Government ‘under no obligation' to intervene in Telegraph sale
Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has said that she is under no legal obligation to intervene in an Abu Dhabi-led sale of The Telegraph despite protestations from members of the House of Lords.
Nandy stated that she had no 'reasonable grounds' for believing an Abu Dhabi joint venture was poised to seize control of the title and therefore did not have a duty to issue a legal notice under laws barring foreign state ownership of UK media outlets.
RedBird IMI, a joint venture part-funded by an Emirati royal, is seeking to sell The Telegraph after its bid to convert debt secured against the title into equity was blocked by a new ban on foreign state owners in March last year.
• Telegraph sale in limbo
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Times
an hour ago
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The state spends £24,000 a year for every adult. Something's got to give
It's amazing how things change. Just a few months ago Rachel Reeves told us the financial situation was so grim she had no choice but to take the winter fuel payment from all but the poorest pensioners. And now, thanks to Labour, it's all going so well she can afford to give it back. That was, of course, a lie. But it wasn't the big lie. No, the big lie was that the spending review bore any relation to what we will actually spend. The traditional recipe for political success is simple: scrimp, then splurge. Get the pain out of the way after the election, so you can splash out before the next one. • Jobs market is flashing a warning sign to Rachel Reeves That's not the approach Reeves took. She wanted to show she was ending austerity (such as it was). But the finances were desperately tight. Her solution, apart from raising taxes, was to frontload her spending increases and hope something turned up. 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