The Times — 13.10.2026

Tuesday October 13 2026 | thetimes.com | No 75162

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Disability benefits for 120,000 teenagers cost taxpayers £1bn a year

T TIMES

Welfare Inquiry

Daisy Eastlake Political Reporter

Millie Brigaud Community Editor

More than 120,000 teenagers with autism, ADHD and depression are claiming disability benefits at a cost to the taxpayer of more than £1bn a year.

Data obtained by The Times Welfare

Inquiry shows 127,600 teenagers aged 16 to 19 in England and Wales have claimed personal independence payments (Pip), a non-means tested benefit designed to cover the cost of a disability, for these conditions in the past year. The average payment is £169 a week, or £8,800 a year, but payments can be worth up to £194 a week, or £10,119 a year.

Ministers are concerned the welfare bill is rising in part due to the NHS's inability to keep pace with the mental health caseload, within a system that gives cash without any obligation for the state to provide, or the claimant to accept, the necessary support.

One former Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) minister told the inquiry this was “one of many problems” with the welfare system. “These kids want help, but they are getting cash instead,” they said. “The money we’re spending could actually get them the treatment they need, and do so quickly. But we can't say what they should spend it on, the DWP doesn't provide therapy and the NHS can't fast-track welfare claimants. So these young people are falling down a gap in the system."

The £1bn welfare bill is more than enough to pay for at least six counselling sessions for each of the 442,000 children waiting an average of almost ten months to be seen by NHS mental health services. A mental health consultation typically costs the NHS close to £320, rising to £480 for specialist services.

One Pip assessor told the inquiry the benefits money was not helping young people with mental health conditions. "In the last six months, I've only found a handful of times where somebody's actually getting better," they said. "Most people I speak to are just on waiting lists and are not using the payments Continued on page 13

Cut screen time in class ‘for sake of pupil health’

Experts blame devices for stunting development

Ben Clatworthy Whitehall Editor

Screen time in classrooms should be slashed amid fears it is fuelling a “crisis” in pupils’ speech and language development, ministers have been told.

Leading clinicians have written to Lucy Powell, the education secretary, to warn they are witnessing a “crisis unfold with children presenting earlier and more severely” with physical and developmental health issues, including language and eyesight problems.

The letter, which was also sent to Yvette Cooper, the health secretary, was signed by 150 clinicians including Dr Louise Milne, consultant paediatrician at Portsmouth Hospitals University Trust, and Dr Sanjiv Nichani, a senior consultant paediatrician and co-founder of the children's intensive care unit at Leicester Children's Hospital.

Experts said that the use of tablets, laptops, interactive whiteboards and headphones “exploded” during the pandemic and had “never been rolled back”. Recent research found that many pupils spent longer on screens in the classroom than they were recommended to spend across an entire day.

The experts wrote: “A generation is being taught on devices and platforms that have never been subject to systematic, child-focused testing for their cumulative impact on children's eyes, ears or speech, and we are the clinicians who will spend the rest of our careers treating the consequences."

Almost one million pupils are now using device-learning in every lesson at school, while a further 2.6 million use screens every day as part of the curriculum. Schools in England are collectively spending about £900m a year on “educational technology”, much of it incorporating artificial intelligence, despite no government oversight.

“No drug, food product, or toy is given to millions of children without a single safety check,” the clinicians wrote. “Yet, astonishingly, education technology devices and platforms currently used by millions of pupils in schools and for homework every day of the week face no equivalent child-focused health scrutiny.

"As a country, we need to wake up to this now, and start rolling back screen use in schools before the damage compounds further."

The letter has been signed by GPs, ophthalmologists, audiologists, paediatricians, physiotherapists and speech and language therapists.

They said they were especially concerned about the use of one-to-one devices in early years education. "Language acquisition depends on rich, responsive, face-to-face interaction that screens, however well designed, cannot replicate," they write.

The clinicians were supported by Continued on page 4

HARA KAUR/DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES

Bravery honour Sienna Miller presents Gisèle Pelicot with the Woman of Courage award at the Women of the Year ceremony in central London. Pelicot, who waived her right to anonymity during the trial of her husband and 50 men accused of assaulting her, was recognised for her efforts in the fight against sexual violence

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We're ready for closer ties with EU, says Burnham

Oliver Wright Policy Editor

Britain's existing relationship with the European Union is “not good enough”, Andy Burnham has said, as he set out plans for further integration with Brussels.

The prime minister confirmed that he would attend a summit with European leaders on November 20, which is expected to lead to new agreements on food exports, illegal immigration and youth mobility. “Sticking with the status quo is not good enough for Britain. Worse, it would be a major dereliction of duty to turn away,” he said.

Burnham said that the deals would add up to £10bn per year to the British economy by 2040 and make it easier to tackle the small boat crisis by giving the UK access to EU migration databases for the first time since Brexit.

Burnham also confirmed that he was committed to a youth mobility scheme, saying it mattered “greatly” to him that young people should be able to move across Europe “with ease”.

"I believe this generation now ... deserves the same that so many of us took for granted, which is the ability to travel and study in Europe with ease," he said. "That is why the youth mobility component of the proposed deal matters greatly to me."

He said he believed that the chances of a successful outcome at the summit had been “enhanced” by his comments at Labour’s conference last month that he was open to Britain rejoining the EU.

"At every stage, the British public will be the boss. We will proceed with care and complete transparency," he added. PM says Brexit vote was legitimate but it's 'clear' Russia interfered, page 8

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Red tape and taxes blamed for firms refusing to build homes

Martina Lees Senior Property Writer

Tens of thousands of planned homes are not being built because regulatory costs and taxes prevent developers from making a profit, according to a commission led by Lord Barwell.

“We shouldn't be surprised that people don't build homes if they can't make money.” Barwell, a former Conservative housing minister, said. “There's a danger in our country at the moment that profit has become a dirty word. If you want private companies to do something, they have to be able to ... make profit in doing it.”

Barwell spoke as he launched a home-building blueprint for Prosper UK, a centre-right growth movement founded by Baroness Davidson of Lundin Links, the former Scottish Tory leader, and Sir Andy Street, the former Tory mayor of the West Midlands.

Since 2020, regulation and taxes have added £38,030 in costs to the average new home, plus another £22,272 in safety costs for new flats in blocks taller than 18 metres. This “policy inflation” has included “biodiversity net gain” to protect nature, nutrient neutrality to protect rivers, the future homes standard to cut carbon emissions, a tax to fund cladding safety work and, for high-rises, second staircases to protect residents from fire.

Barwell said: “They’re good things the government’s trying to do. But if you add them all together, you’re imposing a lot of costs on people trying to buy new homes and the result is you don’t get the homes built.”

One 300-home scheme, which showed an £8m projected profit in 2020, would make a £6m loss today, the report said. Another 50-home scheme was asked to pay £1.5m in education contributions and £500,000 for biodiversity net gain, adding £40,000 to the build cost of each home.

Many of these costs are confirmed only after the developer has bought the land and can no longer deduct them from the purchase price. House prices have remained flat and do not cover the costs. As a result, schemes frequently become “unviable” because investors are no longer compensated for the risks they have taken.

A commission of housebuilders, planners and economists, led by Barwell, called for an immediate three-year freeze on all new development burdens. Its report said that people who bought new homes should not have to pay to increase biodiversity or to offset nutrient pollution caused by farming and water networks dumping sewage. These were “societal problems” so “the taxpayer as a whole should put that right”, Barwell said.

Buyers should also not fund social housing, the report added. “We absolutely need more social housing, but that should be funded through general taxation,” Barwell said. He called for councils to be banned from forcing developers to fund social housing.

Barwell welcomed Labour's revived Help to Buy scheme and Kemi Badenoch's pledges to cut section 106 red tape and net zero building rules. "But if you don't do both [demand stimulus and viability measures] together, you won't solve the problem," he said.

Iran link to RAF base plot ‘highly likely’

Steven Swinford Political Editor

Iran is “highly likely” to have been behind the alleged terrorist plot against RAF Fairfield in Gloucestershire, the prime minister has told parliament.

Seven men have been arrested in connection with the incident on September 27. Police were alerted in the early hours to reports of three suspicious vans near the airbase.

Counterterror officers later said no explosives had been recovered from the vehicles, but petrol had been found.

The base, which previously housed US air force staff and aircraft, had been used to launch bombing raids on Iran. The US withdrew its bomber fleet from the airbase after the incident.

Andy Burnham said: "I can confirm our assessment that it is highly likely to have been co-ordinated in Iran, almost certainly directed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).”

He added: “We will crack down on Iran's use of criminal networks, using our full range of powers to target them and their funding streams.”

A branch of the IRGC planned to recruit British citizens to carry out the plot, which would have involved a diversion nearby and drones swarming the airfield, The Wall Street Journal reported. President Trump said last week that the withdrawal of a dozen bombers from the base was a response to a specific threat, adding: "They didn't fly out by accident." He did not mention Iran.

Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, summoned the Iranian ambassador to make clear that “Britain will not tolerate threats on our soil”.

He announced that two Iranian citizens had been designated for their role in hostile activity on behalf of the regime. Ruhollah Bazghandi, head of counterespionage operations within the IRGC, and Shahram Ali Reza Tamarzadeh Jakki, a facilitator of the Zindashti criminal network, were subject to an immediate asset freeze, travel ban and director disqualification, he said.

After the UK's assessment, foreign ministers from 29 nations, including the US, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, issued a joint statement condemning Iran's “use of violent attacks, including the acts of lethal plotting, arson, sabotage, cyberattacks and other hybrid activities”.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Plea to cut screen time

Laura Trott, the shadow education secretary, who accused the government of being “too slow” on the dangers of screens in schools. She added: “Other countries that went all-in on screens in schools are now changing course. We should learn from their mistakes.”

Dr Becky Foljambe, a GP and the founder of Health Professionals for Safer Screens, said: “We can’t keep prescribing glasses and speech therapy for a problem schools are making worse.” Jane Rowland, of the Safe-Screens campaign group, urged ministers to commission a review of educational technology in schools.

Sir Anthony Seldon, founding director of Wellington College Education and one of Britain's leading educationalists, said that AI “because of its deliberately addictive programming and its sophisticated personalisation” was more dangerous than pre-AI social media. He said: “We need ... pupils to spend much less time on screens, but much more intentional and safer use of time when young people are engaging with the technology.”

The government said: “Evidence-gathering is vital to getting this right, and we’re committed to working with teachers, leaders and parents to help them use technology most effectively.” Posing with books can lead to better things, James Marriott, page 25

Pros and cons of EdTech

Behind the story

Before Covid, educational technology (EdTech) in English

schools largely meant interactive whiteboards and IT lessons (Georgia Lambert writes).

In April 2019, the then-Conservative government launched its Department for Education (DfE) EdTech strategy, aiming to cut teachers' workloads, improve teaching and support pupils with special educational needs and disabilities.

The pandemic changed everything.

School closures made laptops, tablets and cloud-based platforms essential. Through its Get Help with Technology scheme, the DfE supplied more than 1.8 million devices to disadvantaged pupils.

Google Workspace for Education, Zoom and Microsoft Teams became fixtures of remote learning, connecting teachers, pupils and families.

The shift stuck; the DfE's Technology in Schools survey shows that 70 per cent of secondary schools and 52 per cent of primary schools have formal digital strategies. Devices are integral to lessons, homework and assessment and schools have access to a suite of EdTech resources.

Platforms such as Sparx Maths and Seneca Learning deliver assignments and feedback, while Century, an AI-powered adaptive learning platform used by 1,200 schools in England, supports diagnostic assessment, lesson planning, homework and revision.

The industry behind these tools is substantial. Government figures released in June put the UK EdTech market at 1,123 firms, employing 29,660 to 39,100 people and generating about £6.5bn in annual turnover. Growth averages 8.8 per cent a year, with £782m in annual investment.

The Education Endowment Foundation claims technology reduces teachers' workloads and streamlines administrative tasks, but its impact on academic attainment is “best characterised as mixed”.

Cruise's oil tycoon digs Warner Bros a \$245m hole

The dismal failure of the satirical climate comedy has capped a miserable year for the film studio, Keiran Southern writes

Tom Cruise plays an eccentric oil magnate whose relentless drilling leads to a world-threatening ecological disaster in his latest movie Digger. In a case of life imitating art, the satirical black comedy has turned into a Hollywood catastrophe.

After a disappointing opening two weeks at the box office, Digger could lose Warner Bros as much as \$245m, making it one of the biggest bombs in industry history.

The film, directed by the Oscar-winning auteur Alejandro G Inárritu, had a reported production budget of between \$160m and \$180m, while the studio Warner Bros is said to have spent a further \$100m on marketing. Yet critics excoriated the film and it opened to a \$20m worldwide gross, far below expectations for a Cruise film.

Warner Bros attempted to use the divisive critical response in a “decide for yourself” marketing campaign, but the second weekend gross fell by a further 60 per cent. Digger has now made \$35m. Variety reported that the film was tracking to lose \$245m.

The outlet said Digger needed to

make \$350m to break it because cinema owner keep about half of ticket sales. Warner Bros said the film's breakeven point was \$300m. Not only would that make Digger one of the biggest failures in Hollywood history, but it means the final

Warner Bros movie before its merger with Paramount was a major flop.

Analysts said the film's high budget made it a tough proposition from the outset but that studios should be praised for taking creative risks.

"There's no question the box office performance has been disappointing, particularly given the reported budget," said Paul Dergarabedian, the head of marketplace trends at the box office analytics company Rentrak.

"But I think we have to look at this movie in the context of what it was intended to be. This was a passion project for Tom Cruise, a chance to work with Alejandro G Iñárritu on a truly original film that defies easy description.

"This was a very different kind of movie from Mission: Impossible or Top Gun: Maverick, and I don't think it should be measured against the same commercial expectations."

Cruise, 64, plays Digger Rockwell, a powerful oil magnate whose company endangers the world. He wears prosthetics and has greying hair, making the role a significant departure from his usual action hero fare. That may have put off Cruise's usual audience.

Cruise's last blockbuster was 2022's Top Gun: Maverick, which arrived in cinemas at a time when audiences were still wary of Covid but became a major hit, grossing \$1.5bn. Steven Spielberg famously said that Cruise had “saved Hollywood's ass”.

Dergarabedian does not believe

Cruise's reputation will be damaged by Digger's failure. "One unconventional film doesn't define a career like his, and this certainly isn't the only unconventional film he's ever made," he said. "Cruise has always been a risk-taker, whether it's per-

Tom Cruise plays an oil magnate in Digger, directed by Alejandro G Iñárritu, below with his wife, María Eladia Hagerman

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Box office bombs

John Carter (2012) \$200m loss Disney's sci-fi adventure was a notorious commercial disaster and made studios more risk-averse.

The Lone Ranger (2013) \$190m loss

Despite starring Johnny Depp, the film, right, was savaged by critics and never came close to making back its budget.

The Marvels (2023) \$237m loss

The sequel to the billion-dollar hit

Captain Marvel grossed \$206m worldwide, becoming a symbol of Hollywood's superhero fatigue.

Strange World (2022) \$197m loss Another expensive

Disney misfire, which some analysts blamed on the company's streaming strategy.

Mortal Engines (2018) \$175m loss

Sir Peter Jackson produced the steam-punk fantasy but could not replicate his Lord of the Rings success.

Cutthroat Island (1995) \$100m-plus loss

The film became synonymous with Hollywood excess. It bankrupted Carolco Pictures and damaged the prospects of pirate films for years.

forming his own extraordinary stunts or taking on roles that go against his traditional leading-man image.”

Digger was one of the year's biggest gambles but capped a miserable year for Warner Bros.

Mike De Luca and Pam Abdi, now the former studio heads, were the toast of Hollywood last year after their bets on original movies largely paid off.

One Battle After Another, from director Paul Thomas Anderson, won best picture, while Ryan Coogler's Sinners dominated the box office and won four Oscars. A Minecraft Movie made almost a billion dollars. Yet 2026 was a disaster. The Bride!, Supergirl and Mortal Kombat II were all disappointments. Digger was arguably the worst of all.

De Luca and Abdi paid with their jobs. They left the studio before the merger with Paramount was finalised.

Analysts expect Skydance, as the new media giant is called, to make more commercial films rather than creative risks like Digger.

Baron Cohen ‘keen’ on Tarantino play

Sacha Baron Cohen said that he agreed to take the headline role in Quentin Tarantino's The Popinjay Cavalier when it premieres on the West End next year before the Hollywood director "even got to say his first motherf\*\*\*er".

The production, which comes to the Phoenix Theatre in London in March 2027, marks the Hollywood director's first play written for the stage — which he will also direct. Tarantino, 63, is best known for the films Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. He said he was “keen with anticipation to give the West End a great night out”.

A popinjay is defined as “a vain, foppish or conceited person”, while a cavalier is a cavalryman or courteous gentleman.

Baron Cohen, 54, best known for playing Borat and Ali G, added: "Quentin called, I said yes before he even got to say his first 'motherf\*\*\*er'. When the best director in the world calls, you don't ask questions. I am beyond delighted that we will be losing our West End virginity together. I have made him promise not to be gentle.”

Set in 1830s Europe, The Popinjay Cavalier has been billed as a “rambunctious comedy of deception and disguise inspired by the grand swashbuckling epics of stage and

The Popinjay Cavalier premieres next March screen". It was inspired by the classic swashbuckler genre of old Hollywood, including the writings of George Bruce, Ernst Vajda and Jesse Lasky Jr.

Tarantino made his directorial debut in 1992 with Reservoir Dogs, before co-writing, directing and acting in Pulp Fiction, for which he picked up his first Oscar for best screenplay.

He revealed his plans to stage a play last year, saying on The Church of Tarantino podcast it was “all written”. He added: “I’m preparing for it to be a success. If it’s a flop, I’ll be done very quickly.”

Tickets went on sale yesterday, from £25.

Actor best known for role in Breaking Bad dies at 34

was best known for playing Walter "Flynn" White Jr in the hit TV drama.

Keiran Southern Los Angeles

RJ Mitte, who played Walter White's son in the popular television series Breaking Bad, has died aged 34.

The actor died in Brownsville, Texas, yesterday, according to reports. A cause of death was not provided.

Like his character in the hit show, Mitte lived with cerebral palsy and was known for advocating for disability representation in Hollywood.

In a statement, a representative said: "It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of beloved actor, philanthropist, and passionate disability rights advocate RJ Mitte."

The announcement noted that Mitte

“Mitte brought authenticity to the role and built a platform on disability awareness and inclusion,” the statement added.

Mitte won acclaim for his portrayal of a loving son who has a strained relationship with his father in the series, which starred Bryan Cranston as a school chemistry teacher who turns to drug dealing after a cancer diagnosis.

Breaking Bad was recently named the greatest TV show of the 21st century by the New York Times. After it ended in 2013 Mitte appeared in other films and series, though it will be Breaking Bad for which he is best remembered.

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JEFF J MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES

Show of pride Staff from the Scottish Rugby Union paint 30ft poppies beside the M8 near Edinburgh before the start of the Royal British Legion appeal on October 22

Rogue AI agents will ‘inevitably’ breach Britain’s cyberdefences

Mark Sellman

Technology Correspondent

It is inevitable that Britain will be hacked by autonomous AI agents gone rogue, a minister has warned, while telling tech companies not to release systems they cannot control.

Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, said the UK was at a critical moment and that hacks by OpenAI agents like that on the Australian government “should concern us”. He added: “It seems likely, if not inevitable, that our own cyberdefences will be breached.”

Narayan used a speech yesterday to outline the UK's first safety laws to counter the technology's threat.

He told the audience at an Imperial College London tech “incubator”: “To the companies developing the world’s most powerful AI systems, my message is this: listen when your scientists warn of severe dangers, investigate unexpected behaviours and if you can’t adequately control the risks, do not release the system. I want the labs to be honest."

Narayan said the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill would be strengthened to make Britain “harder to hack”.

Parliamentarians who have been briefed on the proposals said the government was planning to gain “direction powers” that would enable the secretary of state to mitigate national security risks, such as restricting data flows or suspending automated AI actions.

In practice this could mean telling critical organisations covered by the bill, who have contracts with the AI companies, to stop using their services.

The government will also get powers to gather information on rogue AI incidents and companies will be forced to report back on safety breaches.

It is not clear whether the top AI companies would be obliged to report on safety, which would fall on providers of essential services under the act.

Narayan added that the National Cyber Security Centre and AI Security Institute (Aisi) would develop “ways for government to respond to agentic AI incidents, looking in particular at how incidents can be contained”.

Lord Clement-Jones, the Lib Dem AI spokesman who has been pushing for stronger AI controls in parliament, said: “This is totally inadequate and flies in the face of all the evidence of agentic AI behaviour over the last two months and the demands from the AI frontier developers themselves.”

Britain has also struck a deal with the Trump administration to allow Aisi to test the latest models before they are released. Aisi had privileged access to the models until recently when the United States stopped the San Francisco-based company Anthropic releasing its Mythos 5.1 model for testing.

Narayan confirmed the ongoing access, but added that “when you’re reliant on someone else’s technology, you have to be clear-eyed about the permanence of any outcome". The new laws have raised the possibility of a backlash from President Trump, who has rejected AI safety warnings as a hoax.

Britain is also using its presidency of the G20 next year to push for new global AI safety standards. Asked whether he believed AI could wipe out humanity, Narayan said: "I think the risks that I see imminently are much more focused on practical cybersecurity, biosecurity risks ... But at the same time, I don't want to neglect and be complacent about any warnings that come from any companies."

He revealed that AI had helped to identify and address more than 1,000 vulnerabilities in public services and reduced the time taken to fix security weaknesses from 50 days to eight. He said he was determined to build up the UK's capabilities in AI after it "failed to build this technology in the way that I have liked to over the last 15 years".

Judges can use artificial intelligence, but not for rulings

Jonathan Ames Legal Editor

Judges have been given the green light to use artificial intelligence but warned that the technology should not determine the outcome of cases.

Robots should not “displace judicial reasoning, analysis or discretion”, a senior judge has said in fresh guidance to those on the bench across England and Wales, who have been told to adopt a “cautious but positive” approach to the use of AI. But the controversial technology will be added to judicial toolboxes, said the report, noting that "AI will be adopted to support but not replace judicial decision-making and be subject to strict safeguards and robust testing".

In the guidance note, Sir Colin Birss, who takes over as Master of the Rolls, the senior civil law judge, next month, said: "AI offers potentially transformative implications for justice". He told the judges that he welcomed AI assisting them, but added that “judicial decisions will be taken by a judicial office holder”. The technology, he said, “must not displace reasoning, evaluation of evidence or the exercise of judicial discretion”.

Birss stated that safeguards were crucial to “maintain public confidence” in the judiciary and its decision-making.

The senior judiciary in England and Wales has for more than two years been issuing guidance on the use of AI, which, it said, had “established core principles for responsible use and strengthened guidance on risks including hallucination and bias”.

There has been work on testing functionality through pilot programmes in which “lower risk” cases were used to assess the security of tools in controlled settings before they were deployed more widely across the bench. Birss that “lessons” from those pilot schemes had shaped his guidance to judges.

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Synagogue inquiry

A public inquiry will be held into the deaths of two men killed in an attack at Manchester's Heaton Park synagogue a year ago. Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, said the inquiry would “ensure that all evidence can be heard, including any sensitive national security material that could not otherwise be fully heard in the coroner’s court”.

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Sycamore vandal freed

The second man jailed for felling the Sycamore Gap tree has been released on licence. Daniel Graham, 41, was jailed last July for cutting down the tree and for damaging Hadrian's Wall in September 2023. His accomplice, Adam Carruthers, 34, was freed in April. The tree had stood for more than 100 years in a fold in the Northumberland landscape.

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Fan arrested over 'taunt'

A 20-year-old from Walsall has been arrested on suspicion of a public order offence after images emerged of a man appearing to taunt Middlesbrough football fans over a crash that killed two police officers and five other men on the A66 on August 22. They showed a man thought to be a Wolves fan displaying the message: "Police killed your own."

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Vader saber a cut above

A lightsaber from the Star Wars films is expected to sell for more than \$1m at auction next month. Darth Vader used the prop in key scenes in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, including the moment when he tells Luke Skywalker: "No, I am your father." Skywalker's weapon from the duelling scenes fetched \$3.75m in the summer, a franchise record.

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Jordanian princess ‘upset her staff by accusing them of stealing’

Tash Mosheim

A Jordanian princess whose housekeeper is accused of stealing jewellery worth £188,000 from her London home had repeatedly accused staff of being thieves, a court has been told.

Princess Firyal Irshaid, 81, allegedly had jewellery stolen from her Belgravia property while she was in Jordan during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

Her former housekeeper, Maria Virgelina Taborda Henao, 71, who worked for the princess for 11 years, is on trial at Southwark crown court charged with theft by an employee.

Giving evidence on Monday, Taborda Henao said that relations between the princess and her staff had been “very hard”. When asked by Manveer Cheema, her defence barrister, whether there had been tensions between her and the princess, she replied: “Yes.”

When she was asked what caused the tensions, she said: "She called me a thief." When Cheema asked how that made her feel, she replied: "Bad."

Asked directly whether she was a

thier, Taborda Henao said: "No." She agreed that the allegation had upset her. Asked whether the princess

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Some of the jewellery that was stolen. The theft was discovered when a friend saw the victim's ring on the cover of an auction catalogue

had also accused other members of staff of stealing, she replied: "Yes."

Taborda Henao, who gave evidence through a Spanish interpreter, said she arrived in Britain in the 1980s and had worked in 30 to 35 households, including those of the businessman Lord Anthony Jacobs and a Belgian countess.

Princess Firyal left Britain in March 2020 to join her family in Jordan as the pandemic began, leaving Taborda Henao with access to her London home, the court was told. The princess agreed that the housekeeper's sister, the mother of Taborda Henao's nephew Julian Ra-

mirez, could move into the prop-

erty during the early stages of the pandemic. Ramirez is alleged to have acted as a “key conduit for the sale of stolen property”. The court was told that he transferred £17,835 to his aunt between June 23, 2019, and November 28, 2020.

Asked whether she knew that any items had been stolen and were being sold, Taborda Henao replied: "No."

Princess Firyal told the court last week that she discovered the jewellery was missing after a friend contacted her in November 2020 to say that her engagement ring had appeared on the cover of an auction catalogue. Police searching Taborda Henao's home in west London found the princess's wedding ring, a pair of earrings and a jewelled metal necklace, the court was told.

Ramirez is believed to have flown to Colombia in October 2023 while on police bail. Taborda Henao denies theft by an employee. The trial continues.

Russell Brand arriving at Southwark crown court for the start of his trial on charges of rape and sexual assault. He was accompanied by his wife, Laura Gallacher

Brand arrives at court with his wife for start of rape trial

Jessica Sharkey Crime Correspondent

Russell Brand has appeared in court for the start of his trial over allegations of rape and sexual assault against six women.

The 51-year-old comedian and actor faces three charges of rape, three of sexual assault and one of indecent assault alleged to have occurred between 1999 and 2009. He denies all the charges.

He arrived at Southwark crown court yesterday morning wearing a suit and sunglasses. He was accompanied by his wife, Laura Gallacher, and a bodyguard.

The Metropolitan Police began investigating the allegations against Brand in September 2023.

A group of potential jurors was selected and asked by the judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, to return to the court this morning, when the final selection will be made. The prosecution will open its case tomorrow and the trial is expected to last about six weeks.

Potential jurors were asked whether they had watched or read previous reporting of the allegations.

The judge said: “We are about to start the trial of one Mr Russell Brand. Many of you will have heard of him.”

He said that about three years ago there was a television documentary and a long newspaper article in which some allegations of sexual misconduct were made against Brand.

Jurors were asked to raise their hands if they had seen the documentary or newspaper article, the content of which Brand firmly denies, and six members of the jury panel were then dismissed.

The potential jurors were whittled down to 20. Those jurors were told a smaller group of them would be chosen today and sworn in for the trial. They were then sent home. The judge warned them that they must not carry out any research about Brand.

A court was previously told that Brand was accused of raping a woman in a hotel room in Bournemouth after he met her at an event during the Labour Party conference in 1999, and of trying to drag a woman into a men's lavatory in 2001 after grabbing her arm.

It is also alleged that Brand orally raped and sexually assaulted a television worker in London in 2004 after dragging her into a men's lavatory, and that he grabbed a radio station worker's face, kissed her and grabbed her breast and buttocks in 2004 or 2005.

There was a large media presence at the court for the start of the trial and photographers captured the moment Brand arrived in a black Mercedes.

He did not respond to members of the press who shouted questions as he entered and left the court. During the hearing, Brand remained seated as the jury selection process began.

Brand emerged as a British television personality in the 2000s, hosting shows such as Big Brother's Big Mouth and his own BBC radio programmes.

He went on to star in Hollywood films, including Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Get Him to the Greek and the 2012 musical comedy Rock of Ages.

He was married to the American pop singer Katy Perry from 2010 to 2012. In 2017 he married Gallacher, with whom he has three children. More recently, he has turned to podcasting and moved to Florida in the United States.

Brand, who pleaded not guilty to the charges during pre-trial hearings, is on bail.

THE TRIAL OF RUSSELL BRAND

Watch or listen to our podcast every weekday on Apple Podcasts, YouTube or Spotify

Zoo where man killed by tiger to face inquiry

Mario Ledwith

Sian Bradley Northern Correspondent

A fatal tiger attack on a man who jumped into an enclosure at a zoo is being investigated by town hall health and safety officials.

City of Doncaster council said it was reviewing safety protocols at Yorkshire Wildlife Park after the incident on Saturday afternoon.

Witnesses said that the man had jumped into an enclosure from a raised viewing platform where he had danced and asked other visitors to take his picture.

A woman tried to block the man, who has not been named but was visiting the park alone, before he pushed past her into the two-acre fenced area where he was attacked by a Siberian tiger called Altai.

Zookeepers responded shortly after the man climbed a fence, firing shots from acoustic weapons designed to scare the animal away. Ambulance teams tried to save the man but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Dan Swaine, an executive director at the council, said that it had opened an investigation in line with its statutory duties as the licensing authority for the park.

He said: “We are deeply saddened by the incident that occurred this weekend and our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with everyone involved, including the family and loved ones of the person who tragically lost their life, those that witnessed the incident and the staff involved at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, as well as the emergency services who provided a swift response.

“We are also working with multiple agencies, including the police and health agencies, and are supporting the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in response to the incident.”

The park, which was evacuated on Saturday, remained closed yesterday as investigations continued.

A park insider described the incident as “freakish” and said security protocols had been in place. “The tiger was distracted and was back in its house within minutes,” they said.

South Yorkshire police said that, at the request of his family, they would not release details about the man, though a file has been passed to the coroner.

Bosses at the zoo, which opened in 2009 and covers 260 acres, confirmed that the tiger would not be euthanised and was safe and well.

News Politics

PM says Brexit vote is legitimate

Oliver Wright Policy Editor

Steven Swinford Political Editor

Andy Burnham has claimed that he has “always respected” the legitimacy of the Brexit vote after saying that Russia had interfered during the referendum.

The prime minister told The Rest Is Politics podcast at the weekend that it was important to get “on the record” that Russia had interfered with the vote. He said: “I asked the question coming to Downing Street: ‘Well, was there interference in the 2016 referendum from Russia?’ I’ve had the clear answer that, yes, there was. These things are important now to put clearly on the record.”

The comments prompted criticism given that the official position of the government and the security services has always been that while Russia attempted to interfere in the referendum, it was not successful.

In the Commons, Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, accused Burnham of having “implied that the referendum result was illegitimate because of Russian interference”.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, accused the prime minister of lying.

Burnham insisted that he had always respected the result and had never questioned its legitimacy. He said: “I will very much say so on the record. It was legitimate ... But I am within my rights to point out where foreign actors are looking to interfere in British democracy.”

Badenoch accused Burnham of unpicking the original Brexit deal and “blurting out everything he wants” from the EU, warning that that was “not how you conduct negotiations”.

She said: "His exact words earlier this year were, 'The last thing we should do right now is rerun those arguments'. And yet here he is, unpicking the deal this country signed with the EU a decade after the referendum. He is not going to get a better deal."

However, Burnham attacked the Tory leader for “defending the status quo”. He asked: “How can she justify turning her back on a deal to add billions to the UK economy?”

Farage described Burnham as “a liar”, telling a press conference in Hythe, Kent: “There was no Russian interference and the Russia hoax has run all the way through this.”

Dame Emily Thornberry, chairwoman of the Commons foreign affairs select committee, said that while it was difficult to measure the success of Russia's disinformation campaign, it was difficult to believe that Putin would have bothered “if there was not at least a chance it might succeed”.

She said: “One thing is for sure: over the past ten years, Russia has certainly got better at it, while at the same time, elements of the British state have been far too complacent about it.”

Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, said that Burnham's comment on Russia took “courage” after the Conservatives “had spent so long suppressing the evidence”.

He asked: "Will the prime minister now present it to the House in full, alongside any evidence of interference in other UK votes, so that we can understand the threat and make it a national security priority to protect our democracy from attacks such as that?"

Burnham replied that it was “really important to be open with people about everything that we have lived through in the last decade”.

He added: “I have been open, but I am also making sure that Britain is in a position where we do not face the same again.”

In 2016 Boris Johnson, who had campaigned for Leave, said that when he became foreign secretary, the security services had told him that “there was no evidence of any successful interference in the 2016 referendum, by Russia or any other power”.

Johnson, who became prime minister in 2019 on a platform of “getting Brexit done” yesterday repeated that statement, saying that Russian interference was “just not true”.

He added: “Either the security services have changed their view — which would be very odd — or Burnham is lying about what he has been told. After all Starmer was in power for two years and had access to exactly the same information.”

Asked in 2017 if he had seen evidence of Russia successfully meddling in UK elections, Johnson said: "Nyet [Russian for no], not a sausage."

In 2020 a parliamentary report did not reach a firm conclusion on whether Russia had tried to intervene in UK elections and referendums, but criticised the government for failing to fully assess and counter the threat from Russian “troll” accounts on social media.

Return to EU would weaken our democracy, Melanie Phillips, page 24

Mahmood is right to tackle the post-Brexit Boriswave, leading article, page 25

Andy Burnham and Labour MPs welcome Sagal Abdi-Wali, who won the Holborn & St Pancras by-election, to Westminster,

Burnham took free Man City tickets

Constance Kampfner

Political Correspondent

Andy Burnham accepted tickets to three football games and an Ed Sheeran concert at the Etihad stadium while mayor of Greater Manchester, The Times understands.

He was pictured in the stands with Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the Manchester City chairman, in 2019 on one of those occasions and had a formal meeting with him two years later at an investment summit.

The prime minister has been facing calls to reveal the full extent of his interactions with the scandal-hit club, which has been found guilty of breaching the Premier League's financial rules.

An independent commission found that City had created sham contracts with commercial partners to secretly funnel more than £830m into the club. It denied the charges and is appealing against the findings.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, and Sir Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, have been urging Burnham to release details of any meetings or hospitality received from the club during his nine-year stint as mayor. He responded by telling MPs that “all of my dealings” with Manchester City’s owners would be published.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority said in a statement yesterday that, as mayor, Burnham had “a formal meeting” with Mubarak at an investment summit arranged by the Department for International Trade in 2021.

Burnham had also been “a guest of Manchester City FC at home matches on a small number of occasions, including attending Vincent Kompany’s testimonial match in September 2019, where he met the chairman informally in the stands”. It said that these gifts had been declared “in the normal way”.

The Times understands that Burnham attended a total of three matches at the Etihad in his capacity as mayor, as well as the Sheeran concert. The combined authority spokeswoman added: "Also during his time as mayor, representatives of Greater Manchester sporting clubs would routinely join business delegations as part of mayoral international visits.

“This included representatives from Manchester United travelling to Austin and Dublin, Lancashire Cricket Club joining a delegation to India, and Manchester City FC staff supporting visits to China and Japan.”

Burnham reacted to news of the guilty verdicts last month by saying that he would be “really concerned” to see the club’s Emirati owners sell up, describing them as “a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester”. No 10 later clarified in a statement that no team was “above the rules”.

Reports have suggested future Emirati investments in Britain could be jeopardised by the row. However, UAE government sources told The Times they felt Burnham was broadly sympathetic to their ownership of the club.

Return voyage takes us all back to a dark place

Brexit. Why did he say it? What problem does it solve?

Tom Peck

Political Sketch

Andy Burnham's favourite soundbite is that he believes in "problem-solving, not point-scoring", so he may wish

Scoring, so he may wish to turn his vast problem-solving skills on the growing problem that he absolutely cannot stop point-scoring. Last week he appeared on The Rest Is Politics podcast, where he repeated his favourite self-referential bon mot, that he is a problem-solver not a point-scorer, and then, for reasons only he can know, went on to claim that it was “inconceivable” that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 referendum on

Yesterday afternoon the prime minister came to the House of Commons to give an update on his visit to the United Nations general assembly. In a shock to absolutely no one, it took barely minutes for the occasion to descend into a three-hour point-scoring session about Brexit, in which absolutely no problems were solved.

The prime minister repeated his view that it is a matter of public record that Russia sought to interfere in the 2019 general election, and that it is therefore inconceivable that it did not also seek to interfere in Brexit. And so, with dreary inevitability, Kemi Badenoch had little choice but to point out how, in 2018, the head of

but ‘clear’ that Russia interfered

IAN WEST/PA; TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL

while Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf pose in front of a mock mega-dinghy to announce new Reform UK immigration policies

do. There's a good one doing the rounds in which one of Mesut Ozil's famous goals is scored by Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, complete with tank top, chinos and tremulous gut. Somehow, here was Starmer delivering a pointless statement to the Commons, but through the medium of an ABBA Voyage hologram that looked and sounded just like Burnham.

News

They argued about how he is apparently going to do a new deal with the EU, one that will boost trade and control immigration. He didn't make clear quite what it was. In a torturous decade in which a once-proud nation banged its head against a wall and wore itself out, these were problems that were never solved, because they can't be solved. If Burnham really thinks Britain is suddenly "back", he may wish to ponder whether his plans might involve taking it back to its very recent past, a place to which absolutely no one wants to go, where points are pointless and problems only go away when everyone just agrees to ignore them.

The conflict has significantly damaged the public finances by raising borrowing costs, while also hitting household finances with a rise in food and energy costs, pushing up inflation.

Healey wants to deliver a “breathing space” budget that is also a “steady the ship” moment in the face of the international shocks. It will give households and small businesses more support, while a targeted cost of living package is being drawn up to help poorer people with energy price rises this winter.

Fiscal headroom has halved since Iran war, chancellor is warned

MI5 concluded there was no evidence that Russia influenced the EU referendum result.

Forecasts show that bills are expected to increase by 20 per cent in January, when the new Ofgem price cap comes in. It means the average household will pay £360 a year more for their energy, taking overall bills to £2,084.

He had, in other words, never said there was a problem. He'd just been trying to do a bit of point-scoring, even if he wasn't entirely sure what the point was meant to be.

some respect through the impact of higher inflation and wages.

Healey would need to “balance support for struggling families with the need to rebuild confidence in the public finances” amid the fallout of war.

The think tank also warned that higher debt interest costs, which have soared in recent weeks, are also likely to increase borrowing by about £14bn a year in 2029-30, but will be mitigated in

The more intriguing question, which Burnham did not get into, is quite what Russia was up to in the 2019 general election. I've no doubt they did interfere, but looking back, it's very hard to work out who it was they wanted to win. That election was between Boris Johnson

Badenoch and Lewis received the same world-weary shake of the head. Burnham invited them both to “listen again” to his comments on the podcast, as if one listen were not already one too many. At no point had he said they’d influenced the “result”. He’d merely said they had tried to interfere.

Sir Julian Lewis, a former head of the defence committee, invited the prime minister to “explain how he thinks Russia was able to alter the result of the referendum”.

The chancellor's headroom against the government's tax and spending plans was likely to have halved from £24bn in the spring to as little as £12bn at the budget on October 28, it added.

Ben Clatworthy Whitehall Editor

The conflict in the Middle East has halved John Healey's financial headroom since the spring, a leading economic think tank has warned.

The Resolution Foundation said a big hole in the UK public finances had been left by the US war with Iran and the economic backdrop to the budget was “perilous despite the fastest growth in the G7 in the first half of this year”.

"[The] war has likely halved the level of headroom he has against his fiscal rules. And with markets closely scrutinising our fiscal position, he will need to deliver a robust budget to show he's serious about sound public finances. Families, too, will be listening carefully to news of help with their energy bills this winter."

He said Healey needed to reassure the financial markets he was “willing to face reality rather than duck it by setting out his approach to tax and spend over the remainder of the parliament”.

The think tank's forecast is more pessimistic than an estimate from the Institute for Fiscal Studies yesterday. It suggested Healey could have about £20bn of headroom, with higher inflation boosting tax revenues and offsetting much of the rise in borrowing costs.

promising to “get Brexit done” and Jeremy Corbyn wanting to disband the armed forces. On Sunday, Johnson suggested the Royal Navy be used to detain Russian cargo ships transporting diesel to the US. If Putin did interfere, then you have to say he backed the wrong horse.

James Smith, the foundation's chief economist, said: "Strong data over the summer on economic growth and productivity could have made for a honeymoon budget... Unfortunately, the conflict in the Middle East has thrown that out of the water and landed the chancellor with a tough first act.

However, it warned inflation would also erode departmental budgets, requiring an additional £12bn by 2030-31.

On energy, the Resolution Foundation warned Healey to “heed the lessons of the cost of living crisis” by avoiding “wasteful” universal support for bills.

So pointless was the point-scoring, Burnham contrived to render the entire occasion pointless. He'd begun his update by breezily telling the house the following: "I took a clear message to the UN, that after a decade of turbulence, Britain is back." We were not told quite what the UN told him in response. Two years ago, Sir Keir Starmer told the UN more or less exactly the same. That there has been considerable turbulence since is a matter in which Burnham is hardly blameless.

For two long hours, Burnham made it harder and harder to understand quite why the UK needed a new prime minister at all. It was like watching one of those now ubiquitous AI slop videos in which someone famous says or does something they would never actually

It advocates a temporary scheme for those struggling to heat their homes. It suggests targeting those with an income of below £24,000, which would extend beyond benefit recipients and save eligible households £175 on average, and cost £2bn overall.

Mahmood orders security review for royals and MPs

serve at all levels receive the protection they deserve."

Geraldine Scott Assistant Political Editor

Shabana Mahmood has ordered an independent review into security for the royal family and high-profile politicians due to “serious questions” about their safety.

The home secretary commissioned the review after the alleged murder of Ann Widdecombe and other recent cases that she described as “an attack on democracy itself”.

Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the former national security adviser, has been appointed to examine whether the system was fit for purpose to tackle threats from terrorism, extremism and hostile states, as well as harassment and intimidation.

Mahmood told the Commons: “For those who serve, politics is a calling. Robust debate and criticism are part of this job, threats, abuse and violence are not.

“Today, as on so many other days, we remember Ann Widdecombe, Sir David Amess and Jo Cox, three beloved colleagues and three champions of our democracy. We owe it to them and to everyone who believes in a fair and open country to ensure those who

Mahmood said, regardless of the outcome of the investigation into Widdecombe's death, "it is clear there is insufficient protection for those who serve". She said the review would report within six months.

Mahmood also said she had asked the Independent Office for Police Conduct to investigate the allegations that Joshua Kerry, who has been charged with Widdecombe's murder, had previously targeted the home of Nigel Farage. She said: "We must first ensure that every opportunity was taken in this particular case to stop this attacker."

Lovegrove will examine whether those at greatest risk received enough protection, whether funding and security measures were used effectively and how decisions could be made more consistently.

Its scope includes protection for members of the royal family, government ministers, MPs, local representatives and other prominent political figures. It will examine security at high-risk sites, including government buildings and diplomatic premises.

News

Sit! Cocker spaniels Teg, Tod, Minnie, Sophie, Harry, Piglet, Bryn, Nel, Griff and Penny stop for a photograph on Llangennith beach in south Wales. Eight of the dogs are owned by Kelly Roberts, a vet

Troubles-era prosecutions overhauled

Charlie Parker Defence Correspondent

Powers to prosecute Troubles cases are being transferred from Belfast to London under new government measures to better protect British troops from historic legal battles.

As part of a package of planned legislative changes announced by Labour yesterday the attorney-general must now provide consent for any “serious” prosecutions related to violence in Northern Ireland.

Officials responsible for reviewing fresh demands for legal action will also need to consider if “compelling new evidence” exists before approaching any witnesses.

Writing in The Times today, Wes Streeting, the defence secretary, and Sir Chris Bryant, secretary of state for Northern Ireland, said: “The search for truth and answers must never be hijacked by those seeking revenge in the name of justice. That is why, over the last few months, we have listened to veterans, victims’ groups, including those representing service families, and the wider defence community to hear their concerns.

“We are responding by making sure the Troubles Bill properly protects all those troops who served with honour.”

The announcement comes after former soldiers who endured years of investigations before effectively being cleared by courts accused the government of allowing the “cynical exploitation” of the judicial system to persecute veterans.

Troops who served during the decades-long conflict said “ludicrous” and “vexatious” legal proceedings were brought against them, while the SAS Regimental Association, which represents special forces, said the system is being “abused and it is the process that is the punishment”.

Labour unveiled its controversial Northern Ireland Troubles Bill last year to replace the previous Conservative government's 2023 Legacy Act, which introduced a ban on inquests and civil actions related to Troubles-era killings. The High Court in Belfast ruled in 2024 that the Act breached the European Convention on Human Rights by offering immunity from prosecution to suspects who co-operated with investigators.

Labour's bill involves the introduction of a legacy commission to investigate unresolved killings, a separate information recovery body, and a dedicated legacy unit within the Irish police.

The party said its series of new amendments “significantly reduce” the prospect of military veterans facing “rinse and repeat” investigations.

Under the proposals, troops will not be cold-called without warning or have to travel to Northern Ireland to give evidence; will have the right to seek anonymity; will have protection in old age; will have the right to be heard; and "will not face repeated investigations", the government said.

Prosecutions will still be brought under the amended bill, which Streeting and Bryant said seeks to address the “deep scars” that “remain from the Troubles” on both sides.

However, in their joint article for The Times, they stressed that there will now “be no duplication of previous investigative processes unless it is essential, and that witnesses cannot be contacted unless it has been clearly demonstrated that there is compelling new evidence".

Crucially, the amendments require the consent of Ellie Reeves, the attorney-general, before any prosecutions proceed, rather than the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland.

Criticising the previous Conservative government's scheme, Streeting and Bryant said “terrorists would have enjoyed the same immunity as veterans”.

Former troops currently fighting legal battles will not benefit from the changes, it is understood. This includes Soldier B, a former special forces soldier who joined the army in 1978 and served six tours of Northern Ireland. The veteran had his name effectively cleared for a third time last year after five years of investigations and criticism of those challenging the veteran from a judge. His lawyer revealed last month that he now faces “sleepless nights” after the family of an IRA man killed in an ambush more than three decades ago were granted legal aid to continue their case against him.

The Tories said the changes do not go far enough and that they still strongly oppose the bill as it leaves veterans vulnerable to persecution.

Alex Burghart, shadow secretary of state for Northern Ireland, said: "These amendments have only been in the public domain for a few hours but it is already apparent that they are much more about persuading Labour back-benchers to vote for this awful bill than actually protecting veterans.

“Labour are reopening the door to vexatious litigation against those who protected our country. The Conservatives will continue to lead the fight against this legislation.”

Mark Francois, shadow armed forces and veterans minister, added: “As veterans well know, this whole bill has now become embroiled in Labour’s willingness to appease Dublin, as part of their wider ‘EU reset’. We are wholly opposed to this and will continue to defend those who have defended us.”

Family members of Bloody Sunday victims hold photos of their relatives at a march to court in Belfast during the trial of 'Soldier F' in October last year. The former British paratrooper was cleared of murder and attempted murder

Bill will protect troops who served with honour in Northern Ireland

Wes Streeting

Sir Chris Bryant

Comment

Despite the undeniable journey towards peace and progress since the Good Friday agreement, deep scars remain from

The Troubles. It's not surprising. More than 3,500 people were killed between the late 1960s and 1998. And decades on, many still seek answers about the circumstances surrounding the death of their parent, child, sibling or spouse.

That is why we are so committed to the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. By setting up a fair, workable system to deliver as many answers as possible, we will help communities to heal so that we can finally turn the page on one of the darkest periods in our recent history.

More than a quarter of the families seeking answers from the Legacy Commission are veterans' families. Nearly one in five are the families of police officers. No one should be in any doubt how important this is. One woman has spoken of how she is still waiting for answers about her brother, who was killed in the M62 coach bomb more than half a century ago.

The search for truth and answers must never be hijacked by those seeking revenge in the name of justice. That is why, over the last few months, we have listened to

veterans, victims' groups, including those representing service families, and the wider defence community to hear their concerns. We are responding by making sure the Troubles Bill properly protects all those troops who served with honour.

Under the previous government's scheme, terrorists would have enjoyed the same immunity as veterans; something so abhorrent it should never have been considered. And so we will not only repeal it, we will make clear — in black and white — that there is no equivalence between paramilitaries, who waged campaigns of violence, murder and destruction, and the lawful actions of our armed forces sent to stop them.

For too long, our servicemen and women have had to fear the knock at the door, the call from an unknown number or the ping of an email notification, as they bear the brunt of incidents being reinvestigated years or decades after the events in question. The bill spells out that there can be no duplication of previous investigative processes unless it is essential, and that witnesses cannot be contacted unless it has been clearly demonstrated that there is compelling new evidence. Nor will veterans be forced to traipse to Northern Ireland to attend hearings. And any decision to prosecute a serious Troubles-related crime will now require the consent of the attorney-general.

The situation in Northern Ireland has improved beyond all recognition. But as recent events show, there are still issues to be resolved and, until they are, old sores will continue to fester. The amended Troubles Bill is another step forward on the path to a lasting peace. It gives survivors, victims and families a means to find the answers and acknowledgment they need. And it gives the men and women who served so valiantly the legal protection they are owed. This government will never allow our soldiers to find themselves in this position again and we will legislate to make sure of it.

Sir Chris Bryant is Northern Ireland secretary; Wes Streeting is defence secretary

News

Rule the road behind the wheel of Elizabeth II's customised Bentley

TOBY SHEPHEARD FOR THE TIMES

George Odling

When Queen Elizabeth eased herself into the idling Bentley after an engagement, did she marvel as the door gently closed itself behind her?

As the enormous vehicle pulled away, was Her Majesty mindful of how its foam-lined tyres kept noise to a minimum while maximising comfort for its royal passenger?

The Queen's own modifications indicate that her priorities when it came to travel were more practical.

When assembling the car in 2016, Bentley's engineers removed the passenger armrests and, at Elizabeth's request, installed a compartment for her Launer London handbag. Sadly, this addition and other modifications were stripped away when the vehicle left royal service.

One wealthy enthusiast will have the opportunity to travel almost as the late Queen did, however, provided they are willing to part with at least £340,000 — the reserve price — when the hammer

tomorrow.

The handmade Bentley Mulsanne, sprayed in the late Queen's favourite Barnato green, is the first of two she used, but the only one to have entered private ownership. It remained in royal service until 2019, and took Her Majesty to engagements including the 80th birthday of Archduchess Helen of Austria, the funeral of Countess Mountbatten of Burma and British Champions Day at

Royal Ascot. In service, the car had blue flashing lights behind the front grille, a siren and a loudspeaker, badges on its front and royal crests in the rails on the rear doors.

These, along with the handbag tray, were removed when the car was decommissioned and sent back to Bentley in 2019, although it does still have some of the flourishes the Queen

chose. As well as with the ash trays in the rear, Elizabeth asked for the electric privacy curtains to be removed as, it is understood, she believed that

members of the public should be able to see her. The curtains have been reinstalled, though the ashtrays remain absent.

The 6.75-litre Mulsanne has a TV with DVD player, soft-close doors, a cabin trimmed in twine and Cumbrian green leather, burr walnut veneers and deep lambswool carpet.

In the boot is a set of thick woollen rugs that were regularly washed and rotated by the chauffeur.

Usually, cars are designed around the driving experience but the extended wheelbase Mulsanne was created not for its owner to drive but for her to be driven in. Its wheelbase was stretched by 250mm, creating a 5.8m car with all the extra length in the rear compartment.

This is the Mulsanne's most striking feature — an almost absurd amount of leg room and space in the rear, which feels more like a sitting room on wheels or the first-class quarters of a plane than a back seat. Such is the length of the footwell that, when she was sitting in at the rear, the Queen would have found it almost impossible to touch the back of the seat in front of her.

The Bentley is impressively responsive for such a behemoth, however, and has a tight turning circle.

It is easy to picture Elizabeth sitting in the cavernous luxury of the rear, the noise of the road and outside world muffled, stealing quiet moments between engagements.

Unlike the royal family's state Bentley, which was given to the Queen in 2002 and has bulletproof bodywork and Kevlar tyres, the Mulsanne has no extra armour. Though it weighs almost three tonnes, the Bentley's twin-turbo engine can move it from 0-60mph in five seconds and it has a top speed of 184mph. A typical Mulsanne of the same age and specification, and with 6,000 miles on the clock, would be worth £150,000.

Ryan Cigana, a director at Broad Arrow Auctions, which is managing the sale, said it was impossible to know how much the vehicle would fetch. He said: "We had some early interest from a member of a royal family in the Middle East until they realised it was right-hand drive. They wanted to drive it themselves, so withdrew."

Freddie Woodd, a car specialist at the auctioneer, said the fact that the vehicle once belonged to Elizabeth would significantly increase its value. He said: "How can you determine how much someone might value being able to sit in the same car the Queen did?"

The interior of the late Queen's Bentley Mulsanne has burr walnut veneers and a lambswool carpet. The wheelbase was extended for extra legroom

Amazon set to air secret Diana tapes

Alex Farber Media Correspondent

Recordings made by Princess Diana about the breakdown of her marriage are to be broadcast by Amazon's Prime Video.

The streaming service will show a documentary series Diana: Her Secret Confessions next year after producers announced they had secured access to the tapes in April. Across five hours of recordings, made in 1991, Diana shares her thoughts on her former husband, now the King, Camilla Parker-Bowles, her sons, William and Harry, as well as Sarah Ferguson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

The recordings were made by a friend, Dr James Colthurst, smuggled out of Kensington Palace and delivered to Andrew Morton, the author who used them for his book Diana: Her True

Story — In Her Own Words, published in 1992. Diana: Her Secret Confessions is being produced by Love Monday TV, which was also responsible for ITV's 2024 documentary Her Majesty The Queen: Behind Closed Doors in which Camilla raised awareness about domestic abuse.

Kerene Barefield, creative director at Love Monday TV, said that Her Secret Confessions allowed Diana to “reclaim and reframe her own story”. She added: “Diana, Princess of Wales is often portrayed as victim of her circumstances, with the narrative around her even today still being written and argued about by powerful men. Through exclusive access for the

Diana sent her recorded thoughts to an author

first time to the complete collection of these extraordinary tapes, together with interviews with those who knew her, audiences will hear Diana's voice as never before ... a strong woman who is risking everything to take control."

Colthurst and Morton will appear in the programme, alongside the publisher Michael O'Mara, to discuss the risks

taken by Diana and the scrutiny they all faced.

In February Amazon aired a documentary by Charles, Finding Harmony: A King's Vision. The streamer is also expected to sign a deal with Prince Harry's Invictus Games.

Can Harry and Meghan win back Britain? Times2

Royals make amends with Aberfan commemoration

Kate Mansey Assistant Editor

When Queen Elizabeth II visited Aberfan eight days after the 1966 disaster in which 116 children and 28 adults died, she was criticised for waiting so long.

Now the King, Queen and the Prince of Wales will return to south Wales to mark the 60th anniversary in a rare joint engagement.

On October 21 1966, Aberfan suffered the worst mining tragedy in British history when a vast wall of coal waste smothered the village school and nearby homes on the last day before half-term. About half the pupils and five teachers Pantglas School died.

The Queen delayed her visit for a week after courtiers advised that it might detract from the rescue effort. She later said that delay was one of the greatest regrets of her reign.

It is understood that Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace wanted to mark the anniversary with the present and previous Prince of Wales in attendance. A source said the visit reflected the longstanding connection the royal family had made with the people of Aberfan over many years.

They will visit Aberfan Memorial Garden and meet survivors, including Jeff Edwards, who was eight at the time, bereaved parents and siblings, and members of Aberfan Wives, a mothers' support group. Ynysowen Male Voice Choir, which became a support group for the men of the village, will perform.

News Welfare Inquiry

'You get less if you're good.' How children end up with a label for life

Welfare payments for a medical diagnosis can set young people on an unhealthy path, finds Fraser Nelson

Howdon could be a case study in Britain's new poverty. It doesn't look poor: the houses are decent and the streets safe. But for alcohol-induced hospital admissions, family breakdown, child self-harm and worklessness it's among the nation's worst.

The trademark of this tends to be lost children: often out of school, not being looked after properly at home. Many find their way to the Howdon Community Hub, run by Julie Marriott. Her team are in the business of turning lives around, which usually starts by listening to what people have to say. And they're picking up a very modern concern: a growing number of young people are worried about being "labelled" or "statemented"; that is, diagnosed with a medical condition that prompts welfare payments but changes the way they are perceived. And, they fear, sets them on a trajectory of failure.

“Children have talked to me about this,” Marriott says when we meet. “A diagnosis might mean additional benefits. For some, it lets them abdicate any problem with their parenting. But the kids are telling us that they don’t necessarily want that label. They want to be seen for who they are.”

At first, this sounds bizarre: what's not to welcome? A child with a diagnosis can bring their parents about £6,000 a year in child disability living allowance (DLA) and up to £4,500 in carer's allowance. Quite a sum for a family on the breadline. Uptake has almost doubled since lockdown. Learning and behavioural disorders are the main drivers. One in nine 15-year-olds is categorised as disabled, in a way that can unlock a £10,500 package for a parent. In places such as Liverpool (and Howdon, in Tyne & Wear), it's one in five. The welfare system is kicking in, providing extra resources intended to level the playing field for later life. That, at least, is the theory.

Marriott has personal experience. "When I was at primary school, I was put into what was called the ‘remedial’ class. I had no learning difficulty whatsoever; I just learnt differently. But that label followed me through to my GCSEs. It told me that I couldn't. It told me that I shouldn't."

This, she says, can be a net negative. "I'm not saying we shouldn't put some structures in, or shouldn't recognise that there are children who need a definition to get the right support. But do they then need to be defined by that for the rest of their life?"

Britain has always had provisions for children with special needs. But there has been a trebling of the number in the past 12 years, a status that may overlap with child disability but is independent of it. As the number of categorised children surges, so does the evidence that they are twice as likely to end up not in education, employment or training (Neet) at the age of 17. Disengagement starts early: school truancy rates tend to follow child DLA awards.

The risk, Marriott says, is that diagnosis lowers expectations: for school attendance, performance and behaviour. “The minute they have a diagnosis, a small proportion of children ... will use it to be as disruptive as they can. Because they’ve got a reason.”

One boy put the perversity of it to her plainly. "He said: 'When I was getting extra support, I got to see the therapy dog. The minute I didn't need the support any more, they took it away. All the bad kids get to see the therapy dog. How come you get more if you're naughty, and less if you're good?"

The incentives for parents are sub-

Julie Marriott, of Howdon Community

Hub in Tyne and Wear, says children fear being given a special needs label because it changes the way they are perceived

stantial. A typical child diagnosis for ADHD or behavioural problems pays £5,600 on its own or £10,100 if it triggers carer's allowance. Part-time work in Tyneside pays less, and those who do work find the tax burden rising as thresholds are frozen. Disability benefit, by contrast, is tax-free.

Not all take the money. Aimee Perry, one of Marriott's colleagues, tells of a volunteer at the centre whose children qualified for additional needs. "Everyone was saying to her: 'Go and claim carer's allowance, you'll get a bit of extra money'. And she replied: 'I'm a parent, I'm not a carer. So why would I claim carer's allowance for my child?'

It is quite a lot of money for someone on a tight budget to turn down on a point of self-sufficiency principle. But this shows how the system tends to punish, not reward, those trying to stick to such principles.

---

The welfare conveyor belt

Child DLA has become a conveyor belt, taking teenagers into the world of welfare. At the age of 16, child DLA is re-tested as a personal independence payment (Pip) and paid directly to the teenager. The conversion rate is 80 per cent. There is no such thing as a child rate, so a sixth-former living at home can be paid the adult rate — an average of about £8,800 a year for ADHD, behavioural disorder or learning difficulties. This is more than the typical graduate wage premium after five years and is paid regardless of work or study status.

The result is the economic rewiring not just of childhood and parenthood, but perceptions of the game of life. The premium on a diagnosis is far greater than that for learning. No one has released figures for this, but it will be obvious to children looking around them.

Marriott says that the welfare state is full of perverse incentives. “We make people utterly reliant on systems, which leads them to think they’re entitled and some end up thinking they’re powerless to do anything themselves. What’s shocked me is that some of the mums and dads now see their universal credit and their carer's allowance as their salary. 'That's my wage,' they say. That's a cultural shift I don't think was ever considered at the time, or comprehended now."

A turning point early in her career was John, whom she helped after he emerged from the care system. “I’d worked really hard to get him a college place. I arrived at the house and told him: get up those stairs, clean your teeth, brush your hair, ten minutes. After a while I heard him sobbing. He looked at me and said: ‘I don’t know how to brush my teeth’. I’d assumed he knew.” When people are not taught the basics at home, they can go through life never asking. What’s striking, she says, is just how long the list of basics now runs.

She hears the same from teachers. "Years ago, a child might start school with the developmental age of a three-year-old, which was challenging. They're now taking children in with the skills of a 12 to 18-month-old." Such children, she says, struggle to share things, to sit for a story or keep themselves dry. She says the colleagues once handed out bags of potatoes from a food project, and the children asked what they were for. "It wasn't until we said 'chips, mash, roasties' that they understood. They couldn't correlate the potato to the food."

If such foundations are missing, Marriott argues, no amount of money poured on top will hold. She bristles at one phrase above all. “How would you like to be called ‘economically inactive’? It’s like me being called ‘remedial’ when I was a kid. It’s like being called a Neet. Being given a label can have a catastrophic effect.”

She has seen how the welfare system clings on to those who try to escape it. Her centre holds a council contract to get women into work. “We had a woman who secured a job, a little cleaning job, her first one. She’d applied, been interviewed, got it. She went down to the [Department of Work and Pensions], and they told her: don’t take that! There’s another benefit you’re entitled to. She had to write to us to say they’d told her she couldn’t take it.” She is still angry about it. “Why are you investing £150,000 for us to get women into work when another part of the system tells them not to take the job?”

---

Changing mindsets

At the centre she has caterers called the “barefoot bakers”: mothers who a year ago had no job or life plan. Now they run the café and cook homemade meals for 90 children on youth-club nights as volunteers. The idea is to reduce the fear of work and combine this with coaching designed to change the mindset about sickness. “My long-term aim is that, in three years’ time, those women will not be claiming benefits,” she says. “And their children will have seen their mothers go to work and be purposeful.”

But here, as so often, the system is not helping. "It's not the parenting demands stopping them working: it's the benefits system. They are standing on a cliff." Carer's allowance vanishes the moment a claimant's earnings tip over £204 a week. It's not so much losing the money that acts as the deterrent, but fear the job may not work out — so they would have to apply for benefits all over again.

She introduces me to Billie, her community hub health and wellbeing coach, who first arrived as a long-term sickness claimant who had never held a job. She tells me that her mum never worked. "I was getting money for being unwell, and it wasn't bad money. I could live. I never believed people when they said a routine would help your mental health." Eight years on, her sickness record is, in Marriott's words, "off the chart" — but in the right direction. "Her sick rate is now nil."

Billie's tale, says Marriott, points to the way out. "We do have people who want to work, but they need a job to go to ... We need to make work pay. Give people the chance to build confidence, to make mistakes, to see themselves in someone who looks like them — and without losing their benefits for that period. Then, when they're ready, get them into work and support them in it." Email welfare@thetimes.co.uk

News

Untangling the benefits system — and its costs

---

Charlotte Bend, Christopher Phillips

Changes to the benefit system have created an alphabet soup of acronyms and co-dependencies, explained here. The sums are the most recent annualised costs, and the percentage changes are over the past five years.

---

UNIVERSAL CREDIT

This is the big one. Designed as a catch-all benefit, UC is paid to 3.1 million people in work as a salary top-up, and to 5.2 million out of work.

Annual cost: £67bn (+194 per cent)

PERSONAL INDEPENDENCE PAYMENT

Covers the extra costs of living with a disability. Pip is not means-tested. It was designed for anyone with a long-term condition — mental or physical — limiting daily life, but 39 per cent of claims now relate to psychiatric conditions. Of the record 212,000 teenagers claiming Pip, psychiatric conditions make up 83 per cent of claims. Children who qualified for child DLA “inherit” a Pip averaging £8,800 a year.

Annual cost: £27bn (+67 per cent)

CHILD DISABILITY LIVING ALLOWANCE

Helps parents with the costs of looking after disabled children. Claims have surged with diagnoses for behavioural disorders and learning difficulties.

Annual cost: £4.8bn (+60 per cent)

---

CARER'S ALLOWANCE

More than a million people receive about £4,500 a year for at least 35 hours a week looking after someone.

Annual cost: £4.5bn (+17 per cent)

---

REASSESSMENT

Sickness benefit awards have review dates based on a claimant's prognosis. Pip, a disability allowance, comes with a fixed review date. Reassessments stopped during Covid and never restarted at scale. New Pip awards are set for four years and reassessed at three years to cut the backlog.

---

LCW AND LCWRA

UC sickness benefits. About 440,000 people have limited capability for work (LCW). It gives no money to most but removes the requirement to look for a job. About 2.8 million have limited capability for work and work-related activity (LCWRA) worth £430 a month or £217 for those assessed after April. Annual cost: £7.7bn (+40 per cent for incapacity spending as a whole, including legacy benefits).

---

'TEMPORARY' AND 'SUPPORTED' ACCOMMODATION

Councils have a duty to house homeless households, but with 1.3 million on the social housing waiting list they turn to “temporary” accommodation or, where care is needed, to “supported” accommodation. These accommodate more than 323,000 working-age claimants. Annual cost: £4.9bn a year.

---

ACCESS TO WORK

Access to work funds the extra needs of a disabled person to find work and to stay in it. Claims have doubled since 2018, and £323m was spent in 2024-25.

MOTABILITY

A claimant signs over their Pip mobility allowance (£4,160 a year) and gets a three-year lease on a vehicle.

Annual cost: £3.8bn in subsidy for the leases; £1.5bn for VAT relief.

---

LEGACY BENEFITS

UC replaced jobseeker's allowance, employment and support allowance, income support, housing benefit, working tax credit and child tax credit, but the migration has so far taken more than a decade.

Annual cost: £26bn (-57 per cent)

Disability bill for teenagers costs taxpayers £1bn a year

Continued from page 1

to get any support. So things aren't improving for them."

Referrals of children to NHS mental health services in England have nearly doubled in six years. Most are seen within two weeks, but those with conditions such as autism wait an average of 42 weeks. About 44,200 children have been waiting for almost three years.

Dame Rachel de Souza, the children's commissioner for England, said mental health was one of the reasons more than 40,000 teenagers were severely absent from college and were effectively “hidden Neets [not in education, employment or training]”, adding: “The way we support young people's mental health must change — we cannot address mental health in isolation. Improving children's wellbeing requires action across government.”

The Pip assessor also said that, as a mental health nurse, they would rather be helping young people through counselling than signing them up to benefits.

Connie Muttock, of the Centre for Young Lives think tank, said a failure to invest in bringing mental health services to young people earlier was one

Children waiting for mental health appointments

Average wait from referral is ten months

England. Referrals of under-18s with no first contact yet Source: NHS England

reason “we have so many young people that aren’t in employment and are ... on benefits”. The government said: “The increase in the Pip caseload has slowed under this government, falling from 400,000 in the 12 months to July 2024, to 260,000 in the 12 months to July 2026.” It said it was waiting for a number of reviews to make recommendations. How to fix the system, letters, page 26 A one-way street to lifelong dependency, leading article, page 27

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Wheel deal Andy Swinscoe arranges artisan cheeses at the Courtyard Dairy near Settle in preparation for the Yorkshire Dales Cheese Festival, which ends on Sunday

News

Dog trainer quits in fear for his nose

A world-leading dog trainer is retiring over fears that “wagging tails” will knock off his £4,000 prosthetic nose.

Graeme Sims, 89, trained more than 3,500 dogs over 40 years giving advice and canine psychology seminars to tens of thousands of owners.

His training philosophy, the Graeme Sims Method, built around “love, compassion and understanding”, is used by dog owners around the world. But after having his nose removed because of cancer and replaced with one held on by magnets he has called time on his career over concerns an excited puppy might “send it flying”.

Sims, known as the UK's original "dog whisperer", has a collection of six silicone noses in slightly varying shades, which he wears at different times of year to match his tan or outfit.

He said his decision to retire was triggered by an incident this summer when a border collie jumped up and sent his “favourite” nose flying into bushes.

Graeme, who is now clear of cancer, tells the full story of his life with a prosthetic nose in his new book, The Answer is Under Your Nose.

The grandfather of eight, who lives in Ystradgynlais near Swansea, said: “Dog training has been a major part of my life so calling it a day wasn’t an easy decision.”

He was diagnosed with aggressive cancer in early 2018 after his nose suddenly began to cave in while training sheepdogs in Turin.

Within three months, during which he underwent radiotherapy, surgeons at Velindre Hospital in Cardiff removed most of the tumour.

Modern households close the door on dining rooms

Andrew Ellson

Consumer Affairs Correspondent

The dining room was once the room kept tidy for guests, Christmas lunch and occasions important enough to justify getting out the posh crockery.

Now, it is losing its place at the heart of the British home, with growing numbers of owners deciding that such precious square footage can be put to better use, particularly if a dining table can be accommodated in the kitchen.

Research has found that nearly a quarter of homeowners have repurposed their dining room, with most converting it to an office or playroom. In other words, the room that once hosted a roast may now be more likely to host a Zoom call.

The study found that the growth of working from home is the main reason for the trend, although it began before the pandemic. An analysis by Rightmove in 2022 found that the proportion of property listings mentioning a dining room had fallen by 28 per cent over the previous decade while mentions of open-plan rooms rose by 74 per cent.

The demise of the dining room would, in one sense, complete a historical circle. For much of British history there was no separate room devoted to eating.

In medieval manor houses the household ate together in the great hall, with the lord, his family and the most important guests at the high table and everybody else, including servants, arranged below according to rank. Over succeeding centuries wealthier families increasingly withdrew to smaller, more private rooms. At Great Chalfield Manor in Wiltshire, for example, built in the late 15th century, the family ate in the parlour rather than alongside the rest of the household in the great hall.

By the 18th century, the purpose-built dining room, or “eating room” as it was known at the time, was becoming a feature of prosperous homes. Felbrigg

A separate room for special occasions is a thing of the past in many homes

Hall in Norfolk created one in the 1750s, while Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire acquired a “modern eating room” in the 1770s.

For many working-class families, however, the separate dining room was never a feature of home life. Victorian workers' houses were often small terraces in which the front room doubled as a parlour and living space, while poorer urban families ate, cooked and lived in the same room. Historic England notes that the standard Victorian workers' terrace was typically only two rooms deep.

From the 1930s architects increasingly experimented with combining previously separate rooms and after the war open-plan living was encouraged by central heating, new building techniques and the loss of live-in servants.

The research, commissioned by the insurer, Aviva, shows that Londoners are most willing to dispense with the formality of a dining room, almost certainly because space costs such a premium in the capital. The study found that 28 per cent of London homeowners had repurposed a dining room compared to only 16 per cent in Wales and 17 per cent in the East Midlands.

Across the country as a whole, only bedrooms and box rooms were repurposed more frequently than dining rooms. Next most likely to be converted were living rooms, followed by lofts and attics. In total, one in six homeowners have converted their loft space.

All that reinvention can be expensive. Owners of detached homes who had renovated in the previous year spent an average of £63,169, according to the study.

Carolyn Scott, head of home and lifestyle at Aviva, said the findings showed “how many of us are repurposing and rethinking how we use our homes”.

For the dining room, the danger looks existential. The table may survive, but increasingly it has to share its territory with a laptop or Lego.

Sea change in tastes sees Britons stick to ‘big 5’ fish

Kaya Burgess Science Correspondent

Halibut, herring, oysters, sole, shrimp, trout, even curried whale: Britons ate a huge variety of seafood just a century ago. But over recent decades we have narrowed our tastes down to the “big five” species, a study found.

Salmon, cod, tuna, haddock and prawns now dominate our fish suppers, making up 80 per cent of the seafood eaten in the UK. They also account for 60 per cent of the fish recipes followed in British kitchens, according to an analysis of 1,192 recipes published in Good Housekeeping from 1923 to last year.

Researchers from Exeter University noted: “Recipes included oyster soup and halibut steaks in milk in [the] 1920s and 1930s, fish pasties and jellied herrings in the 1940s, and tuna soured cream quiche, herring snips and salmon trout in aspic in the 1970s.”

During wartime rationing in the 1940s there were “featured recipes by the Ministry of Food explicitly encouraging the consumption of fish and alternative protein sources, including a recipe for curried whale meat.”

In the 1920s and 1930s, cooks were expected to have the skills to clean, fillet and cook a whole fish at home, although recipes included instructions on preparation. From the 1950s, people began to place greater value on convenience and increasingly bought boneless fillets and frozen or tinned fish.

In the 1970s the herring and oyster populations collapsed. Catches of cod and haddock also declined but these were replaced by stocks from abroad, while the rise of industrial salmon farming made it widely available in supermarkets. Imported warm water prawns also started to replace native cold water shrimp.

Over the following decades, this led to more “narrow preferences” in British recipes, according to the analysis published in the journal People and Nature.

In the 1920s recipes were more likely to suggest an “interchangeable” list of ingredients depending on what was available at the fishmonger, but by the 1970s they tended to list specific fish.

“Flatfish, herring and oysters, once culturally prominent, declined substantially while salmon, prawns and tuna became entrenched,” the study found, noting also that “diversity fell significantly”.

The results reveal “a striking story of change,” said Dr Ruth Thurstan of Exeter University’s Centre for Ecology and Conservation, based in Cornwall.

"This wasn't simply a case of fewer species being available: herring, oyster and lobster can all still be bought. But it reflects a genuine narrowing of what readers were being shown and encouraged to cook, at least within the pages of this magazine."

She said the shift was not because tastes became more conservative. “Instead, it reflects decades of interacting changes in fish supply chains, which shaped what domestic cooks came to see as familiar and desirable to eat.”

She added: “Today, the UK exports most of the diverse fish caught here, and imports most of the narrow range of fish we eat.”

News

Root and branch reform for gardens

The traditional English herbaceous border — for more than a

century the defining hallmark of the country house garden — is being dug up as head gardeners call for a radical overhaul of the nation's historic landscapes (Sidonie Wilson writes).

At the annual Head Gardener's conference in Somerset this week, 90 experts representing thousands of acres of land across the National Trust, the Chatsworth estate in Derbyshire and London's Royal Parks, said that moisture-hungry flower beds were no longer viable because of the UK's increasingly erratic weather.

The herbaceous border, characterised by dense rows of perennials that burst into colour in the summer, has been a staple of British

horticulture since the Victorian era. However, after a succession of record heatwaves, droughts, water restrictions and wet winters, horticulturists agreed that maintaining the displays had become an unsustainable battle.

In a survey at the conference, participants unanimously backed abandoning traditional planting schemes in favour of deep-rooting, drought-hardy "shrubscaping" — saying that woody shrubs would be the future of British gardens.

John Grimshaw,

editor-in-chief of Trees

and Shrubs Online,

told the gathering: "Aesthetics were in the previous dimension. We have to change our perspective about what makes a beautiful garden. This goes far beyond the idea of a

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOP

British conventional herbaceous border — those may become a thing of the past."

Matthew Pottage, head of landscape strategy at the Royal Parks, said: "For years,

Climate change will make displays like the herbaceous border at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire too difficult to maintain, gardeners say

the rise of grasses and perennials has dominated our trends and gardens."

He joked that people were happy to plant things such as echinacea, which had “a lifespan of 20 minutes”, when they should be thinking more of shrubs that can last 30 years. “We need a different mindset. We need to look at shrubs in a bold ‘shrubscaping’ style rather than just using them as a background screen.”

Jack Aldridge, horticultural curator for the Royal Parks, said staple species were already failing across the south of England. "Front gardens filled with hydrangeas, which usually thrive, are dying and popular species like Cornus kousa are suffering severe heat scorch," he said. "Even with throwing water on them, temperatures above 30 degrees just scorch the leaves. Growing them is no longer a realistic possibility."

Pupils forced on exam treadmill early as GCSE studies start at 11

Nicola Woolcock Education Editor

The first years of secondary school are becoming a “dumping ground” for GCSE preparation as children as young as ll are set on a treadmill to the exams, a report has found.

GCSE courses are officially introduced in year 10, at the age of 14, but more than half of teachers say the qualifications are also dominating the first three years of secondary school (key stage 3).

Ofsted cracked down on the practice several years ago but it appears to be creeping back in at some schools.

PF Global (PF), formerly Public First, conducted research and found that 57 per cent of teachers identified GCSE preparation as a leading influence on the key stage 3 curriculum.

Thirty-nine per cent of those questioned said that key stage 3 received less leadership attention than the exam years, while 30 per cent reported less funding and fewer resources.

Commissioned by the International Baccalaureate and overseen by an advisory group of leading educationists from across England, PF said that its research was the biggest survey of opinion focused on key stage 3 in England.

The report — Education's Overlooked Middle Child: Reclaiming Key Stage 3 — painted an uneven picture of early secondary education, with pupils' experiences depending heavily on their school, subjects and individual teachers. Pupils gave teaching lower ratings in years 8 and 9 than in year 7. Girls, pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) and those from disadvantaged backgrounds reported a consistently poorer experience.

The report said that many pupils struggled to see how their learning related to life beyond exams or a future career. Only 36 per cent said they could see that connection in most or all lessons. Some pupils said that their plans for future exams were shaping which lessons they felt were worth their time. One year 9 pupil told researchers: "Lots of subjects I just don't really put much effort into because I know I'm not going to take them for GCSEs and I don't care about the subject."

More than half of teachers (53 per cent) said that teaching key stage 3 was regarded as less desirable than teaching older pupils. Teachers struggled to find the resources to make lessons practical and relevant. One teacher at a school in Greater Manchester, said: "Everything has to go to key stage 4 [GCSE years] because you have to get those results every year. What time is there left then to look at key stage 3?"

Only 2 per cent of teachers thought the present approach was satisfactory. The most popular alternative, backed by 56 per cent, was to keep GCSE preparation central while giving key stage 3 a clearer identity of its own.

The report called for the government and schools to agree what pupils should gain from years 7 to 9. It said that practical work and opportunities to apply knowledge should be built into lessons and not depend on individual teachers.

A new organisation called the Lower Secondary Advisory Group supported the research.

Ed Dorrell, a partner at PF Global, which surveyed more than 2,000 pupils, 810 teachers and 750 parents, said: "Key stage 3 is too often treated as a dumping ground for early GCSE preparation. Some pupils are already deciding that subjects they won't take at GCSE aren't worth their effort, years before they sit those exams.

“More than a decade on from Ofsted’s ‘Wasted Years’ report looking at the challenges around key stage 3, it feels like too little has changed.”

Bailout for town halls won't cover soaring Send bill

Georgia Lambert

Education Correspondent

Councils in England could face a financial catastrophe as special educational needs and disabilities (Send) deficits are forecast to reach a record £10.4 billion by March 2028 despite a government bailout, leaders have warned.

Figures from the County Councils Network (CCN), based on a survey of local authorities by the Association of Local Authority Treasurers, suggest that the Send deficits will continue to grow rapidly.

The government has pledged to write off 90 per cent of the debt accrued up to the end of the 2025-26 academic year, which is estimated to be more than £5 billion. However, rising demand for support is causing councils' debts to build up again.

Even after the bailout, councils say their deficits could reach £4.8 billion by March 2027 before more than doubling to £10.4 billion over the following 12 months, according to the CCN. In January, the number of young people with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) reached a record 718,000, a 13 per cent increase over 12 months.

Council leaders say that applications for the plans, which set out the support a young person with Send is entitled to, have risen sharply since the government announced proposed reforms in March.

Under its reforms, children with an EHCP would have it reviewed when they reached the end of primary school or secondary school, and schools in England would have a statutory duty to draw up an individual support plan for every child with Send.

Linden Kemkaran, the Reform leader of Kent county council and the Send spokesperson for the CCN, said that while the bailout covered “yesterday’s debts”, anything less than the government covering 90 per cent of the new deficits would be a “financial catastrophe for councils”.

Users banned from being 'cruel' to AI

Alex Farber Media Correspondent

Annoyed AI users have been known to take out their frustrations on the technology with a variety of insults. But one service is about to ban the worst cases.

Milder jibes have included “a potato has more processing power than you” and “you’re replacing nobody’s job with answers like that”.

Now Claude, the AI service created by Anthropic, will no longer have to tolerate barrages of complaints.

In its latest usage policy update, first reported by The Verge website and due to come into effect next month, users have been banned from directing “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behaviour” towards it.

"The policy update is meant to apply only in extreme cases, where users repeatedly act cruelly toward our models, with no discernible purpose," Anthropic said. "It does not apply to common versions of user frustration, pushback ... or model testing and research."

The update also strengthened rules surrounding usage of Claude to deceive voters, disrupt elections and arm drones and other autonomous vehicles.

Last month Christopher Olah, Anthropic co-founder, lobbied the Vatican to try to convince the Pope AI could be conscious, according to a New York Times investigation. Olah warned AI models may experience suffering.

The usage update received praise from some who welcomed more polite discourse. But Dr Barry Scannell, an AI partner at law firm William Fry, said that it was a “bonkers” decision.

Armando Iannucci, the satirist, said he “rejoiced” in the fact he could insult AI because it is not human.

News

Why I said No, Mr Bond, after offer to write 007 novel

Will Humphries

Southwest Correspondent

James Bond and Detective Inspector John Rebus share a slew of similar traits, from their hard drinking and smoking to a habitual disregard for their superiors.

So the concept of Sir Ian Rankin, the celebrated Edinburgh-based crime novelist, being given the reins for the slightly Scottish secret agent amounts to a tantalising prospect. And it is one that almost came to be, said Rankin, after he was given the chance to write an official Bond novel “a few years ago” by the estate of Ian Fleming.

Rankin said he had a “pretty good idea” for the plot but it remains for his eyes only after he was offered just half of the royalties for the finished story.

Rankin told The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival that he had eventually turned down the opportunity to write an official James Bond novel for the “identical” reasons as Lee Child, the creator of the Jack Reacher series. Child said he rebuffed several invitations in 2008 to write officially licensed Bond books because

TMS

diary@thetimes.co.uk | @timesdiary

Kemi ignores doctor's advice

Kemi Badenoch could yet become prime minister, but it still wouldn't have been her late father's first choice for her career. "I was a doctor's daughter and I was going to be a doctor," the Tory leader told the historian Simon Sebag Montefiore at the Cliveden Literary Festival. Sadly for Dr Adegoke, his little girl was tempted away into engineering and then ultimately politics, but it could have been worse. "My uncle who didn't do very well was a dentist," she joked. However, Badenoch doesn't feel like she was a great loss to the medical profession. "I think my bedside manner would probably not have made me the best doctor," she said.

Parental expectations were something of a theme at Cliveden. The billionaire venture capitalist and author Sir Michael Moritz said that his mother never understood his career choice. "You were never good with money when you were a small boy," she said. "You never bothered to balance your chequebook." She even asked, "Is it legal?" Despite these doubts, Moritz became the world's leading venture capitalist and she always kept an eye out for his name in the papers. She would comment on his appearances in the Rich List — but only when he'd dropped a few places.

UNITY STRETCHED

The Conservatives' conference last week was an uncharacteristic display of unity, but there is division at the very top of the party. Last week, in a series of quickfire questions from The Times, Badenoch, right, was asked whether she preferred William the

“why would I do Bond books for 50 per cent of the royalties, when I can get 100 per cent with the Reacher books?”

Asked if he would ever consider handing over Rebus to another author, Rankin, 66, said he could picture his creation joining a popular literary band of octogenarian crime fighters.

Rankin's new novel, The Heights, his

“I was thinking that all I can do now with Rebus, now he’s almost 80 years old, is hand him over to Richard Osman,” he said. “[Rebus] would be the maverick in The Thursday Murder Club.

“He’d be good off out of town, doing all the wrong things, getting him in trouble. You know, he’d slot right in ... So I’m going to mention that to [Osman] the next time I see him.”

The author said his son had shown no interest in writing so passing on the literary baton was “a dead loss”. He added: “Unlike Lee Child, I don’t have a brother who’s a thriller writer [Andrew Child, who has written the Reacher series since Child’s retirement]. But I mean, after I’m gone, if you’ve got a good character in literature, someone will come along and pick up the baton.”

Conqueror or Harold II and she plumped for the Norman invader over the Anglo-Saxon king. This would be fine were her deputy Alex Burghart not a historian of the Anglo-Saxons. "There is a divide in the Conservative Party over this," he said, and he promised to "have it out" with his leader after conference season. However, unlike Harold, Burghart is not rushing to the battlefield. "The diary has not yet been able to accommodate the lengthy conversation required," he said. Such a shame that the opposition cannot bring an urgent question against itself.

The Labour peer Lord Glasman brings a refreshing honesty to proceedings. During a panel discussion at Cliveden chaired by Emily Maitlis, he was asked if he would like to come in on the topic of welfare cuts. "Well, I don't know if I'd like to," he said, "but I guess I'm morally obliged." Sometimes he achieved honesty in what he didn't say. Asked if he was "no fan" of Andy Burnham, he simply replied "Well, we've known each other a while".

SARKO JR FACES WATERLOO

Perhaps Donald Trump is historically underspoken. While discussing Andrew Roberts's new book Napoleon and his Marshals, the writer and politician Louis Sarkozy (son of the former French president) noted that “during the first six months of 1807, Napoleon averaged more letters to his marshals than Trump did tweets in his first term”. Sarkozy is a huge fan of Roberts, despite the way the

historian treated him when the Frenchman had a book out. Roberts invited Sarkozy into the Lords and took him to a very

grand room with enormous paintings. "So good to have you here," said Roberts, as he showed Sarkozy Waterloo on one wall and Trafalgar on the other.

JACK BLACKBURN first standalone thriller in 20 years, takes him from the grit of Edinburgh's sandstone tenements to the sleek glass superstructures of London's ultra-rich.

He said he had had no contact with billionaires but explored the subject with journalists who investigated the gilded lives of the city's elite.

While researching his first Rebus novel, Knots and Crosses, aged 24, he unwittingly became an early suspect in a murder investigation.

As a postgraduate student in Edinburgh, he wanted to set his story in a city shocked by the strangling of two girls. He wrote to Lothian & Borders police asking for help and was invited to visit

Leith police station. “I’m wearing a grey coat I got from an Oxfam shop, and a pair of Dr Martens boots with bright red laces. I’ve not shaved for a few days. I’ve not slept for a few days. I’ve got a notebook and a pen and these two very dapper cops in three-piece suits and Hai Karate aftershave [were] saying, ‘You’re writing a book?’”

He added: "What I

---

Sir Ian Rankin said he had a “pretty good idea” for a Bond plot

didn't realise was these cops were investigating the disappearance and murder of a child on the outskirts of Edinburgh that happened six weeks or eight weeks before. It was a disappearance at that stage and not a murder. So they said, 'Well, let's pretend you're a suspect' and they started entering my details into their computer. The only computer in the police station.

“So I became a suspect in a police inquiry and that was my first research. So after that I didn’t go near the police for years.”

\* A great night's sleep before your important meeting

News

Later motherhood 'not women's choice'

Sanchez Manning

Social Affairs Correspondent

Almost 40 per cent of women are becoming mothers later than they had wanted to and the average delay is six years, a study has found.

Among the most common reasons for delaying motherhood were not being ready because they felt they were too young, not having enough money and not having met the right partner.

The study conducted by GfK, a market research company, on behalf of the IVI Institute, a research collaboration between seven fertility clinic groups across nine countries, also concluded that women were having fewer children than they desired.

In the survey of 4,000 women across Britain aged 19-49, 38 per cent said they had children later than they had wished to. The average difference between the hoped for age and actual age was six years. The study found the average number of children that mothers said they wanted was 2.4, but the average they actually had was 1.6.

These results echo the findings of surveys of millennials by University College London's Centre for Longitudinal Studies. And the Office for National Statistics revealed this year that the fertility rate — the average number of children a woman would give birth to based on current rates — had fallen to 1.39 in England and Wales, the lowest level on record. Their data showed that the average age for becoming a mother was now 31, compared with 26 in 1975.

However, the GfK study found that the overwhelming majority of women still aspired to having children. Some 54 per cent of those surveyed were already mothers and 27 per cent wanted to become mothers.

Among the 12 per cent who did not want children, the most common reason cited was the impact it would have on their lifestyle. The second most popular reason was being unhappy with today's society and feeling it was a difficult environment to raise children in.

Asked what changes would make having children easier, 76 per cent of the mothers surveyed said they wanted more subsidised childcare, including free childcare until school age, childcare in the workplace and subsidised babysitting services. Some 88 per cent said they wanted more flexibility in the workplace and 75 per cent wanted better paid maternity leave.

Dan Annetts, chief executive of IVI Fertility Northern Europe, said: “It’s tempting to assume that falling birth-rates are simply a result of women not wanting to have children, but our report demonstrates that this is far from the case. In fact, the vast majority of women in the UK and around the world do want to start a family, but lack the financial, workplace, childcare and emotional support to convert this aspiration into reality, within the timeframe that they would want.”

Brush with history This image of Lord Hague of Richmond is the first ceremonial portrait of a University of Oxford chancellor in 800 years painted by a woman. Louise Pragnell joins a lineage that includes Hans Holbein. Comment, page 23

Midwives win £750,000 after gas exposure

More than 120 midwives and maternity staff have been awarded almost £750,000 in compensation after being exposed to nitrous oxide.

The compound is the main component in gas and air, used for pain relief in labour. Although it is safe for women during childbirth, long-term exposure can have serious effects.

The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) said staff at Basildon University Hospital were exposed between 2018 and 2023 thanks to leakikng gas lines nd poor ventilation on the maternity unit. Midwives reported symptoms such as fatigue, headaches, brain fog and anxiety.

Thompsons Solicitors, working with the trade union, acted on behalf of more than 120 workers, including about 80 RCM members, and a settlement of almost was £750,000 agreed.

Daniel Poet, partner at Thompsons Solicitors, said: "We're proud to have secured compensation for our clients, but they should never have been at risk.

"The trust knew about the dangers in 2021, but staff weren't told until the following year. That ... is unacceptable."

An independent review two years ago by the Good Governance Institute found there had been an “unacceptable delay” by Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust

Gill Walton, chief executive and general secretary of the RCM, hailed the settlement as a “landmark”.

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Busy level crossing shut after becoming playground for children

Tom Gould

A busy level crossing in London has been closed after children were repeatedly caught on camera playing dangerously on the train tracks.

The children were seen doing handstands and posing on the railway at Brickfields level crossing near Upminster, east London, which is used by about 230 trains a day. The level crossing was initially shut for 21 days from September 30 due to “repeated incidents of dangerous misuse by children and teenagers”, Network Rail said.

However, the closure has been extended “while action is taken to address the serious misuse observed”. This will include delivering a presentation about the dangers of trespassing on train tracks to all year groups at local schools.

Images show the children playing on the railway, using their phones, running across the line to race a train and walking on the anti-trespass boards.

Network Rail said the children were "placing themselves at significant risk of serious injury or death". Shenel Bullock, the route health and safety manager for Network Rail Anglia, said: "The safety of the public is our absolute priority, which is why we have taken the difficult decision to temporarily close Brickfields level crossing.

"We understand this closure may inconvenience some local people, but we cannot ignore the significant risks

Children are seen running across the tracks and performing handstands at the Brickfields level crossing in Upminster, east London. The line is used by 230 trains each day

posed by this behaviour. This temporary closure gives us the opportunity to assess what further measures may be needed to keep people safe.

"We are asking parents, carers, teachers and the wider community to help us reinforce this vital safety message. Every railway safety conversation could help prevent a tragedy."

A level crossing at Featherstone in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, is to reopen this year after it was closed in April due to children “playing chicken” with trains. The crossing will be moved 40 metres to the east with mini-traffic lights and CCTV systems installed to deter misuse, Network Rail said.

In an incident at a level crossing near Diss station in Norfolk last year, a teenage boy was filmed standing in the path of a full speed train before jumping away at the last second.

Eleven people died on level crossings between April 2025 and March this year. Last year, Network Rail said accidental deaths on the railway had reached a five-year high with 24 preventable fatalities, an increase of 26 per cent compared with the previous year.

Plea to save hedgehogs after notable decline in numbers

KEVIN SAWFORD/IMAGEBROKER/GETTY IMAGES

Adam Vaughan Environment Editor

The rural population was hit hardest, caused by pesticides, habitat loss, climate and the threat from badgers, say researchers

They are going to be immortalised on our banknotes for decades. But the chance of seeing hedgehogs in the wild is now vanishingly rare, according to research which revealed their population has fallen by more than two thirds.

A peer-reviewed study, described as the most comprehensive look at the once-common creature in Great Britain, found that their numbers fell by 71 per cent between 1981 and 2023.

In the countryside they have fared even worse. The number of rural areas where they could be found have fallen by 80 per cent between 2002 and 2023. A species once ubiquitous is now being pushed to extinction in some parts of the country.

Silviu Petrovan, assistant research professor at Cambridge University's conservation science group, said: "Britain as a nation loves hedgehogs, demonstrated by the fact that they're the only mammal that is going to feature on the new banknotes. The fact that they're doing really badly should be a call for action."

Petrovan and his team drew on five datasets from England, Scotland and Wales. None of them were specifically targeting hedgehogs but counted them inadvertently, from ones caught in tunnel traps by shooting estates to roadkill figures and hundreds of thousands of people recording birds in their gardens.

Though the data sources were not optimised for hedgehogs, Petrovan said the fact that they all pointed in the same direction showed they were “in the right ballpark”.

Ecologists said the reasons behind the decline included the intensification of agriculture, which has removed the hedgerows they rely on and pesticides affecting the insects they eat.

Roads are a major issue, fragmenting their habitats and causing traffic deaths. And while hedgehogs and badgers can coexist side by side with enough good habitat, growing populations of badgers prey on hedgehogs and compete with them for food.

The hot summer has not helped. “If you’re an animal that feeds on the surface, on beetle larvae slugs, snails and earthworms, the kind of prolonged dry weather over summer is not going to make things any better for you. It’s [the decline] magnified by climate change,” Petrovan said.

Hedgehogs in villages, towns and

---

Hedgehog population density

Annual numbers of hedgehogs at each site and year were divided by site area and averaged over the five-year period. An average value for each $10 \times 10$ -km grid cell was calculated and is shown as a relative abundance

Source: National Gamebag Census cities are faring better. Gardens appear to be acting as refuges and badger numbers in those areas are lower too. People also tend to provide food and water.

Their numbers in urban areas have risen by about a fifth between 2004 and 2024. “It’s certainly a much more hopeful picture in urban areas,” said David Wembridge, an author of the study, who works for the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, a charity.

Unlike targeted conservation projects to save rare species or restore ones, safeguarding the future of the hedgehog would require much more systemic action, said Petrovan.

He said that farmers wanted to help and restoring or improving hedgerows was one solution, adding: "We can't take out too much land out of [food] production because Britain's already heavily dependent on food imports."

For gardeners, Petrovan suggested hedgehog-friendly actions from leaving a corner of their garden wild to putting small holes in fences so the animals can move freely.

£5bn Thames tunnel leads to big fall in sewage spills

Adam Vaughan

London's £5bn “supersewer” has drastically decreased the amount of sewage spilt into the Thames but still fallen short of its target.

The Thames Tideway, a vast concrete tunnel that holds sewage during times of heavy rainfall, opened last year and has now been transferred to Thames Water's ownership.

The first annual report on its performance found that it had cut volumes of raw sewage discharges into the tidal part of the river to around 3 million cubic metres last year, 86 per cent lower than before it was built.

However, the tunnel, paid for by customers of Thames Water through their bills, was designed to cut volumes by more than 95 per cent.

Last year was also very dry, resulting in a nationwide decrease in sewage spills into rivers and seas. The report, by Thames Water, said that the limited number of significant storms and higher number of dry days had contributed to the low amount spilt.

Nonetheless, the water company claimed that the tunnel marked a “new chapter” for the river, which was declared biologically dead in the 1950s.

Surveys by Thames21, an environmental charity, showed that sewage-related items dropped to 18 per cent of all foreshore litter last year, down from 30 per cent before the tunnel began operating. The tunnel also intercepted about 84 tonnes of sewage-derived litter, including wet wipes, sanitary items and plastic waste last year. That has helped avoid a repeat of the build-up of “wet wipe islands” such as the one that accumulated on the Hammersmith foreshore.

The sewer is not designed to make the tidal Thames safe to swim in; most of it is considered unsafe because of currents and ships. However, it has cut the health risks associated with sewage spills. The number of days where harmful bacteria levels were “elevated” fell from 75.5 per cent before the sewer to 10.4 per cent last year.

Alison Debney, conservation lead for UK nature recovery at the Zoological Society of London, which surveys wildlife in the river, said: "It is encouraging to see the progress being made in diverting untreated sewage away from the Thames, reducing risks to this vital ecosystem and the wildlife and people that depend on it."

News

Ajax commander claims ‘acoustic shock’

BEN BIRCHALL/AP

Jonathan Ames Legal Editor

A former tank commander is claiming £500,000 from defence chiefs over allegations that he suffered “acoustic shock” from the army’s £6.3bn fleet of armoured vehicles.

Jonathan Bevan, 46, said that his hearing was badly damaged by “horrible” and “piercing” emergency alarms sounding in his headset while testing the “troubled” updated version of the Ajax. The 40-tonne light tank is billed as the army’s next-generation battlefield scouting and logistics vehicle.

Bevan, formerly a sergeant in the

Household Cavalry, the regiment that guards the royal family, worked as an Ajax tank commander while the vehicle was being tested between 2017 and 2021. He was later medically discharged over complaints of chronic tinnitus and mental health problems.

His lawyers told Baroness Carr, the lady chief justice, that the Ministry of Defence should pay £500,000 in damages over allegations that his health problems stemmed from “acoustic shock” syndrome caused by repeated noises in his earpiece while he was in the cockpit of the Ajax.

Ministry officials have admitted neg-

The fleet is at the centre of a £500,000 claim by Jonathan Bevan, right, who says “piercing” alarms sounded every few seconds during trials between 2017 and 2021, leaving him with chronic tinnitus

ligence over high levels of noise in the tank, but have denied that acoustic shock was caused and have disputed whether Bevan's condition was caused by noise from his headset.

The Ajax programme has been plagued with difficulty and delays and was described three years ago in parliament as “troubled” by Ben Wallace, the then defence secretary.

Nearly a year ago, testing was suspended after some 30 soldiers complained of becoming unwell because of noise and vibration issues. Testing of the vehicle resumed “cautiously” in April, according to defence chiefs.

Ministers paused payments to the American manufacturers of the fleet between 2020 and 2023 because of the problems.

Bevan's case first went to the High Court in Manchester last year, where a judge rejected his claim, but is now being considered at the Court of Appeal. His lawyers said that he had served a gruelling tour in Afghanistan before taking part in the Ajax testing, which he said had ended his career.

He said that by 2021 he was experiencing “ringing or buzzing” in one ear. The next year he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, attributed to the tour of Afghanistan, and he was medically discharged in 2023.

Bevan described “noisy high-pitched ringing in his Bowman headset”, a high-frequency sound from a fan behind his head and an intermittent screeching alarm. In written submissions from his legal team, he said the alarm would sound in his headset “every six to seven seconds” and was “so loud and so piercing”. Spending hours in the vehicle with it sounding could be “very disorientat-

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At the High Court hearing, the judge ruled that Bevan's symptoms fell outside the category of acoustic shock as there was no specific “memorable event” which triggered his symptoms.

Carr, sitting with Lord Justice Popplewell and La dy Justice Whipple, reserved their decision, which will be given later.

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Death of author was murder, domestic abuse charities say

David Brown Chief News Correspondent

Domestic abuse charities have urged the Supreme Court to reinstate the conviction of a churchwarden for murdering an elderly author he seduced.

The case of Benjamin Field was turned into a BBC drama called The Sixth Commandment for which Timothy Spall won a Bafta for his portrayal of Peter Farquhar, the victim.

Field, the son of a Baptist minister, was convicted of murdering Farquhar, 69, in 2015 after the court heard that he left a bottle of whisky at the author's home, knowing Farquhar would die if he drank it along with the sedatives he had already taken.

Field was jailed for life with a minimum term of 36 years in 2019.

Peter Farquhar died after taking sedatives and drinking a bottle of whisky

Field, now 35, was found not guilty of the attempted murder of Ann Moore-Martin, 83, a retired headteacher who was Farquhar's neighbour in Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire. He admitted fraudulently being in sexual relationships with both pensioners as part of his plan to get them to change their wills.

Farquhar, a former English teacher at Stowe public school, was working as a part-time lecturer at Buckingham University where Field was a student. Field became a warden at Stowe parish church where Farquhar was a member of the congregation. The Court of Appeal overturned Field's murder conviction in April after ruling that the jurors were not “properly directed” by the judge during the trial at Oxford crown court.

Lord Justice Edis said: “The fact that [Field] secretly intended that Mr Farquhar should die did not change the act or, in law, mean that Mr Farquhar’s decision to drink whisky was not free, deliberate and informed. There was no evidence that [Field] had ‘administered’ the alcohol.”

The prosecution's appeal against that ruling will be heard today at the Supreme Court.

David Jeremy KC, representing Field, said in a written submission that Farquhar “had a choice whether or not to drink whisky given to him by [Field]”.

“He chose to do so freely and voluntarily, knowing what it was and knowing what he was doing,” said Jeremy. “This ought to have been fatal to the contention that [Field] caused [Farquhar] to drink the whisky and thus murdered him.”

Three domestic abuse groups have made a joint legal submission to the Supreme Court urging for Field's murder conviction to be reinstated.

Katherine Hardcastle, representing Advocacy After Fatal Domestic Abuse, The Centre for Women's Justice and Project Resist, said in a written submission that the Court of Appeal ruling "may provide an expanded basis for perpetrators of domestic abuse to avoid criminal liability for homicide, even though their abuse has brought about their victim's death".

Hardcastle told the court: “The actions of a victim of abuse are, frequently as a direct consequence of the abuse, not free or voluntary actions given the distinctive nature of the harm. A victim’s choice to escape domestic abuse by ending their life is no choice at all.”

Student stabbed housemate 30 times in masked ambush

A university student lay in wait for his housemate before stabbing him 30 times to death, a court was told.

Zack Coughlan, 23, dressed all in black and wore a mask and gloves to ambush Jamie Collins, 21, in the garden of the home they shared in Filton, near Bristol.

Bristol crown court was told that Collins was stabbed repeatedly and Coughlan left him dying in the alleyway as he cycled away on his housemate's bike.

The student was attacked shortly before 6pm on April 8 this year after re-

Jamie Collins was killed after returning home from university

turning from the University of the West of England where he was studying robotics alongside his killer.

Coughlan dumped the bike at a nearby retail park, bought a change of clothes and threw his bloodstained clothing in a pond. He then returned to the house in Cleve Road at about 9pm, put a pizza in the oven and did some online gaming with friends.

Adam Vaitilingam KC, prosecuting, told the jury: “A few hours later he decided it was time to call the police and pretend that he had just found his friend’s body in the garden.

"At about 2am — eight hours later — the defendant called 999. He said that his friend had been stabbed. They told him to do CPR until paramedics arrived and he told them that he was.

“Shortly afterwards armed police officers arrived. They saw Jamie’s body in the back garden of the house.

“They spoke to the defendant. He told them that he had been out, at the park, and he had just come home. He had noticed that the back gate was open so came outside and it was then that he found Jamie lying in the garden.”

The court heard the attack was caught on CCTV installed at the house, which Coughlan showed officers who initially treated him as a witness.

Coughlan had injuries to his hands, and told people who saw him bleeding that he had been climbing trees and had fallen and hurt himself.

Vaitilingam said there had previously been disagreements between the pair about paying rent and whether Coughlan was charging too much, but they had been resolved.

Coughlan accepts he had killed Collins but denies murder.

The trial continues.

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Beatles fans urged to see four fab films

Alex Farber Media Correspondent

Fans of the Beatles who choose to see all four upcoming biopics in quick succession will benefit from their “cumulative effect”, according to the films’ producer.

Pippa Harris, who co-founded Neal Street Prouctions alongside the films' director, Sir Sam Mendes, said she hoped audiences would watch each one at the cinema after their concurrent release in April 2028.

"Our hope is that people will see all four films. They standalone as individual stories of each of those four men but they have a cumulative power which I think is greater than the sum of their parts," she said yesterday at the BFI London Film Festival.

Although movies such as Backbeat, Nowhere Boy and I Wanna Hold Your Hand have depicted the Beatles, this is the first time all four band members and their estates have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film. Harris added: “The Beatles are simply the greatest band in history and we’re trying to do our best to do them justice, hence the four films.

“I don’t think there’s another band that you could say you wanted to see four films about.”

Mendes last year described the release schedule as the first “bingeable moment in cinema”, saying: “Frankly, we need big cinematic events to get people out of the house.”

Neal Street is currently on “day 180” of the shoot for the films, which star Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Joseph Quinn as George Harrison and Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr.

Harris said she did not expect audiences to watch the films back-to-back.

“We want people to be able to experience them in the cinema during the same period,” she said. “That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re thinking that people will go and see all four films on the same day. But within the same month you might see one a week, or you might see one weekend, two the next, one the next."

Pippa Harris's Neal Street Productions is making the films, which star Harris Dickinson, Paul Mescal, Barry Keoghan and Joseph Quinn as the Beatles

Each film is told from the perspective of one Beatle although the stories are expected to intersect and overlap.

Harris raised concerns about the retreat of Hollywood studios from original ideas and said Mendes's 2008 romantic drama Revolutionary Road, which starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, would be unlikely to find funding today. "Studios are banking on big hitters like Avengers or Spider-Man films which they know have got a built-in audience," she said.

“Even though they’re much more expensive to make, they can pretty much guarantee they’ll get their money back. But when it comes to unknown IP or new independent films, people are nervous that they’re going to lose money.”

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A seriously good tribute to hip-hop's founding father

Pop Will Hodgkinson

Gil Scott-Heron by Brian Jackson and Yasiin Bey Royal Albert Hall, SW7 ★★★★☆

This one-off at the Royal Albert Hall was a tribute to the pioneering New York jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron, featuring his closest collaborator and the singer who owes him the most obvious debt. Brian Jackson's flute and Fender Rhodes piano brought a free-wheeling groove to Scott-Heron's classic recordings, while Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, took his legacy of socially conscious poetry against a syncopated beat and brought it to rap. Together they sought to honour the man who put protest, humour, attitude and street wisdom into rhythmically delivered spoken word, thereby creating the template for hip-hop.

"The revolution will not go better with Coke," recited Bey, from Scott-Heron's declamatory, sardonic masterpiece The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. After Bey pointed out that it was Jackson's birthday and the crowd started singing accordingly, he asked: "Can we do the black one?" That led to Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday, a diversion from the repertoire that stopped things from getting too reverential.

Asked about his influence on hip-hop, Scott-Heron once pointed out that he had spent years studying music, something few rappers did. That was emphasised on Lady Day and John Coltrane, which gave the band a chance to stretch out into jazz complexity and for Bey to prove his R&B singing chops. Jackson then introduced the mournful Winter in America not as a lament for the death of the civil rights movement as it is usually interpreted, but as a message of hope for change.

“A good writer is someone who can get into the essence of a thing, and I have a really good example of that right now," said Jackson before Home is Where the Hatred Is, a soulful classic from the junkie's viewpoint in which the bleakness of the words was balanced by the zest of Jackson's piano and an incredibly versatile drum solo from Paul Jones.

Scott-Heron was a formidable figure; he addressed everything from the dangers of alcoholism to nuclear meltdowns in Detroit with sophistication and not a little righteous anger. For that reason, it was a shock when in the early 2000s he succumbed to the demons he

Brian Jackson, at the keyboard, and Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, celebrated Gil Scott-Heron, above, with free-wheeling interpretations of the jazz poet's classic songs

railed against, leading to a jail sentence for charges relating to crack cocaine. But he was an artist as much as a polemicist, with all the complexities it brings. That artistry was celebrated here, right up to The Bottle, Scott-Heron's funky finger-wagger on the evils of booze.

Return to EU would weaken our democracy

Melanie Phillips

Page 24

Comment

Europe must be ready for Putin's winter push

Kremlin's hybrid warfare has targets beyond Ukraine and an ever-more erratic Trump cannot be relied upon to help

William Hague

It is a fixture of President Trump's thinking that he sees foreign policy as akin to property transactions. Recently, he predicted the Iranian regime would make peace after the US midterms. "I believe we'll make a deal right after the election because it doesn't make sense for them not to," he said.

Sadly, of course, it makes abundant sense for them not to. They have weathered an intense US bombardment, discovered new leverage over the world economy through disrupting the Strait of Hormuz and now see no need to give up their nuclear material. Their Houthi allies have been sufficiently emboldened to take war into the heart of Saudi Arabia. Such factors do not have easy equivalents in property deals. As a result, there is much less prospect of a comprehensive deal with Iran than before Trump launched the war in February.

The president is similarly over-optimistic about ending the war in Ukraine. “It’s going to happen more quickly than people understand,” he said three weeks ago. No, it isn’t. The Russians have never deviated from their demands to keep parts of Ukraine they have brutally occupied and add other areas they have not managed to conquer in four and a half years of war.

The Ukrainians, with extraordinary courage and resilience, have fought the invaders to a standstill. Last month alone the Russians are said to have suffered

50,000 casualties to very little purpose and also found their crucial oil industry severely disrupted by drone attacks in ports thousands of miles away. Ukraine is not about to trade away its land and freedom to a struggling aggressor as if it is selling a greenfield site to a hotel developer.

With the weekend's agreement between Trump and President Putin for the United States to buy Russian diesel, the president's habit of seeing world affairs wholly as commercial transactions reached a new nadir. It was inconsistent, because he signed the Lindsey Graham Act tightening sanctions on Russian oil less than a month ago; illogical, because the quantities involved will barely move the retail price of diesel; and ineffective, because it will not incentivise either side, particularly Russia, to end the war. It was also highly unprincipled and showed no recognition that probably the biggest contributor to high diesel prices has

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He will send waves of missiles and wants the western allies divided

been the war in the Gulf initiated by the US president himself.

Sunday night's Russian missile attack on a Ukrainian gas facility shows how Putin will regard the immediate “energy ceasefire” suddenly announced by Trump. Ukrainian and European leaders were blindsided by that announcement, which was more the product of wishful thinking than of patient negotiation. Diplomatic strains across the Atlantic and consequent glee in the Russian media will reverberate throughout this week. Yet something much bigger is happening here: the

beginning of a winter that is more crucial, perhaps more decisive and much more threatening than any we have witnessed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

An ominous combination of events is coming together. Trump has always been erratic. But now he is sinking into a mess of his own making, with no easy solution in the Middle East, which is in turn exacerbating the prospects of him losing control of Congress in the midterm elections. Cornered and frustrated, his unpredictability is more likely to intensify than diminish, which does not bode well for support for Ukraine and solidarity with western allies.

Across in Moscow, Putin too is a very frustrated man. The “special military operation” was not meant to last longer than the First World War. Refineries on the Black Sea, Caspian and Baltic coasts of Russia were not meant to be exploding. The battlefield on which vast numbers of young Russians are being slaughtered was not expected to be static. Ordinary Russians were not meant to be noticing that all is not well. Putin needs a masterstroke to win the war.

The coming winter is his best hope. Although his armies are stuck, new jet-powered drones are getting through Ukraine's air defences, attacking energy plants, bridges, grain terminals and railways without regard for civilian deaths. And while the Ukrainians will improve their defences against such drones, Russia is building up a new stock of ballistic missiles. With the crucial Patriot interceptors of such missiles in very short supply — the US used up most of them fighting Iran and Europeans have few remaining — waves of Russian missiles in the depth of winter will be Putin's plan. At the

BOBYLYOV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Vladimir Putin is frustrated that his war on Ukraine has no end in sight

same time, he must keep the western allies who support Ukraine off-balance and divided. That means keeping Trump thinking a deal is in prospect. Playing him does not seem to be difficult. Then he will seek to demoralise and disorientate the Europeans with “grey zone” attacks, both to intimidate them and show that America won’t protect them.

It is no mystery that this is Putin's strategy, since this is what he is doing already. Recent weeks have seen steadily more Russian activity in western Europe. A fire at an Estonian defence company, a missile strike on a diplomatic train near the Polish border, a drone attack on Leipzig airport, marine drones near a Romanian gas platform, a growing number of missiles and drones going beyond Ukraine and reported plots to assassinate bosses of European

defence firms — this all fits the strategy.

It is easy to think that this winter, the fifth of the war, will be just like the four before it. But for Putin — with Trump desperate for deals, Europe not sure how to respond to threats and Ukraine's air defences weakened — this is his chance. The coming winter is the crisis.

What should European leaders, including Andy Burnham, do? They have no choice but to try to persuade and placate Trump. Ukraine needs US intelligence, satellites and Patriots. They should continue to step up the provision of arms to Ukraine and work intensively with Kyiv on new methods of defence against fast drones and missiles.

Much of this is happening, but they should also step up their response to Moscow's intensifying hybrid warfare. Last week's agreement between the UK and Germany on countering cyberattacks and sabotage is a good step but much more will be needed. Russian activity should be understood as a pattern, not isolated incidents. It needs a new forum of allies to co-ordinate a response, using both Nato and EU structures.

A united response could include creating joint counter-drone units, expanding protection of subsea cables, conducting joint exercises in maintaining critical infrastructure and creating a grey zone response centre for allied co-ordination. The shooting down of drones and missiles over western Ukraine should be an option. And proposals from Poland and Estonia to restrict access around Europe for Russian diplomats and tourists should be adopted.

Trump dreams of deals and will become ever more erratic. Putin has a strategy and it is centred on this winter. Europe, including Britain, needs to prepare to defend itself.

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Comment

Return to EU would weaken our democracy

PM's turn towards Brussels is of a piece with his determination to drain Westminster's power

Melanie Phillips

@MELANIELATEST

Why is Andy Burnham so keen to reopen the Brexit wound? He has said that Britain must now consider a

new, closer relationship with the European Union because Brexit hasn't delivered either economic growth or immigration control.

The public certainly share the view that Brexit has failed. But that doesn't mean people want to rejoin the EU.

A YouGov survey last month showed that 60 per cent thought it had been wrong to leave the EU, while just under that number said they would support rejoining. However, when it was suggested that the only basis on which the UK could rejoin might be to sign up to all major EU policy areas from which it had previously opted out — such as the euro — rejoining was opposed by 45 per cent to 35 per cent.

And there's no doubt that the terms for rejoining would be brutal. The EU's enlargement commissioner Marta Kos has displayed the sinister implications of her title by outlining a plan to enlarge EU power over any state that joins the bloc in future. If, during a 15-year probation period, a new state was seen to be backsliding on EU laws or values, a four-fifths majority of members could vote to cut off its funding or remove its

voting rights. Moreover, Brussels is hardly an advertisement for economic success. Last year Mario Draghi, a former prime minister of Italy and ex-head of the European Central Bank, warned that European companies struggled to rival the size of American or Chinese companies because of red tape and sky-high energy prices.

Meanwhile, Britain is actually doing a little better than the EU. The UK's GDP grew by 0.5 per cent in the second quarter of this year, compared with 0.4 per cent in the eurozone. The OECD has estimated that the UK's annual economic growth is likely to reach 1.1 per cent this year, matching that of Germany

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Burnham is continuing the project started by Tony Blair years ago

and second in the G7 only to the US.

For its part, the German economy is crippled by soaring fuel prices from a net zero energy policy even more ruinous than Britain's. France is heading into a sovereign debt crisis and is being consumed by anarchist violence as public fury rises, while similar unrest has broken out in Belgium.

Nor do Burnham and the rejoiners seem to realise that the EU is itself struggling with the same pressures over mass immigration. These have provoked the rise of populist parties and other EU responses that hardly promise progressives a refuge in Brussels from Britain's allegedly xenophobic deplorables. An EU-wide agreement adopted in 2024 and which has now come into force imposes stricter border controls, has expanded digital tools to track asylum applications and has increased deportations. In June the EU agreed new rules allowing countries to send migrants who are ordered to leave the bloc to processing centres in third countries — just like Britain's reviled and abandoned Rwanda policy.

But the most jarring element in Burnham's statement that Brexit has done more harm than good is the free pass he's giving to previous governments, even though these were Conservative ones. All Brexit did, after all, was give the UK back its power of independent self-government so that British politicians could once again make decisions in the country's national interest. But they didn't. They screwed up from the start.

Britain hasn't benefited economically from Brexit because successive governments used their restored political agency to mess up the economy. The terms on which Britain left the EU were guaranteed to hobble any economic benefit because of a remainer-establishment stitch-up which still ties companies in red tape by continuing with many EU rules and regulations. And it was successive governments' refusal to leave the human rights and other international conventions that has caused the failure to tackle mass immigration.

The essence of Brexit was that democracy matters. But Burnham disdains democracy. He has even suggested “leaving the door open” to rejoining the EU without offering the

British people another referendum.

His drive to once again outsource to the EU Britain's sovereign power and accountability is all of a piece with his disdain for parliamentary government. His aim to increase the power of the country's mayors means leeching power from Westminster. His No 10 North threatens to dismember and weaken central government by duplicating and dissipating its efficiency and effectiveness.

Now he is reportedly planning to halve the time available for peers to scrutinise legislation that would make it possible to vote without photographic identification, lower the voting age to 16 and tighten restrictions on political donations — the first two proposals an attempt to rig the rules in Labour's favour.

Burnham, the former New Labour minister, is continuing the project started by Tony Blair all those years ago. Blair combined a fanatical belief in the UK's membership of the EU with an equally fanatical belief in outsourcing power from Westminster to judges, international human rights lawyers, quangos and devolved governments.

Brexit was never going to be able to restore Britain's fortunes while — as the historian David Starkey has argued — the constitutional settlement that had created political freedom and given rise to Britain's greatness remains in ruins.

Burnham has said he will return power to the British people. Both in his proposed further emasculation of Westminster and his genuflection to Brussels, he actually intends to take it away.

Giles Coren Notebook

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I'm not in Clarkson's good books after all

On Thursday evening Esther and I dragged ourselves away from the nocturnal comforts of Kentish Town to drop in

on the launch party for Jeremy Clarkson's latest farming manual at the Savoy. We arrived about an hour after the start to find the place by no means empty but not nearly as full as one might have expected for a man of Jeremy's immense charm, generosity and good character.

“Maybe people are losing interest in the old bugger’s writing at last,” I whispered to my wife. But that wasn’t it. Obviously.

“Please don’t tell anybody you were here,” said Jeremy when called upon to say the usual few words. “Because I woke up this morning and suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to ask most of my friends. It’s rather embarrassing and I’d prefer if they never found out that this had happened at all.” There was a ripple of well-heeled laughter and also of smugness as we grasped that we, who had been remembered, held a special place in Jeremy's heart. A smugness that was endorsed, for almost all, when our host went on: "So this is a sort of edited highlights of my address book — apart from you, Giles."

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Quote unquote

Now, I include this story at a risk. Because the last time I wrote something in the paper based on something Jeremy had said in private, he was extremely pissed off with me. He didn't say so at the time. He didn't fire off an admonitory text or anything. But when I next saw him, he let it be known that I had hideously misquoted him and that he was by no means more disappointed than angry. He was just angry. So I apologised profusely and resolved thereafter never to mention his name in print again.

But then, as I was leaving the Savoy after the party, he turned to me and said: "Have you got plenty of copy?" And I thought: "Oh no, he's expecting me to write something to celebrate his book in return for those three non-alcoholic lagers I had."

So I've done this, to try and make amends. But now I'm worried that when he said, "Have you got plenty of copy?" he was joking, and he'll be furious all over again.

This is why I never go out.

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Weighty issue

According to Saturday's Times, sumo is one of the fastest-growing sports in Britain, with a 12-fold growth in sumo clubs in the last two

who clubs in the last two years alone (from one to 12, obviously). My first thought, of course, was: "At last, a use for all the fat people!" But then I panicked. The recent Ozempic boom has meant that, in my own immediate circle at least, there are now no fat people at all. If UK sumo really does catch on, are we going to encounter a terrible

shortage of potential competitors? Will we be looking at ... a reverse obesity crisis?

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Hard to swallow

I made a pea and ham soup on Sunday, using the stock left over after Esther had boiled a ham on Saturday — it's a classic English dish from the days when we would eat literally anything, and I don't recommend you try it at home.

“It tastes the way the cat smells when she’s wet,” said Sam, ladling it down anyway because there was nothing else till suppertime. But he drinks soup all wrong, shovelling it in very fast with a teaspoon. So I offered him a soup spoon.

"A what?" he said. "Is that a thing? There's a special spoon?"

He turned it in his hand when I gave it to him, like Indiana Jones inspecting the Holy Grail, then went on stoking the soup into his mouth, clattering the spoon against his teeth as he rammed it in.

“You don’t put it all in,” I said. “You drink it from the tilted edge of the …”

“You mean not only is there a dedicated spoon for this slop,” interrupted Sam, “but there is a technique I have to master? I don’t believe you!”

After that, I let him get on with his lunch in peace. I can't wait till he hears about fish knives.

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Questions for Met over suicide of Pusher suspect Jawad Iqbal

The Metropolitan Police find themselves in the dock over the arrest and subsequent suicide of Nicholas Brandram,

suspected by officers of being the Putney Pusher.

Brandram was arrested in June, nine years after a jogger pushed a woman into the path of an oncoming bus on Putney Bridge in west London. He killed himself last month while he was still under police investigation, leaving the force with questions to answer.

How did Brandram's identity become public? The Met say they did not name him publicly when he was arrested or at any point before his death. Yet somehow his biographical details — wealthy banker, former army captain, a descendant of Queen Victoria — crept into the public domain. It didn't take long for him to be vilified on social media. An innocent man, remember, thrown to the online wolves.

Then there is the police arrest at his home. Brandram's family claim a media film crew was in tow when police arrived, reportedly hired by a tabloid newspaper. Did someone in the force think his royal connections made the arrest newsworthy? Answers, so far, none.

Why, after nine long years, did the police alight on Brandram as a suspect? His family insist there was no forensic evidence linking him to the case and accuse officers of ignoring evidence proving he could not have been present at the time of the attack. He told relatives the police investigation was “murdering him” and that he had “no fight left” days before his death.

His family insist the Met's refusal to formally clear Brandram's name ultimately led to him ending his own life. It is a grave accusation.

The response of Sir Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, to this catalogue of damaging claims fails to meet the gravity of the moment. He refused to apologise for the pressure placed on Brandram, adding: "So, we're investigating the case. We have a suspect, he died, the family have complained ... It could be the person we're investigating. So let us work it through."

It would appear that the Met chief refuses even to entertain the possibility his officers might have done something wrong. Wake up, Sir Mark! An innocent man, never formally charged with any offence, ended his own life in the most tragic circumstances.

The police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct, is right to order the Met's professional standards unit to look into the force's handling of the case. The sooner its findings are published the better. Brandram's family, and the wider public, are entitled to know the whole truth.

Comment

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Posing with books can lead to better things

The fashion for performative reading may seem risible but tackling something more difficult than TikTok brings rewards

James Marriott

@J\_AMESMARRIOTT

Books, a slew of hyperventilating magazine trendpieces announce, “are sexy”. A variety of improbable-sounding

phenomena are cited in evidence. Dior is about to stage a fashion show in a library and is presently marketing a baby blue tote bag emblazoned with the words ULYSSES BY JAMES JOYCE. Attendees at Valentino's spring 2027 show, also held in a library, were asked to bring a book.

The pop star Dua Lipa's book club invariably gets a mention. So does London's present epidemic of “hot” literary parties, beloved of high-cheekboned trustafarians. And then, of course, there is the much-debated phenomenon of “performative reading”, the supposed explosion of show-offs flourishing ostentatiously difficult or worthy books for the approval of social media followers and dating app matches.

This unexpected injection of glamour comes at a time when the habit of reading is in severe trouble.

(A third of UK adults say they have given up reading for pleasure and 40 per cent say they did not read a single book in the last year.) The apparent contradiction may be explained by the thought that as reading fades, books are once again becoming what they have been for most of their history: unusual and slightly exotic objects.

After all, there is no need to “performatively scroll”; everyone is doing that anyway. To be a reader is no longer banal but a mark of a distinctive identity. There is perhaps an analogy to be made with the fading of Christianity from the social mainstream and its adoption as a chic cultural signifier. (A Met Gala in New York a few years ago was Catholicism-themed.)

The performative readers offer an interesting glimpse of the future of the book. In an age of ubiquitous digital distraction, books are struggling to compete as mere entertainment — video games and social media offer more immediate (if not deeper) pleasures. And so the survival of reading is increasingly tied up with its social prestige. For a book remains what a TikTok video can never be — a widely respected source of knowledge and personal improvement.

A physical book is an object that, placed prominently on a living-room shelf or flourished subtly at one's

fellow commuters, advertises its owner's intelligence, sensitivity and moral superiority. That fact was not lost on the Valentino-bound celebrities who toted works by James Baldwin and Raymond Queneau, as well as glossy high-end art books. Dior is yet to issue a tote bag bearing the legend KANE AND ABEL BY JEFFREY ARCHER. Nobody is performatively reading Dan Brown.

This has been creeping up on us for a while. There was a period a few summers ago when I seemed to be

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Readers once used to demand not merely delight but instruction

the only person in Hackney not carrying around a copy of Reni Eddo-Lodge's Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race. That book belonged to a whole genre of works (White Fragility, How to Be an Antiracist) sold to readers hoping to advertise their up-to-date racial sensitivities.

Few things are more marketable in 2026 than a low-effort, high-prestige title. The recent viral success of Dostoevsky's hundred-page novella White Nights, which sold as many as 100,000 copies in a single year, is a case in point. That book has the status-enhancing glamour of being the work of a notoriously difficult Russian novelist without the downside of being (like, say, The Brothers Karamazov) 800 pages long.

This is not to write off the performative readers as shallow cynics — or not entirely. The show-off titles they flaunt in cafés and beside catwalks are more than mere accessories. They are also a sign that what people expect from reading is changing. Because reading is hard cognitive work compared with passively scrolling short videos on TikTok, readers increasingly want something to show for their effort. To put in the hard graft of actually getting through a whole book — a feat reportedly beyond many modern students — and then gain nothing but entertainment strikes many younger readers as a poor trade-off. You might as well have spent the afternoon playing Grand Theft Auto. Performative readers are reading not only to be seen as better people but also to be better people.

There is a parallel with the first age of mass reading in the 18th century. Back then, long before public libraries and the paperback revolution, books were still rare and prestigious artefacts. And readers demanded not merely “delight” from their reading matter but also “instruction” and “improvement”. It was a great age of sermons, edifying novels and moralising children's literature. And so is ours. The front tables of Waterstones groan with secular sermons (in the form of "manifestos" on climate and race) and novels with improving messages about diversity and tolerance. The children's section yields the modern heirs of Maria Edgeworth's Moral Tales for Young People in the form of books like Antiracist Baby and No! My First Book of Protest.

Reading, after all, is supposed to be a sign of superiority. And it is supposed to be improving.

The point can be overstated. There is still a vast market for thrillers and cosy crime. But even low-rent romantasy authors are careful to signal their moral credentials — gender and sexuality are prominent themes of the genre. Netflix is allowed to be meaner and less moralising than publishing because nobody expects TV to make you a better person (and nobody watches TV to show off). As books are outcompeted as entertainment devices, their future will be worthier, showier and more self-conscious.

This is a gloomy conclusion in some ways. But also a cause for hope. A few readers will start out wanting to look sexy or be improved morally and wind up realising that reading is so much more complicated and so much richer than that.

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Letters to the Editor

Letters to the Editor should be sent to letters@thetimes.co.uk or by post to 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

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Migrant workforce

Sir, It is rare for me to disagree with Jenni Russell and she makes some powerful economic points in arguing for the home secretary's immigration reforms ("Labour is betraying voters over the Boriswave", comment, Oct 12). However, having witnessed the compassionate care in our local nursing home by many immigrant workers on care visas, I feel the injustice and un-Britishness of now moving the goal posts. These people are working very hard indeed and are not unskilled, or even low-skilled in my view. Care working should have a much higher status than it does. Even if they walk away from these jobs, it is strange to assume they will all default to a life on benefits. Many will stay in the care sector. It is understandable to restrict new visas, but to apply limits to those already here is unjust.

Dr Rachel Turner

Ret'd GP; Overton, Hants

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Future mandarins

Sir, One might be forgiven for thinking Britain lacked graduates from decent universities with decent Mandarin, keen on a career in public service (“Britain needs a China unit with mandarins who speak Mandarin”, news, Oct 12). However, Foreign Office applicants can now be discarded by an online test of generic civil service “behaviours” before their language skills are even considered.

In its enthusiasm for accessibility, apparently speaking Chinese should confer no particular advantage when recruiting people to deal with China. Perhaps the shortage of Mandarin speakers in Whitehall is not so mysterious after all. Cosmo de Bono Oxford

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How to fix Britain's failing benefits system?

Sir, At last, your Welfare Inquiry is beginning to expose what some people have argued for years: the system is biased towards claimants at the expense of taxpayers (“Almost 2m on sickness benefit may not qualify”, news, Oct 12). The answer to welfare abuse is to replace family GPs as the gatekeeper and replace them with specially trained medics and paramedics. GPs are too quick to sign people off and in some cases are probably intimidated into doing so. This shift will cost money but should easily be paid for through savings, providing the Labour government has the courage to deny benefits to those fit enough to do some form of work, which I doubt.

Sir, Further to your leading article (“Caught in the Safety Net”, Oct 12), the onus appears to be on the government to reassess claimants who have been receiving benefits that are no longer relevant. Surely it makes more sense to put the onus on claimants. If the two million that The Times has identified were to receive a letter requiring them to provide written evidence of need within a given period, say three months, it would have a dramatic effect in reducing numbers. In the case of the taxi driver you highlight in your news articles, the response would be simple. He no longer needs it and hasn't done for years. How many times is this replicated elsewhere? Martin Lindsay Colston Bassett, Notts

Sir, Your inquiry is to be welcomed. As resources for determining an individual's right to sickness benefits seem to be prioritised towards new claimants, the solution to potentially never-ending payments seems obvious: stop the payments at the end of the term so that recipients are encouraged to reapply if they need it.

Chris Broyden

Richmond, Surrey

Sir, While I wait in anticipation of the publication of Alan Milburn's review into why there are so many young people not in education, employment or training, we should address the legislation that acts as a barrier to

teenagers getting work experience. I started work in my village bakery aged 12, working from 8am until 4pm with a half-hour break and earned about £10, which felt like a fortune in 1982. I then progressed to working in the chip shop at age 14, where I was able to work two evenings a week and a Saturday lunchtime and evening — and I kept on top of my schoolwork!

Now young people, from 13, can only work a maximum of two hours on a school day and Sundays, and a maximum of five hours on a Saturday (eight hours if they are aged 15 to 16). In an increasingly secular society, why does the Sunday rule exist?

As a youth worker in a rural area, I know many young people who would love a part-time job in a café or hotel, but employers are hesitant or unable to take them on because they simply cannot employ them for the hours that they need. There are more ways for the government to help young people into employment without the need to offer grants and subsidies, and reviewing this legislation would be a cost-effective first step.

Kate Parish

Duntish, Dorset

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Trump and Putin

Sir, President Trump has now conclusively demonstrated he believes the price of diesel to American farmers and truckers is more important than the lives or freedom of Ukrainians (“‘Energy truce’ with Russia was surprise to Zelensky”, news, Oct 12). What a dreadful comparison with President Truman, who ordered a massive, continuous air mission to fly food, fuel and supplies into West Berlin after the Soviet Union blockade; and to President John F Kennedy, with his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech after the erection of the Berlin Wall. The Statue of Liberty must be hanging her head in shame.

Charles Treasure

Claygate, Surrey

Sir, Your leading article (Oct 12) rightly fires both barrels at President Trump's latest betrayal of Ukraine. The UK and European Union have also condemned the move. But until legalistic objections to giving frozen Russian funds in Europe (\$300bn) to Ukraine are overcome, an irksome question mark will remain over our commitment to defeating Putin. Robert Wright Cheltenham

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The last hangings

Sir, By happenstance (I was an 18-year-old bus conductor), I found myself outside Walton prison in Liverpool on the morning of August 13, 1964, as a small group holding placards protested against capital punishment, some praying. Inside the jail, Peter Allen, 21, was being hanged for the murder of Alan West, 53. At the same time, in Strangeways, Manchester, Gwynne Evans, 24, was being executed for the same crime. They were the last criminals to be executed in the UK. The chilling memory came back as I read Libby Purves's article (“Dickens can tell Hegseth why he’s wrong”, comment, Oct 12). That lonely vigil has stayed with me since that morning. The thought that America is even contemplating such heinous barbarity, and in public, should occasion a clamour of condemnation from our government and from all civilised people.

Paddy McEvoy

March, Cambs

Sir, Is it too much to hope that Pete Hegseth is publicly fired?

David Carvel

Ceres, Fife

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Who's in control?

Sir, Your article on “robotaxis” (news, Oct 12) rightly raises safety concerns, but there is a larger issue here. The introduction of new technology typically addresses a problem with the status quo, or seeks to improve life generally, but what exactly is the problem to which these cabs are seen as the solution? At present, we have an army of drivers gainfully employed ferrying passengers safely around the city. Replacing them with driverless cars will simply boost unemployment figures and divert cash to the firms operating the cars. Everyone else loses.

Bob Bury

Leeds

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Flocking to church

Sir, Dr Ian d'Alton (letter, Oct 12) says he was often the only member of the congregation when attending evensong at Cambridge in 2014. He'll be pleased to know that at Oxford there has been an upturn in attendance, especially in the years after Covid. The chaplain at Pembroke says that in term-time there can be a congregation of 160. Canon Brian Stevenson West Peckham, Kent

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BURGLARS TAKE HISTORIC DIAMOND

FROM THE TIMES OCTOBER 13, 1926

In the early hours of yesterday morning burglars entered the Château de Chantilly, formerly the residence of the Duc d'Aumale, but now a museum, and stole a considerable number of jewels, including the famous rose diamond known as "le Grand Condé".

It is estimated that the objects stolen are worth seven or eight million francs, but their chief value is historic. The château occupies the site of the ancient building which was the home of the Montmorency family and later of the House of Bourbon-Conde. The greater part was destroyed during the Revolution and much of the present building was erected between 1876 and 1882 by the Duc d'Aumale, son of King Louis Philippe and heir of the last Duc de Bourbon. The Duc d'Aumale bequeathed it to the Institut de France. In the museum, which it has now become, are family relics and the art collection of the Duc d'Aumale.

There is evidence that the theft was the work of several men, probably four, who had carefully studied the method to be followed. They are believed to have arrived at Chantilly by motor-car. They stole two ladders, by means of which they reached the balcony on the first floor, broke the window, bored a line of holes in the oaken shutters behind and burst in the woodwork. They then smashed the glass case containing the rose diamond and other jewels. The burglary was discovered by the keepers, who arrived at 7am.

The rose diamond was an heirloom of the Bourbon-Condé family, its first possessor being the great Condé. The last of the family left it to the Duc d'Aumale. It is mounted as a scarf pin and surrounded with small pearls.

The diamond was found weeks later hidden in an apple in a hotel room. It will go back on display at the Château de Chantilly this month.

Gang warfare in Chicago has broken out afresh. An unknown person stationed in the upper storey of a building on North State-street opened fire with a machine-gun on a group of men in front of the Scofield flower shop across the street, killing two of them and seriously wounding three others. It is believed by the police that the gang led by “Scarface” Al Capone was responsible for the shooting.

THETIMES.COM/ARCHIVE

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Paths into science

Sir, The government's plans to replace applied science qualifications with V-levels risk narrowing an important route into chemistry careers, which contribute as much to the UK's economy as our tourism sector. About 20,000 students take applied science qualifications each year, compared with just 283 completing a science T-level last year. Many progress to higher education and into chemistry and related sectors that underpin the UK's industrial strategy ambitions.

Concerns about these reforms are shared across the scientific community, but from a chemistry perspective it is still unclear whether the proposed replacement qualifications will offer the same breadth of scientific study or progression opportunities. At a time when demand for chemistry skills is growing, we should be widening pathways into the profession, not restricting them. Ministers must ensure that post-16 qualification reforms preserve accessible routes for young people from all backgrounds to progress into chemistry and the wider scientific workforce.

Jo Reynolds, director, Royal Society of Chemistry; Jason Love, chair, Heads of Chemistry UK

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Mustn't grumble

Sir, Adding to Giles Coren's anti-grumble list (comment, Oct 10), I would suggest much warmer weather in Britain, meaning there's no need to go abroad for holidays, and English wine, which has improved so much it regularly wins in blind tastings. I am also surprised that he, as a restaurant critic, did not mention the increased quality and choice when eating out and in our supermarkets.

Graham Ashen

Horsham, W Sussex

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Required reading

Sir, Having graduated from “Lady C”, at our boarding school we moved on to The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins (letter, Oct 12). Due to its size, it was carefully dissected into four or five sections to allow for undetected reading by several of us after lights out. These should have been passed among us in their correct order but rarely were. The reader’s confusion, while tempered by the naughty bits, was further confounded by the housemaster’s confiscation of two instalments.

Christopher Murray

Barford St Michael, Oxon

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What a nightmare

Sir, I was pleased to read “Hearing your top tunes soothes pain” (news, Oct 9). The London teaching hospital where I received successful treatment for cancer this year offered its radiotherapy patients the option of music during the painless but taxing treatment. I was told that the app used by the hospital could play anything I wished to hear. I asked for The Four Seasons. The radiotherapy machine started; the music began playing. For some seconds my brain was bemused. I was indeed listening to the Four Seasons: not the Vivaldi I should have specified, but the Sixties pop-rock group. I decided that in future sessions I would prefer to listen to the comfort of my own thoughts.

Gillian Dunkeld

London N2

Letters to The Times must be exclusive and may be edited.

Leading articles

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Daily Universal Register

UK: Figures released for the number of people on universal credit; women's World Cup play-off, second leg: England v Greece.

Nature notes

The pair of yellow butterflies that danced into the distance over the tall grass and clover were far too golden to be brimstones.

They were clouded yellows, which have a much more “Colman’s mustard” tone and a smart black border to their wings. Fast flyers, they are hard to photograph and rarely settle for long, so most encounters are fleeting. They migrate from Europe and are most common in southern England, especially along the coastlines, but in a good summer they can turn up anywhere. They breed here easily but the new adults cannot survive winter; however, small numbers of clouded yellow larvae and pupae are now thought to hatch out each spring along the south coast. MELISSA HARRISON

Birthdays today

Edwina Currie, pictured, health minister (1988) and novelist, A Parliamentary Affair (2002), 80; Stephen Bayley, chairman, Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, founding director,

Design Museum (London), 75; Doug Beattie, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (2021-24), 61; Chris Carter, screenwriter and producer, The X-Files (1993-2018), 70; Aleksander Ceferin, president of Uefa (European football's governing body), 59; Sacha Baron Cohen, actor and comedian, Borat (2006), 55; Baroness (Angie) Bray of Coln, Tory MP for Ealing Central & Acton (2010-15), 73; Keith Christmas, acoustic guitarist on David Bowie's Space Oddity album (1969), 80; Rachel de Thame, gardener and TV presenter, Gardeners' World, 65; Sir Michael Gooley, founder (1970) and chairman of Trailfinders, 90; Sir Paul Grice, chief executive, Scottish parliament (1999-2019), 65; David Haye, boxer, former world cruiserweight and heavyweight champion, 46; Michael Heath, cartoons editor, The Spectator, 91; Rob Howley, rugby player, Wales (1996-2002), 56; Nigel Huddleston, shadow culture, media and sport secretary (2025-Aug 2026), co-chairman of the Tory party (2024-25), 56; Nana Mouskouri, singer, The White Rose of Athens (1969), and former MEP, 92; Sir Ken Olisa, lord-lieutenant for Greater London (who retires today), 75; Marie Osmond, singer, Paper Roses (1973), 67; Ed Parker, co-founder and chief executive, Walking with the Wounded (2010-21), 61; General Sir Nick Parker, commander, Land Forces (2010-13), 72; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, youngest woman (aged 29) elected to the House of Representatives, 37; John Regis, athlete, British 200m recordholder (1994-2023), 60; Paul Simon, singer-songwriter, The Sound of Silence (1966), 85; John Snow, cricketer, England (1965-76), 85; Melvyn Tan, pianist, 70; Ian Thorpe, swimmer, nine-time Olympic medallist, 44; Mordechai Vanunu, technician who gave details of Israel's nuclear weapons to The Sunday Times in 1986, 74.

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On this day

In 1992 it was announced that up to 31 out of 50 of British Coal's deep coalmines would close, affecting 31,000 jobs.

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The last word

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." The novelist Paul Eldridge, Maxims for a Modern Man (1965)

Cradle to Grave

The disability benefits system offers perverse incentives to claim even from early childhood. From then on, it can be a one-way street to lifelong welfare dependency

The British welfare system is unusual in that it allows teenagers to inherit a disability benefit on their 16th birthday. To qualify, they need to be categorised as disabled — but by this age, one in nine already are. This child “disability living allowance” typically releases £6,300 for the parents and, on top of that, £4,500 a year in carers’ allowance. Four in five such payments turns into an adult personal independence payment (PIP) when the child turns 16, paying on average £8,800 a year.

This system is now paying £1.9bn a year to 210,000 teenagers — mainly for ADHD, autism and anxiety. Young people struggling with mental health should, of course, be given support. But, as this newspaper reveals today, the waiting list for child mental health has now hit a record 440,000, with a ten-month average wait. The welfare state transfers money easily. But when it comes to giving real help to children who have summoned the courage to ask for it? It fails abysmally.

This is the latest finding of The Times welfare inquiry and a theme is emerging: our system is geared up to dispense cash, not care. There is hardly any thought, strategy or scrutiny in the payouts. And, most of all, no interest in what fate befalls the children. If this money were proven to help disadvantaged children make a success of their later life, it would have some merit. But the reverse, its seems, is true.

The Department for Work and Pensions can now track young people who claim sickness and disability benefit as they make their way through life. Its studies show that just over half are Neets five years later: not in employment, education or training. Worse, this ratio has been steadily rising over time: their chances of finding a job or a place in college are getting steadily worse. So, we see two trends: a surge in the number of young people on disability payments and the relentless worsening of their prospects.

This is what Whitehall officials have started to call “the pipeline”, a system that prepares youngsters for a life on benefits, not work. Such children are inducted into the system from a frighteningly early age. The number of five-year-olds put down for disability benefit has nearly doubled in five years, most of the rise being ascribed to behavioural issues. On current trends, a staggering one in five 15-year-olds will end up claiming disability benefit, as is already the case in Liverpool.

It is sometimes argued that sickness benefit is a kindness to middle-aged men who have lost their role through de-industrialisation; a form of early retirement. But this financing of the workless now seems to apply to teenage PIP, a fast-rising trend at its most acute in coastal and post-industrial communities. Nigel Farage's constituency of Clacton, for example, is the teenage PIP capital of Britain. Teenage PIP claiming correlates with truancy and general disengagement from the system.

While the sheer cost of teenage PIP is extraordinary, the greater scandal is a system that seems almost designed to set children up for failure. As we report today, this point is now fully understood by young people, who are starting to fear being categorised as “depressed” or “anxious” because they believe they will be regarded by teachers as disruptive — or edged towards so-called alternative provision schools where children are warehoused rather than educated (such institutions have a 4 per cent pass rate in English and maths).

In the most deprived parts of Britain, primary teachers report children who now openly aspire to be on welfare. While shocking, it's not surprising given what they observe in their communities: workers who are stressed, insecure and often with less money to spend than those who have become adept at navigating the welfare system. Work needs to pay more; welfare needs to help rather than entrench dependency. We need a safety net that works rather than one that ensnares.

Slap in the Face

The Houthi attack on Riyadh airport is an audacious blow against Saudi Arabia

Two Houthi missile attacks on Riyadh's international airport at the weekend have killed at least 14 people, provoked outrage in Saudi Arabia and are likely to unleash a furious military response in an attempt to drive the Iran-backed Yemeni rebels away from the Red Sea coast they now occupy. The attacks also pose a dilemma for Saudi Arabia's allies. Should they respond to Riyadh's urgent pleas for military support and intervention? Or should they hold back for fear of further inflaming tensions in the Middle East and inviting fresh Iranian attacks on its Gulf Arab neighbours?

For President Trump the attacks are especially challenging. Saudi Arabia is a key American ally, has bought billions of dollars of US (and British) arms and lavished a spectacular welcome on Mr Trump during the first overseas visit of his first presidency. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman feels entitled to call on him for immediate military help. The president knows, however, that American public opinion, already hostile to his impulsive and failing attempt to overthrow the Iranian regime by force of arms, would be outraged by further entanglement in the region.

Voters would certainly make this clear at the congressional midterm elections next month.

Mr Trump has expressed anger at the Houthi attacks but has prevaricated when pressed on any US military response. So too have Saudi Arabia's two new military partners in the region, Turkey and Pakistan. Their fledgling strategic relationship does not oblige them, as a Nato-style treaty would, to go to each other's aid in war. And beyond immediate expressions of solidarity, there is little evidence they will allow their troops to fight.

The anger in Saudi Arabia is palpable. But to a large extent the Saudis have only themselves to blame. Their political manoeuvring has been as inept as their botched attempts to bolster the ousted recognised government of Yemen on the battlefield. Alarmed from the start by the rise of the Houthis and their massive military, political and intelligence support from Iran, Riyadh veered between half-hearted and sporadic military intervention in the Yemeni civil war and attempts at negotiation during an ill-kept truce since 2022. But the Houthi blitzkrieg that gave them control of the strategic Bab al-Mandeb entrance to the Red Sea — together with the attacks by pro-Iranian Iraqis on the Saudi trans-Arabia oil pipeline, a vital alternative to the perilous Strait of Hormuz — led to Saudi Arabia bombing Houthi airfields to prevent the importation of more Iranian arms.

Saudi attempts to restore the recognised Yemen government to power have also been thwarted by the foolish split with the United Arab Emirates. Once an ally in opposing the Houthis, the UAE is now seen as a rival to its bigger neighbour for commercial and diplomatic influence in the Gulf.

Washington believes Riyadh now has enough arms to fight its own wars. What it lacks are the skills and determination to use them. The US, however, is now withdrawing its forces from the region after nine months of war that have already cost more than \$43bn, destroyed or damaged 81 US warplanes and crippled its Gulf bases. The Saudis, however, will not wait. Passengers are avoiding Riyadh. Planned international business conferences may collapse as participants take fright. Riyadh is likely now to launch massive retaliation, with or without allied support. Iran will then respond. The consequences are incalculable.

The Burnhamwave

Labour would betray the country by allowing Boriswave migrants leave to remain

Between 2021 and 2024 about four million people came to the United Kingdom seemingly by accident. This was the so-called “Boriswave” of migrants, named after the former prime minister who somehow left the door open on his watch.

It means one in 30 people now in this country arrived due to Boris Johnson's disastrous changes to the immigration system. It was a dramatic shift, not only in policy but in the make-up of society. Fewer than 6 per cent of this influx were skilled workers. And, under Labour, it now risks becoming embedded: a staggering 1.6 million arrivals will be eligible for permanent settlement by 2030.

Shabana Mahmood has grasped the danger to Britain's public services and social fabric if these migrants and their relatives are added permanently to the population, allowing them unfettered access to welfare. The home secretary wants to make it harder for such people to gain indefinite leave to remain. That includes doubling the minimum period for eligibility for permanent residency from five to ten years. Those who arrived on health and social care visas, a big part of the Boriswave, would wait 15 years. Ms Mahmood's changes are the only way to ease what would be a catastrophic burden on the future economy.

Yet, despite the obvious dangers to both the public finances and social cohesion, soft-left Labour MPs such as Angela Rayner, the local government secretary, are intent on sabotaging the reforms. Ms Rayner describes the measures as “un-British”. Perhaps she would like to tell the British people exactly when they voted for the admission of a major city’s worth of extra people.

So far, Andy Burnham has supported Ms Mahmood. It is absolutely critical that the prime minister continues to do so. Otherwise, the Boriswave will become the Burnhamwave. And at the next election he will face the consequences.

World

Trump ‘unwilling to pay the price’ of hot war with Iran

The US president is counting the political and financial cost of a renewal of hostilities, Michael Evans writes

To judge from his Truth Social posts, President Trump is getting ready to resume the war on Iran.

Ever since the summer cessation of bombing Iranian targets, Trump has been threatening to launch a new round of strikes to “annihilate” the Tehran regime.

Pete Hegseth, his war secretary, has assembled an even bigger armada in the region, including three aircraft carrier strike groups, ready to carry out his commander-in-chief's orders.

But beneath the public bellicosity, the president may be harbouring doubts about the wisdom of another “hot” phase of fighting. He has already vowed that nothing will happen until after the US midterm elections on November 3. The reasons for his hesitancy are clear: Iran’s retaliation to the US-Israeli assault caused billions of dollars of damage to US bases in the region, destroyed more than 80 American warplanes, forced the US military to use up large stocks of anti-missile interceptors, and persuaded the Pentagon to withdraw 12 long-range B-1 Lancer bombers from RAF Fairfield, over fears they were vulnerable to an Iranian plot to attack the base with a swarm of drones.

The 81 US aircraft damaged or destroyed — many of them targeted by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with the assistance of satellite intelligence from China and Russia — included 12 F-15 Strike Eagles, nine of them as a result of Iranian fire; two A-10 Thunderbolt ground attack planes, both hit by IRGC strikes; seven HC-135 Stratotanker air-refuellers, five of them struck in an Iranian attack on a Sa

struck in an Italian attack on a Studi Arabian airbase; one E-3 Sentry airborne early warning aircraft, destroyed on the ground by a direct hit; and 45 MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drones, each costing about \$34m.

With the war having already cost the US more than \$43bn since it began in February — rising to \$1bn a day at the height of Operation Epic Fury — Trump has to calculate whether a return to bombing would force Tehran to sign a deal that the White House could claim as a victory, or trigger a fresh round of Iranian attacks

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Iranian strikes on US bases

in the wider region.

The omens are not good. Despite a US naval blockade of Iran's oil-exporting ports, which has crippled the economy, the regime has repaired much of the damage done by the US and Israel to its missile and drone launchers, and weapon production facilities.

The IRGC has said it is ready to strike back if US bombing is resumed. It continues to target shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, demonstrating its ability to threaten the safe passage of oil tankers through the chokepoint.

The cost of repairing the damaged bases and replacing the destroyed aircraft would run into tens of billions of dollars. The US has pulled out from its bases in Iraq, some of which were damaged by Iranian fire, but insists this was a long-planned withdrawal.

A former senior US defence official said: "The damage to bases, munitions shortfalls, especially air and missile defence interceptors, as well as the aircraft losses, are all weighing on the decision-makers, although those concerns would not necessarily be [the deciding factor].

“Much will depend on how far the current Iranian escalation in the

Gulf and Strait of Hormuz extends — if, for instance, a US ship was hit with significant casualties — but these factors as well as political calculations will weigh heavily.

“The war is extremely unpopular.

"It started with a low level of support and Trump has never really made the case for it publicly."

President Trump vowed no action until after midterms

The other crucial factor relates to the future of RAF Fairford in Britain and other US bases in Europe.

The Pentagon is reviewing its dep- lloyments in Europe. It is expected to conclude by December that it should reduce its presence, leave Europe to shoulder the burden of conventional military capabilities and focus chiefly on providing the nuclear umbrella.

The 12 B-I bombers were withdrawn from RAF Fairfield because they were sitting ducks at the base, parked out in the open. The US air force has estimated it would cost \$4.2bn to upgrade Fairfield and the two other bases used by the US in the UK — RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall — including protecting aircraft from drone and missile attacks, and building storage facilities for air-launched nuclear bombs.

The Pentagon review will determine whether the cost of upgrading the bases is worthwhile. Will the B-1, B-52 and B-2 bombers, regular visitors, ever return to the UK?

The former senior US defence official said the withdrawal of the B-Is served a variety of purposes: “A vote of no confidence in force protection there, and raising the possibility of pulling back from the traditional US forward presence in Europe.”

He added: “The destruction of bases in the Middle East, terrorist threats, and the refusal by some Nato allies for over-flight permission [during the Iran war] are serving the interests of those in the administration who favour an ‘America First’ emphasis on defence [of the US’s backyard in the western hemisphere] at the expense of maintaining a strong conventional deterrent as part of America’s commitments to treaty allies.

“They are all too happy to say — ‘we won’t rebuild those bases in the Gulf and our aircraft aren’t safe in Europe’.”

'Hypocritical Europeans buy Putin's diesel too'

President Trump has attacked European leaders for

continuing to buy Russian oil and gas as he defended as the “right choice” his decision to purchase millions of tonnes of diesel from President Putin (George Grylls writes).

The US president accused the EU of double standards after he faced a barrage of criticism for lifting sanctions on Russia and pressuring President Zelensky of Ukraine to call elections. “The European Union paid Russia 250 Billion Dollars for Energy, and the Fake News Media doesn’t want to get near that story. I made the right choice for the American People," Trump sad on Truth Social yesterday morning.

Russia accounts for 12 per cent of Europe's gas supply, down from 45 per cent at the beginning of the war. The EU remains the largest importer of Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), which makes up almost half of the country's exports, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. France is the largest buyer but Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy also have regular shipments.

The EU is also the largest importer of

Russian pipeline gas, taking about a third of its exports, and Hungary and Slovakia are the main recipients. Under an EU sanctions exemption, those landlocked countries and the Czech Republic have also received Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline, although supplies have been disrupted by the war.

Trump's figure of \$250bn appears to reflect an estimate by the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which says European countries have bought \$265bn of Russian oil, gas and coal since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

Mercenary ambush reveals fight for Africa's minerals Page 30

Kerala's fishing fleets are left high and dry Page 32

SERGEY KOZLOV/EPA

Vladyslav survived but his wife, pictured in their wedding photo, top, was killed in the strike that started a fire at a block of flats, left

Zelensky accused the Kremlin of failing to abide by an energy ceasefire declared by Trump on Sunday. Zelensky, blindsided by the announcement, pointed to a strike on a power plant in Kharkiv. At the Warsaw Security Forum, he said: "It is clear that Putin does not read Truth Social.

“Last night, we did not attack any energy facilities on the territory of Russia because President Trump said that there would be an energy ceasefire.”

A Russian drone attack on the village of Pisochyn in Kharkiv on Sunday killed three people and injured 22 others, including

children, according to the authorities. Vadym Filashkin, head of the military administration in the Donetsk region, accused Russian forces of using cluster munitions in “a deliberate attempt to inflict as many casualties as possible among civilians”.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, declined to comment on Trump's proposed ceasefire, saying that talks between the US and Russia "continue".

Trump's idea of a ceasefire appears to be lopsided, requiring both sides to stop attacks on each other's refineries even though Ukraine has only one working while Russia has many. A White House official told Axios the deal was “refinery for refinery”, with no obligation for Russia to stop attacking Ukraine's energy grid and power stations.

Flat-footed kingdom faces crisis as Houthis wreak their revenge

Saudi Arabia

Samer Al-Atrush

Middle East Correspondent

The grainy footage will haunt the Houthis, who formally call themselves the Champions of Allah and claim their leader is favoured by the Almighty. Muslim pilgrims, swaddled in unsewn white cloth garments meant to represent humility, can be seen queuing in Riyadh's international airport on Saturday as a missile strikes. Among the 13 dead was a senior Bangladeshi cleric.

The scene has shocked many in the Muslim world and underlined the Houthis' capacity for slaughter. It also called into question Saudi Arabia's efforts to project an idea of stability.

Yesterday, the authorities said the airport, the capital's main point of connection with the outside world given its desert location, would reopen on Saturday. The energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, threatened a “serious response”. But neither he nor the kingdom's ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, offered any clues to what that might be, almost 12 years into a war with the Houthis which has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths but only strengthened the group's standing.

Abdulaziz was speaking at the high-profile WPC Energy Congress in Riyadh, one of two flagship conferences scheduled for the city this month. The second, the Future Investment Initiative conference, which is known as “Davos in the Desert” and attracts the world’s leading financiers as well as senior US and British officials, is a regular fixture used to show off the new, business-friendly Saudi Arabia.

Yet international airlines have cancelled their flights, the British government has cautioned citizens against flying to the capital, and the American embassy warned that US government employees required special permission to use any airport in Saudi Arabia.

It was the Saudis who in June escalated the war, theoretically paused by a ceasefire in 2022. Yet they were caught flat-footed by the Houthi response. No missile warning could be heard before Saturday's attack, the third on the airport in a week. On Thursday, a Houthi missile destroyed a passenger jet on the tarmac, killing a pilot and two other people. Days earlier, another had killed one person at the airport.

The escalation began when the Saudis struck a Houthi-held airport to stop an Iranian-backed plane from landing. Iran has long backed the Houthis, who have also developed a trading relationship with al-Qaeda in Somalia.

That has given the Houthis the strength to resist the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates, which has played a big role in the war. It means the Iranians have an outpost overlooking the Red Sea and Yemen has been sucked into the war between Iran, Israel and the United States.

Saudi Arabia's airport attack in June was meant to be a show of dominance. It had elbowed out the UAE, its ally in Yemen, to signal to the Iranians that Yemen was Saudi Arabia's backyard.

Both decisions were momentous. With the Emiratis gone, along with their Apache helicopters and command centre in Mocha, a city on Yemen's Red Sea coast, the Houthis carried out a lightning advance last month. That left them in control of Mocha and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which controls access to the Red Sea and Suez Canal.

Last week, the Saudi-backed government forces launched an offensive to retake the territories from the Houthis. It was this that prompted the Riyadh airport strikes. The kingdom now faces two unpalatable choices.

It can sue for peace with the emboldened rebels and try to forge a wider agreement with Iran, which remains locked in conflict with the US. That may buy them time, albeit with a loss of face and deterrence, but Riyadh believes that would postpone the next round of conflict.

Or it can continue with its offensive, possibly with the US joining in, to pound the Houthis into a weaker position at the negotiating table, but risking enmiring itself in Yemen and suffering attacks on its civilian infrastructure.

The question is what price the kingdom, as it seeks to attract foreign investment and tourists, is willing to pay. Houthi attack audacious blow against Saudi Arabia, leading article, page 27

Washington post is fake news

Denzel Washington has worked with a lot of people in his life but he is one of the few Hollywood actors who has not made a song and dance about his political leanings.

Not that anyone following President Trump's Truth Social posts yesterday would know that. Trump shared a poll that asked a simple question: "Do you agree with Denzel?"

Washington was quoted as saying: "I've worked with a lot of people in my life, and I've never met anyone braver, smarter, or who cares more about America than Donald Trump.

“He’s a great friend and an even better president. I’m proud to be a steadfast supporter, and I’ll never apologise for it.”

There is no evidence, however, that

Washington has ever said those words, and Federal Election Commission records show that he has made political contributions to Democratic campaigns, including for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Still, Washington is in good company. The same quote has also been attributed, falsely, to the actor Matthew McConaughey and the Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.

In an interview with The Sunday Times in 2024, Washington said: "We're all slaves to information now. We really are. We're all slaves. So whatever you feel about the leaders, like this guy's crazy or the other one is sane, you'd better realise you're being manipulated by both sides. Period. So go to the movies."

World

Maga mercenary's ambush exposes the dirty fight for Africa's minerals

A former UFC fighter was hired for a secret mission by an ally of President Trump, Jane Flanagan reports

In late August, Tim Kennedy, a former US special forces soldier and mixed martial arts fighter with millions of social media followers, posted about discussing with his son “what being a man means and what sacrifice really looks like”.

It was, in hindsight, a hint of the secret mission he was about to undertake in the Democratic Republic of Congo for Erik Prince, a fellow Trump supporter and a notorious mercenary.

Kennedy, a 47-year-old father of four, has built a second career as a media personality and podcaster, holding forth on politics, fitness and masculinity on his popular YouTube channel. His deployment would take him from talking about his military past to the bloody reality of one of the world's most protracted conflicts.

Prince's contract through his company Vectus Global, said to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, was to help the Congolese government recover revenues lost through smuggling and tax fraud in its mining industry. In reality, and perhaps inevitably, it has become an active military mission, backing the armed forces in their fight for control of parts of the resource-rich east against rebels supported by neighbouring Rwanda. Conflict monitors have reported Prince-linked contractors doing drone and air-defence work alongside Congolese special forces.

The risks became clear on September 17 when a convoy carrying a team working for Prince and Congolese soldiers was ambushed in South Kivu. Kennedy was shot at least three times in the leg, according to Reuters.

About 20 people were killed or wounded. The dead were reported to include seven Congolese citizens and Justin Conaglen, a former New Zealand SAS lance corporal who had taken leave without pay in March before formally leaving the military in August.

Another foreign security contractor three, two of whom were shot and one killed. It was, he said, “a pretty small element to be rolling around the Congo with”. He had been told the men waited eight to ten hours to be recovered.

After being evacuated from central Africa, Kennedy is being treated at ing revenues to include a covert military component covering border security, aircraft, strategic advice and the recruitment of foreign former soldiers.

Tim Kennedy won followers thanks to his time as a UFC professional

A Vectus Global representative had told UN investigators that the Congolese government had asked the company to help plan operations to retake Uvira, in South Kivu, from M23 rebels who held swathes of the east.

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center near Washington. Beyond giving him dramatic material for his social media feed, his narrow escape has raised difficult questions about the foreign contractors Congo has hired to fight alongside its army.

Congo has long been a theatre for mercenaries in Africa. In the 1960s, Mike Hoare led his fighters, known as the Wild Geese, in support of the Congolese government of Moïse Tshombe against rebels during the Congo crisis. They were hired openly as soldiers of fortune, an unapologetic exercise in military intervention for hire.

Prince's operation is unfolding against the backdrop of Washington's push for greater access to Congo's cobalt, copper, lithium and tantalum — minerals vital for electric cars, smartphones and defence systems. Some Congolese officials described the US deal as “peace for minerals”.

A UN group of experts found that Prince's contract with the finance ministry went beyond recovering lost min-

Six decades later, contractors working for Prince, a former Navy Seal whose company Blackwater won lucrative contracts during the US war on terror, are operating in a far more technologically sophisticated conflict. A Congolese government source told Reuters that Rwandan forces might have found the team by tracking one of its surveillance drones.

The foreign mercenary's old edge in weapons and experience has gone, and his foes are now often every bit as well equipped and as battle-hardened. Rwanda denies backing M23, despite UN findings that its troops have fought alongside the rebels and supplied them with advanced military equipment.

A prominent Trump supporter, Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, who served as education secretary during Trump's first term. Prince has made little secret of his views on Africa. In a 2024 podcast, he said America should "put the imperial hat back on" and govern countries incapable of governing themselves, a category he said included "pretty much all of Africa". Asked whether that amounted to colonialism, he replied: "Absolutely, yes."

Kennedy built his profile on the combination of a special forces career and UFC fighting record. Last year his military record came under scrutiny after a 2017 interview resurfaced in which he said he had received a Bronze Star for valour. He did get the medal, in 2006, for planning combat operations in Iraq, but not for valour. He apologised, saying he had “unintentionally misstated aspects of my military service”.

was wounded. Two sources told Reuters that the Rwandan military carried out the attack.

The first account of the deadly ambush came from Brent Tucker, a former Delta Force soldier, on his Tier1 podcast last week. He said Kennedy was working as a contractor in a team of

Kim biography shows dictator wrote the book on being a genius

North Korea

Richard Lloyd Parry Asia Editor

North Korea has published an official biography of Kim Jong-un, and created a “study room” devoted to his thought, in the latest sign of the intensifying cult of personality surrounding the supreme leader.

State television recently broadcast a report that featured a thick green book entitled Great Comrade Kim Jong-un Revolutionary History published this year by the Workers' Party of Korea Publishing House.

The programme on Korean Central Television two weeks ago also reported on the Comrade Kim Jong-un Revolutionary Ideology Study Room that has been created at Kim Il-sung University, the country's most prestigious educational establishment. Stills published on the NK News website show a room of desks and red-backed chairs with a large formal portrait of Kim at the far end.

The book does not appear to have been smuggled out of North Korea yet, although this is probably only a matter of time. It is not clear whether it is related to a volume published in 2020, entitled Revolutionary History of Respected Supreme Leader Comrade Kim Jong-un.

Daily NK, a South Korean website staffed by North Korean defectors with contacts in the country, reported on that book last year. Similarly titled volumes were produced for Kim's father and grandfather before him, and set out the official version of their early lives, often at dramatic variance with the historical facts.

The official story of Kim Il-sung, North Korea's founder and first leader, credits him with virtually single-handedly defeating Korea's Japanese colonisers. His son and Kim's father,

A formal portrait of Kim Jong-un hangs on the wall of a new study room

Kim Jong-il, is reported to have been born in a hut on the slopes of the sacred Mount Paektu — rather than in a camp for anti-Chinese partisans, as independent historians attest.

The 2020 book about the current leader, by contrast, has little to say about his early life and education, making no mention of his education at a school in Switzerland. In characteristic style, however, it emphasises his genius in diverse fields of achievement.

"The marshal [Kim Jong-un] has completely mastered all military branches including the army, navy, air and anti-air forces, as well as all military specialties and service branches," it says, according to Daily NK. "[He] deeply acquired knowledge of numerous military tactics recorded in world war history, various weapons and equipment, and the latest military science and technology."

It adds: “He built extensive knowledge by thoroughly reading massive volumes of books covering various fields from basic sciences to computer engineering and modern science and technology, politics and economics, culture, history and geography." The book describes a moment in 1984, at which time he was being educated in Bern, when the young Kim ascended Mount Paektu with his father and vowed to "continue the revolution". Friends from his Swiss school say that he showed little academic promise and was more fervent about basketball.

The 2020 book also puts a flattering interpretation on Kim's last summit meeting with President Trump in 2019, when he travelled by train to Vietnam only to fail to reach a deal. The meeting is described as “a demonstration of ... farsighted wisdom, outstanding political skills, high international authority, and excellent leadership”.

The book adds: “The respected marshal firmly established autonomy at the meeting and did not make any concessions on issues that conflicted with our national interests, waging a principled struggle that cornered the US side.”

A taxing read helps the French Thatcher to cash in on ‘state heist’

The hard-right MEP Sarah Knafo accuses the government of stealing money in her bestseller, Adam Sage reports

Rebecca Yarros's “romantasy” blockbuster, Threshing Day, may be dominating the book charts in the UK and the US, but reading tastes in France seem to be different this autumn.

The country's No I bestseller is an essay on public finances by Sarah Knafo, the general secretary of Reconquest, a small hard-right party that sits with Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the European Parliament, where she is an MEP.

Le Casse du Siècle (The Heist of the Century) says that France is suffering from record levels of taxation and government expenditure, along with miles of red tape, which Knafo says impoverishes the country and undermines public services.

In her book — set out like a criminal investigation in which the state is accused of stealing people's money — she paints a picture so dire that Britain's taxation levels and bureaucracy seem almost enviable by comparison. She urges the implementation of an unprecedented plan to cut public spending by €140bn a year.

Her critics accuse her of exploiting the sort of discontent over taxation that has often ended in social turmoil in France. Jean-Yves Camus, joint director of the left-leaning Observatory of Political Radicalism, told La Croix newspaper that Knafo's “anti-fiscal pamphlet” contained arguments that “have always worked in France. It’s one of the structural reasons behind the Revolution.”

She said that she was simply trying to “reveal the truth”.

She writes that France is burdened by a system that “levies everyone to give back to no one, that degrades public services while increasing taxes”.

In an interview with The Times, Knafo, 33, who was in London on Sunday to sign copies of her work, also highlighted a reliance on the state and the social security system, which she said had undermined a nation that was once “more hardworking than almost anyone else in the world”. Asked how she squared her claim that the French were naturally diligent with the widespread perception in Anglo-Saxon circles that they are idle, she said: “It’s the perverted system which creates the vice.”

She said people were constantly told “that the state will look after you”. They displayed “rational behaviour” and made the calculation that in some situations, it was better

Sarah Knafo denied her book was intended to be a political manifesto to live off welfare than to work. “This system can transform people who were initially hardworking,” she said.

Knafo denied that her book was intended to be a political manifesto, although it reads like one with its call to cut hundreds of thousands of civil service jobs, slash benefits and end them altogether for immigrants who have not paid into the system, and privatise the state broadcaster.

She said her work would raise “awareness” of the French plight ahead of next year’s presidential election, and to some extent she may be right.

Marine Le Pen, the populist right National Rally candidate, who is ahead in the polls, seemed to draw heavily on Knafo's analysis when she presented her economic programme last week. The presentation was marked by a swing away from the tax-and-spend policies to which Le Pen has been attached in the past, and featured a promise to get rid of regulations, state agencies and "120 ridiculous taxes".

Knafo said Le Pen had copied her programme “without understanding it”. She said the Rally was no better than centrist and left-wing parties when it came to “approving billions of euros in extra taxes”.

For her part, she hopes that the presidential election winner will be Éric Zemmour, 68, the anti-Islam polemicist who is Reconquest's chairman and her partner. This outcome is unlikely given he only received 7 per cent of the vote in the 2022 presidential election.

L'Express magazine called her the "French Thatcher" but there is something of Donald Trump about her too — in terms of her beliefs if not expression, which owes more to French intellectualism than American brashness.

Despite the dry subject matter, more than 200,000 copies of Le Casse du Siècle have been sold since its publication on September 2. By comparison, Unir, an essay by François Hollande, the former Socialist Party president hoping to run again for the Elysée next year, has sold fewer than 4,000 copies during the same period.

Knafo says its success “shows that French people want to understand what is going on in their country and why they have the impression that they work a lot and live honourable lives and yet get poorer”.

She attributes the national malaise largely to its fiscal extravagance.

According to the OECD, tax revenue was equivalent to 43.5 per cent of national wealth in

2024, behind only

4, behind only Denmark on 45.2 per cent.

"You might think that this would mean the best public services in the world but everyone knows that this is not true," said Knafo.

Punt on van Gogh proves master stroke for collector

rarely seen

self-portrait by

Vincent van

Gogh has gone

on display in

France in an exhibition that pays homage to an influential but largely forgotten collector (David Chazan writes).

Gustave Fayet, heir to a wealthy southern French winemaking dynasty, has been described as a “compulsive collector” who accumulated more than 750 modern artworks at the start of the 20th century. A total of 257 are on view at the Fondation Louis Vuitton outside Paris, until March 2027.

Gustave Fayet: Collector — Artist Designer illustrates his visionary tastes, featuring ten works by Van Gogh and 78 by Paul Gauguin, along with paintings and pastels by, among others, Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir,

Vincent van Gogh's Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe is on show in France for the first time since 1937, with Haere Mai by Paul Gauguin

and Henri Matisse. "It's a better investment to buy Cézanne, Renoir, Gauguin and Degas than to buy French annuities," Fayet once wrote.

Among his investments was Van Gogh's 1889 Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, one of two self-portraits painted by the Dutch post-impressionist after he cut off his ear with a razor after a row with Gauguin, whom he had invited to live and work in his house in Arles in southern France. Van Gogh, suffering from mental illness, offered his ear to a local prostitute before being hospitalised. A week after his return home, he painted Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, showing him without a pipe, held by London's Courtauld Gallery. The version with the pipe was acquired by Fayet shortly after the turn of the century. Bought by another collector, it was seized by the Nazis during the Second World War, returned after the end of the conflict and sold to Stavros Niarchos, the Greek shipping magnate, in the early 1970s for about \$3m, according to The Art Newspaper. It is thought to have remained in his family's hands. The newspaper said it would eclipse the record price for a Van Gogh of \$117m if sold. It has not been lent for an exhibition since 1990 and has not been seen in France since 1937.

Fondation Louis Vuitton says Fayet's collection was dispersed after his death in 1925 and he was forgotten by the art world. It is displaying 374 of his own works. "He represented a generation whose life was permeated in all its aspects by art," it says.

Bardot's charity ‘evicts’ her widower

France

Charles Bremner Paris

Brigitte Bardot's widower accused the late film star's charity of throwing him out of her Saint-Tropez home and replacing him at the head of her powerful animal welfare foundation in a “coup”.

Bernard d'Ormale, 85, who lived with Bardot at La Madrague on the French Riviera until her death in December at the age of 91, said the Brigitte Bardot Foundation had evicted him.

Max Guazzini, a sports and broadcasting executive who succeeded him as chairman of the foundation in September, said d'Ormale was obliged to leave because La Madrague, a former fisherman's house, had been owned by the charity since 1992 and Bardot had not intended him to remain.

D'Ormale has been given a suitable apartment by the Saint-Tropez council, according to Guazzini.

Bernard d'Ormale advised Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the National Front

The widower says he was ousted from the foundation and his home by “a clique of coup plotters” and calls the flat a tiny pensioner’s council home.“All this is sickening," d'Ormale told Nice Matin newspaper. "I've lived there for 35 years, and they kick me out," he said.

The row reflects unhappiness within the foundation, which employs around 300 staff and handles millions of euros in annual donations, over ties between d'Ormale and hard-right political circles. The former businessman served as an adviser to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front, now National Rally, over 30 years ago.

After retiring from the cinema in 1973 when she still a global sex symbol, Bardot espoused right-wing views and moved in nationalist circles.

D'Ormale has said that he regretted that he accepted long ago that he would not be a beneficiary in Bardot's will, which left most of her assets to the foundation. The couple were married at a ceremony in Norway in 1992, but Guazzini has said the marriage was not legally registered in France.

World

Hackers wage cold war to melt French fridges

France

chain was also affected, but the company has not yet confirmed this.

Charles Bremner Paris

Hundreds of French supermarkets have been forced to throw out food after a cyberattack raised the temperature of their fridges as high as 50C.

Several of the country's biggest chains, including Intermarché, Coopérative U and E.Leclerc, said the attack hit their refrigeration systems overnight from Sunday to Monday. Workers arrived to find steam pouring out of door seals.

The Paris prosecutor's office is investigating a “cyberattack affecting the refrigerators of several major food retail chains across France”.

Dominique Schelcher, chief executive of Coopérative U, said: “Targeting equipment essential to the preservation of fresh products and to the food supply of the French people is extremely serious and is unprecedented. It is unacceptable.”

More than 100 Coopérative U outlets were targeted, as well as more than 300 owned by Intermarché or its Netto brand. Carrefour said 80 of its supermarkets were affected. Industry news sites said the Monoprix

Les Mousquetaires, which owns Intermarché, said that fridges had been heated to 50 degrees for six hours. All the food had to be binned.

An Intermarché supermarket at Haguenau in Alsace said it had lost its whole stock of refrigerated products, worth €50,000. In the same town, the Super U supermarket lost €220,000 of frozen food products.

An aide to Sébastien Lecornu, the prime minister, said that the national cybersecurity agency had identified “a vulnerability in software supplied by a Danish company”. The company, Danfoss, said that most of the affected equipment “no longer receive[d] software or security updates”. It said its AK-SM800 and AK-SC355 fridge regulator systems were notably affected and that a version of the former used “outdated firmware”. It added that it had long advised supermarkets to update the models.

President Macron and his government have warned recently of increasingly sophisticated electronic and physical assaults on French security, mostly by Russia.

ABACA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Helping hand The Pope, who is due to have lung surgery, welcomed St Peter's Circle, a charity for the needy, to the Vatican

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Kerala's fishing fleets are left high and dry

India

Catherine Philp Vizhinjam

It was a clear day in February when Thaddeus Veetis set out with his fishing crew into the bountiful seas of the Gulf. He had returned to the coast of Iran from his home in Kerala the day before and was looking forward to making money to send his family.

“Suddenly all our communications failed,” Veetis recalled, back home in the Keralan fishing village of Vizhin-jam. “We didn’t know where we were or what was happening.” The crew would spend another four days lost at sea, navigating by the stars, until they reached land.

They watched in horror as explosions lit up the sky, hitting nearby Kish Island over and over again. Iran had been under bombardment, and now so was Dubai, where they usually landed and sold their catch. They lay across the enemy lines bisecting the Gulf as missiles flew overhead. "We knew that somehow we had to escape," Veetis said. "That things here were finished."

Veetis, 52, first travelled to Iran's coast eight years ago, joining a westward migration undertaken by Keralans for decades, supplying the cheap labour that built the Gulf after the oil boom.

Cheap labour also built modern Kerala. Money was funnelled back to finance the homes, education and healthcare of a generation of Keralans, helping them outpace the rest of India in development. At its peak, two million of Kerala's 33 million people worked in the Gulf, more than 90 per cent of its expatriate workers. The vast majority were labourers.

The migrant route has undergone several shocks, from the Gulf war in 1991 to the 2008 financial crash and the Covid pandemic. Now it is under threat again.

Fishermen who had gone to the Gulf came back with tales of a crystal sea laden with catch. Veetis signed a contract with an Iranian agent to fish off the coast at Chiruyeh, selling the catch on the Emirati side.

“It was hard, hard work, enormous fish,” he said. “But the money was so good.” The catches yielded a big commission, 30,000-40,000 rupees (£234-312) a day, most of which was sent home directly from Dubai.

Veetis worked a year at a time without seeing his wife and two sons, returning to Kerala for one month's respite before resuming. He had just arrived back in Chiruyeh from such a break when the war broke out. They found out why their communications had failed when they made it to shore.

Residents of Kish Island were also arriving in Chiruyeh to escape the bombardment. Scared that the coast itself would be next, Veetis and his crew pushed off back to sea. “We could see all the missiles and explosions hitting,” he said. “We believed if we stayed we would all be killed.”

Besin Babu, 42, was working in the Saudi Arabian hill station Abha, in the mountains above the Red Sea, when news broke that war had begun. As fellow migrants and tourists left, the market for Babu's bakery goods evaporated. "There was no one left to sell to," he said.

He cashed out and returned home

Fishermen begin their day at Veli Beach in Kerala. Crews that were once drawn to the Gulf by high earnings and plentiful catches are returning to India after fleeing airstrikes on Iran's coast

to his family in Yeroor, up in the lush green hills above Kollam in Kerala. He opened a shop where he grinds spices. “I was always planning to come home,” he said, not least because the Gulf does not provide a pathway for foreigners to stay after working and become citizens.

Migrant work in the Gulf has made Kerala so wealthy by Indian standards that it imports workers from poorer parts of the country to fill the manual jobs left behind. However, since the war began there has been “a drastic drop” in Keralans seeking employment in the Gulf, Rajesh Madhavan, the head of the Department of Non-Resident Keralites Affairs in the state capital, Trivandrum, said. They fear another “forever war” was unfolding, he added.

After fleeing airstrikes, Veetis and his crew were at sea for a month before returning. They were evacuated through Armenia with 600 other Indian fishermen. Elizabeth, Veetis's wife, had reported him missing. She had to borrow to send 60,000 rupees (£469) to pay for his repatriation.

Despite the poverty he has returned to, even in relatively affluent Kerala, Veetis has resolved never to return to the Gulf. "It isn't just the fear for my life," he said. "There just are no prospects there any more. The states have become enemies of each other so that route is no longer possible."

Business

AI developer that aims to do away with human PAs ... seeks PA

Chris Dorrell

Technology Business Correspondent

One of the world's leading artificial intelligence labs is offering a £145,000 salary for a personal assistant to help deliver “error-free” support to the company's business leaders.

Anthropic, developer of the Claude chatbot, is hiring an administrative business partner in London to support its senior “go-to-market” bosses.

While the company's own AI tools are designed to help with administrative tasks, the six-figure salary is for a candidate who can manage calendars, monitor inboxes and handle travel logistics. Candidates must have “immaculate systems to ensure no details slip through the cracks” and deliver “error-free execution”, its job advert said.

It specified tasks that AI agents have yet to master, requiring candidates to have “strong relationship-building skills” and provide “seamless and welcoming experiences for in-person visitors". Candidates must also have "a proven track record of handling sensitive and confidential information".

Although AI agents are becoming increasingly prevalent in businesses, there are widespread concerns about their accuracy. A recent report found that 64 per cent of surveyed businesses had caught an AI agent giving “confidently wrong” answers.

The job ad suggests that eagle-eyed administrative assistants will continue to find employment, despite warnings of a looming jobs crisis. Dario Amodei, Anthropic's chief executive, has previously forecast that AI would destroy half of all entry-level white-collar jobs by the end of the decade.

Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, once predicted that AI could wipe out entire categories of jobs, but later changed his mind after discovering the importance of human interactions. "We really do care about our interactions with people and this thing, which is a huge amount of my time, is not something I can imagine myself outsourcing anytime soon," he said in May.

While meticulous PAs seem safe for now, copywriters for recruitment firms might be in trouble. At least 60 per cent of the ad showed signs of AI drafting or editing, according to Pangram, an AI-text detection company.

Anthropic has secured a new office in King's Cross, London, with capacity for 800 people, giving it the ability to quadruple its headcount in Britain. The news was first reported by City AM.

IMF predicts UK economy to grow 1.3%

Upgrade is a pre-budget boost for chancellor

Mehreen Khan

Economics Editor, Bangkok

The UK economy will grow faster than expected this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, which has warned governments against stepping up public spending in the face of inflation and higher borrowing costs.

Annual economic output in the UK is on course to expand by 1.3 per cent this year, the IMF's latest forecasts showed, up from an estimate of 1 per cent in July. The economy is then on course to slow to a pace of 1.2 per cent next year, a downgrade of 0.1 percentage points from the July estimates.

The fund said in its latest annual economic outlook that the UK's economy had performed better than expected this year, with output rising by 0.6 per cent in the first quarter and 0.4 per cent in the second, making it the best performer in the G7 in the first half of the year. The estimated 1.3 per cent GDP growth would make Britain the joint second-fastest in the group of advanced economies, behind the United States (2.3 per cent) and equal to Germany.

Canada, which has been hit by new US tariffs, is projected to expand by 1.1 per cent and Japan by 0.7 per cent.

The IMF said the UK's average rate of inflation would be stuck at 3.3 per cent this year, on the back of rising energy prices, and would not fall back to the Bank of England's 2 per cent target until the end of 2027. Unemployment was expected to hit 5.3 per cent this year and next, from the current 4.9 per cent.

The growth upgrade will be a boost for John Healey, who is attending his first meetings of the IMF and World

Bank in Bangkok this week, before his maiden budget on October 28. Healey has said his budget will focus on “fiscal discipline” and “economic resilience” in the face of rising oil and gas prices and escalating conflict in the Middle East.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the government faced a £35bn funding gap if it wanted to protect public services from cuts and pay for its defence spending commitments. That would force Healey to either cut public spending elsewhere, or raise taxes.

The IMF said the world economy had proved resilient to multiple shocks this year, led by the widening conflict in the Middle East. Global GDP is on course to expand by 3.1 per cent this year, slowing from 3.4 per cent last year.

Massive AI investment spending, demand for AI-related materials and a rerouting of energy supplies have helped prevent a more serious global downturn, Silvana Tenreyro, the IMF's new chief economist and a former Bank of England rate-setter, said.

She warned that governments should refrain from massive spending increases in the face of rising inflation and worries about debt sustainability in the global bond markets.

“Primary deficits have remained elevated and, in many countries, are significantly higher than before,” Tenreyro said. “Importantly, the increase in borrowing costs and its implications for fiscal sustainability make the need for fiscal adjustment all the more urgent.”

Sovereign bond markets have been roiled by worries of rising public debt, growing budget deficits and the world's central banks raising interest rates to Continued on page 36

King of the rue France's President Macron checks out an electric version of Citroën's classic 2CV at the Paris Motor Show

Super-rich would rather rent than buy

Tom Howard Property Correspondent

A record number of mansions and penthouses in London have been let over the past 12 months as the wealthy increasingly look to rent, not buy.

Changes to stamp duty and taxes for non-doms last year brought the high-end sales market in London to a juddering halt — but the wealthiest still want to “maintain a presence in the capital”, according to JLL, the estate agent.

The trend means that the “prime central London” rental market is busier than ever. JLL data showed 338 homes with annual rents of more than £150,000 have been leased over the past 12 months, a 14 per cent increase on the previous year and a record.

Last year Rachel Reeves, the chancellor at the time, abolished the nondom tax status, which had allowed wealthy residents to avoid paying tax on overseas income, while stamp duty increases mean overseas buyers now have to pay as much as 19 per cent when they purchase an additional property.

High-end estate agents said buyers were waiting to see what happened at the next general election before committing to a purchase. If they gain power, the Conservatives have pledged to scrap stamp duty on main residences.

“What we are seeing is that demand for a presence in central London remains, but some wealthy residents are choosing to rent rather than buy while they wait for greater clarity,” Meg Eglington, an associate in JLL’s UK residential research team, said. “Many purchasers have the flexibility to wait until uncertainty subsides.”

JLL said the prime London sales market — typically homes priced over £5m — “remains subdued”. Prices of those mansions and penthouses have, on average, declined by 7.2 per cent over the past 12 months. Since peaking in 2014, prime houses in London have lost on average a quarter of their value.

Between July and September 457 homes worth £5m or more were sold, 11 per cent fewer than in the previous quarter. Activity was strongest in July, JLL said, at 200 homes bought.

With many homes sitting unsold, it said, owners were turning to the rental market to try and generate money, making themselves “accidental landlords” in the process. This new supply has kept a lid on rents at the top end of the London market, up only 0.5 per cent over the past 12 months.

Business

---

Need to know

1 The UK economy will grow faster than expected this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, which has also warned governments against stepping up public spending in the face of inflation and higher borrowing costs. Annual economic output in the UK is on course to expand by 1.3 per cent, the IMF's latest forecasts showed, up from an estimate of 1 per cent in July. Page 33

2 Anthropic, the developer of the Claude chatbot, is offering a £145,000 salary for a personal assistant to help deliver “error-free” support to its business leaders in London. Page 33

3 A record number of mansions and penthouses in London have been rented out over the past 12 months, as the wealthy look to rent rather than buy. Changes to stamp duty and taxes for non-doms have brought the high-end sales market in London to a juddering halt, but the wealthiest still want to maintain a presence in the capital, estate agents say. Page 33

4 LVMH's core fashion and leather goods division has reported a steeper than expected decline in quarterly sales, dealing a blow to investor hopes of a long-awaited recovery in the Chinese market.

5 The Serious Fraud Office is developing plans to reward whistleblowers who report economic crimes such as fraud and bribery. The government said it would back the move.

6 Banks, hedge funds and consulting firms have urged Andy Burnham to tweak non-compete rules but have warned that scrapping them altogether would risk “undermining Britain’s world-class” financial sector. The prime minister said on Friday that the use of non-compete clauses in employment contracts had “gone too far”. Page 36

7 The chancellor should increase taxes on “robots and AI tools” in his budget so he can lower costs for companies hiring young workers, the head of Reed, one of Britain’s largest recruiters, has said. Page 40

A nine-year-old Nvidia graphics processing unit costs 43 per cent more to rent than a year ago

Katie Prescott, page 37

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China blow to hopes of

Sales pedalled backwards at the LVMH division behind Dior as a recovery in

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The luxury goods group said overall sales in its fashion and leather division fell by 5 per cent, writes Guy Taylor

LVMH's core fashion and leather goods division has reported a steeper than expected decline in quarterly sales, dealing a blow to investor hopes of a long-awaited recovery in the Chinese market.

The division behind Louis Vuitton and Dior, which makes up the bulk of LVMH's revenue, reported third-quarter sales just shy of €8.25bn, down 5 per cent on an organic basis and below analyst forecasts of €8.4bn.

Overall sales at the world's largest luxury goods group, which also owns Moët & Chandon champagne, were up 1 per cent in the three-month period to €18.5bn, only just below consensus.

LVMH, which is controlled by France's billionaire Arnault family, was formed in 1987 through the merger of Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy. Today it

Heinlessy. Today it sells more than 75 brands across more than 6,000 stores, helping its chairman and chief executive, Bernard Arnault, to accrue an estimated personal fortune of more than £100bn.

The latest quarterly update will be viewed as a bellwether before a busy period of corporate earnings for the luxury sector,

which has been locked in a years-long slowdown amid sluggish sales in China and the shifting tastes of a new generation of Gen Z consumers.

The Iran war has also emerged as a serious headwind this year, restricting air travel and affecting footfall to the lucrative shopping malls of Middle Eastern cities such as Dubai and Riyadh.

In a statement yesterday, LVMH described its performance this year as “very solid” in an “uncertain geopolitical and economic environment”.

However, it added that its third-quarter revenue growth reflected the “impact on business activity of a less buoyant environment in China”, while the United States, Europe and Japan reported “good growth”. The downturn in China was particularly pronounced in fashion and leather goods.

LVMH's wine and spirits division, which houses Moët & Chandon and Hennessy cognac, reported quarterly revenues of €1.4bn, up 6 per cent year-on-year. Its watches and jewellery division edged up 1 per cent to €2.5bn.

Over the first nine months of the year, group sales rose 2 per cent to €57.lbn.

Shares in LVMH, which is listed in Paris, had fallen by about 40 per cent so far this year before the update. The company has lost hundreds of billions from its market capitalisation in the last three years, bringing it just shy of €190bn. Yesterday the stock closed up €4.50, or 1.2 per cent, at €384.50.

The results will deal a significant blow to any immediate hopes of a recovery in China, with fears now growing that a new clampdown from Beijing on wealthy individuals using offshore trusts to shelter assets could make things worse.

There had been early indications

that spending among higher-income households was picking up again following a protracted lull after the pandemic.

LVMH is also dealing with brand-related difficulties because of a legal dispute with the popular Chinese tea chain Molly Tea, which was ordered to pay a £1.1m fine this year after a court ruled that its logo had infringed on Louis Vuitton's intellectual property rights.

Social media anger over the case has fuelled a series of patriotic local boycotts and there were signs before yesterday that it had begun weighing on Louis Vuitton's sales.

Nevertheless, signs of resilience in the US market, which makes up more than a quarter of LVMH's sales and has acted as a buffer against the slowdown in China, will cushion the blow for investors. The company is heavily exposed to American consumer demand

Whistleblower payout plan at SFO

James Hurley Assistant Business Editor

The Serious Fraud Office is developing plans to reward whistleblowers who report economic crimes such as fraud and bribery.

The move would bring Britain closer to the United States, where financial incentives are used to encourage people to provide evidence that can help uncover wrongdoing.

The government said it would back the move as it launched a consultation on options for reforms to whistleblowing rules in the Employment Rights Act, which protect workers who report wrongdoing from dismissal and other forms of retaliation by their employer.

It follows debate about whether whistleblowers should be paid for information. Last year, HMRC introduced Britain's first US-style reward scheme, offering informants up to 30 per cent of the tax recovered in major cases.

Nick Ephgrave, the former director of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), who stepped down this year, campaigned for whistleblowers to be paid, saying doing so had “many benefits”.

The idea was also recommended by an independent review, which found that Britain was losing valuable intelligence as whistleblowers chose to report wrongdoing to the US, where they could be financially rewarded.

The SFO is developing proposals “to encourage more people to come forward with information, strengthening the SFO’s ability to investigate and prosecute serious fraud, bribery and corruption”, the government said.

Ian Hargreaves, partner at Quillon Law, said: "There are mixed views on how effective such incentives will be, with some arguing it is morally problematic to encourage people to blow the whistle for financial reward. The argument is that it should be a public and social duty, without the need to be paid."

Andy Agathangelou, founder of Transparency Task Force, which campaigns for better protections for whistleblowers, said there needed to be wider reform. She said: "A whistleblowing system cannot be considered effective simply because legislation exists, or disclosures are received.

“Its effectiveness must be judged by what happens when people speak up: whether their concerns are properly considered, whether allegations of retaliation are taken seriously, whether they receive appropriate information, support, and protection, and whether those responsible for handling their disclosures are held accountable when things go wrong.”

The consultation comes amid increased scrutiny of treatment of whistleblowers after the recent suicide of Simon Andriesz, a British banker.

Andriesz had put forward allegations to the Financial Conduct Authority about links between Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, and Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted paedophile who died in 2019.

Andriesz said he felt “thoroughly let down” by the support he had received. The FCA is conducting a review into its interactions with Andriesz.

---

Libor traders to have City bans reviewed

James Hurley

The City regulator has indicated that it is willing to review industry bans for interest rate “rigging” after convictions for the conduct unravelled.

In the light of last week's developments, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is preparing to reconsider orders that banned traders from the City.

On Friday, appeal judges quashed the conviction of Christian Bittar, a former Deutsche Bank trader. Bittar had been jailed in 2018 for fixing interbank lending rates. The convictions of five ex-Barclays traders for similar conduct were also overturned last week.

Out of nine convictions secured by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for manipulating the Libor and Euribor interest rates, the only one still standing is

recovery at LVMH

Frasers adds to Burberry stake

China failed to materialise for boss Bernard Arnault, left, with his wife Hélène

thanks to Louis Vuitton and other brands, such as the jewellery house Tiffany & Co.

The group said it remained “confident” in its outlook for the year ahead, adding that it would “maintain a strategy focused on continuously enhancing the desirability of its brands, drawing on the authenticity and quality of its products, its excellence in retail and its agile organisation".

Sales in LVMH's perfumes and cosmetics division rose 6 per cent over the quarter to just over €2bn.

A host of other luxury names, including Kering, Richemont and Hermès, the Birkin bag maker, are set to report in the coming weeks.

Mike Ashley's Frasers Group has increased its stake in Burberry again as it broadens its luxury offering (Isabella Fish writes).

The Sports Direct and Flannels owner raised its holding in the high-end fashion house from 6.32 per cent to 7.42 per cent less than a week after unveiling a new global luxury retail strategy.

The stake is held entirely through sold put options, which if exercised would make Frasers the company's largest shareholder. Frasers declined to comment, while Burberry was contacted for comment.

Ashley's retail empire has built a reputation in recent years for snapping up stakes in rival companies such as Asos, Mulberry and Boohoo. Under Michael Murray, the group's chief executive and Ashley's son-in-law, the group has attempted to push into luxury retail. Frasers has spent the past few years building a significant stake in Hugo Boss, which it stocks in its Flannels and Frasers shops. It now holds a 47.89 per cent stake, clearing the threshold that triggers a mandatory takeover offer under German market rules.

In August it bought the luxury department store Harvey Nichols out of administration.

Frasers last week unveiled a new strategy, called Frasers Group Luxury, which aims to bring together its UK and US luxury businesses and investments into one “luxury ecosystem” with ambitions to expand globally.

Flannels, which has more than 80 UK stores, forms the core of the new strategy, alongside House of Fraser, Harvey Nichols and US retailer The Webster, which joined the group last year. The strategy also encompasses its investments in Mulberry and Burberry.

Murray said: “Our ambition is clear: to continue scaling Frasers Group Luxury globally through organic expansion, acquisitions and strategic investments, creating long-term value for our brand partners, customers and the group.”

Salary overhaul at HSBC embraces bonus culture

that of Peter Johnson, an ex-Barclays banker, and he is planning an appeal.

The FCA had banned five people who were pursued by the SFO, including Johnson, Bittar and three of the Barclays traders who had their convictions overturned. It will now re-examine those orders.

The quashing of Bittar's conviction is particularly significant as he had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud Euribor.

His barrister argued that the plea was founded on fundamental errors of law, because prosecutors had not been required to prove a factual element of the charge against him — that he had agreed to the submission of “false or misleading” Euribor rates.

The “rigging” affair resulted in banks and broking firms paying almost \$10bn in fines to regulators around the world. It centred on Libor, which reflected the rate at which banks could borrow from each other and was used to price trillions of pounds’ worth of products, including mortgages and credit cards.

Allegations first emerged in 2012 that traders had been rigging Libor and Euribor, its European equivalent, for profit. Libor has since been discontinued.

Helen Cahill Financial Correspondent

London's biggest listed bank has overhauled its pay structure to allow larger bonuses for its bankers as Britain's lenders continue to move away from European caps on variable pay.

HSBC has told staff it will phase out the fixed-pay allowances previously used to top up base salaries to make up for the introduction of banker bonus caps by the European Union. The FTSE 100 group says it will grant a larger proportion of compensation in the form of bonuses from the start of 2028.

In a memo to employees, HSBC said it was seeking to “support a high-performance culture” that would enable the group to “better align compensation to performance”.

Britain abandoned a cap on bankers' bonuses three years ago as it shifted away from limits originally imposed by the EU to deter excessive risk-taking in the wake of the financial crisis. UK regulators were opposed to the caps when they were set up in 2014, with Andrew Bailey, then head of the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority, calling it a “misguided” policy.

HSBC removed its bonus cap in 2024 after investor approval at its annual general meeting. The latest overhaul at the bank, first reported by Bloomberg, follows a similar move from Barclays.

The changes will more closely align British banks with peers on Wall Street, which typically use bonuses for the bulk of their employees' pay.

A spokesman for HSBC said: "Adapting our approach in this way strengthens our ability to pay for performance... attract the best talent and recognise those who deliver the best outcomes."

HSBC spent \$3.93bn on variable pay in 2025, up 10 per cent year-on-year, and paid out gross compensation and benefits worth \$21.5bn.

Business

'Ringmaster' brought down the circus

BUSINESS COMMENTARY Ben Martin

It is ironic that Tom Hayes was once labelled by prosecutors as the “ringmaster” of interest rate rigging because the convictions in the affair now resemble the sort of clown show you might see at the circus. It’s due in no small measure to Hayes, too, that the whole thing has been reduced to a farce, although it’s no laughing matter for those whose lives were turned upside down by the Serious Fraud Office.

Hayes became the face of the scandal when, in 2015, the former UBS and Citigroup trader was the first person in the world to be convicted by a jury for manipulating Libor. A key benchmark that was meant to reflect the rate at which banks could borrow from each other, the now-defunct Libor was once embedded in the bedrock of the financial system, having been used to price hundreds of trillions of pounds' worth of products from mortgages to credit cards and derivatives.

The idea that traders were manipulating the rate for profit inevitably fuelled anger towards bankers at a time when the public were still smarting from the financial crisis, which, in the UK, forced the government to spend £137bn propping up the financial system and led to years of austerity.

But the fate of Hayes and the other eight bankers who were convicted as a result of the SFO's investigation into Libor and its European equivalent, Euribor, has never looked like justice. Take Hayes, who pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to defraud and long protested his innocence. He ended up spending time in the maximum security Belmarsh prison alongside murderers and rapists after he was sentenced to 14 years, later reduced to 11 on appeal, and lost his home and marriage during his ordeal.

Yet, as he told The Times in 2021, shortly after his release having served five and a half years, “there was no subterfuge, no deceit” in what he had been doing while working as a trader. In fact, there have even been separate allegations that the Bank of England and the UK government put pressure on banks to push their Libor rates lower during the 2008 crisis to shore up confidence in the markets.

Hayes finally won his decade-long battle to clear his name in July last year, when the Supreme Court quashed his conviction on the grounds that the jury that had found him guilty had been misdirected by the judge, which “undermined the fairness of the trial”. Because similar directions were given in other rigging trials in the UK, this has led to the spectacular unravelling of a further seven of the SFO’s convictions, including six that were quashed last week. It’s thanks partly to Hayes’s tenacity that these injustices have been reversed.

True, the Supreme Court did not entirely exonerate Hayes, saying that there “was ample evidence” for a properly directed jury to have found him guilty of conspiracy to defraud. But when you look at developments overseas, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the entire

pursuit of these traders by the SFO was wrong from the start.

In 2016, Frankfurt prosecutors decided that alleged Euribor rigging had not been a crime under German law. French authorities also declined to extradite Philippe Moryoussef — a former Barclays trader who in 2018 was sentenced in absentia in the UK to eight years — on the grounds that Euribor manipulation was not a crime in France at the time. Moryoussef was among those whose convictions were quashed last week.

Then there's the United States, where ten people were originally convicted for rate-rigging; all of them have been cleared in recent years. Back in the UK, this leaves Peter Johnson as the only person in the world whose conviction for rate-rigging still stands.

Johnson, 72, is an ex-Barclays employee who received a four-year sentence after pleading guilty to Libor manipulation in 2014. He did so because the legal fees for a trial would have forced him to sell the family home and he also wanted to avoid being extradited to the US.

Yet now he, too, is appealing, bolstered by last week's rulings, which included the quashing of Christian Bittar's conviction. Of the SFO's nine original convictions, only those of Bittar, a former Deutsche Bank trader, and Johnson involved guilty pleas. Given it's rare for such pleas to be overturned, Bittar's success will give Johnson hope. It's time for the rigging circus to come to an end.

---

Tables turned on AI

The head of the International Monetary Fund reckons the development of artificial intelligence is a “slow-moving tsunami” that will eventually affect an average of 40 per cent of jobs. So slow-moving, in fact, that the machines are yet to replace humans as personal assistants at one of the world’s leading AI labs.

What better evidence is there that the predictions of an AI-fuelled jobs apocalypse may be overdone than the fact that Anthropic is hunting for an “administrative business partner” in London — in a role that pays a whopping £145,000 a year to boot.

It's a job that involves scheduling calendars, managing inboxes, handling travel logistics and sorting expense claims, the sort of routine tasks you'd think should be a doddle for Anthropic's cutting-edging AI agents, even if they would struggle with "providing seamless and welcoming experiences for in-person visitors".

Then again, the successful candidate also needs to demonstrate “error-free execution”, which presumably automatically excludes hallucination-prone AI. Similarly problematic might be Anthropic’s preference for someone who brings “a security mindset with a thorough understanding of data protection and privacy best practices”, what with the tendency of AI agents to go rogue and hack websites.

benjamin.martin@thetimes.co.uk

Business

We need non-compete rules, says City

Tom Howard

Professional Services Correspondent

Banks, hedge funds and consulting firms have urged Andy Burnham to tweak non-compete rules but have warned that scrapping them altogether would risk “undermining Britain’s world-class” financial industry.

The prime minister said on Friday that the use of non-compete clauses in employment contracts had “gone too far” and become a “drag on innovation”.

He promised that the government would “legislate to make sure that non-compete clauses will no longer be a barrier to hiring for our most promising start-ups and scaling firms". Non-compete clauses prevent workers from joining a rival business for a set time after leaving a company.

Several lobby groups in the City have come out in support of reforms to the current rules, but urged Burnham not to scrap them entirely.

“We understand what the government is trying to do [but] it cannot come at the price of undermining Britain's world-class financial and related professional services companies,” said Miles Celic, chief executive of TheCityUK, which represents some of

Britain's largest financial groups. "There shouldn't be a ‘one size fits all’ approach that will risk dampening innovation and undermining the UK as a global hub for talent."

Many businesses use non-compete agreements to discourage star employees from defecting to rivals. It is estimated that 5 million people in the UK have some form of non-compete clause in their contracts, usually with a duration of about six months. Senior and prized workers can be forced to wait up to two years before starting a new job at a competitor.

Burnham believes the practice is holding back growth by keeping some of the country's most talented and productive people out of the economy for months on end. “We need our innovators to be able to move freely between companies and start their own without constraint,” he said.

Business groups insisted that non-compete agreements were necessary to protect commercially sensitive information. The CBI, the business lobby group, said it had not seen any “compelling evidence that non-compete clauses are a drag on innovation or a material hindrance on labour market mobility”.

Tamzen Isacsson, chief executive of the Management Consultancies Association, which represents consulting firms, said non-competes helped “safeguard confidential client data, protect intellectual property and prevent misuse of sensitive commercial insights”.

She accepted that the government could provide “clearer, more proportionate rules” so that restrictions applied only to “genuinely sensitive roles”.

A chief executive of a start-up professional services firm said: “You need to be able to protect legitimate business interests, but the definition of competitor is so wide it catches pretty much whatever [the employer] decides.”

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Kristalina Georgieva, head of the IMF, talks to Anutin Charnvirakul, Thailand's prime minister, at the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Bangkok

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 33 UK to grow faster than expected

contain inflationary pressures. The UK has the highest real interest rate of the major economies — calculated after inflation — according to the IMF's forecasts, and is paying the highest debt servicing costs since 2007.

France received the biggest growth downgrade in the G7, with output this year expected to grow by only 0.4 per cent, down from an earlier estimate of 0.6 per cent. The eurozone's second-largest economy is paying the highest premium to service its debt over worries about its budget deficit and social unrest over proposed spending cuts.

The IMF said its global forecast was at risk of being downgraded later this year on the back of “a prolonged stalemate or further escalation in the Middle East [that] could keep energy and food prices elevated and volatile, revive inflationary pressures, worsen fiscal and external balances, and weigh on growth. Further disruptions to energy infrastructure, cyberattacks, or extreme weather events could amplify these effects,” its annual World Economic Outlook said.

“Policymakers need to do two things at once: contain immediate risks from inflation, debt and financial fragility; and put in place infrastructure, skills and the competitive environment needed for technological transformation to translate into broader and more balanced growth, with gains distributed more evenly across and within countries.”

---

Global economy 'at risk'

Massive debt-fuelled investment in AI poses a new risk to global financial stability, the IMF has warned (Mehreen Khan writes).

The world economy's reliance on the AI boom to keep growth stable this year is a new vulnerability, and a decline in technology company valuations could have big repercussions for the financial system, the IMF said in its latest global financial stability report.

“Faltering AI investment and profitability could challenge optimistic expectations and trigger a correction in asset prices linked to the AI industry,” it said.

The IMF highlighted two risks to financial stability from the development of AI: the growing use of debt to fund massive investment levels in US firms; and the “circular financing” between giant American groups such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Nvidia.

"[Data centre operators] are borrowing more and more, while investors have been leveraging to invest in AI stocks," the report said. "Circular financing arrangements ... involving equity and debt flows between AI firms, suggest that stress at key companies receiving investment could lower revenue forecasts and investment valuations."

Gerard Lyons

Sorry, prime minister. We've never been so in hock to the bond market

“

War, AI and resilience have defined the global economic landscape this year. War has fed inflation. The artificial intelligence investment boom has added to borrowing costs. Economic resilience has led central banks to be less fearful about raising interest rates.

Monetary policy is being tightened across much of the globe. The Reserve Bank of India was the latest to act, raising rates last week for the first time since February 2023. The Bank of England looks set to raise rates next month.

Meanwhile, global bond yields have soared in the face of huge borrowing. According to the OECD, governments and companies will borrow a record \$29trn from bond markets this year. That is up from \$27trn last year and double the level of a decade ago.

Until recently, hyperscalers largely funded investment from retained earnings. Now AI investment is adding to borrowing demands.

There are offsetting influences on interest rates. Oil could dip, easing cost pressures. Chinese exports are exerting a powerful disinflationary influence. AI may boost productivity. The Bank for International Settlements also highlighted fears this summer that the AI investment boom could become a bust. Even allowing for these, policy rates and borrowing yields look set to be elevated.

Financial markets are discounting US and UK policy rates settling at 4 to 5 per cent, with longer-term yields higher still. Yet, until the beginning of this year, this century had seen the US Fed funds rate average 2 per cent and a UK Bank rate at about 2.5 per cent. The average for ten-year Treasuries was

3.3 per cent and ten-year gilts 3.2 per cent.

We are in a new normal, with significant ramifications. Cheap borrowing is being replaced by expensive refinancing. Britain's interest rate-sensitive

Riyadh airport on fire at the weekend. War is feeding inflation

housing and construction sectors are moribund. Private equity is struggling to return cash to investors; its debt-heavy buyout model thrived on cheap money. Debt once amplified returns. Now it is squeezing them.

The profound implication is the return of the debt constraint on economic policy.

With government debt high, the relationship between the interest rate paid by governments on their debt and economic growth is critical. In an era of high rates and borrowing costs, financial markets will place greater weight on whether governments have credible policies to boost economic growth or to deliver sound public finances that reduce debt. It will bring the relationship between monetary and fiscal policy into sharper focus, heightening tensions between governments and central banks.

Last week, Bank governor Andrew Bailey emphasised that fiscal policy must be credible and directed at stability — and be seen as such by financial markets. The big difference from previous periods of high debt is that monetary policy may no longer come to the government's rescue.

Consider two examples. After the Second World War, financial repression kept interest rates low and debt servicing manageable. Alongside inflation and economic growth, this helped reduce debt relative to GDP.

After the 2008 global financial crisis, monetary policy again provided relief through quantitative easing and low rates. Central banks became huge holders of government debt.

But stubborn inflation means the days are gone when monetary policy can relieve the pressure on the government from confronting its debt burden. For years, the debate focused on fiscal dominance, where debt pressures risked

constraining monetary

policy.

Now the concern may be monetary dominance, as central banks contain inflation, regardless of the fiscal consequences. This changes

the relationship between

governments, central banks and financial

markets. And the government may be even more in hock to the bond market than before.

It may not be enough to meet self-imposed fiscal rules. Given the scale of the challenge, meeting these will be seen as necessary but not sufficient to retain the confidence of the markets.

Limited scope for additional borrowing reinforces the case for policies to boost growth that do not add to public debt, particularly supply-side reforms that incentivise the private sector. Markets will penalise policies that lack credibility.

France is at the centre of the storm, with its borrowing spread over Germany widening. Protesters' demands for still higher government spending should serve as a warning to Britain. That's because France already has one of the highest levels of government spending in the OECD, at 57.2 per cent of GDP, against an OECD average of 42.6 per cent.

UK borrowing yields are even higher, reflecting market concerns about both anti-inflation credibility and the fiscal outlook. It would be no surprise if contagion spread from France to the UK.

The deterioration in Britain's debt arithmetic is stark. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the effective interest rate on government debt averaged just 1.75 per cent between 2012 and 2019, rising to 4.5 per cent in 2025. Over the longer term, it projects borrowing costs of about 4 per cent against nominal economic growth of just 3.5 per cent. In March, it forecast a rise in annual debt interest payments from £110bn to £137bn by 2030-31.

With borrowing costs exceeding growth, stabilising the debt burden will require sustained primary surpluses where government revenues exceed spending before debt interest payments.

In an era of relatively high interest rates, both France and Britain are discovering that high debt and low growth is a lethal combination. Governments can no longer rely on cheap money

They must restore growth and fix their public finances.

Gerard Lyons is chief economist at Netwealth

Comment Business

Katie Prescott

UK's AI promises are nothing without the power to back them up

angston Road, a long stretch of tarmac between Debden Tube station and the Mll in Essex, is home to a retail park occupied by

Greggs, Next, TK Maxx and a clutch of businesses in low, grey buildings set back from the main drag. Safely on the other side of the motorway lies the more rarefied Woolston Manor Golf and Country Club.

The area was soon supposed to be welcoming a more futuristic entrant, billed as the UK's largest AI supercomputer, due to open early next year. To great fanfare, Nscale, the UK AI infrastructure start-up valued at \$14.6bn — and with a clutch of big names on its board, including Sir Nick Clegg and Sheryl Sandberg — announced ambitious plans for this 50MW site last September. Partnering with Microsoft, it promised 750 jobs over three years, part of a £2bn commitment to UK data centres.

Fast-forward a year and there is a hitch. Development has stalled over power supply issues, with reports that it may even take until the 2030s to secure enough energy to run the supercomputer. And lo, the ongoing saga over the UK's attempts to rev up its AI infrastructure continues.

Britain's data centre ambitions face two stubborn obstacles: the cost of electricity and the difficulty of connecting to the grid, all set against the backdrop of the global compute (processing power) crunch.

Shortages of the specialist memory needed by AI chips, and of the advanced packaging that puts them together, are limiting how many processors can be made.

Chips are being hoovered up by the big players years in advance, leading to rising prices even for the oldest and should-be-obsolete processors. A nine-year-old Nvidia V100 graphics processing unit costs 43 per cent more to rent than a year ago, the influential annual State of AI report, published last week, says.

Data centres and compute infrastructure really matter. As a government paper set out in July last year: “Compute has emerged as one of among the most critical inputs for the development and deployment of advanced AI ... a critical enabler of industrial competitiveness, scientific excellence and sovereign capability.”

The US companies with the deepest pockets dominate AI data centre projects. Five individual American AI clusters each have more computing capacity than all EU installations combined. Furthermore, four US hyperscalers — Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta — will fork out \$733bn on capital expenditure in 2026 (although not all of this is for AI), up from \$384bn last year. This dwarfs the European Union's €30bn gigafactory project, a third of which will be funded by public money.

Which brings us back to the problem of cost and connectivity. I hear repeatedly that the UK should not expect any announcements of further expansion of investment from the rich US giants until they see evidence that these very real concerns are being addressed, along with questions over how to manage the grid's capacity more efficiently. They are worried about running into exactly Nscale's issue.

They have allocated large sums of money to UK data centres in recent years, such as Google's £1bn spend on Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire and Microsoft's developments in west London and Newport, not to mention that partnership with Nscale in Essex.

But, as the State of AI report lays out, the UK's business energy costs are more than four times the cost in Finland — \$0.373 per kWh, compared with \$0.085 — which frankly makes us a less attractive place for businesses.

The government has confirmed it is continuing with last year's (and the last government's) five designated "AI growth zones" — areas where large data centre developments are made easier and more commercially attractive. But these are slow to take effect.

The AI minister, Kanishka Narayan, said yesterday that the UK needed to build a “table-stakes level of sovereign infrastructure” to have control over increasingly powerful systems. British businesses are clamouring for that, too.

But Nscale's Essex experience shows that in this challenging environment, announcements are far easier than delivery.

Katie Prescott is Business Technology

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Business

Iceland's creaking grid gives data centres cold feet

Its renewables and cold air should be ideal for powering AI but firms are being turned away, writes Chris Dorrell

A passing bandwagon poses a question for any observer. Jump on to it, or let it go past. In the global economy, there is only one bandwagon in town: artificial intelligence.

Cumulative global spending on data centres is projected to hit \$7trn in the years to 2030, according to McKinsey, almost double the UK's entire gross domestic product.

While this explosion in capital spending is being led by the US hyperscalers, who are projected to spend about \$700bn this year alone, countries all over the world are trying to develop their own infrastructure. The European Commission wants to triple its data centre capacity in the next five to seven years to support its own AI ambitions and cut its reliance on US infrastructure.

The global expansion will face a number of challenges, not least the deep unpopularity of data centres and the availability of power, but for countries that have the right conditions for data centres, the AI investment boom is a growth opportunity like no other.

On the face of it, few countries in the world are as suitable as Iceland. Thanks to its hydroelectric and geothermal power, it generates almost 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources. The country's grid was also built largely to cater for aluminium smelting, which accounts for about 80 per cent of energy consumption.

Smelting requires an extremely reliable supply; if power is lost for more than three hours the molten metal can solidify, destroying entire manufacturing plants. The reliability and sustainability of the grid makes it particularly attractive for data centre operators.

As the name implies, Iceland is cold, but perhaps more importantly the temperature is also relatively stable. Big changes in temperature can cause the hardware to deteriorate faster. "You always need a sweater and a raincoat here," said Styrmir Haflidason, who leads Icelandic operations at Verne, a London-based data centre operator.

The climate means operators can spend significantly less on cooling the hardware. Verne claims that its data centres run with a power usage effectiveness of about 1.05, meaning for every \$1 it spends on power to run the servers, it has to spend only 5 cents on things like cooling. The industry standard across Europe is about 1.36 to 1.6.

Verne runs a 140 megawatt (MW) site on an old Nato base in Keflavik, on the southwest corner of the island. It has owned the site since 2008 and opened its data centre campus in 2012, with BMW as its anchor tenant. The car-maker leased space to run complex computations such as crash simulations, aerodynamic calculations and engineering for new vehicles.

The Icelandic language did not have a word for data centres when Verne arrived, and so the company had to invent it. It opted for gagnaver, which means "data storehouse". Few people in Iceland had experience working in the industry. Haflidason said that one of the people hired to fix the electricity generators had previously worked on engines on fishing boats in the Atlantic.

Verne runs a data centre campus on a former Nato base in Keflavik, in Iceland's

During the 2010s two other operators — atNorth and Borealis — opened sites in Iceland, largely concentrating on bitcoin mining. For a time, it used more of Iceland's electricity than the country's 330,000 inhabitants.

Karl Gudmundsson, head of strategic investments in the prime minister's office, said this posed problems for the industry. "The social licence was hardly there. People were like, 'Why are we doing this? This doesn't make sense'."

In recent years, however, all three operators have pivoted towards AI workloads. A fourth operator, Akur, revealed plans for a 120MW campus in the far north of the country last month. Major customers in Iceland include the neocloud firms Nscale, Nebius and Crusoe.

Iceland is not suitable for every AI workload, particularly those which require exceptionally fast processing time, such as high-frequency trading or streaming. But Dominic Ward, Verne's chief executive, argued this only removed about 5 per cent of the global computing market.

“We’re only 10 milliseconds on a sub-sea fibre network down to Dublin. We’re 21 milliseconds down to London. 19 milliseconds down to Denmark,” he said. “No user, and probably no computer, is actually really going to notice that it’s a further distance away.”

The government has taken an interest. "Global demand for data centre services is rising rapidly, driven in particular by the expansion of artificial intelligence," the government's industrial strategy, which was approved in March, said. "Given the competitiveness of Icelandic electricity and the cool climate, Iceland is well positioned to realise these opportunities."

The only problem is that other countries are getting there first. Norway received a \$6.2bn investment from Microsoft last year as part of the Stargate initiative, while Google invested €13bn in Finland last month.

According to CBRE, the global real estate firm, Iceland's total colocation data supply will be 206MW at the end of 2026, compared with 467MW in Norway and 116MW in Finland. Colocation supply takes into account only sites operated by data centre specialists, not the sites owned and operated by the hyperscalers.

By the end of the decade, both Finland and Norway's colocation supply will be larger than 1GW, while Iceland will still be only a 300MW market.

Politically, there are obvious reasons

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TIMES Holidays for caution. Around the world, data centres are not popular. Although only one US state has imposed a moratorium on their construction, a further 15 are considering it. More than 70 data centre projects in Europe were rejected or restricted between January and April, more than all of last year, according to the European Data Center Monitor.

southwest. The country's year-round cold climate means Verne has to spend less cooling its servers than rivals in Europe

Even some prominent Icelandic business people have criticised the country's data centre expansion. Rannveig Rist, the former general manager of Rio Tinto in Iceland, said it seemed like data centres were the only example where the government was looking to utilise energy and create jobs.

“Employment policy is not created by chasing the latest idea that attracts attention or yields quick benefits,” she said at the annual meeting of the Confederation of Icelandic Enterprises this month.

However, many of the arguments against data centres do not apply to Iceland in the same way. Haflidason said water usage was hardly an issue for

Verne because they can cool the hardware with cold air, which is available in plentiful supply.

“Most of the water usage at our site stems from the fact that we have 50 full-time staff who need to use the bathroom,” he said. Gudmundsson also said energy prices for local people had not been affected by the data centres.

The key practical obstacle to major expansion is the grid. Gudmundsson said that Iceland was not suitable at the moment for big hyperscale projects.

"All of the big US operators have been here at one point or another, just looking into what is possible. But their starting point is quite often just way too high for where we can actually deliver," he said.

"Iceland does not have endless reserves of energy to place into data centres. Currently, the data centres use maybe 3.5 per cent of our energy, and it might grow somewhat, but if you look at our pipeline of energy coming onto the grid, we can't really have any mega-projects in the next five to seven years.

“Even if a large hyperscaler came in and wanted to expand the grid on its own dime, the process of bringing more power to the grid would most likely take too long for them. These companies aren't very patient for energy currently.”

Iceland's grid constraints are not unusual. In the UK, the combined consumption of data centres in the queue for a connection is equal to the entire capacity of the existing grid. Nscale has been told that it will not get a grid connection until the 2030s for its site in Loughton, Essex.

Across the most developed markets in Europe and the US, many major data centre projects face delays of about five years to connect to the grid.

There is no doubt this is a big problem for the hyperscalers, and any economy that wants to rapidly build out its own domestic capacity. But it does not seem to be a problem for Iceland. “We are quite happy with these incremental additions,” Gudmundsson said. “We’re not looking to put a data centre in every village across the country.”

Business

Mystery investor backs Falklands oil explorer

Emily Gosden Energy Editor

A Falklands oil and gas explorer has announced a £2m investment from a mystery Middle Eastern backer despite escalating threats from Argentina.

Shares in Borders & Southern jumped more than 19 per cent after it revealed the fundraising from the unnamed “ultra-high net worth Middle Eastern investor ... exceptionally well-connected and experienced, with a long history of deploying strategic capital across a range of industries”.

Harry Baker, chief executive, said the investor had bought in at a 42 per cent premium to Borders & Southern's Friday closing price "in spite of the geopolitical backdrop" — recent threats by Argentina against oil companies operating around the islands, the sovereignty of which it disputes.

The cash injection should help fund the firm through to mid-2028, which Baker said would strengthen its hand as it negotiates with potential partners.

The Falklands do not have any oil and gas production to date but the UK-listed Rockhopper Exploration and Israel's Navitas Petroleum are developing the Sea Li-

on oilfield to the north of the islands. Rockhopper discovered the field in 2010; it is now expected to begin production in early 2028.

Borders & Southern has exploration rights to the south and east of the islands and in 2012 made a gas condensate discovery at the Darwin East well, which could hold the equivalent of 170 million barrels of oil. The company is quoted on London's Aim market.

Argentina, which attempted to seize the islands in 1982, was a vocal critic of Rockhopper and Borders & Southern during their original exploration campaigns, before a lull in activity as the companies struggled to raise cash. In recent months, as Sea Lion has got under way, President Milei of Argenti-

na has vowed to launch a legal challenge against the government.

Borders & Southern has been looking to “farm out” or sell a stake in its assets to bring in a bigger player that could help fund the next wave of drilling. Under its licence it has to drill another well by the end of this year but is seeking an extension from the Falklands government.

Rival driller Rockhopper is named after the local penguin

'Start drilling at Rosebank or risk shortages of diesel'

Emily Gosden

The government must approve the Rosebank oil field to bolster the security of Britain's diesel supplies amid growing risks of a shortage, an influential supporter of the project has said.

Nick Butler, an energy economist and former BP executive, argued that Britain's largest untapped oil field could "supply crude to British and European refineries when diesel from across the Atlantic can no longer be relied on".

The UK government is mulling whether to approve production from Rosebank, which is being developed by Adu-ra, the Shell-Equinor joint venture, as well as from the Jackdaw gas field.

Jackdaw is widely expected to be approved, as it will feed gas into Britain's grid and bolster security of supplies. Rosebank is more controversial: oil is more polluting, and there is no guarantee any of it will end up in the UK.

Approving Rosebank and other big new Adura oil projects would deliver a £10.8bn boost to the UK economy over the next decade, according to research.

Butler said the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and President Trump's consideration of a diesel export ban showed that Britain needed to “produce as much of its own oil and gas as it can”. He said there was “every chance of a serious supply shortage” of diesel this winter.

Tessa Khan at Uplift, the environmental campaign group, said: “More drilling makes next to no difference to our energy security. Rosebank’s oil will overwhelmingly be exported.”

Surgical robot firm sells stake to US

Alex Ralph

Chief Business Correspondent

Stryker, the giant American medical technology group, has taken a \$400m stake in Cambridge-based CMR Surgical, with an exclusive option to buy the remaining equity in the future.

The investment is understood to give Stryker a stake of about 10 per cent and to value CMR, one of the UK's most promising tech firms, at about \$4bn. Stryker will also become CMR's exclusive sales agent for its Versius robotics portfolio in the US, and a Stryker executive will join CMR's board.

The investment is the latest by an American group in an innovative UK technology company at a time when the British government is trying to scale and retain these businesses.

The Capital Markets Industry Taskforce, chaired by Dame Julia Hoggett, the London Stock Exchange chief executive, has warned chancellor John Healey that “the UK is at a serious risk of becoming forever an incubator nation, exporting its greatest companies just at the point they become globally consequential".

However, CMR and existing investors believe the deal is positive for both the company and the UK, accelerating its growth in the important US market while reinforcing its British foundations. They argue that its intellectual property, research and development, jobs, infrastructure and manufacturing are “remaining and scaling” in the UK.

CMR, founded in 2014, made a breakthrough two years ago when its portable surgical robot was approved by regulators in the US, the world's biggest healthcare market. The Food and Drug Administration granted marketing authorisation for its Versius Surgical System for use in adults for gallbladder removal. It is working to expand into other conditions in the US.

It went on to raise a further \$200m in April last year, increasing its total investment to more than \$1bn, and hired advisers to consider its options.

Existing backers include SoftBank, the Japanese investor, which led a \$600m investment in 2021 — the largest global medtech private funding round. Other investors include China's Tencent and Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), which partners with Cambridge University and surrounding clusters to commercialise intellectual property. CIC was the first institutional investor and is the largest British investor in CMR.

CMR, which will remain based in Cambridge where it also has a manufacturing site, employs more than 500 people, about 400 of them in Britain.

Massimiliano Colella, CMR's chief executive, said Stryker's investment was a “strong endorsement of the technology, clinical experience and global business we have built”.

Versius, which mimics the human arm, is one of the world's most in-demand surgical robotic systems, used in tens of thousands of procedures.

Martin Frost, a CMR co-founder and former chief executive, said he believed the deal was “excellent for the UK and CMR ... a good example of bringing one of the world’s largest med devices companies into the Cambridge ecosystem”.

Hays leads drop in recruiters despite promising quarter

Tom Howard

Professional Services Correspondent

Hays Group enjoyed its best quarter for more than three years over the summer, but its share price suffered another beating yesterday — and took the rest of the recruitment sector with it.

The largest recruiter on the London Stock Exchange saw net fee income between July and September 3 per cent lower than in the same three-month period last year, but that was the smallest quarterly year-on-year decline Hays had reported since spring 2023.

"The last six to nine months have been very stable for us," James Hilton, the chief financial officer, said. "We've got places like the US, which is clearly getting better; we've got good growth in parts of Asia; and southern Europe is performing really well."

After making a fortune during the pandemic-era “great resignation”, recruiters have been seeing their fee income steadily decline since the start of 2023. Trade wars, real wars, political upheaval, higher payroll taxes and worries about artificial intelligence have made companies reluctant to hire and employees hesitant to move.

However, optimism started to grow over the summer that the downturn in recruiting was close to ending after several upbeat trading updates.

The Hays share price had more than doubled since the start of July, but yesterday it fell 8/4p, or 12.8 per cent, to 56p. The sharp drop surprised some analysts given the FTSE 250 company's trading over the summer period. The prevailing theory was that investors had hoped the increased optimism and better trading would translate into an earnings upgrade, but that did not come.

Following the update, the share prices of Hays's peers also retreated. Michael Page fell 8.5 per cent, Robert Walters declined 5.5 per cent and SThree slipped 1.6 per cent.

Business

Increase taxes on AI tools ‘to pay for young workers’

Jack Barnett Economics Correspondent

Andy Burnham and John Healey should increase taxes on “robots and AI tools” in this month’s budget so they can lower the costs incurred when hiring young workers, the head of one of Britain’s largest recruiters has said.

The recommendation from James Reed, chairman and chief executive of Reed, is designed to revive demand for graduates and other entry-level staff and stop them from becoming a “missing generation” among businesses.

Reed, 63, said the growing use of artificial intelligence tools by companies to perform functions previously fulfilled by graduates risked depleting the pipeline of future business leaders by denying young people their first entry point into the workforce.

"The longer we allow entry-level opportunities to disappear, the harder and more expensive it will be to rebuild the talent pipeline," he said. "There doesn't have to be a missing generation, but preventing it will take employers, entrepreneurs and government working together."

Reed said the prime minister and chancellor should consider revamping the tax treatment of business spending on AI products and purchases of automated services. Any tax revenues raised should be used to lower the cost of hiring young people, he added.

"My proposal is simple: back humans, tax robots," Reed said. "Lighten the load on employers who hire people, and look at how transaction-based levies on automated services and AI tokens, much like VAT, could help fill the gap.

“This isn’t about penalising innovation or the companies building AI. It’s about making sure that as robots do more of the work, they also do more of the heavy lifting on tax, so that we can keep investing in people.”

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72% Drop in graduate vacancies in four years Source: Reed

Separate research released by the CBI, the business lobby group, based on a survey of nearly 700 firms, found that nearly 75 per cent thought employment costs were the biggest threat to the health of the UK's labour market.

Rain Newton-Smith, head of the CBI, said: “Higher employment costs and growing regulatory pressures are making firms more cautious about hiring and investment. That matters not just for businesses, but for living standards — and particularly for young people trying to get their foot on the career ladder.

"The good news is that this is not irreversible. Government can use the upcoming budget to rebuild confidence."

Burnham and Healey have come under pressure to set out policies in the budget on October 28 that will help bring young people into the workforce, after youth unemployment reached its highest level in over a decade.

Figures produced by Reed also showed the number of vacancies for graduate roles tumbled by 72 per cent over four years, from 180,000 to 50,000.

At the Conservative Party conference last week, Andrew Griffith, the shadow chancellor, announced that the party would lower national insurance contributions for young workers if in power after the next general election.

Sectors that typically employ a large share of young people, such as retail, leisure and hospitality, were hit particularly hard by the former chancellor Rachel Reeves's decision to raise employer national insurance contributions by £25 billion in her first budget in October 2024.

In addition, Reed said that, based on a survey of 2,000 people aged 16-24, each young person had sent an average of 17 job applications, but that 54 per cent of them had received no response to at least one of them.

Burnham and Healey have also faced a call from Tina McKenzie, national chairwoman of the Federation of Small Businesses, another lobby group, for the budget to ease the “huge and persistent cost rises” that have hamstrung the sector in recent years.

Music stops at HMV's flagship

The music retailer HMV is to close its Oxford Street store in

London only three years after reopening the site, blaming rent rises and a “substantial” renovation bill (Guy Taylor writes).

It said landlords planned to nearly double the rent; with the “substantial” cost of the refurbishment, this would make the

West End shop "commercially unsustainable".

The location at 363 Oxford Street is where the first HMV store opened its doors in 1921. Over the decades it has hosted performances and autograph signings from some of the biggest names in music, including Paul McCartney and David Bowie.

However, the retailer faced a period

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HMV reopened its original store in Oxford Street in 2023, selling vinyl records, CDs, books and clothing

of upheaval in the 2010s and was forced to close the store when it fell into administration in 2018, putting thousands of jobs at risk. The business was bought by the Canadian entrepreneur Doug Putman through his Sunrise Records.

Four years later, Putman reopened the five-storey Oxford Street store, which sells vinyl records and CDs alongside clothing, collectibles and books.

Putman, who was on hand to greet queueing crowds alongside acts including the ska band Madness, said at the time: "The return to Oxford Street and reopening of our flagship is a culmination of the team's hard work over the past four years and as a business we see it as the launchpad for an exciting new era for HMV."

Phil Halliday,

HMV's managing director, said yesterday it was "frustrating" that the store had been made "commercially unviable". He added: "However, we are looking ahead, and our focus is now on what we do to make exciting steps for HMV in 2027."

HMV is planning to leave the Oxford Street store in March. It said staff would be transferred to its two other London shops and head office while the search for a new site was under way.

Halliday added: "We're actively looking for a new location in the West End and are determined to give London a store that music fans can be proud of."

HMV has 123 stores across the UK. It said the closure of the Oxford Street site was despite robust trading. Group like-for-like sales were up 15 per cent in the first nine months of 2026. Revenue for shops and online trading was set to reach more than £240m this year, up from £212m in 2025.

Business

H&M ‘targeted by cybercriminal gang’

Isabella Fish Retail Editor

H&M Group, the world's second-largest fashion retailer, is investigating claims that it was targeted by a group of cybercriminals last week.

The Swedish clothing company, which owns H&M, Cos, Arket and Monki, said it was looking into a potential cybersecurity incident ascribed to a group called Shinyhunters.

The financially motivated gang specialises in social engineering, AI-powered voice phishing, and exploiting cloud service misconfigurations such as Snowflake and Salesforce. It has targeted companies including Google, Microsoft and Ticketmaster.

H&M told The Times: “We are aware of the claims circulating online regarding a potential cybersecurity incident involving a limited scope of H&M Group data. Protecting the security of our systems and data is of utmost importance to us.”

It added: “We are currently investigating these claims to assess their validity and so far we have no indication that our data environment has been compromised. We take any potential threat to our systems and data seriously. As this work is ongoing, we are unable to provide further details at this time.”

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's independent data watchdog, said yesterday that it had not received a report on the incident. Companies must notify the ICO within

72 hours of becoming aware of a personal data breach if it poses a risk to people's rights and freedoms.

It is not yet known whether the National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ, had been contacted.

Sources told The Times they thought that H&M had also been targeted by the same group behind an attack at Asos, H&M's competitor, last week. The hackers claimed to be called the Xuanye group, a name translating to "Mysterious Splendour".

A member of the group impersonated a trusted contact to trick an Asos employee into surrendering log-in credentials, a process known as “phishing”. The hackers were then able to access personal data including customer names and contact details.

H&M operates thousands of stores across more than 80 markets alongside a substantial e-commerce business. Its multi-brand portfolio generates tens of billions of pounds in annual sales.

However, sales have stagnated due to cost of living pressures squeezing consumers, and tough competition from Shein and the Zara owner Inditex.

Marks & Spencer and the Co-op suffered cyberattacks last year costing them millions of pounds in lost sales and profits. An attack on Jaguar Land Rover in August last year was estimated to have cost the carmaker, its suppliers and local businesses nearly £2bn.

H&M shares closed down 1.5 per cent in Stockholm yesterday.

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JANUS HENDERSON INVESTORS

Investor Serv: 0800 832 831 DIng:0845 946 4646 | American A Acc ‡ | 873,87 | +9,13 | ... | Cautious Managed A Acc ‡ | 468,89 | +1,25 | 2,62 | Cautious Managed A Inc ‡ | 265,28 | +0,72 | 2,53 | Diversified Growth A Acc ‡ | 330,2 | +1,34 | 0,20 | Diversified Growth Inc ‡ | 119,92 | +0,48 | 0,95 | Diversified Income A Acc ‡ | 1375,15 | +0,46 | 3,92 | Diversified Income A Inc ‡ | 66,96 | +0,09 | 5,34 | Emerging Mkts Blended Debt A Inc ‡ | 142,09 | +0,19 | 5,68 | Emerging Mkts Blended Debt A Inc ‡ | 164,65 | +0,09 | 7,40 | Emerging Mkts Equity A Acc ‡ | 297,61 | -1,4 | 0,04 | Emerging Mkts Leaders A Acc ‡ | 1246,4 | -7,61 | ... | Global Equity A Acc ‡ | 301,07 | +2,54 | ... | Global Franchise A Acc ‡ | 400,53 | +2,84 | ... | Global Free Enterprise A Acc ‡ | 2157,69 | +20,06 | ... | Global Gold A Acc ‡ | 574,34 | +9,34 | ... | Global Special Situations A Acc ‡ | 1547,93 | +5,93 | ... | Global Special Situations A Inc ‡ | 420,36 | +4,55 | ... | Sterling Class A Investment Funds 3 | Corp Bd A Inc ‡ | 31,83 | +0,02 | 5,28 | Dividend Inc ‡ | 65,46 | +0,54 | 5,46 | Recovery A Inc ‡ | 138,26 | +1,22 | 2,93 | Sml Cos Inc ‡ | 370.72 | +1,53 | 2,76 | Sell | Buy | +/- | Yld % | UK Special Situations A Acc ‡2604.99 | +12.2 | 1.04 | UK Special Situations A Inc ‡885.61 | +4.14 | 1.06 | All Stcks Credit A Inc ‡ | 110,5 | ... | 4,60 | Asian Div Inc U Trust Inc ‡ | 102 | ... | 5,50 | Cautious Managed Fd A Acc ‡ | 350,4 | ... | 3,90 | Cautious Managed A Inc ‡ | 150,4 | ... | 4,00 | China Opp Fund A Acc ‡ | 1275 | ... | 0,10 | Emg Mkts Opps Fd A Acc ‡ | 303,1 | ... | ... | Erpn Sel Opps Fd A Acc ‡ | 3087 | ... | 0,30 | Fix IntMnthly Inc Fd Acc ‡ | 32,57 | ... | 6,50 | Global Equity Fund Acc ‡ | 6557 | ... | ... | Global Equity Income A Ac ‡ | 186,64 | ... | 2,60 | Global Tech A Acc ‡ | 7515 | ... | ... | Instl UK idx Opps A Acc ‡ | 175,9659 | ... | 2,40 | M-Asset Abs Rtn A Acc ‡ | 190,8 | ... | 2,10 | M-Man Active Fd A Acc ‡ | 339 | +0,5 | 1,70 | M-Man Inc Grth A Inc ‡ | 160,9 | ... | 2,60 | M-Man Inc Fd Grth A Acc ‡ | 231,8 | ... | 2,60 | Sterling Bond U Trst Acc ‡ | 225,7 | ... | 4,10 | Sterling Bond U Trst Inc ‡ | 54,52 | ... | 4,10 | Strategic Bond A Inc ‡ | 92,32 | ... | 6,30 | UK Abs Ret Fd A Acc ‡ | 206,7 | ... | 2,10 | UK Alpha Fund A Acc ‡ | 197,3 | ... | 0,90 | US Growth Fund A Acc ‡ | 3115 | ... | ... | Sell | Buy | +/- | Yld % | Extra Income Inc ♂@ | 810,54 | +5,57 | 5,20 | Gilt & Fxd Int Inc ♂@ | 65,28 | +0,03 | 4,81 | GI Hi Yd Bd Inc ‡ | 38,59 | +0,04 | 6,58 | Index Linked Bd Inc ‡ | 101,35 | +0,19 | 1,57 | Index Trckr Inc ‡ | 103,13 | +0,81 | 3,05 | Short Dated Corp Bd Inc ♂@25,03 | +0,01 | 4,39 | UK Select A Inc ‡ | 3270,49 | +29,72 | 2,67 | High Income ‡ | 85,69 | ... | 4,60 | High Income Acc ‡ | 292.4 | ... | 4,60 | UK 100 Comp Acc ‡ | 711.6 | ... | 3,10 | UK 100 Comp Inc ‡ | 314.4 | ... | 3,10 | UK Select Port ‡ | 472.8 | ... | 2,90 | UK Select Port Acc ‡ | 1081.5 | ... | 2,90 | W'wide Mgd Acc ‡ | 1349.26 | +2,54 | 0,20 | Worldwide Mgd Acc ‡ | 750.95 | +1,42 | 0,20 | UK Equity Core E Net Acc @699.7000 | +5.8000 | 2.56 | Distribution & Growth ‡ | 124,33 | ... | 2,93 | Euro Special Sits ‡ | 576,33 | ... | 0,71 | European ‡ | 3834,87 | ... | 0,61 | Financial Opps ‡ | 1263,12 | ... | 1,01 | Global Macro Bd L GBP ACC ‡ | 428,92 | ... | 3,65 | Merlin Bal Acc ‡ | 347,13 | ... | 2,26 | Merlin Growth Acc ‡ | 839,28 | ... | 0,16 | ---

MORGAN STANLEY INVESTMENT MGMT | Equity | Glob Bal Inc F Acc ‡ | 1049,40 | ... | 1,54 | Glob Bal Inc F I Inc ‡ | 938,65 | ... | 1,55 | Glob Bal Inc F I Inc ‡ | 936,69 | ... | 1,49 | Glob Bal Inc F I Acc ‡ | 1046,53 | ... | 1,47 | Glob Bal Sust F Acc ‡ | 1056,68 | ... | 1,65 | Glob Bal Sust F I Inc ‡ | 989,88 | ... | 1,64 | Glob Bal Sust F I Acc ‡ | 1034,12 | ... | 1,57 | Glob Bal Sust F I Inc ‡ | 989,45 | ... | 1,60 | Glob Br Eq Fund F Inc ‡ | 1125,04 | ... | 4,01 | Glob Br Eq Fund I Acc ‡ | 1786,82 | ... | 3,98 | Glob Br Eq Fund I Inc ‡ | 1188,6 | ... | 4,08 | Glob Br Fund I Acc (PH) ‡ | 4441,21 | ... | 0,32 |

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TIMESRadio | Merlin Inc Acc ‡ | 469,83 | ... | 3,40 | Merlin Wwide Inc ‡ | 614,48 | ... | ... | UK Dynamic Equity L Dis ‡ | 285,82 | ... | 1,75 | UK Growth ‡ | 278,6 | ... | 0,64 | UK Income Trust ‡ | 1008,05 | ... | 4,58 | LEGAL & GENERAL (UT MANGRS) LTD

Enquiries: 0870 050 0955 Dealing: 0870 050 0956 | Euro Ind Acc ‡ | 771,6 | +1,3 | 2,00 | Euro Ind Inc ‡ | 460,7 | +0,7 | 2,00 | Fixed Int Acc ‡@ | 148 | +0,1 | 4,70 | Fixed Int Dist. @ | 60,46 | +0,04 | 4,80 | Global Health ‡ | 126,9 | +0,7 | 0,90 | Glob Tech Acc ‡ | 257,5 | -0,2 | ... | High Inc Acc ‡ | 151,4 | +0,1 | 6,10 | Japan Ind Acc ‡ | 116,4 | -0,3 | 1,20 | Pacific Ind Acc ‡ | 439,9 | -4,5 | 1,30 | UK Index Trust Acc ‡ | 530,7 | +4,1 | 2,50 | Uk Index Trust Dist ‡ | 226,4 | +1,7 | 2,60 | US Ind Acc ‡ | 1475 | +5 | 0,50 | Worldwide Acc ‡ | 471,9 | +0,9 | 0,90 | SANTANDER UNIT TST MGRS

08457 413002 | Glob Br Fund I Inc (PH) ‡1648,89 | ... | 0,45 | Glob Br Fund I Acc (PH) ‡1757,58 | ... | 0,45 | Glob Br Fund I Inc (PH) ‡3884,22 | ... | 0,32 | Glob Quality Fund F Acc (PH) ‡1552,38 | ... | 0,49 | Glob Quality Fund F Inc ‡1532,01 | ... | 0,51 | Glob Quality Fund I Acc ‡ 1574 | ... | 0,34 | Glob Quality Fund I Acc (PH) ‡1546,55 | ... | 0,34 | Glob Quality Fund F Acc ‡1591,02 | ... | 0,51 | Stg Corp Bond F F Acc ‡ 142,64 | ... | 5,22 | Stg Corp Bond F F Inc ‡ 95,91 | ... | 5,25 | Stg Corp Bond F I Inc ‡ 1361,84 | ... | 4,90 | Stg Corp Bond F I Acc ‡ 3016,85 | ... | 4,90 | US Adv F F Acc ‡ 2593,36 | ... | ... | US Adv F F Acc (PH) ‡ 1527,27 | ... | ... | US Adv F I Acc ‡ 2729,16 | ... | ... | US Adv F I Acc (PH) ‡ 1580,48 | ... | ... | ---

M&G SECURITIES

Enq:0800 390 390 Dealing Line: 0800 328 3196 Authorised Inv Funds | Equity Inc Inc ‡ | 232.0 | ... | ... | Stkmkt 100 Tkr ‡ | 230,8000 | ... | ... | UK Growth I Acc ‡ | 638.6 | ... | ... | UK Growth Inc ‡ | 306.6 | ... | ... | Charifund Inc ‡ | 1884.48 | +12.9 | 5.17 | Sterling Class A Investment Funds 2 | Far Eastern Inc | 617.0700 | 649.4700 | ... | ... | Mutual Far Eastern | 1390.4500 | 1467.4900 | -10.55 | 0.39 | Mutual UK Eq | 1429.4900 | 1508.7000 | ... | 7.81 | Sell | Buy | +/- | Yld % | UK Equity Inc | 562.2300 | 593.3800 | ... | 7.81 | UK Trkr A Acc @ | 590.5 | +6.20 | 2.50 | UK Trkr A Inc @ | 265.1 | +2.70 | 2.50 | UK & Income Investment Funds | Corp Bond A Acc ‡@ | 324,3 | +0,60 | 4,20 | Corp Bond A Inc ‡@ | 105,6 | +0,20 | 4,20 | Envir Invtr A Acc ‡ | 451,7 | +5,00 | 2,10 | Hi Inc Bond A Ac ‡@ | 293,3 | +0,10 | 6,20 | Hi Inc Bond A Inc ‡@ | 68,39 | +0,03 | 6,20 | Hi Res A Acc ‡@ | 547,7 | +4,20 | 3,70 | Hi Res A Inc ‡@ | 146,8 | +1,20 | 3,80 | Strat In A Acc ‡@ | 224,1 | +0,40 | 4,30 | Strat In A Inc ‡@ | 83,87 | +0,13 | 4,30 | UK Eq Treckr A ‡@ | 133,9 | +2,10 | 2,50 | OEIC B Class | UK Trkr B Acc ‡@ | 654.3 | +6.90 | 2.60 | UK Trkr B Inc ‡@ | 263.6 | +2.80 | 2.60 | OEIC C Class | UK Eq Tkr C @ | 129.0 | +2.10 | 2.60 | Amer Eq Gth Acc ‡ | 278.80 | ... | ... | Glb Advtg CAT Acc ‡ | 201 | ... | 1.32 | Glob Advtg Acc ‡ | 264.90 | ... | ... | Higher Inc Acc ‡ | 181.70 | ... | ... | Higher Inc Inc ‡ | 46.38 | ... | ... | Managed Acc ‡ | 517.2 | ... | 1.83 | UK Ethical Acc ‡ | 254.20 | ... | ... | UK Smlr Cos Acc ‡ | 817.20 | ... | ... | SVS BROWN SHIPLEY FUNDS | Balanced A Acc ‡ | 187,75 | ... | 2,02 | Blanced A Inc ‡ | 158,41 | ... | 2,07 | Cautious A Acc ‡ | 132,31 | ... | 2,44 | Cautious A Inc ‡ | 103,92 | ... | 2,48 | Dynamic A Acc ‡ | 506,13 | ... | 1,40 | Dynamic A Inc ‡ | 441,41 | ... | 1,41 | Growth A Acc ‡ | 497,65 | ... | 1,63 | Income A Acc ‡ | 319,03 | ... | 2,17 | ---

THREADNEEDLE INVESTMENTS | Threadneedle HY Bd Rtl Inc ‡38,1725 | +2,83 | ... | Threadneedle Monthly Etr Inc Inc ‡98,7521 | +26,84 | ... | Threadneedle SterlingCorp Bd Inc ‡53,4046 | +5,42 | ... | Threadneedle SterlingCorp Acc ‡53,3215 | +5,27 | ... | Threadneedle Stg Bd Ret Inc ‡37,9338 | +7,8 | ... | Threadneedle Strat Bd Ret ‡40,6178 | +0,34 | ... | Threadneedle UK Eq Inc Rtd Inc ‡115,4092 | +35,83 | ... | Threadneedle UK Growth & Inc Rtl Inc ‡106,6263 | +22,13 | ... | Threadneedle UK Istl Rtl ‡246,9761 | +228,31 | ... | Threadneedle UK Mthlyb Inc Rtl Inc ‡86,9302 | +39,03 | ... | Threadneedle UK Rtl Inc ‡162,7959 | +120,67 | ... | Threadneedle U Smaller Cons RtlInc ‡413,4388 | -636,08 | ... | ---

For Resolution see Ignis | IFSL Marlborough Eur A Dis 973 | 973 | ... | 1.26 | Longs (Over 15 Years)

\* Yield expressed as CAR (Compound Annual Return); † Ex dividend; \*Middle price; ... No significant data. # Periodic charge deducted from capital; @ Exit charge

British funds | 12 month | Price | Int Yld | Grs rd | High | Low | Stock | (£) | +/- | % | yld | Index-Linked | 73.08 | 62.31 | Tr IL 0 %$ 50 | 63,45 | +.44 | 0,79 | 2,59 | 66.33 | 55.43 | Tr IL 0 %$ 52 | 56,75 | +.50 | 0,44 | 2,58 | 101.91 | 98.40 | Tr IL 0 %$ 28 | 99,63 | +. nc | 0,13 | 0,33 | 100.99 | 97.50 | Tr IL 0 %$ 29 | 98,13 | ... | 0,13 | 0,90 | 98.88 | 94.73 | Tr IL 0 %$ 31 | 95,31 | +.07 | 0,13 | 1,13 | 88.33 | 81.89 | Tr IL 0 %$ 36 | 82,57 | +.10 | 0,15 | 2,04 | 82.85 | 75.76 | Tr IL 0 %$ 39 | 76,58 | +.23 | 0,16 | 2,30 | 79.32 | 70.96 | Tr IL 0 %$ 41 | 71,98 | +.27 | 0,17 | 2,38 | 74.05 | 65.25 | Tr IL 0 %$ 44 | 66,19 | +.25 | 0,19 | 2,54 | 71.23 | 61.52 | Tr IL 0 %$ 46 | 62,57 | +.22 | 0,20 | 2,59 | 68.00 | 57.99 | Tr IL 0 %$ 48 | 59,12 | +.29 | 0,21 | 2,59 | 60.61 | 48.78 | Tr IL 0 %$ 56 | 50,25 | +.41 | 0,25 | 2,48 | 58.90 | 48.29 | Tr IL 0 %$ 58 | 49,53 | +.47 | 0,25 | 2,43 | 54.25 | 42.88 | Tr IL 0 %$ 65 | 45,23 | +.39 | 0,28 | 2,23 | 53.89 | 41.56 | Tr IL 0 %$ 68 | 44,38 | +.42 | 0,28 | 2,16 | 57.66 | 42.83 | Tr IL 0 %$ 73 | 46,83 | +.55 | 0,27 | 1,83 | 97.88 | 92.64 | Tr IL 0 %$ 34 | 93,12 | +.17 | 0,81 | 1,74 | 79.12 | 69.68 | Tr IL 0 %$ 47 | 70,58 | +.30 | 1,06 | 2,56 | 62.70 | 50.78 | Tr IL 0 %$ 62 | 52,93 | +.44 | 0,71 | 2,33 | 87.38 | 79.58 | Tr IL 0 %$ 40 | 80,26 | +.25 | 0,78 | 2,35 | 84.28 | 75.00 | Tr IL 0 %$ 42 | 75,93 | +.23 | 0,82 | 2,44 | 104.16 | 100.95 | Tr IL 1 %$ 27 | 101,60 | -.04 | 1,23 | 103.67 | 98.72 | Tr IL 1 %$ 32 | 99,08 | +.15 | 1,26 | 1,41 | 86.56 | 72.39 | Tr IL 1 %$ 54 | 74,06 | +.58 | 1,69 | 2,55 | 85.60 | 72.50 | Tr IL 1 %$ 55 | 73,86 | +.57 | 1,69 | 2,52 | 99.52 | 93.16 | Tr IL 1 %$ 35 | 93,61 | +.09 | 1,20 | 1,91 | 97.09 | 89.56 | Tr IL 1 %$ 37 | 90,08 | +.22 | 1,25 | 2,13 | 102.53 | 94.69 | Tr IL 1 %$ 38 | 95,27 | +.14 | 1,84 | 2,20 | 99.42 | 86.58 | Tr IL 1 %$ 49 | 80,16 | +.34 | 2,13 | 2,56 | 248.27 | 237.68 | Tr IL 2% 35 | 240,51 | +.44 | 0,83 | 1,92 | 349.35 | 338.55 | Tr IL 4 %$ 30 | 341.23 | +.05 | 1,21 | 1,12 | 26,99 | 21,43 | Tr 0 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 61 | 22,11 + .10 | 2,26 | 5,60 | 65,04 | 54,28 | Tr 0 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 51 | 55,63 + .48 | 0,22 | 2,59 | 38,39 | 31,76 | Tr 0 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 50 | 32,47 + .17 | 1,92 | 5,94 | 47,60 | 39,77 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 53 | 40,58 + .21 | 3,70 | 5,97 | 45,88 | 38,50 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 51 | 39,26 + .21 | 3,18 | 5,98 | 33,04 | 26,72 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 73 | 27,71 + .16 | 4,06 | 5,34 | 48,44 | 40,58 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 57 | 41,35 + .23 | 4,23 | 5,91 | 48,36 | 40,67 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 54 | 41,45 + .20 | 3,92 | 5,94 | 41,45 | 34,74 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 71 | 35,53 + .18 | 4,57 | 5,52 | 57,14 | 48,65 | Tr 2 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 65 | 49,38 + .25 | 5,06 | 5,79 | 74,02 | 63,19 | Tr 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 68 | 64,27 + .32 | 5,45 | 5,77 | 81,50 | 70,51 | Tr 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 52 | 71,48 + .31 | 5,25 | 5,92 | 80,90 | 69,53 | Tr 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 53 | 70,59 + .30 | 5,31 | 5,95 | 88,15 | 75,91 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 55 | 76,96 + .35 | 5,52 | 5,92 | 83,52 | 71,62 | Tr 4% 60 | 72,71 + .34 | 5,50 | 5,88 | Mediums (5-15 Years) | 83,19 | 79,47 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 31 | 80,36 – .01 | 0.31 | 4.89 | 86,27 | 82,79 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 30 | 83,73 – .06 | 0.45 | 4.28 | 72,25 | 66,85 | Tr 0 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 35 | 67,32 + .06 | 0.93 | 5.33 | 79,97 | 75,17 | Tr 0 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 33 | 75,58 + nc | 1.16 | 5.18 | 48,97 | 41,71 | Tr 0 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 46 | 42,46 + .19 | 2.06 | 5.91 | 54,44 | 46,65 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 47 | 47,45 + .19 | 3.16 | 5.93 | 61,88 | 54,57 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 41 | 55,21 + .11 | 2.26 | 5.74 | 66,75 | 60,00 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 39 | 60,62 + .09 | 1.86 | 5.60 | 75,83 | 68,94 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 37 | 69,48 + .07 | 2.52 | 5.51 | 55,77 | 47,91 | Tr 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 49 | 48,66 + .22 | 3.60 | 5.93 | 85,07 | 81,01 | Tr 1% 32 | 81,36 – .04 | 1.23 | 5.05 | 82,54 | 72,66 | Tr 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 45 | 73,57 + .22 | 4.76 | 5.88 | 95,49 | 89,61 | Tr 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 33 | 89,92 – .03 | 3.61 | 5.14 | 80,41 | 71,14 | Tr 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 44 | 71,84 + .20 | 4.52 | 5.86 | 100,00 | 84,41 | Tr 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 38 | 84,99 + .11 | 4.41 | 5.56 | 102,40 | 94,75 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 34 | 95,22 + .01 | 4.73 | 5.25 | 101,93 | 0,01 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 35 | 94,44 + .03 | 4.76 | 5.33 | 96,45 | 85,71 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 42 | 86,63 + .20 | 5.19 | 5.78 | 102,33 | 0,01 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 32 | 96,18 – .04 | 4.42 | 5.03 | 100,56 | 93,14 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 34 | 93,57 + .01 | 4.54 | 5.26 | 99,39 | 91,15 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 36 | 91,70 + .05 | 4.63 | 5.39 | 100,00 | 86,64 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 39 | 87,38 + .12 | 4.86 | 5.64 | 100,00 | 0,01 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 40 | 86,14 + .14 | 4.93 | 5.69 | 90,97 | 79,78 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 46 | 80,82 + .25 | 5.26 | 5.89 | 89,58 | 78,14 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 49 | 79,30 + .33 | 5.36 | 5.90 | 101,49 | 96,41 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 31 | 96,54 – .06 | 4.27 | 5.01 | 100,70 | 94,11 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 33 | 94,42 – .03 | 4.37 | 5.16 | 104,72 | 99,24 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 30 | 99,42 – .08 | 4.78 | 4.90 | 103,33 | 95,06 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 35 | 95,58 + .05 | 4.97 | 5.37 | 102,00 | 0,01 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 38 | 92,66 + .10 | 5.13 | 5.59 | 102,58 | 98,02 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 30 | 98,18 – .07 | 4.46 | 4.96 | 97,07 | 87,10 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 40 | 87,92 + .14 | 4.98 | 5.68 | 100,37 | 97,66 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 32 | 97,85 – .07 | 4.73 | 5.08 | 100,00 | 92,67 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 37 | 93,24 + .07 | 4.96 | 5.49 | 100,99 | 95,19 | Tr 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 36 | 95,75 + .04 | 5.09 | 5.44 | 105,68 | 94,52 | Tr 5 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 41 | 95,41 + .14 | 5.50 | 5.72 | 105,44 | 90,86 | Tr 5 $\frac{1}{2}$ % 56 | 92,36 + .36 | 5.82 | 5.93 | Shorts (Under 5 Years) | Shorts (Under 5 Years) | 91,87 | 89,31 | Tr $\frac{1}{2}\%$ 29 | 90,79 | -.06 | 0,55 | 4,78 | 98,67 | 0,01 | Tr $0\frac{1}{2}\%$ 28 | 94,76 | -.03 | 0,13 | 4,32 | 99,94 | 96,61 | Tr $\frac{1}{2}\%$ 26 | 99,92 | +.01 | 0,38 | 3,42 | 91,00 | 0,01 | Tr $0\frac{1}{2}\%$ 29 | 88,93 | -.06 | 0,98 | 4,85 | 97,71 | 95,53 | Tr $1\frac{1}{2}\%$ 27 | 97,63 | -.02 | 1,28 | 4,43 | 95,46 | 92,89 | Tr $\frac{1}{2}\%$ 28 | 94,02 | -.05 | 1,73 | 4,76 | 101,17 | 97,61 | Tr $4\%$ 29 | 97,81 | -.04 | 4,09 | 4,90 | 101,39 | 99,44 | Tr $4\frac{1}{2}\%$ 27 | 99,63 | -.04 | 4,27 | 4,58 | 101,88 | 97,79 | Tr $4\frac{1}{2}\%$ 29 | 97,99 | -.06 | 4,21 | 4,91 | 100,70 | 99,60 | Tr $\frac{1}{2}\%$ 27 | 99,99 | ... | 4,13 | 4,10 | 101,65 | 99,35 | Tr $4\frac{1}{2}\%$ 28 | 99,50 | -.05 | 4,40 | 4,75 | 99,51 | 98,67 | Tr $4\frac{1}{2}\%$ 30 | 98,82 | -.08 | 4,68 | 4,99 | 107,07 | 102,38 | Tr $6\%$ 28 | 102,60 | -.07 | 5,85 | 4,71 | \* maturities having an eight-month indexation lag.

This is a paid for information service. For further details on a particular fund, readers should contact their fund manager.

Data provided by ICE. Data as shown is for information purposes only. No offer is made by ICE or this publication

John Ficenec Tempus

Buy, sell or hold: today's best share tips

Benchmark beater with dividends too

CITY OF LONDON INV. TRUST

Market cap £3.1bn

Performance YTD 15.3%

City of London Investment Trust has been one of the most popular funds among retail investors this year — and for good reason. It has

outperformed the market, all while maintaining its 60-year record of regular dividend increases. Against a backdrop of concerns over market bubbles, that kind of certainty over income is reassuring.

Picking shares is not for everyone, and that is where investment trusts offer a useful alternative. They do the hard work of meeting company management, building a balanced portfolio and regularly adjusting it for the best return.

One of the attractions of City of London is the unbroken record of dividend increases. This has been possible because it can hold up to 15 per cent of each year's income in a reserve. When tough times hit, like the 2008 financial crash or 2020 pandemic, it can dip into the reserve to keep paying dividends.

The underlying shares could still fall, so the value of the fund would follow during a downturn. But crucially you could still receive the same level of income while waiting for share prices to recover. Those dividend payments are made every three months and its next quarterly payment will go ex-dividend on October 22, and will be paid on November 30.

The other big factor for those saving for retirement is protection against the ravages of inflation.

ADVICE Buy

WHY 60 years of regular

dividend payments from a

low-cost investment portfolio

that is built to last

While £1,000 in a bank account offers about 5 per cent interest, after five years you're still left with £1,000, along with about £250 in interest. Whereas City of London has delivered 88 per cent returns during the past five years, so £1,000 would have become £1,880.

Stability is the key here. The trust can trace its roots back to 1891 when it started life as the City of London Brewing Company. City of London did not enter the investment game in earnest until 1931. The Trust now sits within the Janus Henderson stable and has been managed by Job Curtis since 1991. In another reassuring sign he has “skin in the game”, with a holding of 320,000 shares worth about £1.8m.

Source: City of London IT

The fund is about 90 per cent focused on UK-listed equities, but that does not tell the whole story. The top five holdings are HSBC, Shell, NatWest, BAE Systems and British American Tobacco. The fund as a whole has international giants with global dollar earnings split 42 per cent UK, 21 per cent North America, 15 per cent Asia Pacific, 12 per cent Europe and 10 per cent emerging markets.

In terms of the top five sector weightings, it is 35 per cent financials, 18 per cent consumer staples, 8 per cent energy, 8 per cent industrials and 7 per cent healthcare.

So far this year it has delivered gains of 15.3 per cent, ahead of its benchmark FTSE All-Share on 12 per cent. In the past three years it has delivered 73 per cent, 88 per cent over five years and a handy 132 per cent in the past ten years.

The obvious question is why not just buy a low-cost passive UK index tracker and be done with it? Well, they do not have the same ability to smooth dividends, so in a downturn your income could be hit. Passive trackers are typically lower cost at about 0.2 per cent, but City of London is certainly in the same ballpark with 0.36 per cent charges, and well below other trusts at about 0.57 per cent.

The trust also has the ability to outperform the market. It has two borrowing facilities for a combined £80m that were fixed for the next 20 years when rates were much lower at an average 2.8 per cent. It can use these to buy shares yielding almost double that.

The shares are currently trading at a slight premium of 2 per cent to the underlying net asset value, due to their popularity with retail investors. We said “buy” when we last looked at the start of 2025 because of a reasonable fee for consistent performance and reassuring growth in regular cash payouts. We are sticking with that advice because for those who want UK market exposure without the headache of having to build and monitor a portfolio, it is difficult to beat what is on offer here.

Investing is sometimes enough to turn someone to drink, so it is nice to benefit from a company that started with the drink first and only then got into investing.

London market ‘facing unprecedented exodus’

Wall Street report

MARKET REPORT

London's stock market faces a “material depopulation” amid a blizzard of deal-making in which bidders have swooped on 42 listed businesses worth £74bn so far this year (Helen Cahill writes).

The pace of mergers and acquisitions on the equity market is proceeding at an “unprecedented scale”, according to Peel Hunt, the investment bank. Six FTSE 100 companies and 13 FTSE 250 companies have been targeted by bidders so far this year.

The FTSE 100 companies subject to bids — Beazley, Schroders, Intertek, DCC, Segro and Rotork — have a combined valuation of £46bn, representing about 2 per cent of the value of London's blue chips. Meanwhile, the FTSE 250 companies receiving approaches are worth about £21.4bn, or 6 per cent of the mid-cap market's value, and have included Tate & Lyle, easyJet and Spire Healthcare.

Charles Hall, head of research at Peel Hunt, said: “The number and value of bids for UK companies is running at exceptionally high levels, raising concerns that the UK equity market is seeing a material depopulation.”

Meanwhile the London market remains relatively starved of new en-

A rise in Brent crude, up 1.8 per cent at \$106.65, may have boosted energy stocks with Chevron gaining 1.4 per cent, but falls in tech stocks led by Micron Technology, down 3.9 per cent, and Nvidia, 1.3 per cent lower, gave indices a mixed start to the week. Although 60 per cent of the companies in the S&P 500 rose, the index slipped 4.30 points, or 0.1 per cent, to 7,807.24. The Nasdaq fell 120.27 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 27,245.90. The Dow Jones industrial average, however, rose 195.60 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 51,850.55.

The day's biggest movers

trants, with only seven new listings taking place in the first half of this year, raising £577m.

On the plus side, Airtel Money, the mobile payments business, reignited hopes of an uplift in initial public offerings with a £5.3bn listing last week.

While the disappearance of quoted companies from London is a serious, and ongoing concern, it was business as usual yesterday with investors.

The FTSE 100 rose 104.23 points, or 1 per cent, to 10,656.28, while the more UK-focused FTSE 250 was up 114.28 points, or 0.5 per cent, at 24,328.06.

REINHARD KRULL/GETTY IMAGES

Topping the senior index was Convatec Group after the healthcare company issued a stock market statement saying it had purchased a total of 3,745,358 ordinary shares last week as part of its up to \$200m share buyback programme. The stock closed up 10½p, or 4.8 per cent, at 230½p.

A tier below, the honours went to GlobalData, up 3 $^{3/4}$ p, or 6.4 per cent, at 63p, after its founder and chief executive Mike Danson signalled that he would consider breaking up the tech company if that unlocked greater value for shareholders.

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Markets Business

NEWS IN BRIEF

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Retail's Pikachu bounce

Consumer spending picked up over the last month as shoppers sought Pokémon toys released for the franchise's 30th anniversary and demand remained strong in health and beauty.

Figures released by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and KPMG today reveal that retail sales jumped by 1.3 per cent on an annual basis in September, up from an increase of 0.7 per cent in the previous month.

Consumption of food items was up by 2.5 per cent annually and non-food purchases rose by 0.3 per cent.

Helen Dickinson, chief of the BRC, said that while health and beauty had enjoyed their “strongest month of the year” and that “toys also performed well, helped by the launch of Pokémon’s 30th anniversary products”, warm weather had curbed spending on clothing and footwear.

Sales growth accelerated compared with August, but was down from a 2.3 per cent rise in September 2025.

Dickinson also said demand could be “subdued” amid fears of tax rises at the forthcoming budget and an expected steep rise in energy bills.

Separate Barclays data showed that card spending in restaurants and cafés rose by 2.1 per cent last month while transactions in pubs, bars and clubs increased 3.8 per cent year-on-year.

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Nobel for economic calm

The US academics Robert Hall and Michael Woodford were awarded the Nobel economics prize yesterday for developing models used by central banks and governments to stabilise economies. Their work showed that keeping economies on an even keel required accounting for millions of decisions by households and businesses, rather than relying solely on top-down theories of how economies work. John Hassler, chair of the prize committee, said their models left policymakers “better equipped to deal with shocks in the economy, such as energy crises or sudden changes in how much households consume”.

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Tech boost from India

About 500 jobs are expected to be created in the UK after Meta for Data Technologies, an Indian company, agreed to invest £50m. The investment will fund an AI research centre, an engineering AI hub and a quantum computing laboratory, all in the Manchester area. The company will also expand its London headquarters. The deal was among a number announced to coincide with a visit to India by the business secretary Jonathan Reynolds, mayors from the north of England and more than 100 businesses. The trade mission follows the signing of the UK-India free trade agreement in July last year.

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Getty visualises debt reset

Getty Images said it would file for bankruptcy and go private after a restructuring agreement that it expects to close by the end of the year. The visual-content provider plans to begin a fast-track Chapter II process soon, seeking court approval for a debt restructuring agreed with its main creditors. It is a reset after the collapse of its planned merger with Shutterstock, amid heavy debt and growing competition from AI-generated imagery. Once the restructuring is complete, affiliates of the Getty family and Koch Equity Development will own the company. The investors have also committed to provide up to \$533m of new equity. | ICE Futures | Gas Oil | Nov1415.5-1415 | Mar1269.75-1269.25 | Dec1378-1377.5 | Apr1227.5-1226.75 | Jan1345.5-1345 | Feb1308-1307.5 | Volume: 182406 | Brent | Dec106.66-106.65 | Mar98.28-98.25 | ---

Business

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EQUITY PRICES

Dividend yields Please note dividend yields are supplied by ICE Data Services. The yield is the sum of a company's annual 12-month dividend payments divided by the last day's closing share price.

12-month high and low High/low prices for UK equities and investment trusts are based on intra-day figures. | 12 month | Price (p) | +/- | Forecast Yld% | P/E | High | Low | Company | Automobiles & Part | 68 | 32 | Aston Martin Lag | $41\frac{1}{2}$ + | $\frac{3}{8}$ | ... | -0.8 | Banking & Finance | 265 | 179 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Aberdeen Group | $244\frac{1}{2}$ + | $1\frac{1}{4}$ | 6.0 | 11.3 | 1 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 0 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Acuity RM♦ | $1\frac{1}{2}$ - | $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -6.5 | 4128 | 2624 | Admiral | 3670 + | 46 | 3.9 | 14.9 | 662 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 414 $\frac{1}{4}$ | AJ Bell | 601 + | 8 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 2.5 | 23.4 | 2876 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 20163 | AON Corp | $20779\frac{1}{4}$ + | 17 | 1.2 | ... | 940 | 755 | Arbuthnot♦ | 795 - | 5 | 6.9 | 7.3 | 276 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 151 | Ashmore Group | $225\frac{1}{2}$ + | 5 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 7.5 | 14.4 | 2126 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 1753 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Australia & NZ | $1996\frac{1}{2}$ + | 36 | 5.7 | 19.5 | 740 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 590 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Aviva $\frac{3}{2}$ | $687\frac{1}{2}$ + | $10\frac{1}{2}$ | 5.8 | 25.6 | 1122 | 709 | Banco Santander | 1028 + | 8 | 1.7 | 13.4 | 554 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 353 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Barclays | $437\frac{1}{2}$ + | 8 | 2.6 | 10.0 | 15 | 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Blue Star Capital♦ | 4 | ... | -2.1 | 710 | 613 | BP Marsh & Ptnrs♦ | 661 + | 6 | 5.5 | 5.0 | 415 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 212 | Bridgepoint Grp $\frac{1}{2}$ | 412 + | 10 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 2.4 | 82.4 | 378 | 265 | Chesnara $\frac{3}{2}$ | 329 + | 7 | 7.0 | -65.1 | 540 | 349 | City of London Grp $\frac{3}{2}$ | 520 - | 2 | 6.5 | 14.1 | 556 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 318 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Close Bros | $385\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -6.7 | 787 | 203 | CMC Markets | 673 - | 5 | 2.1 | 24.5 | 3068 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 2057 | Deutsche Bank | $2561\frac{1}{2}$ + | $18\frac{1}{2}$ | 3.3 | 9.6 | 93 | 74 $\frac{1}{2}$ | EFG-Hermes Hldgs | 75 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 0.9 | ... | 240 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 137 | EPE Special Opps♦ | 203 - | 1 | ... | 8.4 | 80 | 52 | Fiske♦ | 65 - | $2\frac{1}{2}$ | 1.7 | 5.7 | 90 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 70 | Foresight Ventures VCT 77 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 4.6 | ... | 5100 | 2330 | Georgia Capital | 4480 + | 120 | ... | 2.7 | 60 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 43 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Hansard Global♦ | 55 $\frac{1}{2}$ + | $1\frac{1}{2}$ | 8.0 | 11.8 | 260 | 194 | Helios U/W♦ | 255 | 3.9 | 8.8 | 1952 | 1288 | Hiscox | 1865 + | 18 | 2.1 | 13.6 | 1610 | 959 $\frac{1}{4}$ | HSBC | $1428\frac{1}{2}$ + | $32\frac{1}{2}$ | 3.9 | 15.6 | 1956 | 930 $\frac{1}{2}$ | IG Group | $976\frac{1}{2}$ - | $18\frac{1}{2}$ | 4.4 | 6.7 | 200 | 90 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Impax Asset Mgmt♦ | $101\frac{1}{2}$ - | $\frac{5}{8}$ | 9.9 | 6.4 | 2194 | 1424 $\frac{1}{2}$ | ICG | 1799 - | 9 | 4.8 | 10.8 | 145 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 115 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Intl Public P'ship | $135\frac{1}{2}$ + | $\frac{3}{8}$ | 6.5 | -6.9 | 690 | 499 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Investec | $594\frac{1}{2}$ + | $1\frac{1}{2}$ | 6.5 | 7.7 | 78 | 60 | Investment Co | 76 | ... | ... | 76 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 48 | IP Group | $72\frac{1}{2}$ + | $1\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | 10.1 | 22 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 6 | Jarvis Securities♦ | 8 | 43.8 | 2.5 | 214 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 137 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Jupiter Fund Mgmt | $173\frac{1}{2}$ - | $\frac{1}{4}$ | 3.5 | 9.0 | 689 | 549 | Lancashire Hldgs | 667 + | $20\frac{1}{2}$ | 2.5 | 7.3 | 318 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 217 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Legal & General | $290\frac{1}{2}$ + | $3\frac{1}{2}$ | 7.5 | 29.1 | 14820 | 7320 | Lion Finance Group | 12720 + | 340 | 2.5 | 8.7 | 358 | 223 | Liontrust Asset Mgmt 298 $\frac{1}{2}$ - | 38 $\frac{1}{2}$ + | 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 8.3 | 17.0 | 61 | 35 | Livermore Invs Grp♦ | $38\frac{1}{2}$ + | $\frac{3}{8}$ | 8.3 | 17.0 | 117 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 81 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Lloyds Banking | 104 + | $2\frac{1}{2}$ | 3.9 | 14.9 | 22 | 14 | LMS Capital | $15\frac{1}{2}$ + | $\frac{1}{4}$ | 25.4 | ... | 10140 | 6684 | London Stock Exchange | 8760 + | 66 | 1.8 | 36.7 | 367 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 251 $\frac{1}{4}$ | M&G♦ | $307\frac{1}{2}$ + | $3\frac{1}{2}$ | 6.7 | 24.4 | 348 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 183 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Man Group | $340\frac{1}{2}$ + | 1 | 3.7 | 29.2 | 33 | 20 | Manx Financial Grp♦ | 23 | 2.2 | 4.2 | 10 | 1 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Marechale Capital♦ | $4\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -5.6 | 186 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 98 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Metro Bank | $160\frac{1}{2}$ + | $5\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | 20.5 | 12 month | Price | Forecast | High | Low | Company | (p) | +/- | Yld% | P/E | 2621 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 1864 $\frac{1}{8}$ | National Australia | 2029 $\frac{1}{8}$ | + | 42 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 4.4 | 17.4 | 726 | 504 $\frac{1}{8}$ | NatWest Group | 653 $\frac{1}{8}$ | + | 11 | 5.4 | 12.2 | 832 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 438 $\frac{1}{8}$ | PayPoint | 679 | + | 15 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 5.9 | 11.5 | 1238 | 867 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Prudential $\ddagger$ | 901 | + | 2 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 2.3 | 7.7 | 1 | 0 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Quantum Blockchain $\blacklozenge$ | 0 $\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | -1.3 | 209 | 163 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Quilter | 178 $\frac{1}{4}$ | + | 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 3.6 | 20.0 | 2500 | 1490 | Rathbones Group | 1566 | + | 26 | 6.4 | 14.5 | 329 | 245 | Rockwood Strategic | 308 | ... | 0.0 | 2458 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 1620 | S & U $\ddagger$ | 1905 | + | 25 | 6.1 | 9.8 | 3 | 0 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Sancus Lending $\blacklozenge$ | 0 $\frac{1}{8}$ | + | $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | 5.6 | 59 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 38 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Schroder REIT | 40 | 9.0 | ... | 1575 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 1011 $\frac{1}{2}$ | St James's Place $1042$ $\frac{1}{2}$ | + | 5 | 1.7 | 10.4 | 2364 | 1351 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Standard Chart $d2159$ | + | 40 | 2.4 | 14.6 | 960 | 633 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Standard Life $\ddagger$ | 858 | + | 9 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 6.5 | -182.2 | 6347 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 4333 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Sun Life Canada | 5820 $\frac{1}{8}$ | + | 3 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 3.5 | ... | 4 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 1 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Tavistock Invs $\blacklozenge$ | 2 | 4.9 | -1.3 | 5490 | 3615 | TBC Bank Grp | 4924 | + | 78 | 5.4 | 6.7 | 1 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 0 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Term $\blacklozenge$ | 1 | + | $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -1.3 | 60 | 40 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Time Finance $\blacklozenge$ | 58 $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | 9.3 | 0 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 0 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Tooru $\blacklozenge$ | 0 $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -1.4 | 4 | 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Truetide $\blacklozenge$ | 3 $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -5.5 | 132 | 67 | Vanquis Banking Gp | 69 $\frac{1}{4}$ | + | $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | 21.8 | 2800 | 1916 | Volvere $\blacklozenge$ | 2250 | ... | 11.9 | 7239 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 5453 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Wells Fargo | 6340 $\frac{1}{8}$ | + | 23 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 2.4 | ... | 2275 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 1755 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Westpac Bkg Corp | 1824 $\frac{1}{8}$ | + | 45 $\frac{1}{6}$ | 4.4 | 17.2 | 31 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 23 | Worsley Investors | 27 $\frac{1}{2}$ | - | $\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | ... | 57550 | 49947 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Zurich Insurance | 52479 $\frac{1}{8}$ | + | 92 $\frac{1}{6}$ | 5.2 | 18.1 | Construction & Property | 345 | 181 | Alumas♦ | 232 $\frac{1}{2}$ | – | 4 | 4.8 | 11.5 | 4 $1\frac{1}{2}$ | 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Asoana Properties | 5 $\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | 1.3 | 2 $1\frac{1}{2}$ | 1 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Built Cybernetics# | 1 $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -165.0 | 973 | 636 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Balfour Beatty | 881 | + | 5 | 1.6 | 16.7 | 410 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 235 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Barratt Redrow‡ | 291 $\frac{1}{2}$ | + | 1 | 2.1 | 21.4 | 2890 | 1715 | Bellway | 1985 | + | 37 | 3.6 | 14.9 | 4442 | 2796 | Berkeley | 3210 | + | 40 | ... | 9.7 | 1208 | 790 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Big Yellow Grp | 801 $\frac{1}{2}$ | + | 2 | 5.9 | ... | 470 | 265 | Billington Hldgs♦ | 447 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 2.5 | 43.0 | 230 | 133 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Boot (Henry) | 148 $\frac{1}{2}$ | + | 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 3.1 | 8.4 | 368 | 271 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Breedon‡ | 305 | + | 2 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 5.0 | 12.6 | 451 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 335 $\frac{1}{8}$ | British Land | 394 $\frac{1}{8}$ | + | 5 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 5.9 | ... | 2900 | 2500 | Cardiff Property | 2750 | 1.1 | 20.7 | 2196 | 1469 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Derwent London | 1784 | + | 21 | 4.6 | ... | 5 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 4 $\frac{1}{8}$ | DCI Advisors♦ | 4 $\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | -2.8 | 19 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 11 | First Property♦ | 16 $\frac{1}{4}$ | + | $\frac{3}{4}$ | 1.5 | 9.0 | 75 | 25 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Fletcher King♦ | 31 | ... | ... | 62 | 31 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Foxtons Group | 37 | + | $\frac{1}{8}$ | 3.2 | 8.6 | 726 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 466 | Galiford Try Hldgs | 680 | – | 4 | 3.5 | 16.3 | 391 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 241 | Genuit Group | 286 $\frac{1}{4}$ | + | 7 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 4.5 | 15.7 | 435 | 221 | Gleeson (MJ) | 270 | – | 2 | 1.9 | -81.3 | 1063 | 788 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Grafton Grp Units | 943 $\frac{1}{4}$ | + | 7 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 4.0 | 13.4 | 202 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 149 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Grainger | 164 $\frac{1}{4}$ | + | 2 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 5.1 | ... | 377 | 270 | Great Portland Est | 305 $\frac{1}{4}$ | + | 2 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 2.7 | 0.0 | 391 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 280 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Hammerson‡ | 326 $\frac{1}{4}$ | + | $\frac{3}{4}$ | 5.6 | ... | 195 | 116 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Harworth Group‡ | 187 | 1.0 | 64.5 | 400 | 215 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Heath (Samuel)♦ | 255 | 5.1 | 31.9 | 236 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 170 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Helical | 176 | – | 1 | 1.5 | 36.4 | 12 month | Price (p) | +/- | Forecast Yld% | P/E | High | Low | Company | 143 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 71 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Ibstock | 77 $\frac{3}{8}$ + | $\frac{1}{2}$ | 2,6 | 96,7 | 148 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 112 | James Halstead♦ | 128 + | $\frac{1}{8}$ | 7,0 | 13.2 | 3518 | 1404 | Keller | 3270 + | 6 | 2,5 | 16.2 | 8578 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 8494 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Kingspan Group | 8519 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 0,6 | 27.2 | 726 | 525 | Land Securities | 611 $\frac{1}{2}$ + | 7 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 6,7 | ... | 216 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 170 $\frac{1}{4}$ | LondonMetric Prop174 | + | 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 7,2 | ... | 17 | 4 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Macau Prop Opp Fd | 5 $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -0,3 | 184 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 124 | Marshalls | 160 $\frac{1}{4}$ + | 2 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 4,4 | 28.1 | 98 | 66 | Michelmersh Brick♦ | 75 $\frac{1}{2}$ + | 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 6,1 | 18.8 | 0 $\frac{7}{8}$ | 0 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Mindflair♦ | 0 $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -1,0 | 5730 | 3938 | Morgan Sindall♦ | 4106 + | 20 | 4,0 | 11.0 | 10200 | 8350 | Mountview Estates | 8725 + | 25 | 6,0 | 16.7 | 85 | 65 $\frac{1}{4}$ | NewRiver REIT | 77 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 8,7 | ... | 226 | 160 | Palace Capital♣ | 189 - | 1 | 4,8 | -8.8 | 320 | 261 | Panther Securities♦♣ | 290 | 4,1 | 11.8 | 1552 | 947 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Persimmon | 1221 + | 22 | 4,9 | 13.7 | 24 | 15 | Plaza Centers | 14 $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -0.1 | 109 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 87 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Primary Health Props | 90 $\frac{1}{4}$ + | $\frac{1}{8}$ | 8,1 | ... | 33 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 28 | Real Estate Inv♦♣ | 31 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 4,8 | -62.6 | 849 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 486 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Safestore | 500 $\frac{1}{2}$ + | 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 6,2 | ... | 1142 | 791 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Savills | 997 + | 24 | 2,4 | 19.2 | 2 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 0 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Secure Prop Dev & Inv♦ | 0 $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -0,1 | 997 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 632 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Segro | 932 $\frac{1}{8}$ + | 13 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 3,4 | ... | 155 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 124 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Shaftesbury Capital | 137 $\frac{1}{4}$ + | 2 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 3,1 | 7,4 | 11 | 6 $\frac{1}{4}$ | SIG | 9 $\frac{1}{8}$ - | $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -1,7 | 153 | 105 | SigmaRoc♦ | 125 $\frac{1}{4}$ + | 1 $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | 17.3 | 113 | 85 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Sirius Real Estate | 88 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 6,1 | 6.9 | 140 | 106 | Smart (J) | 115 | 2,8 | 8,8 | 44 | 16 | Steppe Cement♦ | 44 + | 5 $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | 38.5 | 116 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 72 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Taylor Wimpeys♣ | 73 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 5,6 | 26.2 | 139 | 104 | Town Centre | 122 $\frac{1}{2}$ - | 2 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 4,1 | ... | 723 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 493 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Travis Perkins♣ | 562 $\frac{1}{2}$ + | 13 | 2,0 | -6.8 | 175 | 138 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Tritax Big Box | 141 + | 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 5,9 | ... | 626 | 416 | Unite Group♦ | 428 $\frac{1}{8}$ + | 5 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 8,8 | ... | 746 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 216 | Vistry Group | 218 $\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | 5.2 | 434 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 312 | Workspace Group | 350 $\frac{1}{4}$ - | 2 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 7,4 | ... | 930 | 785 | Wynnstay Props♦ | 900 | 3,2 | 12.5 | Consumer Goods | 229 | 124 | AEP Plantations | $176\frac{1}{2}$ | - | $19\frac{1}{4}$ | 20.3 | 10.1 | 30 | $17\frac{1}{4}$ | Airrea◆ | 25 | - | $\frac{1}{2}$ | 4.0 | 9.8 | 2359 | $1729\frac{1}{2}$ | AB Foods | 1856 | + | 21 | 3.4 | 13.1 | $715\frac{1}{2}$ | 538 | Barr (AG)◆ | 555 | + | 3 | 3.4 | 13.1 | 5326 | 3677 | British Amer Tob‡ | 4194 | 5.8 | 11.9 | $1376\frac{1}{2}$ | $953\frac{1}{2}$ | Burberry Group | 1044 | + | $19\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | ... | $142\frac{1}{4}$ | $85\frac{1}{4}$ | C&C Group | $95\frac{1}{2}$ | + | $\frac{1}{4}$ | 5.1 | ... | $5\frac{1}{4}$ | $3\frac{1}{2}$ | Capital Metals◆ | $3\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | -19.3 | 460 | 271 | Churchill China◆ | 360 | + | 5 | 5.8 | 9.1 | 5195 | 3350 | Coca-Cola HBC | 4350 | + | 68 | 2.3 | 19.9 | $1515\frac{1}{2}$ | 880 | Colefax◆ | 1355 | 0.5 | 9.6 | 5810 | 4775 | Cranswick | 5140 | + | 155 | 2.2 | 17.4 | $1903\frac{1}{2}$ | $1295\frac{1}{2}$ | Diageo | 1673 | + | 35 | 2.3 | 28.3 | $0\frac{1}{4}$ | 0 | Distill® | 0 | ... | -0.6 | 2260 | $1168\frac{1}{4}$ | Evans (M.P.)◆§ | 1922 | - | 103 | 3.5 | 11.9 | 152 | $114\frac{1}{2}$ | Fevara | $148\frac{1}{2}$ | + | $1\frac{1}{2}$ | 1.6 | 6.4 | 23540 | 14300 | Games Workshop | 16560 | + | 170 | 3.4 | 26.5 | $2185\frac{1}{2}$ | $1148\frac{1}{2}$ | Glanbia | $1605\frac{1}{2}$ | - | $44\frac{1}{2}$ | 2.4 | 29.0 | $307\frac{1}{2}$ | $191\frac{1}{4}$ | Greencore | $262\frac{1}{2}$ | + | $6\frac{1}{4}$ | 1.0 | 19.9 | 738 | $447\frac{1}{2}$ | Hilton Food | $703\frac{1}{2}$ | - | 10 | 5.0 | 8.0 | 3632 | 2408 | Imperial Brands | 2664 | + | 2 | 6.3 | 10.6 | $7646\frac{1}{2}$ | $5567\frac{1}{4}$ | Kerry Group◆ | $7522\frac{1}{4}$ | + | $174\frac{1}{4}$ | 1.6 | 22.2 | $214\frac{1}{4}$ | $107\frac{1}{2}$ | McBride | 177 | + | $\frac{3}{4}$ | 1.8 | 10.0 | 290 | 85 | Mulberry Group◆ | 231 | ... | -17.8 | 1200 | 880 | Nichols◆ | 1115 | + | 30 | 3.5 | 19.0 | 374 | 262 | Norcross | 291 | - | 3 | 3.9 | ... | 372 | 309 | Origin Ents◆ | 340 | 4.3 | 9.2 | 1 | $0\frac{1}{4}$ | PACSCo# | $0\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | -0.0 | 12 month | Price | Forecast | High | Low | Company | (p) | +/- | Yld% | P/E | $113\frac{1}{4}$ | $46\frac{1}{4}$ | Portmeirion◆ | $47\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -1.0 | $1\frac{1}{2}$ | $0\frac{1}{2}$ | Provexis◆ | 1 | - | $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -51.5 | 114 | $65\frac{1}{4}$ | PZ Cussons | $96\frac{1}{8}$ | - | $\frac{1}{8}$ | 3.8 | 20.5 | 138 | 92 | REA | 113 | + | $2\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -213.4 | 210 | 155 | Tandem◆ | 175 | 1.7 | 11.3 | 330 | 220 | The Character Grp◆ | 315 | - | 3 | 2.2 | -46.7 | $82\frac{1}{8}$ | 5 | Ukproduct Grp◆ | $7\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -18.0 | $5542\frac{1}{2}$ | 3644 | Unilever | 4738 | + | $64\frac{1}{2}$ | 3.5 | 12.9 | $76\frac{1}{2}$ | $19\frac{1}{2}$ | Victoria◆ | 42 | - | 1 | ... | -0.1 | Engineering | $49\frac{1}{4}$ | 10 | Assoc Brit Eng | 20 | ... | -6.9 | 2375 | 1458 | Avon Technologies | 2330 | 0.8 | 88.3 | 1527 | $871\frac{1}{4}$ | Babcock | $910\frac{1}{4}$ | - | 3 | 0.8 | 21.6 | 2360 | 1529 | BAE Systems | $1882\frac{1}{2}$ | + | $22\frac{1}{2}$ | 2.0 | 27.4 | 1500 | 500 | Braime A N/V◆ | 1275 | 1.3 | 6.8 | 2490 | 1376 | Braime Group◆ | 2400 | 0.7 | 12.7 | 550 | 350 | Caffyns | 500 | 2.0 | -12.3 | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | Cap XX Ld◆ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -3.0 | 340 | $202\frac{1}{4}$ | Castings | 281 | - | 6 | 6.5 | 16.2 | 27 | $12\frac{1}{2}$ | Checkit◆ | $16\frac{1}{4}$ | + | $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -6.2 | $650\frac{1}{4}$ | $446\frac{1}{2}$ | Chemring Group | $516\frac{1}{2}$ | + | $5\frac{1}{2}$ | 1.6 | 29.0 | 55 | $28\frac{1}{4}$ | Chesterfield Spec Cyl◆ | 36 | ... | -40.0 | 1538 | $881\frac{1}{4}$ | Cohort◆ | 1276 | + | 68 | 1.4 | 24.4 | 626 | 240 | Dialight | 586 | + | 10 | ... | ... | 15 | $5\frac{1}{8}$ | Feedback◆ | $6\frac{1}{8}$ | + | $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -0.3 | 1270 | $463\frac{1}{4}$ | Gooch & Housego◆ | 1225 | ... | 89.4 | 28500 | 10820 | Goodwin | 14060 | - | 160 | 2.3 | 19.0 | 4902 | 3268 | Halma | 3540 | + | 12 | 0.7 | 35.9 | 3345 | 1994 | Hill & Smith | 3070 | + | 20 | ... | 29.9 | 4 | $1\frac{1}{4}$ | Image Scan◆ | $3\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -16.2 | 3202 | 2244 | IMI | 3110 | + | 18 | 1.1 | 25.0 | 6300 | 3480 | Judges Sci.◆ | 3600 | 3.3 | 43.5 | 92 | 34 | LPA◆ | 82 | ... | -31.1 | 685 | $409\frac{1}{4}$ | Melrose | $449\frac{1}{4}$ | + | $5\frac{1}{4}$ | 1.7 | 15.5 | $294\frac{1}{2}$ | $179\frac{1}{4}$ | Morgan Advanced | 287 | - | 3 | 4.3 | 38.3 | 405 | 200 | Mpac◆ | $337\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -10.6 | 1800 | 1120 | MS Intl◆ | 1545 | + | 5 | 1.7 | 22.9 | 3318 | 1682 | Oxford Instruments | 2966 | + | 8 | 0.8 | 35.1 | $2413\frac{1}{4}$ | $1779\frac{1}{4}$ | Phillips Elec | $1858\frac{1}{4}$ | + | $18\frac{1}{4}$ | 3.9 | -44.0 | $4\frac{1}{8}$ | 1 | PipeHawk◆ | $1\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -2.7 | 6030 | 3280 | Renishaw | 5710 | - | 25 | 1.4 | 34.9 | 1586 | 990 | Rolls-Royce | $1395\frac{1}{4}$ | + | $10\frac{1}{4}$ | 0.8 | 20.1 | 492 | $286\frac{1}{4}$ | Rotork | 491 | + | $\frac{1}{8}$ | 1.7 | 35.6 | 99 | 60 | SDI Group◆ | 95 | - | $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | 20.2 | $2067\frac{1}{2}$ | $2030\frac{1}{4}$ | SKF Group | $2067\frac{1}{8}$ | 2.8 | 31.8 | 2885 | 2088 | Smiths | 2769 | + | 39 | 1.8 | 4.4 | 215 | 135 | Solid State◆ | 165 | 1.7 | 22.9 | 270 | 170 | Somero Enter◆ | $267\frac{1}{2}$ | + | $3\frac{1}{2}$ | 3.2 | 18.6 | 8050 | 5950 | Spirax Group | 7275 | + | 5 | 2.4 | 32.8 | $7\frac{1}{2}$ | $3\frac{1}{2}$ | Tanfield◆ | $4\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | -4.1 | 320 | 240 | Thorpe FW◆ | 256 | + | 6 | 2.9 | 10.8 | $142\frac{1}{4}$ | 36 | Transense Tech◆ | 46 | ... | -66.7 | $507\frac{1}{2}$ | 350 | Vesuvius | $462\frac{1}{2}$ | - | 4 | 5.1 | 21.9 | 710 | $342\frac{1}{2}$ | Volex | 684 | - | 4 | 0.7 | 25.7 | 3580 | 2254 | Weir◆ | 2680 | + | 38 | 1.6 | 28.0 | 2160 | $849\frac{1}{4}$ | XP Power | 1980 | + | 30 | ... | -47.1 | Health | $284\frac{1}{2}$ | 187 | Advanced Medical◆ | 282 | 0.7 | 61.0 | $12\frac{1}{8}$ | $4\frac{1}{2}$ | Allergy Therapeutics◆ | $4\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | -5.7 | $3\frac{1}{2}$ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | CellBxHealth◆ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -0.2 | 580 | $391\frac{1}{4}$ | Anpario◆ | 510 | 2.5 | 12.7 | 12 month | Price (p) | +/- | Forecast Yld% | P/E | High | Low | Company | 15732 | 9892 | AstraZeneca | 12026 | + | 28 | 2.0 24.1 | 3 | 11⁄4 Cambridge Nutri Sci◆ | 11⁄2 | ... -0.6 | 2591⁄4 | 193 | Convatec | 2303⁄4 | + | 101⁄2 | 2.4 35.4 | 32 | Potter & Moore◆ | 23 | 2.4 7.5 | 1161⁄8 | 771⁄8 | Eco Animal Health◆ | 951⁄2 | ... 29.3 | 30 | 211⁄4 EKF Diagnostics◆ | 26 | ... 55.3 | 31⁄4 | 01⁄8 | Futura Medical◆ | 01⁄8 | ... -0.1 | 3220 | 1943 | Genus | 2272 | - | 8 | 1.5 5.3 | 2282 | 1592 | GSK | 1771 | + | 21 | 4.0 12.6 | 01⁄4 | 01⁄8 | Gunsynd◆ | 01⁄8 | ... -2.2 | 4161⁄8 | 3171⁄8 | Haleon | 3541⁄4 | + | 51⁄4 | 2.1 19.1 | 1865 | 1187 | Hikma Pharma | 1629 | + | 17 | 4.0 11.8 | 241 | 1501⁄2 Hutchmed China◆ | 215 | + | 12 | ... 5.4 | 14 | ImmuPharma◆ | 41⁄2 | + | 1⁄2 | ... -11.1 | 32 | 121⁄4 Inspiration Health◆ | 181⁄2 | ... -15.9 | 14 | 61⁄4 IIXCO◆ | 71⁄4 | ... -4.2 | 1 | 01⁄8 Thalia Therapeutics◆ | 01⁄8 | ... -3.7 | 76 | 531⁄8 NIOX Group◆ | 69 | + | 11⁄2 | 2.2 40.8 | CHF112,68 | 97,05 Novartis | CHF119,96 | + | 0,86 | 3.1 39.1 | 962 | Oxford Biomedica | 535 | + | 14 | ... -19.9 | 01⁄4 | Physiomics◆ | 01⁄2 | ... -2.8 | 41⁄8 | 11⁄8 Proteome Sciences◆ | 11⁄8 | ... -1.3 | 65221⁄8 | 3664 | Reckitt Benck | 5216 | + | 84 | 4.1 11.1 | 31 | 101⁄2 RUA Life Sci◆ | 30 | + | 1⁄2 | ... -128.8 | 40 | 91⁄2 Sareum Holdings# | 271⁄2 | ... -11.5 | 14261⁄8 | 9801⁄8 Smith & Neph8 | 1038 | + | 171⁄2 | 2.9 19.0 | 249 | 1401⁄4 Spire Healthcare | 247 | 0.6 60.2 | 14 | Talisman Metals◆ | 81⁄2 | ... 2.4 | 01⁄2 | 01⁄8 ValRx◆ | 01⁄8 | ... -0.2 | Industrials | 79% | 54 | Accsys Tech◆ | 54 | - | 1 $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | 23,9 | 4780 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 3665 $\frac{1}{8}$ | BASF | 4328 $\frac{1}{4}$ | - | 36 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 4,4 | 28,1 | 4606 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 2268 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Bayer | 3685 $\frac{1}{2}$ | - | 34 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 0,3 | -11,8 | 98% | 73 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Coats Group | 84 $\frac{1}{8}$ | - | 1 | 3,0 | 18,8 | 3520 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 2488 | Croda | 3417 | + | 27 | 3,2 | 77,0 | 710 | 250 | Cropper (James)◆ | 685 | + | 5 | ... | 22,2 | 195 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 136 | Elementis | 182 | - | $\frac{1}{4}$ | 1,8 | -30,8 | 110 | 6 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Hardido◆ | 105 | ... | ... | 3775 | 2095 | International Paper | 2415 | + | 15 | 5,8 | -5,9 | 3245 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 2192 | Johnson Matthey | 2458 | - | 10 | 4,2 | -32,2 | 981 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 660 | Mondi | 792 | + | 4 | 1,6 | 25,1 | 144 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 110 | Robinson◆ | 122 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 4,9 | 9,0 | 1022 | 597 | Swire Pacific | 989 | + | 5 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 3,9 | 47,3 | 10 | 5 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Symphony Enviro◆ | 6 $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -6,0 | 124 | 16 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Synthomer | 107 | - | 3 | ... | -1,1 | 2858 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 2026 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Takeda Pharma? | 2785 $\frac{1}{4}$ | - | 3 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 3,5 | -60,4 | 1024 | 515 | Victrex | 926 | - | 16 | 3,2 | 28,9 | 430 | 320 | Wynnstay◆§ | 352 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 5,1 | 35,7 | 479 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 318 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Zotefoams | 443 $\frac{1}{2}$ | - | 1 | 1,8 | 9,6 | 12 month | Price (p) | +/- | Forecast | High | Low | Company | Yld% | P/E | 219 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 137 $\frac{1}{4}$ | SSP | 176 $\frac{1}{4}$ | - | 4 | 2.5 | -19.0 | 0 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 0 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Bow Street Group◆ | 0 $\frac{1}{3}$ | ... | -0.3 | 1026 | 530 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Wetherspoon JD | 993 | + | 10 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 1.2 | 16.7 | 3278 | 2098 | Whitbread | 2510 | + | 32 | 3.9 | 20.4 | Media | 90 | 51 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Aeorema Comms◆ | 85 | 1.2 | 67.5 | 29 | 18 | Altitude Group◆ | 20 $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -82.0 | 101 | 70 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Arcontech Group◆ $\ddagger$ | 82 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 4.8 | 13.2 | 828 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 418 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Autotrader | 495 $\frac{1}{4}$ | + | 6 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 2.3 | 14.5 | 690 | 435 | Bloomsbury Pub | 682 | + | 9 | 2.4 | 20.6 | 3 $\frac{1}{2}$ | Caledonian Hldgs◆ | 0 $\frac{1}{3}$ | ... | -0.9 | 60 | 40 | Catalyst Media◆ | 42 $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | 23.1 | 0 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 0 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Catenai◆ | 0 $\frac{1}{3}$ | ... | -2.1 | 15 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 9 | Ebiquity◆ | 9 $\frac{1}{3}$ | ... | -0.9 | 679 | 262 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Future | 300 $\frac{1}{4}$ | - | 8 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 5.7 | 4.8 | 129 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 52 $\frac{1}{8}$ | GlobalData◆ | 63 $\frac{1}{4}$ | + | 3 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 2.4 | 14.3 | 110 | 44 | IG Design Group◆ | 97 | - | 1 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 1.0 | -0.8 | 1000 | 719 | Informa | 874 | - | 21 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 2.6 | ... | 87 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 65 $\frac{1}{4}$ | ITV | 66 $\frac{1}{4}$ | - | $\frac{1}{4}$ | 7.5 | 11.2 | 196 | 98 $\frac{1}{2}$ | ME Group | 112 | - | $\frac{3}{4}$ | 7.5 | 7.5 | 0 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 0 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Mediazest◆ | 0 $\frac{1}{3}$ | ... | 13.4 | 29 | 12 | Mission Group◆ | 25 | ... | -1.2 | 214 | 139 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Mony Group | 191 | + | 5 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 6.6 | 12.5 | 2316 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 1624 $\frac{1}{8}$ | News Corp A | 2221 | + | 17 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 0.7 | ... | 2615 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 1891 $\frac{1}{2}$ | News Corp B | 2433 $\frac{1}{2}$ | + | 7 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 0.6 | ... | 439 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 217 | Next 15 Group◆ | 312 $\frac{1}{2}$ | + | 2 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 4.9 | -10.4 | 1337 | 874 $\frac{1}{4}$ | Pearson | 1304 | + | 19 | 2.0 | 25.4 | 4 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 3 | Primorus Inv◆ | 3 $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | 5.0 | 73 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 39 | Reach | 47 | - | $\frac{1}{2}$ | 12.6 | -1.1 | 59 | 40 | React◆ | 41 $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -28.6 | 3539 | 1991 | Relx | 2760 | + | 40 | 2.5 | 24.5 | 700 | 391 $\frac{1}{8}$ | Rightmove◆ | 492 | + | 1 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 2.2 | 17.5 | 269 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 130 | SpaceandPeople◆ | 161 | - | 1 $\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | 7.5 | 124 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 93 $\frac{1}{8}$ | STV Group | 103 | + | 3 | ... | -9.5 | 370 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 170 $\frac{1}{2}$ | System1 Group◆ $\ddagger$ | 350 | + | 4 | 1.7 | 33.7 | 4754 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 4673 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 21st Cent Fox A | 4754 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 0.9 | ... | 3313 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 3262 $\frac{1}{2}$ | 21st Cent Fox B | 3313 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 1.3 | ... | 360 | 230 | Wilmington | 274 | - | 4 | 4.6 | 22.1 | 412 $\frac{1}{8}$ | 218 $\frac{1}{2}$ | WPP◆ | 378 $\frac{1}{8}$ | - | 7 $\frac{1}{4}$ | 4.0 | 7.5 | 62 | 40 | Zinc Media◆ | 47 $\frac{1}{2}$ | - | 3 | ... | -6.6 | Leisure | 418 | 231 | Accesso Tech◆ | 305 | + | $1\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | 14,4 | 260 | 165 | Celtic◆ | $172\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -34,3 | $227\frac{1}{4}$ | 164 | Domino's Pizza | $227\frac{1}{4}$ | + | $1\frac{1}{2}$ | 5,0 | 15,0 | $878\frac{1}{8}$ | $405\frac{1}{8}$ | Entain | $427\frac{1}{8}$ | + | 1 | 4,7 | -4,1 | 48 | $19\frac{1}{8}$ | Evoke | $41\frac{1}{8}$ | - | $\frac{1}{2}$ | ... | -0,3 | $47\frac{1}{4}$ | 29 | Gaming Realms◆ | 30 | - | $\frac{3}{8}$ | ... | 14,8 | 310 | 210 | Heavitree◆ | 295 | 2,2 | 5,4 | 244 | 130 | Heavitree A◆ | $202\frac{1}{2}$ | 3,3 | 3,7 | $175.70 | 117.94 | InterCont'l Hotels | $158.85 | - | 2.20 | 1,2 | 32,4 | 302 | $223\frac{1}{2}$ | Mitch & Butlers | 291 | + | 4 | ... | 9,8 | 234 | $129\frac{1}{2}$ | On The Beach | 167 | - | $3\frac{1}{2}$ | 2,4 | 30,4 | 135 | $68\frac{1}{4}$ | Rank Group‡ | $70\frac{1}{4}$ | - | $\frac{3}{8}$ | 5,0 | 11,0 | Natural Resources | Natural Resources | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | 0 | ADM Energy $\S$ | 0 | ... | 1.2 | $17\frac{1}{8}$ | $8\frac{1}{8}$ | H-Power $\blacklozenge$ | $9\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -4.1 | $89\frac{1}{8}$ | $36\frac{1}{8}$ | Afentra $\blacklozenge$ | 73 | + | $\frac{1}{4}$ | ... | -68.9 | 0 | 0 | Arkadian Strat Metals $\blacklozenge$ | 0 | ... | -0.7 | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | 0 | Alien Metals $\blacklozenge$ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -11.0 | $2\frac{1}{8}$ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | Aminex | $1\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -20.4 | 8924 | $4189\frac{1}{8}$ | Anglo Amer Plat | $5589\frac{1}{8}$ | + | $45\frac{1}{2}$ | 8.2 | 20.8 | 4348 | 2639 | Anglo Amer | 4184 | + | 14 | 0.7 | -16.7 | 435 | $173\frac{1}{8}$ | Anglo Asian Mng $\blacklozenge$ | 424 | + | 10 | 1.8 | 36.2 | 4475 | 2496 | Antofagasta | 3800 | + | 30 | 1.6 | 37.3 | $1\frac{1}{8}$ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | Arc Minerals $\blacklozenge$ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -1.3 | $2\frac{1}{8}$ | $1\frac{1}{8}$ | Ariana Resources $\blacklozenge$ | $1\frac{1}{8}$ | + | $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -145.0 | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | Arkle Resources $\blacklozenge$ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | - | $\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -11.5 | $2\frac{1}{8}$ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | Asiamet Resources $\blacklozenge$ | $0\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -2.3 | 1133 | $609\frac{1}{8}$ | Atalaya Mine | 1075 | + | 3 | 0.9 | 20.9 | $4\frac{1}{4}$ | 2 | Beacon Energy $\blacklozenge$ | $2\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -0.6 | 13 | 4 | Beowulf Mining $\blacklozenge$ | $5\frac{1}{8}$ | ... | -1.6 | ---

PRICES

Major indices | New York | Dow Jones | 51850.55 (+195,60) | Nasdaq | 27245.90 (-120,27) | S&P 500 | 7807.24 (-4,30) | Tokyo | Nikkei 225 | 69030,92 (nc) | Hong Kong | Hang Seng | 24271.20 (+59,85) | Amsterdam | Amsterdam AEX | 1135,49 (+4,54) | Sydney | Australia AO | 8937.00 (+59,30) | Frankfurt | DAX | 25277.68 (+190,41) | Singapore | Singapore Straits | 5415.48 (+13,59) | Brussels | Brussels BEL20 | 5490.22 (+35,48) | Paris | Paris CAC | 7832.88 (+29.55) | Zurich | Zurich SMI | 13877.84 (+90.44) | Zurich DJ Euro Stoxx 50 | 6201.21 (+27.84) | London | FTSE100 | 10656.28 (+104.23) | FTSE250 | 24328.06 (+114.28) | FTSE350 | 5809.25 (+53.64) | FTSE Eurotop 100 | 4907.83 (+31.09) | FTSE All Share | 5746.57 (+52.67) | FTSE Non Financials | 6400.10 (+46.01) | TechMark Focus | 9657.23 (+84.66) | US$ | 1.3219 (-0.0006) | Euro | 1.1831 (+0.0019) | SDR | 0.9780 (+0.0003) | CPI Aug (2015=100) | 143.6 | RPI Aug (1987=100) | 421.6 | RPIX Aug (1987=100) | 414.6 | London Financial Futures | Period | Open | High | Low | Sett | Vol | Open Int | Long Gilt | 26-Dec | 83,92 | 84,17 | 83,72 | 83,83 | 166099 | 1282614 | 27-Mar | 83,81 | 0 | 2027 | 27-Jun | 83,89 | 0 | 3-Mth Sonia Index | 26-Sep | 96,15 | 96,15 | 96,145 | 96,15 | 1868 | 412496 | 26-Dec | 95,805 | 95,805 | 95,775 | 95,78 | 47216 | 534413 | 27-Mar | 95,475 | 95,475 | 95,43 | 95,435 | 55957 | 385806 | 3 Mth Sonia Index | 27-Jun | 95,28 | 95,285 | 95,215 | 95,225 | 51925 | 410434 | 27-Sep | 95,195 | 95,2 | 95,12 | 95,13 | 48342 | 276924 | 27-Dec | 95,17 | 95,18 | 95,1 | 95,11 | 53509 | 358667 | 28-Mar | 95,17 | 95,185 | 95,105 | 95,115 | 29773 | 215174 | 3-Mth Euribor | 26-Dec | 97,115 | 97,12 | 97,095 | 97,1 | 88696 | 895721 | 27-Mar | 96,865 | 96,865 | 96,81 | 96,815 | 72933 | 604732 | 27-Jun | 96,715 | 96,72 | 96,65 | 96,655 | 74807 | 560436 | 27-Sep | 96,65 | 96,66 | 96,585 | 96,59 | 68418 | 441790 | 27-Dec | 96,645 | 96,655 | 96,58 | 96,585 | 98028 | 583140 | 3-Mth Saron Index | 26-Sep | 100.0475 | 100.0475 | 100.0475 | 100.045 | 100 | 82094 | 26-Dec | 99,975 | 99,98 | 99,965 | 99,97 | 2033 | 53615 | 27-Mar | 99,815 | 99,825 | 99,785 | 99,795 | 1903 | 38670 | 27-Jun | 99,635 | 99,655 | 99,6 | 99,61 | 2161 | 30259 | 27-Sep | 99,485 | 99,51 | 99,455 | 99,465 | 1890 | 33401 | 27-Dec | 99,405 | 99,42 | 99,37 | 99,38 | 2004 | 22261 | 28-Mar | 99,34 | 99,365 | 99,32 | 99,325 | 582 | 21838 | FTSE100 | 26-Sep | 26-Dec | 10636 | 10715,5 | 10624 | 10687 | 44142 | 467644 | FTSEurofirst 80 | 26-Sep | 26-Dec | 8450,9 | 0 |

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Obituaries

Cecily Gemmell

Tough-minded assistant who survived Churchill's terrifying late-night dictation sessions, walked his dog Rufus and married a jazz pianist

Cecily Gemmell's first typing session with Winston Churchill was unnerving. Speaking to the Churchill oral history project, she described being summoned to his bedroom at Chartwell, his country house in Kent, one evening in summer 1947. The former prime minister was sitting up in his four-poster bed, surrounded by newspapers, brandy, cigars and ashtrays, preparing to dictate a speech. On the card table was a typewriter. "I don't know why I just didn't fall on the floor. I was so frightened, I was shaking," she said.

Things only got worse. “I couldn’t understand a word he was saying and I couldn’t keep up with him. I thought, ‘This is a nightmare. This isn’t happening.’ So I went plop, plop, quite convinced it wasn’t real,” she told William Manchester, an American historian who noted how Churchill’s lisp confounded many of his secretaries.

Churchill did not read the 18-year-old Gemmell's typewritten script until the following day. Glancing through the pages, his face passed through deeper and deeper shades of red, his frown growing ever more savage, until, rising from his chair, he flung the papers on the floor, stamped his feet and barked: "You haven't got one word in 50 right. Not one word in 50." She froze.

After lunch Gemmell was astonished to be summoned back and told to continue typing. When Churchill finished dictating, she handed him the manuscript fearing the worst. "He looked at it and he said, 'I knew you could do it'," she said. A pattern was established. "After the yell, it was then forgotten and you started again," she said. Over time she realised that he never bore grudges against his staff. "He could make you feel absolutely down in the dumps, or absolutely walking on a cloud."

Gemmell worked for Churchill from 1947 to 1951 and for his wife, Clementine, until 1953. She had been sent by Mrs Hoster's employment agency to help Jo Sturdee, who was managing Churchill's office during his time as leader of the opposition, and was chosen because "I looked the toughest". Having passed Sturdee's eagle eye, "I then went to see the Old Man who had just come back from hospital". He seemed so benign and friendly that she felt emboldened to chat. "But this wasn't on the books at all and Jo had to rush me away," she said, adding that Churchill only wanted to look at her.

Confidentiality was paramount. “Jo put the fear of God into one. One must not say anything about the Churchills because the press was very interested and we were privy to everything there and we were trusted completely and expected to keep our mouths shut,” she said.

Sturdee described Gemmell as “a country girl [who] would much rather work at Chartwell” than in London. This suited Churchill, who seemed never to stop dictating. However, it meant Gemmell often worked weekends, when Churchill decamped to Kent. She had a room in a cottage at nearby Westerham, cycling daily to Chartwell “up an incredibly steep hill”.

Her first role was in the “muniment room”, a semi-basement area of Chartwell, where she helped Denis Kelly, Churchill’s literary assistant, who was sorting, dating and cataloguing papers in preparation for the war memoirs. From that vantage point she could see only “the socks of the famous” as they arrived at the house, recalling that Anthony Eden wore pink. There were hundreds of black boxes containing thousands of documents, all of which needed sorting.

At this point Gemmell was not working for Churchill directly, though she could “hear his voice and smell his cigar”, all of which made her “tremble, and in a way thinking I would never get to the

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She often made up the numbers when Churchill was short of a lunch guest

point where I was going to work for him". Yet once the archiving was finished, she transferred to the secretarial staff, spending many evenings typing as he dictated his history of the Second World War. Occasionally she worked through the night to 5am or later, especially when he had a speech to deliver. "Sometimes he would dictate very fast and one would just have to leave gaps because you couldn't ask him to stop because he was in the middle of a composition," she said. Names were often misspelt "because one hadn't heard of them".

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL, COURTESY OF CECILY GEMMELL; COURTESY OF MARY PIZZARELLI

Winston Churchill's portrait of Gemmell and the secretary in later life, right

On one occasion Churchill quoted his immortal phrase “never in the field of human conflict”. Gemmell, who had been a teenager during the war, had not heard those words and instead typed “never in the field of human consciousness”. When he read it back, she said, he looked more upset than angry at her naive mistake.

There were privileged tasks, including making up the numbers when Churchill was short of a lunch guest. Other work was more menial, such as dog walking. “Whoever was on very late at night, the last thing you had to do was take Rufus out for his last little piddle,” she recalled. Having done so, she brought Rufus upstairs into the bedroom, where Churchill asked: “Did the little dog do his duty?” When she answered “Yes”, he said: “Oh good, you may go to bed now. Thank you very much.” She also joined the household for film nights at Chartwell, accompanied Churchill to the races and cared for his tropical fish, a task she disliked intensely, though she had no objection to removing his socks. “I never thought anything of it,” she said.

Gemmell joined several overseas visits, including his painting trips to Hotel La Mamounia in Marrakech. On one of these Thami El Glaoui, the pasha of Marrakech, hosted a dinner at his palace to which, unusually, the female secretaries were invited. “We were ushered through lots of courtyards and into a tiny little room hung with carpets or silk or something ... No sign of Glaoui and drinks were being passed around ... so I reached up for my drink and the Old Man said, ‘Oh Miss, be careful, it might be an aphrodisiac. Ho, ho, ho’,” she recalled, imitating Churchill’s deep voice.

On one occasion Churchill painted her portrait, though she had no recollection of how it came about. "I suppose because I was there and he felt like painting a picture one day," she said. She had to sit completely still, but at one point wrinkled her nose to avoid sneezing. "Aww, please don't do that. I've just got to your nose," he complained. Oswald Birley, the English portraitist, put some finishing touches to the work, which Churchill presented to her as a Christmas gift.

When Churchill led the Conservatives to victory at the October 1951 general election, Gemmell had no desire to work in government. “I think I thought it was going to be terribly responsible and ... I saw a way out by going to work for Mrs Churchill,” she said. Her work now revolved around lunch invitations, shopping lists and hair appointments. Although based in No 10, she saw less of Churchill. However, on one occasion she was summoned to the Cabinet Room when he needed to dictate something urgently and everyone else was at lunch. She noticed a pile of black ash on the desk because discarded papers had been burnt rather than thrown out.

Churchill was knighted in 1953. Even before then he disliked being addressed as “Sir”. Shortly afterwards Gemmell met him in a corridor at No 10 and pointedly said: “Good morning, Sir Winston.” She told how he “gave one of his wonderful sort of inward chuckles and I heard him quietly say, ‘Don’t be so cheeky’”.

Cecily Gemmell was born in Bangalore, in British-occupied India, on Christmas Day 1928, the daughter of Colonel Geoffrey Gemmell, a surveyor with the 2/7 Rajput Regiment, and his wife, Winifred (née Hall), who, she told The New York Times, “loved camping and walking many miles a day”. She was named after her father’s youngest brother, Cecil, who had been killed in France during the First World War. To family and friends she was known as Chips, her uncle’s nickname.

She was educated at the New School of Calcutta and Darjeeling, better known by its nickname of Harrow on the Hooghly. After the war the family moved to Britain where young Cecily spent a year at Mrs Hoster's secretarial college, at first in bitterly cold rural Lincolnshire before moving to London, where the college also had an employment agency.

In 1953 she left the Churchill household to settle in New York, working as a secretary for Life magazine. As a regular visitor to Midtown jazz clubs she met John Bunch, a pianist who worked with Benny Goodman and Tony Bennett. They lived together for 21 years before marrying on New Year's Day 1998. There were no children. He died from melanoma in 2010.

Gemmell met Churchill again in New York, when he was visiting President Eisenhower. "He was so sweet. I think I got a kiss. I practically burst into tears," she said. On her visits to Britain she was invited to Chartwell for lunch. On the last occasion Clementine warned her that "Winston was very changed, dear". At the table, she was so delighted to be placed on his immediate right that she found herself gazing at him intensely. "Have I got soup on my face or something?" he demanded, before continuing: "Do I know you?" "Oh yes, I used to work for you," she replied. "For how long?" "For four years." When it came time to leave, he "sweetly said, 'Thank you for coming to see me'". She never saw him again.

Cecily Gemmell, secretary to Winston Churchill, was born on December 25, 1928. She died on October 8, 2026, aged 97

Register

James O'Brien

Playwright whose work was inspired by social issues and injustices, including the Birmingham Six and Bridgewater Four

O'Brien readily took up the causes of his fellow regulars at the Red Cow public house in Smethwick, near Birmingham, standing up for them in courts, tribunals and council meetings

In August 1980 Barry Prosser, a 32-year-old inmate at Winson Green prison, Birmingham, died from a ruptured spleen after being assaulted in his cell. Although an inquest jury ruled that he had been unlawfully killed, three prison officers were acquitted of his murder.

His story was told in Prosser: A Cell Death, one of several highly charged and uncompromising plays by James O'Brien, who grew up in the shadow of Winson Green. It was premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1984 by O'Brien's Giro Theatre Company, which took its name from The Lost Giro (1985), the first of his Giro Trilogy of black comedies set in an inner-city social security office.

Giros were government-issued cheques used for paying unemployment benefits and were notorious for being delayed, going missing or otherwise not being available. In O'Brien's play claimants had to eat tablets, ink and sperm, enabling them to give birth to their giros. “These then flood the British currency and start a revolution,” he said at the time, admitting that while the plot was absurd, “there are so many funny stories that crop up in the dole office”.

The Lost Giro won The Sunday Times national student drama festival, which in 1958 had launched a student Harold Pinter on the road to theatrical fame. While O'Brien never achieved Pinter's level of recognition, his writing displayed a Pinter-esque level of menace and the award propelled him into the spotlight as a writer of integrity with a serious message to tell.

Hitler: The Early Years (1986) imagined a pre-Nazi era Führer meeting

Sigmund Freud in Vienna while The Pub-Bombers (1987) dealt with the wrongful arrest, trial and imprisonment of six Irish men after two Birmingham pub bombings in 1974 that killed 21 people. At the time the so-called Birmingham Six were still in prison and the play's performance was highly controversial. Four years later, by which time the Birmingham Six had served 16 years, their convictions were ruled unsafe and they were freed.

O'Brien's theatre was not simply political commentary but also a form of intervention. Redemptive (1992) concerns the Bridgewater Four, who were convicted of shooting dead Carl Bridgewater, I3, a paperboy, at Stourbridge, Worcestershire, in 1978. O'Brien insisted, correctly as it turned out, that the four men, one of whom had died in prison, had been wrongfully convicted. "The boys are innocent, I'm telling you," he told an audience at Black Bo's Bar in Edinburgh. "Don't talk to me about art or theatre when there are three guys rotting away in a 10ft cell and one already dead. This isn't some arty shit on the Fringe. It's not theatre. This is real. I'm angry."

James Anthony O'Brien, known as Shem, short for Seamus, was born in Birmingham in 1958, the third of ten children of Michael O'Brien, a labourer, and his wife, Anne (née Falls), a cleaner. Leaving school with no qualifications, he made metal washers in a factory before joining his father on the building sites.

Ever a free spirit, he spent 18 months walking around the country, sleeping rough and recording his experiences of homelessness. Although unable to get his account published, he returned with a new-found commitment to writing on social issues and talked his way into a drama and humanities degree at the Polytechnic of Wales (now the University of South Wales) at Pontypridd. Within a year he had started Drama Incorporated, an experimental theatre company to produce his own plays, changing its name in 1986 to Giro Theatre. One of the leading members was Dan O'Brien, his brother.

O'Brien wrote 38 plays, many of them challenging some of the less palatable aspects of British justice. Government policy was a frequent target, such as in A Faint Memoir of the Last Recession, subtitled “14 years of Tory Misrule”, presented by Giro at the 1993 Edinburgh Fringe. Others are still awaiting their first performance.

Between 1987 and 1992 O'Brien was director of theatre and performance at the Richard Demarco Gallery and Theatre in Edinburgh. His relationship with Demarco was important to both men's cultural work and in 1992 they compiled a Festival of Polish Theatre at the gallery that received a special combined Fringe First award. Politically active outside the theatre, he was made an honorary member of the National Union of Mineworkers during the 1984–85 miners' strike and took a group of artists, musicians and actors into the rubble of Mostar, Bosnia, after the war in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

He also spent 16 years as an attendant at Tate Modern, standing still as a statue by the gallery's famous paintings, only answering visitors' questions if he felt in a good enough mood. During that time he was branch secretary of the

Public and Commercial Services union, leading a series of strikes against austerity and attacks on workers' rights and pay. He wrote a novel about his time at Tate Modern, which is also awaiting publication. Catherine Carnie, his partner and a theatre director, predeceased him. His extended family includes Rhiannon Faith, the dancer and choreographer.

Turning to poetry he published The Sacrifice Zones (2018), a collection that includes the Kristallnacht Variations dealing with a post-Brexit Britain in which anti-immigrant xenophobia is fuelled by authoritarian political figures and the selective editing of spurious information by vested interests. His gripping poetry readings started with a factual and understated introduction, but when the poetry proper began, his delivery was passionate and fiery.

O'Brien continued to champion the downtrodden, the underdog and the put upon. He held court at the British-Punjabi-owned Red Cow pub and grill in Smethwick, taking up the causes of fellow drinkers and supporting them in courts, tribunals and at council meetings. Poetically, and perhaps prophetically, his final collection of verse was The Lucky Last at the Terminal of the Dead (2026), recently published by the aptly named Culture Matters and described as "a spectral ghost train ride through the intestinal tract of strike, austerity, Covid and Gaza".

James O'Brien, playwright, was born on June 2, 1958. He died from heart complications on September 30, 2026, aged 68

Lucien Lazare

Jewish Resistance fighter who saved many lives and later chronicled the work of the movement in a series of volumes and a memoir

When he joined a Jewish group resisting Nazism and the collaborationist Vichy regime in his native France, Lucien Lazare said he then felt like a small cog “in the life-or-death struggle for the future of humanity”. He had become part of “The Sixth”, an underground unit that had emerged from the Jewish scouting organisation. It was especially active in trying to protect as many Jews in France as possible from the deportations to Nazi death camps that intensified in 1942.

Lazare began to accompany, often on night trains, small groups of children who were being spirited away to safer places. Sometimes they succeeded in escaping just hours before the lorries of the Vichy interior ministry arrived to take them away. The children were passed on from smuggler to smuggler on their journeys. Travelling with a Hebrew Bible in his knapsack, Lazare was still young enough, he recalled later, to see such perilous activity as an adventure.

He also helped to forge identity documents and food stamps to enable Jews to survive in hiding. Lazare, who later became a leading historian of the Jewish Resistance in France, believed many thousands of lives were saved through this network of active support.

In 1944 Lazare moved on from what he called “non-violent resistance” to join other Jews, including his brother, in a 200-strong group linked to the main Maquis Resistance against the Nazis and their collaborators. Training was at a remote farm in southern France after which the unit’s activities included ambushing a German military train. “It was the first time I shot to kill, under orders,” he remembered.

He saw German soldiers emerged from the train to surrender, “their hands in the air, their uniforms blood-stained, trembling like leaves". One of his comrades took delight in telling them: "Ich bin Jude!(I am a Jew)", which the soldiers initially disbelieved. "We didn't hurt them," Lazare recalled. "We didn't behave like terrorists who kill their enemies." However, the incident brought him "immense joy" as "the encounter with the heavily armed German, drunk with his power, and the weakened Jew, a defenceless victim, had become radically reversed".

As the war neared its end and the Germans retreated further, Lazare and his unit used materials dropped by Allied aircraft to help liberate French towns. They were then part of the French forces invading Germany and fought intensely in the Black Forest area.

Near Konstanz they came across survivors of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. “We knew nothing of what had happened there,” Lazare said. “It was our first contact with the world of mass murder.”

The horrors of the Holocaust had destroyed much of the proudly French Jewish community into which Lazare had been born in Strasbourg in 1924. His father was a travelling textile salesman and his

mother a housewife who was much better educated than her husband. She recited French and German poetry to her children.

His father wanted Lazare to enrol in the Jewish Scout movement but he recalled that, as a boy, he was “allergic” to all such organisations with their separate identities and uniforms. He saw himself instead as a French patriot who hoped to become one of his country’s public servants.

The Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933 and the effects of the Depression began, however, to make life far more difficult for all French Jews. Lazare observed growing antisemitic demonstrations in his home region, attended by some of his classmates.

When refugees from Germany began to appear in large numbers in his home town, some in the established Jewish community wanted to move them on, fearing their arrival would lead to more antisemitism. Lazare's father insisted that hospitality was essential to his Jewish identity and his family sheltered many refugees, seeking to help them find work and accommodation.

His father's death in 1938 after a severe illness was, as Lazare put it, “an irredeemable loss”. Soon afterwards came the outbreak of war and, in 1940, the Luftwaffe suddenly appeared above his school. He returned home to find his mother and family frantically packing what they could carry in preparation for fleeing south-

wards.

Lazare's initial hope that the French army would fight back against the Germans swiftly evaporated. And any personal feeling of security in their new home in Lyon disappeared for his family when the Vichy regime collaborating with the Nazis began to pass anti-Jewish legislation.

"I felt myself rejected by society," Lazare wrote later, and he began to attend synagogue and study in Jewish educational establishments as he sought an alternative identity and solidarity. He also joined the Jewish Scout movement, later the framework for his Resistance work, which "from then on guided me in my most fateful decisions".

After the war and his time with French forces in Germany, Lazare continued his education at a yeshiva in Aixles-Bains. He went on to study history and geography at the universities of Lyon and Strasbourg, where he received his doctorate in 1968. He was also secretary-general of the Strasbourg Jewish community.

In 1949 he had married the psychologist Janine Hemmendinger, whom he had first met as a fellow supporter of the Resistance during the war. They had four children, Daniel, Michael, Yael and Elizabeth and by the time of his death Lazare had a huge extended family embracing about 70 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

He and his immediate family lived in Brussels for a time, where Lazare taught at a Jewish school, and in 1968 they emigrated to Israel. There in Jerusalem he helped to found and run the René Cassin High School, which specialised in the French language and culture as well as history, as he believed good historical knowledge should shape moral choice.

Lazare became a leading historian of the wartime Jewish Resistance movement in France of which he had been a member, publishing several volumes and a memoir. He was skilled, as one account put it, in “turning complex archival material into narratives that could speak to public memory”. Such work was, he believed, a vital counter to the myth of universal Jewish passivity in the face of the Nazi and Vichy persecution.

At the same time he sought full acknowledgment of all those, including non-Jews, who had helped many in France to escape the Nazi threat. He worked in Israel with the Holocaust Remembrance Centre of Yad Vashem on its Commission for the Designation of the Righteous and also pressed the French government to secure national recognition at the Panthéon in Paris of those in France who had shown the moral courage to save Jews.

Despite his involvement in the Resistance, Lazare remained by instinct a pacifist — “the human condition is made up of paradoxes” was how he put it in one interview. Politically on the left, he was critical of some aspects of the development of Israel and the spread of settlements and tensions with Palestinians, which led to painful disputes with the Jewish congregations to which he now belonged. His son-in-law Avraham Burg was a prominent Israeli peace activist and for some years Speaker of the Knesset.

Asked in 2022 what were the values he wanted to leave for future generations, Lazare replied simply: “chase away hate”.

Lucien Léopold Lazare was born on November 24, 1924. He died on September 22, 2026, aged 101

Email: obituaries@thetimes.co.uk

Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare

Patrick Rogers writes: I attended an undergraduate dinner of the Ellesmere Society at Brasenose College, Oxford,

in 1972, where Jeffrey Archer (obituary, October 5, 2026) was the guest of honour. The dons involved were noticeably sniffy about him, enjoying their joke whether it was Jeffrey Archer the MP for Louth or Jeffrey Louth the MP for Archer. Sir Noel Hall was still the principal then and may have informed their opinions. In about 1980 I attended a reunion dinner at Brasenose and was seated next to Sir Noel who recounted the story of how Archer had contacted him after the Aquablast fiasco and asked if he could come to stay for a few days in his family home. He stayed about six weeks, only appeared at meal times and then disappeared without a word. Sir Noel later realised, more than somewhat peeved, that he'd been working flat out on Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less.

Michael Beloff KC writes: Jeffrey and I were walking together through Westminster to collect Mary from some function hosted by Colin Moynihan when a young woman stopped Jeffrey in the street. She told him that, when her boyfriend had been seriously ill in hospital, she had brought him Jeffrey's latest novel to cheer him up, and that he had afterwards swiftly recovered. Whether Jeffrey's fables had the therapeutic qualities attributed to the mediaeval monarchs, Les rois thaumaturges, may be doubted; but I can vouch for the truth of the tale.

Peter Bassett writes: I crossed paths with Jeffrey Archer in the mid-Sixties at Betteshanger Prep School. He was a temporary PT teacher, an athletic perfectionist and clearly ambitious. I was an obese unco-ordinated eight-year-old. We did not get on. One day I was slow in changing out of my sports kit in the junior changing room. Jeffrey picked me up and looked me in the eye and threatened that, if I didn't get a move on, he would eat me for dinner. Later that day, Ivor Burton, the head teacher, appeared in my classroom. He informed me, in a serious tone, that I shouldn't worry about Mr Archer's remarks, because cannibalism was no longer practised in Britain.

Canon John Rankin writes: When my wife and I discovered that our fellow dinner party guests were Jeffrey and Mary Archer, it was soon after he had completed his prison sentence. Sitting next to him, I wondered whether this was a subject to be raised or avoided. After a short time I realised it could be spoken about. He was not at all embarrassed and indicated that it had been an experience which had expanded his understanding of life and so to be valued.

Todd Marshman writes: At Christ Church CofE primary school in Weston-super-Mare I remember Jeffrey Archer as a candidate in a mock election (which he didn't win). At 11+, those attaining a "scholarship" had a choice of schools in Somerset. I, along with my classmates, went to Weston Grammar but Jeffrey went to Wellington School. Our paths crossed again when we were sixth-formers, freshers going to university or starting a career. Those from the grammar school, doing holiday jobs, would meet up in the evening and chat. Occasionally, Jeffrey joined us but we weren't very welcoming. He tended to be implausible and boastful, which we all found rather tedious.

Chris Hailstone writes: In the 1990s, my old school in Hinc-kley, Leicestershire, built a sixth-form library, which Jeffrey Archer agreed to open. When asked about the fee for his services, he said that no fee was due as anything associated with books was his passion. A lunch was provided for the benefactors and Lord Archer. Due to heavy traffic he arrived at the school about 30 minutes late, at which point he went straight into the school kitchen to apologise to the dinner ladies. After lunch he made a very humorous speech and formally opened the new facility. We all expected that he would have a photo opportunity and then promptly leave. Three hours later he was still there, fully engaged with all the sixth-form pupils attending the opening. What a gentleman, and some of his books are pretty good.

Alan Hay writes: According to Bob Monkhouse's diaries, the comedian bumped into Jeffrey Archer at a Conservative Party event in 1987. (This was several months after the Monica Coghlan episode.) Archer knew that jokes had been made at his expense, and that Monkhouse was one of the chief perpetrators. Unable to see the funny side, a furious Archer berated the entertainer, demanding he remove himself at once. Afterwards, Monkhouse tried to be conciliatory, but Archer would have none of it. His last words to the stand-up were “Never speak to me again!”. Monkhouse told us with pride that he faithfully kept this promise.

Alderman Paul Lynch: When I met Jeffrey Archer at the Chris Beetles gallery, preparing for a private view, I was not prepared for his skill with small children. My six-year-old queried the depiction of the sun in a cityscape by Roy Hammond, a friend of Jeffrey's. Jeffrey went to great pains to explain the artist's intentions, as he saw them, in simple terms, with great success. A lengthy discussion ensued, my son, unusually for him, quite captivated by this insight into painterly technicalities. Jeffrey called the artist into the conversation, suggesting perhaps he had been influenced by Hercules Brabazon Brabazon. Roy admitted there was a resemblance, but denied being particularly influenced, saying that influences on an artist just happened, one did not consciously adopt techniques of others. "Well," said Jeffrey, "I keep reading Graham Greene, but it never comes out in my writing."

Lieutenant General Sir Peter Duffell writes: At a formal cricket lunch at Lord's, I was next to Jeffrey Archer. With the keen eye of a storyteller he opened the batting: "You are an Army officer, aren't you?" "Why do you say that?" "Clean shoes and clean finger nails!" We continued to banter in similar vein throughout lunch.

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Births, Marriages and Deaths

To book a Birth, Marriage or Death announcement in the Register, visit: newsukadvertising.co.uk for help, please call 020 7782 7553 or email BMDs@thetimes.co.uk

THOSE who live as their human nature tells them to, have their minds controlled by what human nature wants. Those who live as the Spirit tells them to, have their minds controlled by what the Spirit wants. To be controlled by human nature results in death; to be controlled by the Spirit results in life and peace.

Romans 8.5–6 (GNB)

Bible verses are provided by the Bible Society

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Births

VAN HIRTUM-MANLEY on 6th October 2026 to Hanne and Timothy, twins, Patrick and Francis.

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Forthcoming Marriages

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RT HON SIR G. W. HANDS AND MISS M. MCKEEVER

The engagement is announced between Greg, son of the late Edward and Mavis Hands of London, and MaryJo, daughter of Gareth and Mary McKeever of Co Fermanagh.

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Marriages

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MR M. SNOOK

AND MR S. A. CONNACHER

The marriage took place on 10th October 2026, at Shoreditch Studios, London, between Michael and Samuel. Michael, son of William and Sheila, and Samuel, son of Andrew and Kim, would like to thank all those who celebrated with them.

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Deaths

AINSLIE Marilyn Pamela peacefully on Tuesday 29th September 2026, aged 83. The funeral service will take place at 1.30pm on Thursday 22nd October at the Parish Church of St Michael, North Rode, Congleton, Cheshire. Donations, if desired, to St Michael's Parish Church, North Rode PCC. Inquiries to Andrew Smith Funeral Services, Macclesfield, 01625 433853.

BEVAN Brigadier Tim died after a short illness on 4th October 2026, aged 87. Dearly loved husband of Penny, father to Charlotte and Simon, stepfather to Alex and grandfather to Cassia. He will be greatly missed by all who knew him. A service of thanksgiving will be held at St Lawrence's Church, Hungerford, on 30th November at midday.

BRANDRAM Nicholas George on 15th September. Devoted father, greatly cherished son and adored brother and uncle. A private memorial service will take place at a later date. Those wishing to attend should contact a member of the family.

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DAVIES

Brian died peacefully on 4th October 2026, aged 89. Beloved husband to Christine, father to Ben and grandfather to William, Enzo and Emily. Family funeral on 2nd November. No flowers by request; donations, if desired, for RNLI or British Heart Foundation.

FREE Paul Noel died on 5th October 2026, aged 87. Adored husband to Christine and loving father to Julian, Mandy and Andrew, he will be greatly missed. All inquiries E White & Son funeral directors, 01823 272183.

---

ROBERTS

Peter, John. Retired private office shipping director for John Swire & Sons of London. Died in Pennsylvania Hospital, aged 86, on 3rd September 2026. He is survived by his wife Lisabeth and stepdaughter Janice Ferrel. There will be no funeral or memorial. Peter gifted his body to the Perelman Medical Schools University of Pennsylvania for anatomy study. The family kindly request that memorial contributions be directed to Pennsylvania Hospital Excellence in Nursing Fund: giving.apps.upenn.edu

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RUSSELL

---

MILLER

Court Circular

David Ian passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on 3rd October 2026, aged 83. Beloved husband of Frances and father of

Buckingham Palace

12th October, 2026

The King was represented by

His Excellency the Hon

Christopher Dawson

(Governor of Western

Australia) at the Funeral of Sir

William Heseltine (former

Private Secretary to Queen

MOCATTA Elizabeth Margaret Ethel (née Lidbury) died peacefully on 26th September 2026, aged 99. Much-loved mother of David, Robert and Charles, and grandmother to eight devoted grandchildren. Details of funeral service from GM Luff, Funeral Directors, Haslemere.

Kensington Palace

12th October, 2026

The Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall this morning received Mr William Bax (Secretary of the Duchy of Cornwall) and Mr Hugo van Vredenburch (Lord

Elizabeth II) which was held at Christ Church

Claremont, corner of Queenslea Drive and Stirling Highway, Claremont, Western Australia, this morning.

Katherine and devoted grandfather of five. Funeral service on Thursday 22nd October at 11am at The Oratory of St Mary Magdalen Catholic Church, London, SW18 20U.

Lady Jane (née Herbertson) died peacefully on 21st September 2026, aged 76. Beloved mother and grandmother. Adored by her many friends. Please contact family for memorial details.

A new

collection

of Times

obituaries

MARTIN Margaret Mary "Peg" of Woodford Green, Essex, and Ballinascarthy, West Cork, Ireland, died peacefully on 4th October, aged 90. Loving wife of the late John Martin and much-loved mother of Fiona, Miles, Jane and Kate, and grandmother to Sophie, Eleanor, Katherine, Jade, Cameron, Keir and Finn, and great grandmother to Honey. Survived by her siblings Sheila, Ellen, Catherine, David and Pat. Requiem Mass at St Thomas of Canterbury, Woodford Green, on Thursday 22nd October at midday. Flowers, or donations if wished, to Cancer Research UK.

St James's Palace

12th October, 2026

The Princess Royal, President,

National Equine Forum, this

afternoon held an

Organising Committee

Meeting.

Warden of the Stannaries) at Windsor Castle.

His Royal Highness, Founder and President, the Earthshot Prize, this afternoon received Mr Jesper Brodin (Chairman) at Windsor Castle.

Family flowers only please; donations if desired to Alzheimer's Research UK.

STRANGE Ian Michael died peacefully on 27th September 2026, aged 79. An adventurous life well lived, he will be greatly missed. Donations, if desired, to Sobell House Hospice.

The simple way to place your Birth, Marriage or Death announcement in the Register. Available 24 hours a day. Go to: newsukadvertising.co.uk

---

LEGAL, PUBLIC, COMPANY & PARLIAMENTARY NOTICES

To place notices for these sections please call 020 7782 7553

Notices are subject to confirmation and should be received by 11.30am three days prior to insertion

---

Legal Notices

---

In the matter of

THE GREENWICH & BEXLEY ASSOCIATION OF DOCTORS-ON-CALL LIMITED (previously The Greenwich & Bexley Association of Doctors-on-call (until 28/11/2007))

Now available from bookshops as well as amazon.co.uk and thetimes.co.uk/bookshop

(both in Members' Voluntary Liquidation) ("the Companies") and in the matter of the Insolvency Act 1986 and the Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016

Notice is hereby given that resolutions were passed by the members of the Companies on 30 September 2026 placing the Companies into Members' Voluntary Liquidation (solvent liquidation) and appointing Joyce Eleanor Thomson and Nicholas James Timpson of Interpath Ltd as Joint Liquidators.

GRABADOC HEALTHCARE SOCIETY LIMITED

(Company Numbers: 03246571; 05297064)

Registered office & Principal trading address: Unit 7 Mulberry Place, Pinnell Road, Eltham, London, United Kingdom, SE9 6AR

Notice is also hereby given, pursuant to Rule 14.28 of the Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016, that the Joint Liquidators of the Companies intend to declare a distribution to the creditors of the Companies within two months of 20 November 2026. Creditors who have not yet done so must prove their rights as they are responsible for any particular of their debts and the names and addresses of their solicitors (if any) to the Joint Liquidators at Interpath Ltd, 5th Floor, 130 St Vincent Street, Glasgow, G2 SHF United Kingdom by no later than 20 November 2026 (the last date for proving). The intended distribution is a sole distribution and may be made in regard to the holders' respect of the debt not proved by 20 November 2026. Any creditor who has not proved his debt by that date, or who increases the debt in his proof after that date, will not be entitled to disturb the intended sole distribution. The Joint Liquidators intend that, after paying or providing for a sole distribution, the holders of the companies shall have their debts, all funds remaining in the Joint Liquidators' hands following the sole distribution to creditors shall be distributed to the shareholders of the Companies absolutely.

The Companies are able to pay all their known liabilities in full.

---

Journey through the lives of the sporting greats

Joint Liquidators: Joyce Eleanor Thomson (IP number 30670) of Interpath Ltd, 130 St. Vincent Street, Glasgow G2 5HF and Nicholas James Timpson (IP number 20610) of Interpath Ltd, 10 Fleet Place, London EC4M 7RB. Date of Appointment: 30 September 2026

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE

CR-2026-005703

BUSINESS AND PROPERTY

COURTS OF

ENGLAND AND WALES

COMPANIES COURT (ChD)

IN THE MATTER OF

MARCO GAMMA LIMITED

• and -

IN THE MATTER OF

BRITISH RESERVE INSURANCE

COMPANY LIMITED

For further details contact Nicola Roberts on +44 (0) 161 529 9029 or at Nicola.Roberts@interpath.com Dated: 7 October 2026

---

Legal Notices

Joyce Eleanor Thomson, Joint Liquidator

IN THE MATTER OF PART VII OF

THE FINANCIAL SERVICES AND

MARKETS ACT 2000

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that on 29 September 2026, Marco Gamma Limited ("Gamma") and British Reserve Insurance Company Limited ("BRIC") applied to the High Court of England and Wales (the "Court") for an Order under Section 111(1) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 ("FSMA") sanctioning a scheme (the "Scheme") providing for the transfer of the entirety of the general insurance and reinsurance business of Gamma (with company number 01335239) (the "Transferring Business") to BRIC (with company number 00307622) and making ancillary provisions in connection with the Scheme under Sections 112 and 112A of FSMA (the "Application").

The Scheme will result in the Transferring Business which is currently being carried on by Gamma (with firm reference number 202793) being carried on by BRIC (with firm reference number 202058).

Copies of the report on the terms of the Scheme prepared by an independent expert in accordance with section 109(1) of FSMA and of a statement setting out the terms of the Scheme and containing a summary of the independent expert's report, and a copy of the full Scheme document, may be obtained free of charge on the dedicated website for the Scheme at https://marcocapital.net/notices/gamma/. Supporting documents and any further news about the Scheme will be posted on this website so you may wish to check for updates. You can also request free copies of any of these documents by contacting Gamma and BRIC using the telephone number or addresses set out below.

All questions or concerns relating to the Scheme should be referred to Gamma and BRIC using the following telephone number, address or email address:

Telephone: 0800 047 2302

Address: 24 Monument Street, 4th Floor, London EC3R 8AJ

Email:

GammaPartVII@marcocapital.net

The Application is expected to be heard in the week commencing 14 December 2026 by a Judge of the Business and Property Court at The Rolls Building, Fetter Lane, London, EC4A 1NL. If approved by the Court, it is currently proposed that the Scheme will take effect on 31 December 2026. Any person (including any policyholder of Gamma or BRIC) who believes that he or she would be adversely affected by the carrying out of the Scheme is entitled to either make written representations or be heard (either in person or by a legal representative) at the hearing of the Application in the week commencing 14 December 2026. It is requested that anyone intending to attend the hearing (whether in person or via a representative), informs Gamma and BRIC in writing via the contact details set out above as soon as possible and preferably before 1 December 2026 and sets out the nature of any objection they may have. This will enable Gamma and BRIC to provide notification of any changes to the hearing (including any details that are necessary to attend the hearing remotely) and, where possible, to address any concerns raised in advance of the hearing.

If the Scheme is sanctioned by the Court, it will result in the transfer of all the contracts, property, assets and liabilities relating to the general insurance and reinsurance business of Gamma to BRIC; notwithstanding that a person would otherwise be entitled to terminate, modify, acquire or claim an interest or right or to treat an interest or right as terminated or modified in respect thereof. Any such right will only be enforceable to the extent the order of the Court makes provision to that effect.

Willkie Farr and Gallagher (UK) LLP

1 Ropemaker Street, London

EC2Y 9AW

Solicitors to Marco Gamma Limited and British Reserve Insurance Company Limited

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WE ARE OPEN 7

DAYS A WEEK

FROM 8:30AM – 8PM

Trustpilot

Today Rain clearing eastwards to leave sunshine and the risk of sharp showers. Max 20C (68F), min 4C (39F)

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Around Britain

Key: b=bright, c=cloud, d=drizzle, pc=partly cloudy

du=dull, f=fair, fg=fog, h=hail, m=mist, r=rain,

sh=showers, sl=sleet, sn=snow, s=sun, t=thunder

\*=previous day \*\*=data not available | | Temp C | Rain mm | Sun hr* | midday yesterday | 24 hrs to 5pm yesterday | Aberdeen | 13 | C | 0.0 | 2.9 | Aberporth | 17 | C | 0.0 | 5.5 | Anglessey | 17 | D | 0.8 | 5.9 | Aviemore | 13 | PC | 0.0 | 4.1 | Barnstaple | 19 | C | 1.2 | | Bedford | 16 | C | 0.0 | | Belfast | 16 | C | 0.0 | 3.5 | Birmingham | 15 | R | 0.0 | | Bournemouth | 17 | D | 11.0 | 1.3 | Bridlington | 16 | C | 0.0 | | Bristol | 18 | D | 1.0 | 1.1 | Camborne | 16 | C | 9.0 | 0.0 | Cardiff | 18 | D | 1.8 | 1.1 | Edinburgh | 14 | C | 0.0 | 2.3 | Eskdalemuir | 12 | R | 1.4 | 4.3 | Glasgow | 11 | D | 0.4 | 3.0 | Hereford | 17 | C | 0.2 | | Herstmonceux | 14 | R | 2.4 | 4.0 | Ipswich | 17 | C | 0.0 | 7.2 | Isle of Man | 16 | D | 1.2 | 8.5 | Isle of Wight | 16 | D | 5.2 | | Jersey | 17 | C | 9.4 | 0.0 | Keswick | 15 | C | 0.0 | | Kinloss | 15 | | 0.0 | 7.0 | Leeds | 13 | R | 1.4 | | Lerwick | 11 | C | 0.0 | 7.2 | Leuchars | 13 | D | 0.0 | 5.5 | Lincoln | 15 | D | 0.2 | 6.4 | Liverpool | 17 | C | 0.0 | | London | 16 | D | 0.0 | 6.1 | Lyneham | 17 | C | 0.6 | 1.4 | Manchester | 16 | R | 0.2 | 4.0 | Margate | 17 | C | 0.4 | 7.4 | Milford Haven | 17 | C | 5.2 | | Newcastle | 12 | C | 0.2 | | Nottingham | 14 | R | 3.0 | 7.0 | Orkney | 12 | C | 1.8 | | Oxford | 17 | D | 0.0 | | Plymouth | 17 | D | 13.2 | | Portland | 17 | R | 1.4 | | Scilly, St Mary's | 16 | M | 11.8 | | Shoreham | 15 | | 0.8 | 3.8 | Shrewsbury | 16 | D | 0.4 | 4.6 | Snowdonia | 16 | R | 1.6 | | Southend | 17 | C | 0.2 | 6.6 | South Dist | 13 | D | 2.0 | | Stornoway | 13 | M | 0.8 | 5.7 | Tiree | 14 | R | 1.2 | 8.1 | Whitehaven | 13 | D | 1.0 | 3.3 | Wick | 12 | D | 0.0 | ** | Yeovilton | 20 | C | 0.2 | 1.1 | ---

The world

All readings local midday yesterday | Madeira | 23 | PC | Madrid | 24 | S | Malaga | 24 | PC | Mallorca | 25 | PC | Malta | 26 | PC | Melbourne | 18 | PC | Mexico City | 23 | R | Miami | 32 | PC | Milan | 19 | PC | Mombasa | 30 | PC | Montreal | 17 | B | Moscow | 18 | S | Mumbai | 37 | | Munich | 13 | PC | Nairobi | 27 | PC | Naples | 22 | PC | New Orleans | 27 | PC | New York | 15 | R | Nice | 24 | PC | Nicosa | 29 | PC | Oslo | 6 | PC | Paris | 19 | S | Perth | 20 | S | Prague | 12 | PC | Reykjavik | 9 | SH | Riga | 9 | B | Rio de Janeiro | 29 | PC | Riyadh | 36 | S | Rome | 24 | PC | San Francisco | 18 | PC | Santiago | 19 | B | São Paulo | 21 | B | Seoul | 27 | S | Seychelles | 30 | PC | Singapore | 31 | | St. Petersburg | 10 | C | Stockholm | 7 | D | Sydney | 34 | S | Tel Aviv | 28 | PC | Tenerife | 27 | B | Tokyo | 24 | PC | Vancouver | 14 | PC | Venice | 19 | PC | Vienna | 15 | PC | Warsaw | 11 | PC | Washington | 17 | R | Zurich | 15 | PC | Alicante | 26 | S | Amsterdam | 16 | S | Athens | 25 | PC | Auckland | 18 | C | Bahrain | 36 | S | Bangkok | 32 | PC | Barbados | 30 | PC | Barcelona | 24 | PC | Beijing | 21 | | Beirut | | | Belgrade | 15 | S | Berlin | 13 | PC | Bermuda | 27 | B | Bordeaux | 22 | C | Brussels | 17 | PC | Bucharest | 15 | R | Budapest | 16 | S | Buenos Aires | 15 | B | Cairo | 26 | S | Calcutta | 32 | | Canberra | 26 | PC | Cape Town | 18 | B | Chicago | 24 | PC | Copenhagen | 12 | PC | Corfu | 22 | PC | Delhi | 28 | PC | Dubai | 36 | PC | Dublin | 18 | B | Faro | 23 | S | Florence | 22 | PC | Frankfurt | 14 | PC | Geneva | 16 | S | Gibraltar | 25 | S | Helsinki | 6 | R | Hong Kong | 31 | PC | Honolulu | | | Istanbul | 23 | S | Jerusalem | 28 | PC | Johannesburg | 25 | S | Kuala Lumpur | 27 | SH | Kyiv | | | Lanzarote | 27 | PC | Las Palmas | 26 | PC | Lima | 24 | DU | Lisbon | 23 | PC | Los Angeles | 22 | B | Luxor | 31 | S | ---

Five days ahead

Rain over the next few days, before turning drier, brighter and cooler into the weekend

---

Tomorrow

Cloudy and breezy across Scotland and Ireland with drizzle or light rain, with heavy rain moving over the northwest from mid-afternoon. Dry but increasingly cloudy in the south. May 196 min 46

---

Thursday

Rain moves southeastwards across Scotland and Ireland, then over Wales and northern England later, giving way to sunshine and showers in the northwest. Dry in the southeast.

---

Friday

Rain slowly clearing southeastwards across England, with sunshine and a scattering of showers elsewhere. Max 15C, min 0C

---

Saturday

A bright but chilly start with plenty of sunshine. Cloudier in the east with a few scattered showers throughout the day. Early showers clearing Wales and southwest England.

---

Sunday

Max 15C, min 1C

Scattered light showers across central and eastern areas. Dry in the north and west with the best of the sunshine.

The Times weather page is provided by WeatherQuest

---

Sea state

Wind speed 34 (mph)

---

Temperature

28 (degrees C)

Calm

Slight

Moderate

Rough

---

Flood alerts and warnings

At 17:00 on Monday there were no flood alerts or warnings in England, Wales or Scotland. For further information and updates in England visit check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk, for Wales naturalresources.wales/flooding and for Scotland SEPA.org.uk

General situation: Rain moves east across eastern Britain, giving way to sunshine across the south, but with heavy showers in the north and west. NW Scotland, Cen Highland, Glasgow, Argyll, SW Scotland, IoM, N Ireland, Republic of Ireland: Sunny spells and heavy, blustery showers, becoming isolated over Ireland later. Fresh west to southwesterly winds. Maximum 16C (61F), minimum 4C (39F). E Anglia, London, SE Eng, Channel Is: A dry start with some brightness,

---

Tides | Heights in metres. All times in local time | Today | Ht | Ht | Aberdeen | 03:21 | 4.3 | 15:38 | 4.2 | Avonmouth | 09:30 | 13.0 | 21:44 | 12.8 | Belfast | 01:09 | 3.6 | 13:28 | 3.4 | Cardiff | 09:16 | 12.1 | 21:30 | 12.0 | Devonport | 07:56 | 5.5 | 20:07 | 5.4 | Dover | 01:11 | 6.7 | 13:28 | 6.8 | Dublin | 01:28 | 4.8 | 13:46 | 3.9 | Falmouth | 07:26 | 5.2 | 19:42 | 5.1 | Greenock | 02:26 | 3.6 | 14:51 | 3.5 | Harwich | 01:50 | 4.0 | 14:00 | 4.0 | Holyhead | --- | -- | 12:32 | 5.5 | Hull | 08:24 | 7.6 | 20:41 | 7.3 | Leith | 04:43 | 5.6 | 16:59 | 5.4 | Liverpool | 01:02 | 9.4 | 13:19 | 9.3 | London Bridge | 03:59 | 7.0 | 16:12 | 7.2 | Lowestoft | 11:38 | 2.6 | --- | -- | Milford Haven | 08:22 | 7.0 | 20:38 | 6.9 | Morecambe | 01:12 | 9.5 | 13:29 | 9.3 | Newhaven | 01:06 | 6.7 | 13:21 | 6.7 | Newquay | 07:12 | 6.9 | 19:29 | 6.8 | Oban | 07:45 | 4.0 | 19:53 | 3.9 | Penzance | 06:48 | 5.5 | 19:03 | 5.4 | Portsmouth | 01:25 | 4.6 | 13:46 | 4.7 | Shoreham | 01:22 | 6.2 | 13:36 | 6.3 | Southampton | 00:56 | 4.4 | 13:21 | 4.5 | Swansea | 08:32 | 9.3 | 20:46 | 9.2 | Tees | 05:43 | 5.5 | 18:01 | 5.4 | Weymouth | 08:59 | 2.2 | 21:10 | 2.1 | before a band of rain swings through later this morning. A dry and sunny afternoon. Fresh southwesterly winds, easing later. Maximum 20C (68F), minimum 6C (43F).

Moray Firth, Edinburgh and Dundee, Borders, Aberdeen, NE Scotland, N Isles: Early rain soon clearing to leave sunny spells, before scattered heavy showers develop in the afternoon. Fresh to strong southwesterly winds. Maximum 14C (57F), minimum 5C (41F).

---

Synoptic situation

A cold front and associated band of rain clears eastwards across England through the morning, leaving largely dry and sunny weather across southern Britain, but heavy and blustery showers will develop across Scotland and Ireland. Showers ease this evening, before the next set of fronts brings cloudy and breezy weather across the northwest through tomorrow.

Cen S Eng, Midlands, Cen N Eng, E Eng: A cloudy start with rain, clearing to leave a largely dry and sunny afternoon, although an isolated shower is possible in the north. Moderate to fresh westerly winds. Maximum 19C (66F), minimum 5C (41F). SW Eng, Wales, NW Eng, Lake District, NE Eng: Early rain quickly clearing to leave sunshine and the risk of showers, mainly across the north. Moderate to fresh westerly winds. Maximum 17C (63F), minimum 6C (43F).

Highs and lows

24hrs to 5pm yesterday

Warmest: Exeter, 20.8C

Coldest: Redesdale, Northumberland, -0.6C

Wettest: Cardinham, Cornwall, 13.8mm

Sunniest: Tibenham, 9.1hrs\*

Sun and moon

For Greenwich

Sun rises: 07.20

Sun sets: 18.11

Moon rises: 10.58

Moon sets: 18.42

First quarter: October 18

Hours of darkness

Aberdeen 18:41-07:10

Belfast 19:00-07:20

Birmingham 18:47-07:01

Cardiff 18:54-07:05

Exeter 18:56-07:05

Glasgow 18:52-07:16

Liverpool 18:50-07:07

London 18:42-06:53

Manchester 18:47-07:04

Newcastle 18:43-07:04

Norwich 18:34-06:48

Penzance 19:05-07:12

Sheffield 18:44-07:01

Weather Eye

Paul Simons

Magnificent auroras appeared at the weekend over many parts of the UK with green, pink, red or purple colours in curtains, beams and arcs.

The aurora was created by a coronal mass ejection (CME) shot out from the sun, when colossal amounts of charged particles were blasted into space towards Earth. The particles then got caught up in our magnetic field and funnelled down towards the magnetic pole in the Arctic. As the charged particles crashed into the upper atmosphere they collided with oxygen and nitrogen gases, exciting them and making them glow rather like the way the gas in fluorescent lights glows when electrically excited.

But the CME that arrived was special. The sun had unleashed a slow CME towards Earth before another faster CME followed, overtaking and gobbling up the slower one, creating one big powerful CME. That sent a jolt through the Earth's magnetic field with a huge wave of electrically charged plasma that fired up the upper atmosphere into a powerful geomagnetic storm, lighting up bright auroras cascading southwards across the UK and much of Europe.

Auroras were once believed to be a supernatural phenomenon before their origin was revealed by Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, more familiar for his temperature scale. When Celsius visited London in the mid-I700s, he had an instrument maker build him a compass with an extra long magnetic needle. Celsius then used this to study auroras and magnetic activity in his home town of Uppsala, while a similar instrument was set up in London. He found that the stronger an aurora, the more animated the needle became, establishing the connection between magnetism and the lights. Celsius saw how his needle swung wildly when powerful northern lights appeared, which matched similar observations in London and led him to realise that the lights followed the magnetic field and were more focused and visible towards the Earth's magnetic poles.

---

Read more from Paul Simons' Weather Eye

thetimes.com/weathereye

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QUOTE TIM

Sport

Robinson in, Crawley out in England deal splurge

Mike Atherton

Chief Cricket

Correspondent

In a generation, England central contracts have morphed from a slim 12-man unit, designed to give shape and continuity to the Test team, to a broader group, taking in white-ball expertise as well, to a now greatly expanded list, whereby almost one in ten of the entire professional cohort — 39 players in all — has some kind of contractual relationship with the ECB rather than, or as well as, their county.

This year's expansion only partly reflects on what the ECB's press release described as “the growing depth” of England men's cricket, though. It also takes into account the large sum of money that became available through the retirements of Ben Stokes and Mark Wood, both of whom were on top dollar. That much was good news for Tom Banton, Dan Lawrence, Sam Cook, Jordan Cox, Henry Crocombe, Emilio Gay and Matt Fisher, who have signed full-time deals for the first time.

The arrangement, negotiated between Team England Player Partnership and the ECB, is such that Rob Key cannot, like the chancellor of the exchequer, say, save some money for a rainy day. Rather, he must spend the contractually agreed amount now. That accounts for about £16 million this coming year, which has allowed Key to sign 30 players on full-time contracts and nine on development deals, the latter including the 18-year-old Somerset starlet Thomas Rew, who has leap-frogged his brother, James, to international recognition.

The list includes 11 players on two-year deals, but none on three, an experiment quietly (and wisely) shelved after the lack of value for money that accompanied Wood's groundbreaking threeyear contract in 2023. In a sign of the high regard in which they are held, Sonny Baker's deal has been upgraded to two years, while Cox (interestingly, given Jamie Smith's one-year deal) and Crocombe were offered two-year contracts to begin with.

Of the seven newly contracted players, four had significant involvement throughout the summer. Gay opened in every Test, without yet suggesting he is nailed on to be the long-term solution there. Lawrence and Cox impressed in the second half of the summer, the latter especially so with gloves and bat, and Banton showed immense promise in the white-ball fixtures that completed the season. All deserve their promotions.

Crocombe, now of Surrey, is in a different category, picked on promise and pace. Since his arrival as director of cricket, Key has been keen on developing a cohort of young pace bowlers, and Crocombe, 25, is certainly on the rise. Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse (on the naughty step, still, but in the middle of a two-year deal), Josh Tongue, Baker and Crocombe form the core of the pace-bowling unit for the coming year, which will fall under the expert eye of Eric Simons, a former head coach of South Africa, who has been appointed bowling coach for the Test team under Stephen Fleming.

Cook and Fisher are different cases again, and highlight that Key had spare capacity at his disposal after the retirements of Stokes and Wood. Cook has played one Test and Fisher only two, and neither is likely to be in high demand in South Africa or the Ashes, assuming everyone else is fit. Matthew Potts, retained on a one-year deal, is in that category, too, having not played since the end of the Ashes last winter. None is likely to be in high demand in franchise cricket, either. Ollie Robinson has returned to the list after his exceptional summer, but only on a one-year deal designed to keep him hungry.

Broadly, and unsurprisingly, the list reflects the strengths and weaknesses in the professional game. Pace-bowling stocks are healthy — Mitchell Stanley (Lancashire), Eddie Jack (Hampshire) and Josh Hull (Leicestershire) have all been given development contracts — as are middle-order batsmen (Ollie Pope has retained his deal in a sign that he remains of interest) and white-ball specialists, too numerous to mention. Red-ball openers and spinners are rather thin on the ground though.

Robinson has regained a central contract, but has only received a one-year deal

Alongside Ben Duckett and Gay as Test openers, there is only Durham's Ben McKinney, who has been offered a development contract. Zak Crawley has lost his. Shoaib Bashir has retained his central contract despite his rare appearances, as has Rehan Ahmed, recently omitted for the tri-series in Pakistan. Mason Crane, recently picked instead of Ahmed and sure to be on the radar for South Africa and beyond, and Liam Patterson-White, who enjoyed a productive season for Nottinghamshire as a no-nonsense left-arm spinner who can bat, have been offered development contracts.

Red-ball openers and spinners would not be the most sought-after types on the franchise circuit in any event, and it is certainly a list that gives the ECB control of a significant number of players, who would be in demand elsewhere, at a busy time. No England cricketer has yet turned down a central contract for franchise cricket, and the ECB is keen to ensure that remains the case, given the amount of cricket in the schedule for the coming year.

Before the Ashes and 50-over World Cup take centre stage next summer and autumn, the England team are engaged in Pakistan, for a white-ball tri-series, in South Africa for Tests and ODIs, in Bangladesh for Tests, and Australia, for a one-off celebratory Test match. It is a heavy schedule that highlights the folly of expanding Brendon McCullum's brief to take in all formats towards the end of 2024.

With the head coach's role now split between McCullum and Fleming, Key has opted to put together two largely self-contained coaching units. McCullum's carries mostly familiar names, including Sarah Taylor as fielding coach, spin-bowling coach Jeetan Patel, pace-bowling coach Tim Southee, and Kevin

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Central contracts

Joe Root\* (Age 35yrs, Test caps 169, white-ball caps 227)

Harry Brook\* (27yrs, 41, 115)

Rehan Ahmed (22yrs, 5, 25)

Jofra Archer\* (31yrs, 23, 93)

Gus Atkinson\* (28yrs, 21, 20)

Sonny Baker\* (23yrs, 1, 6)

Tom Banton (27yrs, 0, 53)

Shoaib Bashir (22yrs, 21, 0)

Jacob Bethell\* (22yrs, 9, 60)

Jos Buttler (36yrs, 57, 367)

Brydon Carse (31yrs, 14, 44)

Sam Cook (29yrs, 1, 0)

Jordan Cox\* (25yrs, 4, 13)

Henry Crocombe\* (25yrs, 0, 0)

Sam Curran\* (28yrs, 24, 124)

Liam Dawson (36yrs, 4, 50)

Ben Duckett (31yrs, 49, 61)

Emilio Gay (26yrs, 6, 0)

Matthew Fisher (28yrs, 2, 0)

Will Jacks\* (27yrs, 6, 77)

Dan Lawrence (29yrs, 17, 0)

Saqib Mahmood (29yrs, 2, 38)

Jamie Overton (32yrs, 2, 43)

Ollie Pope (28yrs, 64, 0)

Matthew Potts (27yrs, 11, 12)

Adil Rashid (38yrs, 19, 317)

Ollie Robinson (32yrs, 24, 0)

Phil Salt (30yrs, 0, 98)

Jamie Smith (26yrs, 25, 24)

Josh Tongue\* (28yrs, 15, 9)

\* denotes two-year deal through to September 30, 2028

Development contracts

James Coles (22yrs, 0, 0)

Mason Crane (29yrs, 1, 2)

Josh Hull (22yrs, 1, 0)

Eddie Jack (21yrs, 0, 0)

Ben McKinney (22yrs, 0, 0)

Liam Patterson-White (27yrs, 0, 0)

Thomas Rew (18yrs, 0, 0)

Matthew Revis (24yrs, 0, 0)

Mitch Stanley (25yrs, 0, 0)

Pietersen in his mentoring role. The Test team, with Fleming's input crucial, has been given a fresh look, with the exception of Marcus Trescothick, who retains his position as an assistant.

With split head coaches, it makes complete sense to separate the coaching units. James Foster is a highly regarded wicketkeeping/fielding coach, having worked in a variety of franchise and international roles. Richard Dawson, who has also taken on the role as elite national spin-bowling lead (a daunting task given the hurdles), returns to the England Test fold from Glamorgan to look after the spinners and Simons, who has worked with Fleming at Chennai Super Kings for the past eight years, will be in charge of the quicks.

The lack of established English candidates for the head coach role was a problem when the Test vacancy arose in the summer. With Jonathan Trott now in charge of the Lions, Mike Yardy taking on the elite national batting lead role, and Trescothick, Dawson and Foster all closely involved, there should be no shortage of candidates next time.

Renshaw adds first wicket to batting heroics as Australia close in on win

Elizabeth Ammon

Australia are six wickets from victory in the first Test against South Africa after another career-defining day for Matt Renshaw, who added 82 to his first-innings score of 190 and claimed his maiden Test wicket.

Set 421 to win, South Africa ended day four in significant trouble at 102 for four and on the precipice of a heavy defeat — their first under the captaincy of Temba Bavuma.

If — or more likely when — Australia secure the win, it will largely be down to

Yorkshire-born Renshaw, who is the only player in the match to have scored more than 50. His epic first innings rescued Australia after they had slumped to 124 for six, but his rapid 82 from 99 balls in the second innings was just as instrumental.

With bad light having affected the first three days of this match, the visiting side needed to score quickly to allow for a declaration as early as possible and leave enough time to bowl South Africa out. Their second-innings total of 314 for six was scored at 5.41 runs per over, with captain Pat Cummins blasting 32 from 12 balls and Beau Webster finishing unbeaten on 39 when the declaration came just before tea.

It was Renshaw, though, who gave the innings impetus and looked set to score a second century until spinner Keshav Maharaj took a juggling return catch off his own bowling to remove him. Australia's No 3 Marnus Labuschagne made exactly the same score — 37 from 58 balls — as he had in the first innings before he was caught at cover off Maharaj. Steve Smith also fell to spin.

South Africa have a glimmer of hope if Aiden Markram can stay at the crease. He played defiantly to reach the close unbeaten on 45 from 114 balls, and averages over 60 against Australia, but the Kingsmead surface has started to produce more seam and spin movement.

The world Test champions South Africa will be ruing that they squandered the best batting conditions on day three. Markram and David Bedingham combined in a partnership of 84 and temporarily halted Australia's charge. Bedingham looked good before being trapped leg-before for 46 by Josh Hazlewood and then Cummins took his fourth wicket of the match, nicking off Tristan Stubbs for one. Renshaw, who had previously bowled only 30 balls in Test cricket, got the wicket of South Africa's captain with his part-time off spin as Bavuma inside-edged onto his pad and was caught at short leg.

Smith was not able to take the field for South Africa's second innings after being hit on the helmet by a nasty bouncer by Anrich Nortje, although he did continue his innings after a change of helmet. He was being assessed for concussion late on day four. Scoreboard, page 57

4-5 Lucy Glitters, 9-4 Unflappable, 5-1 Bombus Pascuorum, 16-1 Indiza.

Mullins fined over horse's failed drug test at Cheltenham Festival

ALAMY

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Rob Wright Racing Editor

Willie Mullins, the Irish trainer who has dominated jumps racing for the past two decades, has been fined £1,100 after one of his horses failed a drugs test at the Cheltenham Festival on March 11.

Final Demand, who finished second in a grade one chase, has been disqualified, while Cheltenham racecourse has been fined £5,000 for failing to ensure that CCTV footage of the relevant stables was available.

Final Demand was found to have tested positive for a metabolite of mepivacaine, a local anaesthetic, after finishing second to stablemate Kitzbuhel in the Brown Advisory Novices' Chase.

It emerged at the investigation that Final Demand had been kicked in the jaw by another horse at Mullins's stables on March 3, after which its jaw had been stapled and he was given mepivacaine to relieve the pain.

Had no further treatment been administered, there would have been no issue as mepivacaine leaves a horse's system within 72 hours.

However, a standard drugs test after the race revealed Final Demand had 0.19 ng/ml concentration of mepivacaine in his sample, which would suggest that it had been administered between 10-24 hours earlier, according to expert evidence provided by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA).

At the subsequent inquiry, Mullins was “unable to think of any occasion when the horse may have come into contact with mepivacaine”.

A suggestion that the drug had merely been unusually slow to leave the horse's system was rejected by the BHA's expert, with the horse having raced eight days after the drug was officially administered.

It was revealed at the inquiry that CCTV for the area in question — where Final Demand was stabled from March 8-11 — was covered by a thirdparty supplier. However, when the racecourse requested to see the relevant video coverage, the company “proved elusive and did not respond to several attempts to make arrangements to meet with the BHA investigations team to supply the footage”.

Mullins with Final Demand whose sample showed traces of a local anaesthetic

Jon Pullin, the clerk of the course, was finally told on July 2 “that the hard drive containing the footage had been misplaced”.

As a result, it was impossible to apportion blame for the failed test.

Final Demand, who went off as the second-favourite for the Cheltenham race, has been disqualified and placed last but bets laid on the race are unaffected, meaning each-way backers of fourth-placed 80-1 chance Now Is The Hour have every right to feel aggrieved.

The decision will, however, impact the owners, with Final Demand losing his £43,672 prize money from the Brown Advisory Novices' Chase.

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Leicester

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Rob Wright

1.24 Banged Up 3.39 That's Random

1.54 Adelaide Turn 4.14 Hostility

2.29 Hoya Bella 4.47 God Of War

3.04 Lady Phillips 5.17 New Objective

Going: good to soft

Draw: no advantage Racing TV

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1.24 Nursery (2-Y-O: £3,140: 1m) (10)

1 (5) 630 MULVANEY'S POWER TR1 (3) P B Meehan 9-9 David Egan

2 (2) 354 EBYT'S WRIEROR 10 (T) W Muir & C Grassick 9-9L Edmunds

3 (7) 51U03 GOLDEN OASIS 15 Robert Edwards 9-9 J Leavy

4 (3) 356 ADORAMUS 106 Jack Marland 9-8 G Wood

5 (4) 035 NOTIMETOTAKEOFF 10 C Johnston 9-8 Rossa Ryan

6 (6) 0604 BANGED UP 15 (P) E J-Houghton 9-5 C Bishop

7 (8) 060 MR MONTGOMERY 48 Ollie Sangster 9-5 S Donohoe

8 (9) 0300 RULE OF THE AGENCY 50 (B) T Easterby 9-4D Fentiman

9 (10) 00601 KING OF PERSIA 20 (D) T Easterby 9-2 D Allan

10 (1) 00001 WAITING FOR ARCHIE 11 R & P Fahey 9-0 B McHugh

3-1 King Of Persia, 4-1 Waiting For Archie, 11-2 Golden Oasis, 6-1 Banged Up,

7-1 Adoramus, 8-1 Notimetotakeoff, 12-1 Ebt's Warrior, 16-1 other

Roh Wright's choice: Banged Up improved when fourth at

Rob Wright's choice: Banged Up improved when fourth at Brighton Dangers King Of Persia, Waiting For Archie

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1.54 Novice Stakes | 1 (11) | 10 LADY FOXTROT 20 (D) K R Burke 9-9 | P-L Jamin | 2 (1) | BEVERLEIGHANN P McBride 9-2 | C Fallon | 3 (10) | 56 FANCIED ANGEL 27 (T) Adam Kirby 9-2 | C Bishop | 4 (8) | KISSAMEE R & P Fahey 9-2 | H Russell | 5 (12) | MASSA GO GO J G O'Shea 9-2 | T Heard | 6 (5) | 42255 ROMIDLIO 30 Charlie Clover 9-2 | S Osborne | 7 (6) | SETUBAL H Palmer 9-2 | D Probert | 8 (7) | 06420 TRADITTION 24 (B) T Easterby 9-2 | D Allan | 9 (4) | 04 ADELAIDES TURN 30 R Cowell 8-13 | G Wood | 10 (2) | ATLANTIC GRACE Tom Clover 8-13 | David Egan | 11 (3) | 036 CLASSIC BELLINI 11 Easterby 8-13 | S B Kirrane | 12 (9) | 3226 ROMOTOSO 17 (BF) W Knight 8-13 | M Ghiani | 11-4 Romotosio, 9-2 Lady Foxtrot, 7-1 Romidlio, 10-1 Tradition, Setubal,Atlantic Grace, Kissamee, 12-1 Fancied Angel, Adelaide Turn, Classic Bellini.Wright choice: Adelaide Turn was a fair fourth at Bath; this stiffer test will suit Dangers Romotoso, Setubal | ---

2.29 Novice Stakes | 1 | (5) | 1 PIVOTAL VOTAGE 44 K Ryan 9-6 | T Eaves | 2 | (4) | 00 DREAMAWHILE 21 T Easterby 9-2 | D Fentiman | 3 | (2) | ENALIA Adam Kirby 9-2 | R Havlin | 4 | (1) | 3 HOYA BELLA 27 James Owen 9-2 | D Probert | 5 | (9) | LITERARY Charlie Clover 9-2 | Jack Doughty | 6 | (11) | 4 MISS EILEEN 24 R Menzies 9-2 | Rhys Elliott (5) | 7 | (10) | 40522 ON THE QUEUE TEE 8 J S Moore 9-2 | S M Levey | 8 | (8) | 60 ANGELIC MELODY 34 J Camacho 8-13 | R Sexton | 9 | (3) | CLARICE STARLING R Spencer 8-13 | G Wood | 10 | (7) | 3 CLAUDIA MISS 27 T Easterby 8-13 | D Allan | 11 | (6) | 2 WEDYAN 19 J Tate 8-13 | Rossa Ryan | 7-2 Wedyan, 4-1 Pivotal Votages, Hoya Bella, 5-1 On The Queue Tee, 8-1 Miss Elson, 12-1 Annalid Malody, Carino Starito, 14-1 Claudia Miss | Wright choice: Hoya Bella was third to subsequent winner Bidsta at Yarmouth Dangers Pivotal Voyage, Wedyan

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3.04 Novice Stakes (2-Y-O: £6,480: 1m) (7) | 1 | (4) | 4 BERYOZKA 20 A Balding 9-2 | D Probert | 2 | (1) | 6 CATONAHOTTINROOF 24 J & T Gosden 9-2 | R Havlin | 3 | (7) | 0 COMRADE ALEXI 39 E Walker 9-2 | K Shoemark | 4 | (2) | LADY PHILLIPS R Beckett 9-2 | Rossa Ryan | 5 | (5) | 5 NEW YEAR'S EVE 18 W Haggas 9-2 | T Marquand | 6 | (3) | 60 SINGING BLUES 45 (P) T Ward 9-2 | S M Levey | 7 | (6) | VELORA Sir M Prescott 9-2 | L Morris | 2-1 New Year's Eve, 11-4 Velora, 9-2 Lady Phillips, 5-1 Comrade Alexi, 10-1 Beryozka, 14-1 Catonahottinroof, 25-1 Singing Blues. | Wright choice: Lady Phillips, by Night Of Thunder out of a listed winner, is interesting Danger New Year's Eve

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3.39 Handicap (£3,664: 6f) (18)

1 (13) -0000 RASCAL RECKNELL 10 M Appleby 5-9-12 L Morris

2 (2) 35603 FENLANDER 7 (CD) Oily Williams 5-9-12 W Fentiman (3)

3 (16) U3260 ZIGGY'S CONDOR 25 (D) Adam Kirby 5-9-12 C Bishop

4 (6) 60465 HK FOURTEEN 14 (BF,D) A Carroll 6-9-11 T Marquand

5 (17) 56564 TIRIAC 12 (D) P Midgley 6-9-8 O McSweeney

6 (12) 00402 SARGENT DENNIS 11 (V,D) J Channon 3-9-8 D Probert

7 (1) 6-051 THAT'S RANDOM 121 (D) Harry Charlton 3-9-8L Edmunds

8 (7) 60004 TRY STORM CAT 123 (P,D) Jessica Macey 3-9-8 G Wood

9 (18) 03006 TRUST AMY 35 (D) G Hanmer 3-9-8 R Hornby

10 (4) 21205 SPIRIT OF JENNY 60 (D) Steph Hollinshead 4-9-8

11 (3) 46311 BAY BREEZE 15 (P,D) T Easterby 7-9-8 D Allan

12 (5) 40434 IRISH NECTAR 26 (B,D) M Herrington 5-9-8 D E Hogan

13 (9) 56452 DASHING DICK 7 (P.BF.CD) W Stone 8-9-7 K Shoemark

14 (8) 20403 CAIRDEAS 12 P Midgley 4-9-7 R Sexton

15(14) 44364 MOONLIGHT MELODY 11 D McCain 3-9-6 P Mulrennan

16(15) 15016 LAMLASH BAY 11 (D) M & D Easterby 3-9-6 J Mason

17(10) 60430 MILFORD GRANGE 14 (B) M & D Easterby 3-9-5B Garritty

18(11) 13534 SPACEWOMAN 20 (D) H Candy 3-9-2 N Currie

11-2 That's Random, 6-1 Bay Breeze, 7-1 Dashing Deck, 8-1 Sargent Dennis, Cairdeas, 10-1 Irish Nectar, 12-1 Lamlash Bay, 14-1 others.

Wright choice: That's Random won on his handicap debut at Depositar's follow-up Dangere Fandador, Cairdeas

Wright choice: That's Random won on his handicap debut at Doncaster; can follow up Dangers Fenlander, Cairdeas

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4.14 Handicap (£3,664: 1m) (10)

1 (2) 00000 HARRY THE ROGUE 41 (5) S Hanlon 5-9-9 T Eaves

2 (4) 51303 HOOLITY 10 (D) D O'Meara 4-9-7 C Fallon

3 (9) 44303 DONNIA NOOK 29 (T, V, JF, D) D O'Meara 4-9-7 B Garritty

4 (1) 24133 CYPRIOT DIASPORA 29 (C) B Millman 5-9-7R Kavanagh (3)

5 (8) 50304 FRANCESI 24 (D) A Carroll 7-9-5 Myla Coppins (5)

6 (5) 05250 UP THE JAZZ 10 (R) & P Fahey 5-9-5 W Fentiman (3)

7 (10) 4-106 DREAM PIRATE 146 (B,D) T Kent 6-9-5 T Marquand

8 (6) 61202 CAROLUS MAGNUS 31 (M) & D Easterby 8-9-5J M Sierra

9 (7) 00112 OVIEDO 30 (BF,D) Alexandra Dunn 6-9-4 M Wonnacott (5)

10 (3) 55235 LAW OF DESIGN 10 (V) I Williams 4-9-2 P Mulrennan

9-4 Oviedo, 1-1 Carolurus, Mass Whitney, 6-1 Donna Nook, 10-1 Cypriot Diaspora, Law Of Design, 12-1 Francesi, 16-1 others

Wright choice: Hostility drops to his best trip after failing

Wright choice: Hostility drops to his best trip after failing to stay at Redcar Dangers Donna Nook, Cypriot Diaspora

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4.47 Handicap (£8,898: 7f) (18)

1 (2) -0015 KODI LION 26 (D) M Appleby 5-9-13 C Fallon

2 (6) -0000 ONE SMACK MAC 40 (T) J Osborne 4-9-11 W Carver

3 (15) 60000 MORTE POINT 24 (D) W Muir & C Grassick 4-9-97 Marquand

4 (5) 05044 GOD OF WAR 26 (P,D) Tom Clover 4-9-8 David Egan

5 (17) 30300 HUMAM 37 (T,D) S C Williams 4-9-8 M Ghiani

6 (12) 23142 FLIGHT CONTROL 30 (D) K Frost 3-9-8 Rossa Ryan

7 (18) 14064 ATA RANGI 18 (D) E Walker 5-9-7 K Shoemark

8 (9) 02002 SERGEANT WILKO & (C) K Ryan 5-9-7 K Stott

9 (7) 35105 KISSKODI 43 (C), Harry Eustace 4-9-7 G Wood

10(13) 15126 RAGING RAJ 30 (D) M Herrington 3-9-6 D Probert

11(11) -1000 OUR STATUS 37 (V,D) R & P Fahey 5-9-6W Fentiman (3)

12(14) 03110 DAPPER GUEST 17 (P,D) G Margarson 4-9-5 R Havlin

13(10) 0-421 ENGLISH TIME 112 (D) Harry Charlton 3-9-5 L Edmunds

14 (8) 00420 ASTRAZAR 53 (D) E Walker 3-9-4 G Downing

15(16) 41501 HUNGARIAN 24 (B,T,D) Lemos Souza 3-9-3 B Sayette

16 (3) 03000 RIGHTHERE RIGHTNOW 25 (P,D) R Spencer 4-9-15 Osborne

17 (1) 41050 FORESEN 51 A Carroll 5-9-0 Jack Doughty

18 (4) 02000 DAYDREAMA 15 T Easterby 3-8-12 D Allan

4-1 English Time, 6-1 Flight Control, 8-1 Hungarian, Astrazar, 10-1 Sergeant Wilko, Ata Rangi, 12-1 Raging Raj, Kodi Lion.

Wright choice: God Of War was unsuited by a drop to six furlongs at Yarmouth Dangers English Time, Flight Control

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5.17 Handicap (£3,140: 1m 2f) (17)

1 (10) 50-00 MAN FROM HAVANA 14 D F Davis 4-9 R Hornby

2 (8) 0-066 KATHLEEN MARY 216 Gihan Arnolda 4-9 G Wood

3 (17) 03502 WE'VE GOT THIS 11 (T) I Furtado 4-9 J Leavy

4 (6) 06203 STIPULATION 15 (P,D) M Loughnane 5-98 L Morris

5 (16) 11560 PUREIS KING 18 (C,D) R Carr 4-97 JP Sullivan

6 (1) 4-600 PEACEFUL SPIRITY 25 (T) L Mulaney 4-97 P Mulrennan

7 (5) 32135 RICARDO PHILLIPS 20 (CD) H Candy 5-97 N Currie

8 (13) 00405 GATLINBURG 32 M Attwater 3-96 R Havlin

9 (4) 55-36 SOMETHINGINTHEAR 64 P Chapple-Hyam 3-96M Ghiani

10 (7) 30155 ROMAN SECRET 12 (D) L Mulaney 5-96 T Eaves

11(12) 2-041 NEW OBJECTIVE 24 (D) K Frost 3-9-5 A Rawlinson

12(14) -8024 ATATURK 97 (BF) H Morrison 3-9-5 T Marquand

13 (9) 20242 GRINDLETON 26 D & C Kubler 3-9-4 A Volkhansky

14 (3) 0-462 LITTLE TIGER 35 (B,CD) W Stone 6-9-DLaura Coughlan (3)

15 (2) 50436 FIZZY BEAR 14 G Baker 3-9-3 C Bishop

16(11) 0-040 HOTEL CALIFORNIA 47 (T) D Menuisier 3-9-3 S M Levey

17(15) -4365 CORDUROY 157 (T) Steph Hollinshead 3-9-2 D Costello

9-2 Ataturk, 6-1 New Objective, 7-1 We've Got This, Grindleton, 8-1 Stipulation, 10-1 Little Tiger, Ricardo Phillips, 14-1 other

Wright choice: New Objective has improved in two starts since being gelded Dangers Grindleton, Stipulation

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Hereford Rob Wright

1.45 Miss Denver 3.30 Donnie Azoff

2.20 No More Bolero 4.05 Zaraquelle

2.55 Athena's Dream 4.38 Unflappable

Going: good to firm Sky Sports Ra

Going: good to firm Sky Sports Racing

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1.45 Maiden Hurdle (£5,446: 2m) (5)

1 1P-03 BLUE TOPAZ 29 (T) F O'Brien 6-11-4 J Hogan

2 32222 MISS DENVER 36 N & W Twiston-Davies 6-11-4S Twiston-Davies

3 50 UPTON FERN 81 D Hamer 5-11-4 S Fenelon (5)

4 VAJRA G Harris 7-11-4 J A Anderson (3)

5 -6035 ESTHER SPRING 7 Christian Williams 4-11-3 A Wedge

13-8 Blue Topaz, 2-1 Miss Denver, 4-1 Esther Spring, 7-1 Vajra, 14-1 Upton Fern.

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2.20 Handicap Hurdle

(£4,066: 3m 1f 119yd) (4)

1 5-6P1 JACKSTELL 38 (P,T,C) J Snowden 7-12-2 Isabelle Ryder (5)

2 5-2P2 I'M A STARMAN 18 (C) M Rimell 13-11-8 S Twiston-Davies

3 11231 NO MORE BOLERO 8 (V) James Owen 7-11-6 J J Burke

4 00015 BETTY'S TIARA 28 (T,V) B Pauling 8-11-2 C Pritchard

Evens No More Bolero, 15-8 Jackstell, 7-1 Betty's Tiara, 8-1 I'm A Starman.

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2.55 Handicap Hurdle (£3,248: 3m 1f 119yd) (8

1 00F0/ CANTEENY BENNY 1463 (T) G Harris 10-11-12

J A Anderson (3)

2 021-1 CARRHILL 150 R L Llewellyn 6-11-8 Charlie Price

3 35203 ATHENA'S DREAM 12 (V) H Dickin 4-11-5 M Bevan (7)

4 4054- ELUSIVE KNIGHT 228 Mrs C Williams 6-11-2 A Wedge

5 060P- I LOVE YOU SIVOLA 182 M Comley 8-10-12 D Bass

6 P-450 AT SUNRISE 33 (P) D Weston 5-10-11 P Armson (3)

7 0004- DINO MOON 225 Mrs C Williams 5-10-10 C Ring

8 00P55 PORRIDGE 23 Tracey Leeson 6-10-9 O Palmer (7)

21 Athena's Dream, 4-1 Carrhill, 5-1 Dino Moon, 6-1 Elusive Knight, 7-1 Canteeny Benny, 10-1 At Sunrise, 14-1 I Love You Sivola, 25-1 Porridge.

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3.30 Handicap Hurdle (£4,066: 2m 4f) (8)

3 606P- SIXTY PLUS F26 (V,D) James Owen 6-11-9 J J Burke

4 56-03 JARAMILLO 38 (P,D) W Greatrex 8-11-7 Richard Upton (10)

5 PP-50 WHINNEY HILL 18 (H) Dave Roberts 6-11-6 Lee Edwards

6 -0416 SON OF HYPNOS 25 (T,V) R Chapman 9-10-10

7 30P0/ DEPARTMENT OF WAR 764 Katy Price 11-10-8Shane Quinlan (3)

8 24204 DEVON RED 10 (P) Nick Scholfield 7-10-4 H Reed

15-8 Donnie Azoff, 7-2 Sixty Plus, 6-1 Krak, Jaramillo, 7-1 Devon Red, 10-1 Son Of Hypnos, 14-1 Whinney Hill, 33-1 Department Of War.

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4.05 Handicap Hurdle (£3,248: 2m 4f) (7)

1 330-3 MAHON FALLS 149 Katy Price 5-12-0 Shane Quinlan (3)

2 -0P01 MIRACLES DO HAPPEN 21 (H.T) Billy Arahamian 5-11-11 S Twiston-Davies

3 26-42 SIORAI 23 (H.T,BF) Harry Derham 4-11-8 Paul O'Brien

4 35-F0 LADY DAPPLE ROSE 28 B Pauling 5-11-5 Beau Morgan (5)

5 42-ZARAQUELLE F77 (T) James Owen 4-11-3 J J Burke

6 -0004 BARAFUNDBLE BAY 21 Christian Williams 5-10-5 A Wedge

7 20P44 YANKA BLUE 17 B J Murphy (Ire) 5-10-5 C Pritchard

15-8 Miracles Do Happen, 3-1 Sioral, 4-1 Zaraquelle, 8-1 Lady Dapple Rose,

10-1 Yanika Blue, 12-1 Mahon Falls, 14-1 Barafunde Bay.

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4.38 Flat Race (£2,451: 2m) (4) | 1 | 4 BOMBUS PASCUORUM 49 (W) D McCain 4-11-1 | Harry Brown (10) | 2 | 0- INDIZA 364 (T) S Edmunds 4-11-1 | C Hammond | 3 | 23 LUCY GLITTERS 81 (H) T R George 4-10-8 | J J Burke | 4 | 33 UNFLAPPABLE 123 Ben Clarke 4-10-8 | D Noonan | ---

Southwell

2.00 Limerick Leader 4.20 L'Amandine

2.35 Four Springs 4.52 Winston's Oath

3.10 Thelasthighking 5.23 Trigger The Light

3.45 Melodys Encore

Going: good Sky Sports Racing

2.00 Handicap Chase (£4,700: 3m 2f) (3)

1 41121 LIMERICK LEADER 15 (B,T,D) Nick Scholfield 9-11-6

S Bowen

2 31214 AXEL BLEUE 28 (P,T,BF) M Bowen 6-11-5 J Bowen

3 210-6 MUMFORD'S MAGIC 39 (P) D Skelton 8-11-2 T Durrell

5-4 Limerick Leader, 6-4 Axel Bleue, 7-2 Mumford's Magic.

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2.35 Handicap Chase (£4,700: 2m) (6)

1 132P- FOUR SPRINGS 220 B Pauling 5-12-0 K Woods

2 4523-CHEESY ICON 290 (H) Mrs M Rowley 6-11-12 C Deutsch

3 2030-MARCHE D'ALIGRE 192 J Snowden 5-11-12 G Sheehan

4 231-3 JAMADA 151 O Murphy 6-11-4 S Bowen

5 12P40 ASK A SAINTE 9 (BF) O Murphy 6-11-1 Mr T Walsh (7)

6 U4422 LADY KARA 6 (T,BF) Dr R Newland 5-11-1 L Scott (3)

11-4 Jamada, 3-1 Lady Kara, 4-1 Cheesy Icon, 9-2 Four Springs, 7-1 Ask A Sainte, 8-1 Marche D'aligre.

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3.10 Handicap Chase (£4,700: 2m 4f) (6)

1 11-15 MOVE WITH THE BEAT 10 (T,BF,D) J Snowden 7-12-1G Sheehan

2 46/4- THELASTHIGHKING 204 (C) N & W Twiston-Davies 10-12-1

3 -5535 PALAMON 18 (P,T,BF,D) D Skelton 6-11-13 T Durrell

4 -2223 JET SMART 21 (P,D) D Summersby 8-11-11 B Carver

5 33634 DREAM DIAMOND 14 (BF) James Owen 6-11-7 S Bowen

6 1142P MARTIN'S DENUO 18 (H,T,D) D Pipe 4-10-9 Doubtful

2-1 Dream Diamond, 11-4 Move With The Beat, 7-2 Palamon, 5-1 Jet Smart,

8-1 Thelasthighking.

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