Devon airline Flybe has finally been dissolved leaving £700m of debts unpaid. The Exeter-based carrier was at one time a million-passenger operation but it fell into administration in early 2020 and has now finally been wound up.

William Telford www.devonlive.com

Documents filed at Companies House reveal the firm, now called FBE Realisations 2021 Ltd, ceased to exist on March 18. A newer company using the name Flybe, based in Birmingham, is still in administration but ceased trading in January last year.

Administrators for FBE Realisations 2021 Ltd revealed in filed documents last October that there were more than 935,460 claims from unsecured creditors amounting to a jaw-dropping £684m. Following a hearing in the High Court a notice was sent to all creditors telling them they would not receive any money.

A further court hearing last month approved the dissolution of the company. Secured creditors were paid, however, with £29.2m going to lenders, and £3.1m to BRAL Trustee for a fixed charge on the airline’s training academy.

BRAL Trustees was actually owed £96.5m and was one of the largest unsecured creditors and ended up hugely out of pocket. Meanwhile 2,066 preferential creditors and four Redundancy Payment Service claims were paid, totalling £2.7m.

Investigations into all Flybe Ltd/FBE Realisations directors, shadow directors or de-facto directors, for their conduct in the three years before the administration, concluded and no action is being taken against them.

Flybe/FBE Realisations filed for administration on March 5, 2020, and ceased all operations. The airline, which once accounted for more than a third of UK domestic flights, had been struggling for months but claimed the onset of the coronavirus >Covid pandemic was the final straw. The company had been set up in 1979 as Jersey European Airways, was rebranded British European in 2000 and then Flybe in 2002.

The company was taken over by Connect Airways in 2019, but the following year it emerged Flybe was in financial trouble with mounting losses and it sought a £100m Government bailout. When this didn’t come it collapsed with EY Parthenon appointed as administrators.

Meanwhile, a hedge fund-backed company called Thyme Opco Ltd acquired the business and some assets from the administrators and renamed itself Flybe Ltd in April 2021, commonly referred to as “Flybe 2” or “new Flybe” by some observers. A nominal consideration of £1 was paid, with some surviving employees transferring to the new company.

The new Flybe was based at Birmingham Airport, with crew and aircraft at Belfast City and engineers at Exeter Airport. But it lasted just 10 months.

When it collapsed, administrators at Interpath Advisory tried to sell it as a going concern. They wanted to sell shares based on the value of lucrative Heathrow and Amsterdam landing slots, the most valuable assets.

Some of these slots had been transferred from the original Flybe. No money was paid when they moved over to the new company, However, moves by Interpath to sell “new Flybe” didn’t work and they decided to wind down the business.

Administrators for the original Flybe, at EY Parthenon, tried to pursue the new company for cash but when it ceased trading on January 28 last year and went into administration it left debts of £82.6m. It meant there was no hope of any payout for the unsecured creditors of the original company.

committees.parliament.uk 

As many as eight million people face being disenfranchised at the next election due to an electoral registration system which is neither effective nor efficient, says the cross-party Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee in a report published today.

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• Find all publications related to this inquiry, including oral and written evidence

The report finds that the current state of the electoral registration system, which governs local elections in England and UK general elections, needs urgent review.

The report finds that there have been notable issues with the practical implementation of recent electoral registration reforms, including voter ID which left individuals without the right ID being prevented from voting and only a limited number of forms of ID being permitted. The report disagrees with the Government’s view on the adequacy of the list of accepted photo ID and believes it should be widened to include other forms, such as emergency services passes and non-London travel passes.

Clive Betts, Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC) Committee, said:

“Elections are the cornerstone of our democracy and yet we are burdened by a system which is both ineffective and inefficient, where millions of people are disenfranchised because they are incorrectly registered or not on the electoral register. In the year of a general election, this is a damning indictment of the UK’s electoral registration arrangements and a threat to the rights of British voters.

“Our voter registration system is creaking. Recent changes such as voter ID have been tacked onto a Victorian era system which is failing voters, political parties, and election officials. We need a major review of our election arrangements to boost voter registration and to ensure our elections are seen as credible and legitimate. It is a major and fundamental defect in our democratic system that many millions of UK citizens face being unable to make their voice heard at election time.”

The report recognises that certain groups, such as young people, renters, ethnic minorities, and those in lower socio-economic groups are significantly less likely to be registered to vote. The Committee were also told that some disabled people do not feel supported to register to vote, particularly struggling with the lack of variety in communication channels.

The report recommends a series of steps to help tackle under-registration, including involving schools and bodies such as the Department for Work & Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs, Driver Vehicle and Licensing Agency, and HM Passport Office in signposting voter registration. The report also recommends that registering to vote be signposted when national insurance numbers are issued to citizens who reach sixteen years of age as a way of ensuring that more young people are entered on the electoral register.

The report highlights the importance for local authorities and Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to understand communication and access needs to ensure that people with disabilities are not shut out of the electoral process. The report finds it totally unacceptable that local authorities are contacting people without taking into account their communication needs.

The report also calls for the Government to move towards an opt in automated voter registration system to help ensure that voters are not disenfranchised.

The report notes the current strains on the electoral registration system, including the loss of electoral staff and expertise. The report also expresses concern at the pressures on the registration system caused by event led registration, a surge of applications in the pre-election period when voting is at the forefront of voters’ minds. The report warns that election officials may struggle to cope with these pressures at the next General Election, given that, following the Elections Act 2022, there are now additionally up to 3.4 million British citizens who live overseas who can register to vote.

The report references the Electoral Commission’s 2023 report, “Electoral registers in the UK”, which found that completeness of the registers in the UK is at 86%. ‘Accuracy’ looks at the number of false entries on the electoral registers and is currently at 88%. This means that potentially as many as eight million people were not correctly registered at their current address and people may be registered twice inadvertently.  The completeness of the electoral registers in Great Britain is 86%.   The Commission explained that ” if a UK general election was called now, around 14% of the eligible population would not be able to vote.”

The Committee’s report notes the example of Canada, where the system of electoral registration is broadly comparable to the UK’s as, unlike in many other countries, the UK and Canada do not have a civil population register from which electoral registers are derived. The Canadian system has resulted in electoral registers with considerably higher rates of accuracy and completeness than in the UK.

Just to confirm that Simon did indeed vote 10 times to remove the Lord’s amendments to the “Safety of Rwanda” bill.

In the coming weeks he is likely to do his masters’ bidding again and again. He doesn’t seem to have learned from voting down the Lord’s amendment to stop sewage pollution.

The Rwanda policy has been analysed by the Institute for Public Policy Research. They think it could now cost £3.9bn over five years. (See below)

To put this in perspective: this is the sort of sum being talked about to compensate the “Waspi” women hit by pension age rise.

(Which no one expects to happen any time soon).

Is it time to call in the Minister for “Common Sense”?

On second thoughts – possibly not. She seems too busy spending your money in other ways! – Owl

Rwanda policy could cost £3.9bn over 5 years

www.ft.com 

The true cost of Rishi Sunak’s plan to remove asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda could reach up to £3.9bn over five years, according to analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research.

The think-tank on Monday said the price of the prime minister’s scheme, when upfront payments to Kigali and operational expenses were included, could be up to £230,000 per person, depending on how long they stayed in the African nation.

This compared with an average of about £55,000 over two years that the government spends on accommodating asylum seekers while claims are processed in the UK, the IPPR said.

“Aside from the ethical, legal and practical objections, the Rwanda scheme is exceptionally poor value for money,” said Marley Morris, IPPR associate director and author of the report, describing the expense as “eye-watering”.

Sunak is seeking to pass legislation, which returns to the Commons this week, that declares Rwanda a “safe country” for asylum seekers to overcome objections from the Supreme Court, which last year ruled the scheme unlawful.  

The prime minister has made “stopping the boats” that carry migrants across the Channel from France a priority and hopes his deal to remove those entering the UK without prior permission will deter such crossings.

The final cost of the scheme, if Sunak’s bill succeeds, will depend on the number of people removed to Rwanda and the duration of their stay.

Total payments to remove the 20,000 or so migrants who have arrived irregularly in the UK since last July, when legislation barring them from claiming asylum was passed, would start at £1.1bn if they left the country immediately, according to the IPPR.

But this figure would rise to £3.9bn if 90 per cent stayed for five years or more, the think-tank added.

The Home Office said the IPPR had made several assumptions and modelling calculations that “it did not recognise”. The department estimated last year that the cost of relocating people to Rwanda would be about £170,000 per person.

“The best way of saving taxpayer money is by deterring people from coming here illegally in the first place, and our partnership with Rwanda intends to do just that,” the department said.

The UK has agreed to pay Kigali up to £490mn upfront and an additional £20,000 per person relocated, plus a further £80mn for set-up costs.

In addition, the UK must pay up to £150,874 per person to cover asylum processing and integration, and contribute £10,000 to facilitate the departure of each person who leaves Rwanda.

“Every single taxpayer in the country should be alarmed at just how much of the public purse the government seems prepared to spend on these inhumane plans,” said Imran Hussain, director of external affairs at charity the Refugee Council.

The IPPR estimates were based on Home Office data and a report released by the National Audit Office, the UK spending watchdog, this month. The think-tank also factored in extra fees, including staffing, legal and escorting costs.

For the scheme to break even, the IPPR added it would have to deter more than three-quarters of the asylum seekers at present coming to Britain. There were 36,704 irregular arrivals in 2023, according to the Home Office.

Last year Esther McVey wrote in the Daily Mail that she did not “want you to see a single penny of your hard-earned cash wasted on unnecessary public spending”.

Putting No1 first always makes sense (to Tories)! – Owl

Eleni Courea www.theguardian.com 

A cabinet minister who has criticised Whitehall waste has claimed tens of thousands of pounds in expenses to rent a London flat despite her husband owning a property a mile away.

Esther McVey, who was appointed “minister for common sense” last year, has received £39,000 in taxpayers’ money to rent the flat over the last two years. She lives there with her husband, the Tory MP Philip Davies.

The Daily Telegraph, which first reported the story alongside the campaign group Led By Donkeys, said McVey and Davies had been claiming expenses on the property since 2017 and could have received as much as £250,000 from the taxpayer.

Davies owns and lets out a flat about 25 minutes’ walk away in Waterloo. In his register of interests, Davies has declared an annual income of more than £10,000 from this property.

Davies told Led By Donkeys he would have been happy to continue claiming mortgage costs on the flat he owns, “but that option was removed from me”. After the 2009 expenses scandal, rules were changed so that MPs could not claim their mortgage payments back from the taxpayer.

McVey is the MP for Tatton in Cheshire and Davies represents Shipley in West Yorkshire.

They are not breaking any rules but it raises questions about whether the arrangement represents value for money. As a minister, McVey has repeatedly railed against Whitehall waste.

Last year McVey wrote in the Daily Mail that she did not “want you to see a single penny of your hard-earned cash wasted on unnecessary public spending”.

In February she told GB News she had written to independent government agencies asking them to spend more efficiently. “We want to make sure there isn’t any waste … You can’t put up taxpayers’ bills and ask the government for more money, and yet not get rid of wasteful spending yourself,” she said.

According to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, the watchdog created after the expenses scandal, both MPs claim rent for a property in London.

Led By Donkeys has highlighted the cases of several parliamentarians who own and let out properties in London while at the same claiming expenses to rent flats in the capital.

The group said at least another eight MPs were claiming rent in London while also registering income from letting out their own properties in the city, claiming more than £1m in rental expenses since 2017.

Davies told Led By Donkeys: “If I owned the flat outright and I could stay there without incurring any cost then I would agree that I should do that, but that doesn’t remotely apply in my case.

“As far as I am aware, all workplaces cover the accommodation costs of people working away from home, and I am surprised … [you] … think that should no longer be the case. That, of course, will lead to only the wealthiest people in the country being able to become MPs.”