been handed to a company like NHS Property Services which charges the NHS extortionate rents. Morally it belongs to the local community.

If the NHS can’t use a whole wing of the hospital – a wing that was built 100 per cent by local donations – NHSPS should give it back to us, free of charge.

Labour has written to the standards watchdog to ask whether Rishi Sunak should have declared that companies co-owned by his wife were given £2m through his government scheme to help startups in the pandemic.

Rowena Mason www.theguardian.com 

Lucy Powell, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, wrote to the commissioner for standards to ask whether they should have been declared in parliamentary proceedings, after the Guardian reported that four companies linked to Akshata Murty had received investments from the Future Fund.

None of Murty’s investments that benefited from the Future Fund appear publicly on Sunak’s register of ministerial interests and he did not reveal them when mentioning the scheme in the House of Commons.

Critics have raised concerns over a lack of transparency and the potential for a perceived conflict of interest given Sunak launched the scheme to help startups – a sector in which his wife is a known investor – despite warnings that the fund may not represent value for money.

Murty had a financial interest in Carousel Ventures, which owns an underwear business, as well as Mrs Wordsmith, an education company; Digme Fitness, a gym business; and The New Craftsmen, a furniture firm – all of which received loans from the Future Fund that later converted into equity stakes.

In her letter, Powell asked Daniel Greenberg, the commissioner, whether Sunak should have declared the interests when talking about the Future Fund during parliamentary proceedings.

“Members are required to declare any financial interests which satisfy the test of relevance, including indirect financial interests, such as the financial interests of a spouse or partner, or another family member,” she said.

“Despite this, the prime minister has talked about the Future Fund multiple times in the House of Commons without declaring his wife’s interests relating to businesses benefiting from this fund.”

Sunak launched the Future Fund to help emerging businesses during the pandemic but it has since been heavily criticised. The scheme allowed any eligible company to access funding if they had match funding from investors and passed required checks, so neither ministers nor the British Business Bank had a role in selecting which firms got money.

Powell highlighted that Sunak had been caught failing to abide by the rules of the house before when he did not mention his wife’s investment in a firm called Koru Kids when it was due to benefit from a policy announced in the budget.

“The public will rightly be concerned by conflict of interest, given the prime minister set up a £1bn Future Fund to help start ups against civil service advice and then four companies linked to his wife benefited,” she said.

“I would be grateful if you could investigate this situation, and report on whether the code has been breached, particularly: should the Future Fund loans to companies linked to the prime minister’s wife have been declared orally by the Rt Hon Member for Richmond (Yorks) when he mentioned the Future Fund in the house?”

A government spokesperson said: “Labour are showing their true anti-business colours in attacking a scheme that supported a range of businesses through the pandemic. Labour backed the Future Fund when it was introduced and were aware of the eligibility criteria for the scheme, so this is a deeply cynical U-turn on their position.”

The ministerial register declares that Murty owns Catamaran Ventures and is a venture capital investor with a number of shareholdings, without specifying them.

Sunak’s adviser on ministerial interests, whom he appointed this year, has said declaring all shareholdings would be an “excessive degree of intrusion into the private affairs of ministers that would be unreasonable, particularly in respect of their family members”.

However, in April this year Sunak had to declare that his wife had a shareholding in Koru Kids. The standards commissioner also found that Sunak should have declared the interest when asked about it in a select committee hearing.

Plans for a bill have been dropped for fear of Conservative MPs being seen to vote for more water pollution in the run-up to a general election, in a development first reported by ITV.

But if they get back in they can always do another reverse ferret. – Owl

Ministers shelve new plan to ditch nutrient rules on river pollution

The government has quietly abandoned plans for a second attempt at killing off river protection rules in an effort to increase housebuilding.

Adam Vaughan www.thetimes.co.uk 

In August Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, announced that he wanted to ditch the “nutrient neutrality” rules which mean housebuilders in 27 catchments across England cannot win planning permission without offsetting extra pollution from new homes. Officials say the rules are blocking about 16,500 new homes a year.

However, the plan was defeated in a House of Lords vote last month after Labour united with Greens, Lib Dems and cross-party peers.

Less than a fortnight later the government revealed it was planning to resurrect efforts to kill off the protections, by drawing up a new Bill to pass in parliament next year.

That second effort to ditch nutrient neutrality rules is now dead, according to a government source. They said that plans for a bill had been dropped for fear of Conservative MPs being seen to vote for more water pollution in the run-up to a general election, in a development first reported by ITV.

Polling suggests that more than half of the public say the government’s handling of sewage pollution in rivers and seas will influence how they vote next year.

Scrapping the rules would have meant shifting the cost of the extra pollution from housebuilders on to taxpayers. Preserving the regulations also marks a victory for The Times Clean it Up campaign, which has called on the government to resist pressure to drop the rules for the 74 local authorities where they apply.

Charles Watson, chairman of River Action, said: “The prime minister has finally listened to the calls of the public who simply can’t face the prospect of any more pollution of our rivers. Nobody was fooled by government spin that nutrient neutrality laws were mere EU red tape’. They are fundamental and entirely reasonable protections which ensure that the building of new housing doesn’t add additional pollution load to our rivers which are already under huge environmental stress from both sewage discharges and agricultural run-off.”

Housebuilders are privately disappointed by the move. Labour has said it would reform rather than scrap the nutrient neutrality rules, promising to boost offsetting to enable new homes to be built while protecting rivers.

Matthew Pennycock, shadow minister for housing and planning, said: “If the government have indeed abandoned their reckless approach to the nutrient neutrality challenge we welcome it. We can unlock these new homes without damaging our environment.”

Meanwhile, the High Court has approved a challenge by campaigners against the Environment Agency over what they say is its failure to stop chicken farms polluting the River Wye. Demand for cheap chickens has been blamed for the intensification of poultry farms along the river, with the birds’ manure washing into the river and causing nutrient pollution. In May officials downgraded the status of the Wye to “unfavourable-declining”.

Watson, whose group was granted a judicial review, said: “We will vigorously make the case that a prime cause for the recent ecological collapse of the River Wye is the Environment Agency’s decision to slavishly follow Defra’s guidance to not enforce critical provisions of the 2018 Farming Rules for Water. These critically important regulations state that fertilisers and manures must not be spread on soils already over-saturated with excess nutrients.”

A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesperson said:‘We are considering next steps so we can explore how we can unlock the homes we need.”

Jeremy Hunt ‘set to quit as MP’ in fear of a Portillo moment

Jeremy Hunt is expected to stand down as an MP before the next election, according to senior Conservatives, who say the chancellor is aware he could suffer a “Michael Portillo” moment on polling day.

Toby Helm www.theguardian.com

Hunt has already put himself forward and been selected for the new Surrey constituency of Godalming and Ash, after his South West Surrey seat was dissolved and split into two under boundary changes.

His spokesman said on Friday that his position remained that he would stand. But with his party in increasingly dire straits as byelection defeats mount up, and Labour’s poll lead solidifying, several senior sources nationally and locally have told the Observer that they expect him to announce he is stepping down much nearer to the election.

Rumours have been swirling among Surrey Conservatives and at Westminster to this effect, amid cataclysmic predictions of wipeout for several serving cabinet ministers after more than 13 years in power.

One former minister said that with a Labour government in prospect, the options for Hunt of fighting the new seat were not attractive, whether he won or lost: “Barring a miracle [of the Tories winning and forming another government], I can’t see Jeremy wanting to be in opposition under a new leader. And if he loses he will be the biggest scalp on election night. That is not a departure anyone would want. People in Surrey are saying he will not stand.”

Were Hunt to stand down, it would raise questions as to whether he could remain chancellor in the run-up to the general election.

Hunt had a successful business career before entering politics and would expect to be elevated to the House of Lords were he to leave the Commons, allowing him to retain a political role alongside his commercial interests.

Last weekend the Liberal Democrats confirmed that Hunt’s old political adversary in Surrey, Paul Follows, the Liberal Democrat leader on Waverley council, had been chosen as its candidate for the Godalming and Ash seat.

Minutes after being selected, Follows told the local party that he would “work to ensure that the Portillo moment in the public mindset will become the Hunt moment”.

Another former Tory minister said: “Of course Jeremy cannot say so now, but I think he won’t stand. It is not uncommon to pull out having said you will stand, citing changes of circumstances. Short of turning things round and winning, and him remaining chancellor, which is not exactly likely, there is nothing in it for him.”

Follows told the Observer: “Jeremy Hunt is right to be concerned about losing the contest, and certainly right to be worried about ending up on the backbenches if somehow he won it.”

Recent polls have suggested that several cabinet ministers including Hunt, party chairman Greg Hands, the deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden, and leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt – as well as Hunt – could lose their seats at the next election.

A special MRP poll published recently by the Observer, which took into account the new boundaries that the next election will be fought on, suggested Labour would win 420 seats – equating to a landslide 190-seat majority.

According to the poll the Tories would take just 149 seats and the Lib Dems 23, with the result similar to Labour’s 1997 landslide when Tony Blair’s party secured a majority of 179 with 418 seats. The Conservatives would lose all their “red wall” seats and 20 behind the “blue wall”, which would include ones in Surrey.

Hunt has served as MP for South West Surrey since 2005 when he won with a majority of 5,711. In the 2010 election he increased this to 16,318 and then further to 28,556 in 2015. However, in the 2017 election his majority was cut to 21,590 and then to 8,817 in 2019 as the Lib Dem vote increased.

As chancellor he is currently under pressure from Tory MPs to improve the economy before polling day, and deliver on prime minister Rishi Sunak’s pledges to cut inflation and reduce debt.