Latest news with #PatMcFadden
Times
25-05-2025
- Business
- Times
Winter fuel payments for all — is this the beginning of Reeves' undoing?
Sir Keir Starmer was in his office in No 10 on Tuesday night when he told aides he was going to announce a U-turn on winter fuel during the next day's Prime Minister's Questions. 'He was really sure that he wanted to do it and knew it would come up in PMQs, so wanted to be able to give people a straight answer,' said one staff member present. The decision had been taken at a meeting between Starmer, Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, and Pat McFadden, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in the week following the local elections when Labour lost two thirds of their council seats that were being contested. The PM had been privately lobbied by everyone from backbench MPs to members of the cabinet and even the Welsh first minister to change the policy, which had been a toxic issue on the doorstep and risked becoming Labour's poll tax. The announcement was made in haste. He promised reforms to ensure 'more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payments' without explaining either the mechanism for achieving that aim or how it would be funded. He also said he wanted to implement the changes as soon as possible. However, civil servants have categorically told ministers it will be impossible to introduce any proposed reforms in time for this winter as officials struggle to overhaul ageing computer systems. They have been told to spend the summer working on solutions to be presented in time for the next budget, in autumn. Previously it had been reported that the government was looking at options for raising the income threshold at which pensioners qualify for payments, which was set last year at £11,500. But it can be revealed that officials are examining options for an almost complete reversal of the policy amid claims this would be faster and easier to implement. Although no decision had yet been taken, the aim would be to reinstate payment, worth either £200 or £300 a year per recipient, for all but the wealthiest pensioners. Creating a new means test for the winter fuel payment would be highly complex and ministers are considering a simpler option, which is restoring it as a universal benefit and then recouping the money when high income pensioners fill in their tax returns. A similar approach was taken by George Osborne, the former Tory chancellor, when he reduced the eligibility to child benefit for better-off parents. Confirming that the government was considering an almost total reversal of the policy, a senior Whitehall source said: 'I think they will want to do it in a symbolic way that means that the millionaires won't get it, although it won't actually save you that much money just excluding the very rich people from it. However, they haven't yet found the exact mechanism by which to do it.' There are also no guarantees the changes will be ready for this winter, although officials are looking at the feasibility of making backdated payments. The announcement was timed to buy the government a bit of goodwill among its backbenchers after weeks of unease over Liz Kendall's proposed welfare reforms. Labour MPs have been spooked by the Department for Work and Pensions' (DWP) own impact assessment which said the changes, which are worth £5 billion a year by 2030 and will restrict eligibility for Personal independence Payments, would result in an extra 250,000 people, including 50,000 children, living in 'relative poverty' by 2030. But, as with many government U-turns made in the heat of political necessity, the concession may come back to haunt Starmer. The prime minister faces a challenge this week from Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, who is expected to pledge to scrap the two-child cap on child benefits and reinstate the winter fuel allowance, The Telegraph reported. Farage will use his first address since his party's successful elections to appeal to left-leaning voters and attack Starmer's record on benefits. However, the public finances today are if anything worse than when Labour came into office. Economists think that the deficit in Reeves's finances could be as much as £60 billion. So where does that leave the chancellor, who was out of the country when the U-turn came? Given the scale of the challenge, tax rises in the autumn budget now look inevitable. The more that Reeves and Starmer concede on welfare, the greater the tax increases will have to be. 'She's [Reeves] in a really tricky place,' said a senior government source. 'Axing winter fuel payments for all but the poorest pensioners was supposed to send a strong signal to reassure the markets, shore up public finances and demonstrate that Labour is prepared to make tough decisions. So, obviously, if we are finding money for this, it opens up all sorts of questions about welfare, about the two-child benefits cap. 'We have always thought that scrapping the two-child benefits cap is not a vote winner, but at the same time, if you have to choose between giving money to pensioners, who are the only group in this country who are going to be significantly richer by the end of this parliament, versus handing money to impoverished kids, then it's pretty obvious what the priority should be.' Starmer, Kendall and Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, are among those in the cabinet who are said to be open to the idea of scrapping — or at least softening — the two-child cap on benefits. However, it is opposed by the Treasury and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's chief of staff, because of the £3.5 billion price tag and polling showing that there are few votes in it. The Fabian Society has proposed a two-phased approach to scrapping the two-child limit, which they claim would be more palatable for voters. The first phase would include ditching it for working families, and families with a disabled child, before abolishing it entirely. This first step would benefit nearly nine out of ten children under five (89 per cent) affected by the two-child limit, but would be far more popular than scrapping it completely in one big step, and more popular and effective than raising the cap to three children. This is supported by new polling, which shows 46 per cent of voters would support removing the cap for families with disabled children, with 34 per cent opposing, while 45 per cent support removing it for families who are in work, with 35 per cent opposing it. This compares with 32 per cent who support lifting the limit from two children to three children, with 51 per cent opposing it. Just implementing the first step towards scraping the two-child limit — along with proposals to introduce a new baby and toddler element to universal credit — could result in one of the largest falls in early years poverty since the 1990s, lifting 230,000 children under-five out of poverty. HANNAH MCKAY/REUTERS Commenting on the findings, which have been shared with ministers, Ben Cooper, Fabian Society research manager and the author of the report, said: 'While the public finances are incredibly tight, the government can act to transform the lives of babies and toddlers living in poverty — and do so with public support.' While there had been intentions to look at the cap in the spring, the plans, which form part of the child poverty strategy, have now been delayed until the autumn budget. Another big pressure point for Reeves will be when she is urged to rip up her fiscal rules to allow for extra borrowing to stave off public spending cuts. In addition, talks are already under way to bring forward other less costly elements of the strategy to mollify some of the 170 or more MPs who have raised concerns about benefit cuts. Measures would potentially include broadening the eligibility criteria for free school meals and raising the amount paid to families in child benefit, currently £26.05 per week for the first child and £17.25 per week for subsequent children. It is understood that changes could be announced at the spending review next month ahead of the crunch welfare vote, which No 10 insiders insist will go ahead in the second week of June despite rumours of a delay. • Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves backed down on winter fuel. What's next? The spending review looks brutal. With the Home Office, Department for Education and Ministry of Housing, Communities and local government all facing real-terms cuts. Starmer will have a significant challenge on his hands just to retain cabinet order in the run-up to the review on June 11. Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, is set to be one of the biggest losers of the review. She is said to have complained 'forcibly' about proposals to squeeze spending on housing during increasingly heated meetings with Starmer and Reeves. She is also understood to be furious about rumours, now denied, that her department was set to be broken up, with a new ministry of housing created, as part of a wider Whitehall shake-up to better align departments with Labour's five missions of government. It comes after a week of fevered speculation about her leadership ambitions triggered by a leaked memo revealing she had urged the chancellor to hike taxes on savers and high earners. She also suggested stripping middle class families of child benefit payments. The ideas are popular with her allies on the left of the party, but were seen as provocative by critics. Rayner and her team have denied leaking the document, but that has been given short shrift by many in government. Rayner had urged the chancellor to hike taxes on savers and high earners CAMERON SMITH/GETTY IMAGES One source said the leaking of the document showed her 'naked' ambition. 'It's just Angela being Angela,' they added. 'Whenever the party hits a rocky patch she always does this kind of thing to remind the parliamentary Labour Party that she is still here and has different ideas to others at the top of the party.' However, Rayner is not alone in worrying about the 'huge pressures on housing' and the direction of the country as huge budget cuts loom. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, has told the New Statesman that the north of England is so tense it could 'go up in flames'. 'Last summer, when we had the horrendous murder of those young girls [in Southport], there was already a real sense of tension in the north,' she said. 'People have watched their town centres falling apart, their life has got harder over the last decade and a half … I don't remember a time when people worked this hard and had so little to show for it.' It is a problem Starmer's team are acutely aware of. • While the cost of living crisis is easing, with interest rates falling, there is now a living standards crisis they know needs to be addressed if they are to counter the appeal of Reform. This includes also drawing up proposals to attract a new group of voters, known as the Henrys — people who are High Earners, Not Rich Yet. A Whitehall source said: 'The fiscal position is still tough, but for the first time in a long time, the macro stuff is looking better. We are seeing things like the trade deals, the investment coming in, so the bigger picture is good but none of that means anything unless people feel it and you can improve peoples' living standards.' But with the chancellor's cloth being cut smaller by the day, it will be a question once again of what is affordable, not just what is politically desirable, when the spending decisions are made.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Britain is heading for utter ruin, and neither the parties nor the voters are prepared to stop it
What a dreadful week. For the first time, I find myself wondering whether there will be anything left to salvage. I don't mean for Sir Keir Starmer. No, I mean for Britain. Everything that elevated us above the run of nations is being lost: our competitiveness, our sovereignty, our credit-worthiness, our prestige. We are diminished morally, financially and, after the Chagos surrender, physically. At the start of the week, a different future looked possible. Labour had put the Chagos deal on hold, reluctant to hand billions of pounds to a foreign government while cutting benefits at home. There was talk of how, under the influence of his no-nonsense enforcers, Pat McFadden and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer was becoming more sensitive to voters. Just as the foreign aid budget had been cut to increase defence spending, so we were told to expect hard-edged policies on immigration, net zero and welfare. But, when the moment came, Labour returned to its comfort zone. Instead of cancelling the payments to Mauritius, it cancelled its sole attempt to trim the benefits bill, namely the removal of the winter fuel allowance from all but the poorest pensioners. At that moment, any hopes of a more fiscally responsible Labour Government dissolved. All those briefings to the effect that Labour would act where the Tories lacked public trust – cracking down on bogus sicknotes, ending the state's monolithic control of healthcare – were exposed as wishful thinking. When push came to shove, Labour would not challenge the prejudices of its core constituency. That core constituency is no longer the working class. Rather, it is what we might call the perking class, made up of those who depend directly or indirectly on state handouts: quangocrats, BBC employees, civil servants, human rights lawyers, white-collar shop stewards. A subset of the perking class is the shirking class: people who will vote against any party that makes it tougher to get signed off work. If Labour could not slow, even slightly, the ballooning of the state pensions bill, we can forget about Liz Kendall's benefits cuts. The pensioners who would have lost their winter fuel payments were largely Tories. The working-age people who watch YouTube videos on how to qualify for invalidity payments are Labour. Here was a vision of the next four years: a Labour Government prepared to spill the cash in every direction while doing nothing to generate more wealth. Mauritius was paid to take over territory that it had already been paid for renouncing. The EU was paid for graciously taking over our food standards – just in time for its trade war with the US, our chief export destination. Meanwhile, the welfare bill continued to grow. We are heading for national penury. Labour is not just expanding the state, giving pay rises to its public-sector friends while making their work-from-home arrangements permanent. It is simultaneously driving taxpayers to less punitive jurisdictions. Ministers seem not to understand why there might be a problem with pushing out a millionaire every 45 minutes. Leftist commentators positively cheered when it was reported that Britain had suffered the largest fall in the number of billionaires since records began. But who do they imagine is picking up the departing plutocrats' share of the tax bill? In any case, it is not just plutocrats. The real story, masked by our net immigration figures, is that we are also losing young entrepreneurs at every level. Never mind hedgies and property moguls. Beauticians, fitness instructors, IT consultants and estate agents are emigrating in pursuit of higher salaries, lower taxes and better weather. Many nurses in the UAE's top hospitals come from Scotland, as do a lot of the doctors. Who can blame them? Their colleagues in the UK are gearing up for yet another strike because what the Government manages to squeeze from the private sector is never enough. We train medical students expensively only to watch them cross the seas for better pay and conditions – in practice, if not in theory, ending their student loan repayments. Their places are taken by unskilled immigrants, most of whom become a net drain on the Exchequer. So the vicious cycle continues: higher tax rates, lower revenues, worse public services and a deterioration of the workforce. What might break the cycle? The first challenge is to forge a credible opposition. I don't intend to repeat all my arguments for a Tory/Reform entente. I have been periodically making that case in these pages since last year, but few in either party want to hear it. I will simply observe that, if I were to anonymise the reactions of the two parties to the EU and Chagos deals this week, you would not be able to tell which was which. Their divisions are rooted in past grudges, not present policy. Still, let's suppose that the two Right-of-centre parties managed to form a parliamentary majority. Do they have what it takes to nudge us out of our nosedive? To get back to the growth that we enjoyed before the massive expansion of the state under Gordon Brown, we need to cut government spending by a third. Nothing in either the Conservative or Reform programmes suggests that they are prepared for the radical solutions that the moment demands. Neither party backed Labour's mild reduction in pensioner benefits. Both theoretically favour smaller government; both oppose specific cuts. To be fair, they are accurately representing their voters. When the condition is as serious as ours, and the treatment so unpleasant, sufferers will often cast around for quack alternatives. Angela Rayner pretends we can solve our problems through even higher taxes – taxes of the most anti-competitive sort, falling mainly on savers. Reform and the Tories pretend that we can get the savings we need from foreign aid or efficiency drives or scrapping DEI programmes. The truth is that we need to abolish entire departments, halve the state payroll and remove the Government from swathes of public life. We need to dismantle the Blairite juridical state that prevents elected governments from implementing their promises. We need to repeal the laws on which that state rests – the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act, the Climate Change Act – and the quangos they spawned. We need to let ministers appoint their own senior officials, and to allow the Lord Chancellor to remove activist judges. We need to overhaul the immigration system, automatically removing illegal entrants and letting them appeal against that decision only afterwards and from overseas. We need to replace the NHS with Singapore-style individual healthcare accounts. Instead of penalising our private schools, we should be replicating their success in the state sector by introducing school vouchers. We should scrap the EU-era tariffs and regulations that, five years on, still clog up our books. We should replace the ECHR with a Bill of Rights that would restrict itself to guaranteeing our basic liberties: free speech, free association, free contract, free worship and equality before the law: no more protected characteristics. Simply to list these things is to see how far any party or, indeed, public opinion, is from them. Even before 2020, Britain was in an authoritarian mood. Since the dreadful lockdowns, the state has become, for many, a first rather than a last resort. An ugly phrase kept coming into my head this week: De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, or On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain. It was the name of a tract by a fifth- or sixth-century Welsh monk, Gildas, who chronicled the destruction of his country by the invading Anglo-Saxons. To Gildas, the barbarians were simply an instrument of divine justice. It was the sinful Britons who had brought the disaster on themselves. Is there time to turn aside? Are we ready to vote for candidates who offer hard truths rather than sweet delusions? Are we prepared to accept that public spending is limited by the laws of scarcity, not the meanness of politicians? Perhaps. Or perhaps, like the Britons of Gildas's time, we have already left it too late. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
We are heading for economic ruin, and no political party has what it takes to stop this
What a dreadful week. For the first time, I find myself wondering whether there will be anything left to salvage. I don't mean for Sir Keir Starmer. No, I mean for Britain. Everything that elevated us above the run of nations is being lost: our competitiveness, our sovereignty, our credit-worthiness, our prestige. We are diminished morally, financially and, after the Chagos surrender, physically. At the start of the week, a different future looked possible. Labour had put the Chagos deal on hold, reluctant to hand billions of pounds to a foreign government while cutting benefits at home. There was talk of how, under the influence of his no-nonsense enforcers, Pat McFadden and Morgan McSweeney, Starmer was becoming more sensitive to voters. Just as the foreign aid budget had been cut to increase defence spending, so we were told to expect hard-edged policies on immigration, net zero and welfare. But, when the moment came, Labour returned to its comfort zone. Instead of cancelling the payments to Mauritius, it cancelled its sole attempt to trim the benefits bill, namely the removal of the winter fuel allowance from all but the poorest pensioners. At that moment, any hopes of a more fiscally responsible Labour Government dissolved. All those briefings to the effect that Labour would act where the Tories lacked public trust – cracking down on bogus sicknotes, ending the state's monolithic control of healthcare – were exposed as wishful thinking. When push came to shove, Labour would not challenge the prejudices of its core constituency. That core constituency is no longer the working class. Rather, it is what we might call the perking class, made up of those who depend directly or indirectly on state handouts: quangocrats, BBC employees, civil servants, human rights lawyers, white-collar shop stewards. A subset of the perking class is the shirking class: people who will vote against any party that makes it tougher to get signed off work. If Labour could not slow, even slightly, the ballooning of the state pensions bill, we can forget about Liz Kendall's benefits cuts. The pensioners who would have lost their winter fuel payments were largely Tories. The working-age people who watch YouTube videos on how to qualify for invalidity payments are Labour. Here was a vision of the next four years: a Labour Government prepared to spill the cash in every direction while doing nothing to generate more wealth. Mauritius was paid to take over territory that it had already been paid for renouncing. The EU was paid for graciously taking over our food standards – just in time for its trade war with the US, our chief export destination. Meanwhile, the welfare bill continued to grow. We are heading for national penury. Labour is not just expanding the state, giving pay rises to its public-sector friends while making their work-from-home arrangements permanent. It is simultaneously driving taxpayers to less punitive jurisdictions. Ministers seem not to understand why there might be a problem with pushing out a millionaire every 45 minutes. Leftist commentators positively cheered when it was reported that Britain had suffered the largest fall in the number of billionaires since records began. But who do they imagine is picking up the departing plutocrats' share of the tax bill? In any case, it is not just plutocrats. The real story, masked by our net immigration figures, is that we are also losing young entrepreneurs at every level. Never mind hedgies and property moguls. Beauticians, fitness instructors, IT consultants and estate agents are emigrating in pursuit of higher salaries, lower taxes and better weather. Many nurses in the UAE's top hospitals come from Scotland, as do a lot of the doctors. Who can blame them? Their colleagues in the UK are gearing up for yet another strike because what the Government manages to squeeze from the private sector is never enough. We train medical students expensively only to watch them cross the seas for better pay and conditions – in practice, if not in theory, ending their student loan repayments. Their places are taken by unskilled immigrants, most of whom become a net drain on the Exchequer. So the vicious cycle continues: higher tax rates, lower revenues, worse public services and a deterioration of the workforce. What might break the cycle? The first challenge is to forge a credible opposition. I don't intend to repeat all my arguments for a Tory/Reform entente. I have been periodically making that case in these pages since last year, but few in either party want to hear it. I will simply observe that, if I were to anonymise the reactions of the two parties to the EU and Chagos deals this week, you would not be able to tell which was which. Their divisions are rooted in past grudges, not present policy. Still, let's suppose that the two Right-of-centre parties managed to form a parliamentary majority. Do they have what it takes to nudge us out of our nosedive? To get back to the growth that we enjoyed before the massive expansion of the state under Gordon Brown, we need to cut government spending by a third. Nothing in either the Conservative or Reform programmes suggests that they are prepared for the radical solutions that the moment demands. Neither party backed Labour's mild reduction in pensioner benefits. Both theoretically favour smaller government; both oppose specific cuts. To be fair, they are accurately representing their voters. When the condition is as serious as ours, and the treatment so unpleasant, sufferers will often cast around for quack alternatives. Angela Rayner pretends we can solve our problems through even higher taxes – taxes of the most anti-competitive sort, falling mainly on savers. Reform and the Tories pretend that we can get the savings we need from foreign aid or efficiency drives or scrapping DEI programmes. The truth is that we need to abolish entire departments, halve the state payroll and remove the Government from swathes of public life. We need to dismantle the Blairite juridical state that prevents elected governments from implementing their promises. We need to repeal the laws on which that state rests – the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act, the Climate Change Act – and the quangos they spawned. We need to let ministers appoint their own senior officials, and to allow the Lord Chancellor to remove activist judges. We need to overhaul the immigration system, automatically removing illegal entrants and letting them appeal against that decision only afterwards and from overseas. We need to replace the NHS with Singapore-style individual healthcare accounts. Instead of penalising our private schools, we should be replicating their success in the state sector by introducing school vouchers. We should scrap the EU-era tariffs and regulations that, five years on, still clog up our books. We should replace the ECHR with a Bill of Rights that would restrict itself to guaranteeing our basic liberties: free speech, free association, free contract, free worship and equality before the law: no more protected characteristics. Simply to list these things is to see how far any party or, indeed, public opinion, is from them. Even before 2020, Britain was in an authoritarian mood. Since the dreadful lockdowns, the state has become, for many, a first rather than a last resort. An ugly phrase kept coming into my head this week: De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, or On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain. It was the name of a tract by a fifth- or sixth-century Welsh monk, Gildas, who chronicled the destruction of his country by the invading Anglo-Saxons. To Gildas, the barbarians were simply an instrument of divine justice. It was the sinful Britons who had brought the disaster on themselves. Is there time to turn aside? Are we ready to vote for candidates who offer hard truths rather than sweet delusions? Are we prepared to accept that public spending is limited by the laws of scarcity, not the meanness of politicians? Perhaps. Or perhaps, like the Britons of Gildas's time, we have already left it too late.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Chinese takeover of UK smoke alarm maker triggers national security alert
National security restrictions have been placed on a tiny British manufacturer of smoke alarms after it was taken over by a state-owned Chinese company. Pat McFadden, minister for the Cabinet Office, issued a notice banning Kent-based FireBlitz Extinguisher from selling its own internet-connected devices and from sharing data with 'certain entities'. The order was imposed through the National Security and Investment Act after the company was acquired by Canadian-based Maple Armor, which is in turn part of Beijing-headquartered fire alarm company Jade Bird. Jade Bird's largest shareholder is Peking University, which like other Chinese academic institutions has close links with the country's communist government. Weimin Cai, who is Jade Bird's chairman and founded the business in 2001, has also been listed as a director of FireBlitz since April 2024, according to Companies House. No explicit reason was given for the UK Government's restrictions on FireBlitz. However, under the 2021 act, ministers have wide-ranging powers to intervene in takeovers that are seen to pose potential risks to national security. The Cabinet Office said Mr McFadden had deemed the restrictions 'necessary and proportionate' following 'a detailed national security assessment'. A spokesman said: 'The National Security and Investment Act enables the government to continue championing open investment while protecting national security. 'As you would expect, we cannot comment further given the quasi-judicial nature of the Government's investment screening powers.' Such orders are usually issued to tackle either imminent security risks or perceived risks that might arise in future. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by FireBlitz, Maple Armor or Jade Bird. FireBlitz's products are used by a string of fire and rescue services across the country, as well as other public bodies. It secured a joint contract worth up to £40m in 2015 to supply smoke alarms and hard-wired alarms to YPO, a major supplier to the public sector, as well as another joint contract worth up to £30m in 2021 to supply smoke alarms to all of the country's fire services. The Government's order restricts what kinds of devices the company can sell in future and how it uses data. It bans FireBlitz from developing, manufacturing or marketing its own 'internet of things' devices – products that can connect to the internet and wirelessly transmit information to each other – or sell them in partnership with companies based in countries 'outside of a pre-approved list'. The company was also banned from sharing data it collects from any internet-connected devices with any other entities. One cyber security expert said that digitally-enabled fire alarms could theoretically pose a risk as they could be remotely accessed and used for snooping or to gain access secure buildings. Ken Munro, founder of Pen Test Partners, said such alarms are typically connected to 'smart' door systems and automatically disengage the locks when a fire is detected in a building, so that people can escape safely. He said: 'So if you want to break in somewhere, you just trigger the alarm remotely, and it unlocks all the doors.' Internet connected smoke alarms also amounted to 'a sensor in every room', he added. 'Who's to say what's inside that smoke sensor? It's going to be networked, so it's going to be somewhere on the core network. It's going to have an interface, so could easily end up being a backdoor, particularly if it's cloud connected. 'So therefore, you've got a fire alarm that's probably connected to a cloud [computing server]. And that cloud's probably in China somewhere, if it's Chinese.' China has previously been accused by Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, of espionage on an 'epic scale' and MPs have called for the country to be designated as a threat to Britain. There is no suggestion that Jade Bird or FireBlitz is engaged in espionage. FireBlitz was contacted for comment. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Scotsman
21-05-2025
- Business
- Scotsman
You do a fire drill, so do a cyber attack drill
Security should be updated regularly and embedded into the fabric of any business 24/7, writes Douglas McLachlan Sign up to our Scotsman Money newsletter, covering all you need to know to help manage your money. Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Cyber attacks are a shock for any business, but they are no longer a complete surprise given their prevalence – and the devastating high profile impact in recent years. This week though, with attacks on beloved British brands, cyber security is more in the public consciousness than ever. Some of the biggest players on the UK high street have fallen victim to cybercriminals and it has shaken customers, leaving many with questions and even leaving some without food. The attack on Marks & Spencer has been branded a 'wake-up call' by cabinet minister Pat McFadden, who rightly stated that 'cyber security is not a luxury but an absolute necessity'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, but it doesn't mean all businesses (large or small) must spend millions on complex cyber security systems. When it comes to implementing robust cyber security practices, the '80/20 rule' is a good yardstick – and the good news is that the 20per cent refers to technology and IT systems. The Marks & Spencer store in Argyle Street, Glasgow. The recent cyber attack has left the business reeling (Picture: John Devlin) The attacks have been operationally detrimental, impacting everything from online ordering and in-store experience, to the availability of meal deals and concerns over compromised data and reputational damage. Businesses who want to robustly protect themselves, rather than footing a huge bill and incurring significant reputational damage should the worst happen, must look at organisational culture and management. Here are five things businesses can do to get the balance right when it comes to protecting against cyber attacks. Never assume 'it wouldn't happen to us' Your first mistake is thinking your business isn't 'interesting' to cyber criminals. Many attacks aren't as targeted as you think – hackers often look for potentially lucrative 'low hanging fruit'. If you hold data, you're a potential target, and spending some time and effort up front to prepare could save legal headaches, money – and potentially your entire operation – in the long run. Douglas McLachlan, Partner – Head of Data & Technology, Anderson Strathern LLP Think about 'when' it will happen, not 'if' it will happen Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad One of the most damaging allegations levelled at M&S has been a lack of business continuity planning. Worryingly, I suspect many organisations are in a similar boat. Would you be caught without a fire safety and evacuation plan? Of course not. And while the threat of a cyber attack may not be physical, it can do irreparable damage. Get a plan together, online and in hard copy – remember, if your system goes down, you need to access it to action it. Treat it like a fire drill Having a plan is all well and good, but the key personnel must be able to execute it seamlessly in the event of an attack. Map out potential vulnerabilities and rehearse for the worst-case scenario – sealing the breach, beginning recovery, assessing and planning the next steps, establishing reporting lines, containing the attack and mitigating the damage. Use the drills to investigate, analyse and learn lessons. Ensure the right people are involved too – CEOs, CTOs, legal, IT and communications at a minimum. Keeping them in the loop is vital in ensuring the right people are able to handle risky situations, should they arise. It only takes one person being in the dark on how to approach a crisis to potentially escalate things. Create a culture of compliance A culture of awareness and compliance cannot be underestimated when it comes to increasing protections. Your staff are likely to be your biggest vulnerability – responding to scam emails, sharing or writing down passwords, or failing to carry out software updates. There must be a top-down approach that starts with the board and senior management, with an emphasis on removing any 'fear culture' around making mistakes. Introduce phishing tests and make sure policies like GDPR are baked into everything you do – cyber security must be part of the business DNA, not an add-on. Cyber security is too important to leave to the IT Department – it's everyone's job. Limit your liability A huge part of the 'management' element is contract management. The legal side of cyber security cannot be left to chance – you must ensure clear, robust contracts with customers and suppliers. A business that fails to manage its contracts properly can get stuck in a risky position. Just like 'piggy in the middle', it could be fully liable for its customers – having to reimburse delayed or damaged items or compensate for compromised personal data – but only able to claim limited compensation from suppliers. The key is limiting your own liabilities while ensuring fair compensation for your own business. And review your contracts on a regular basis – in line with reviewing your vulnerabilities and updating your business continuity planning. While some level of spend is required – on anti-virus, software updates and cyber insurance – people are crucial to protecting any business. Having the right culture, procedures, tools and contracts in place can significantly help to defend your company against cyber threats. But even with all the protection in the world, it's unlikely businesses will be able to avoid them forever. The question isn't if you'll get hit – it's when - and how badly? Having a robust training, skills and communications approach is the key to mitigating any damage. Cybersecurity should always be on the Board agenda, updated regularly, and embedded into the fabric of any business 24/7. Businesses might have a closing times, but hackers don't.
