Latest news with #The Telegraph
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
How 15,000 family businesses could collapse in pensions tax raid
Rachel Reeves's pensions raid could drive thousands of family businesses to collapse, experts have warned, as inheritance tax bills soar into the millions. Unspent pensions will be dragged into the inheritance tax net from 2027 following changes announced in last year's Budget and confirmed this month. The move will create major problems for around 15,000 businesses that run their own individual pension schemes, which will now attract the same 40pc death duty when members pass away, accountants have warned. One businessman told The Telegraph his children would be hit with a bill of more than £10m, while Gary Smith, of Evelyn Partners, said it was 'another attack' on business owners. During her maiden Budget, Ms Reeves announced that pensions would form part of someone's estate from April 2027. The move will leave many grieving families facing bills of up to 67pc when inheritance tax and income tax are both payable, while some could pay over 90pc. It could also have serious consequences for businesses that run a small self-administered scheme (SSAS), which are pension schemes set up by directors that usually admit up to 11 employees. In addition to accepting contributions and making pension payments to retirees, the schemes are often used to buy commercial property, such as the business's own premises, and pay the resulting rental income to its members. However, Ms Reeves's changes mean that when someone dies, such as the business owner, their share of the SSAS will now be liable for inheritance tax – with just six months to pay. One businessman in the North of England, now partly retired, owns a family-owned logistics business. Speaking to The Telegraph anonymously, he said his children were now facing an eight-figure inheritance tax bill when he and his wife pass away. He said: 'The proposed change is the breaking of a promise made 50 years ago. 'The SSAS provides for retirement, but the other benefit was that it was inheritance tax-free. I have two children and I thought, 'That's a great way of investing in the business, providing for retirement and providing for the retirement of my children and grandchildren.' 'Now, when my wife and I die, the fund that's built up over these will be taxed, and 40pc will be paid to the state. My concern is not that future pensions will be taxed – it's that the promise made at the start of our working lives must be respected.' When the news broke in the Budget, he immediately rang his son to discuss the consequences. They had already purchased one property with the scheme, which he fears will have to be sold when he passes away. Since then, they have had to turn down the opportunity to buy another one priced at £6m. He added: 'To pay the inheritance tax bill, they'll have to probably sell property, probably at fire sale values. They're then going to have to pay any income tax on that money, 40pc or 45pc, and the 40pc inheritance tax. It's scandalous. It's daylight robbery. 'Just yesterday, we had an estate agent on the phone about another property we'd looked at a few years ago. He asked if we were still interested and we said, 'Why would we?' We'd find it very difficult because we're having to accumulate cash for the day that my wife and I die.' 'If there was a playbook of how to stop growth, the Government is ticking every box. Why would they understand the mindset of an entrepreneurial family owning a business? None of the Cabinet have ever been in one. 'They're just kicking us in the teeth wherever they can. It's sickening for me.' Gary Smith, of Evelyn Partners, said: 'It is further punishment for those retirees who have prudently saved into their pensions throughout their lifetime, purchased a commercial property and are using the rental income to maintain their retirement lifestyle. 'It is also indirectly a further attack on business owners, who have already seen an increase in National Insurance contributions, their shares become subject to inheritance tax from April 2026 and now potentially having to raise capital to buy properties back from pension funds at a time of elevated borrowing costs. 'This will have real consequences for the 12,500 to 15,000 small businesses that currently rent properties from pension schemes, and ultimately could result in job losses or business closures.' A Treasury spokesman said: 'We continue to incentivise pensions savings for their intended purpose – of funding retirement instead of them being openly used as a vehicle to transfer wealth – and more than 90pc of estates each year will continue to pay no inheritance tax after these and other changes.'
Daily Mail
4 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Taliban fighters 'have been brought to the UK on secret airlift flights' after Afghanistan data breach cover-up revealed by the Mail
Taliban fighters have been brought to the UK on secret airlift flights after the Afghanistan data breach cover-up revealed by the Mail. This newspaper revealed earlier this month a British military official catastrophically wrongly shared a database of 100,000 Afghans who had applied for sanctuary in the UK. The scheme was set up for those who worked with British forces to flee the murderous Taliban - so the disastrous leak amounted to giving a 'kill list' to the vengeful jihadist warlords. The breach was discovered by the Mail in August 2023 - and so far, 18,500 of the Afghans it imperilled have been flown to Britain or are on their way in taxpayer-funded jets, under a covert airlift, codenamed Operation Rubific. A total of 23,900 are earmarked for arrival. They are living in MOD homes or hotels until permanent homes are found. Tens of thousands of others will be left behind in Afghanistan and will have to fend for themselves against vengeful Taliban warlords. But now, former Taliban fighters themselves have reportedly been brought to this country under the airlift scheme, The Telegraph reports. Sex offenders, corrupt officials and individuals put in prison under Afghanistan's US-led coalition are also among those accepted for resettlement in the UK. It is because they were on the leaked list of names of Afghans who had applied to come to the UK. Several individuals on list had also previously had their applications rejected for violent or sexual assaults. A 23-month High Court super-injunction, only lifted this month, previously prevented the media reporting on the leak and the airlift operation, keeping the public in the dark. Secret hearings in the High Court have also heard how Parliament has been deliberately kept oblivious – or even 'misled', as a judge was told. Senior sources have now said people with Taliban connections managed to infiltrate the evacuation scheme and get fighters from the militant group to the UK. They did so in some cases by naming the Islamic fundamentalists as relatives or dependents who would need to accompany them to this country. One Afghan official revealed: 'We had civilians in our office who had clear ties with the Taliban.' Another explained it was 'corrupt' Afghan officials who were getting people with Taliban connections to Britain, on the scheme intended for actual UK allies. It was facilitated by UK officials tending to rely on these corrupt Afghan representatives for advice, they added: 'It's depressing.' Another said: 'They are not good for Britain. They were fighting against British forces and killed lots of Brits but now are being fed by Brits in London. 'They have British blood on their hands.' The Ministry of Defence has previously revealed some Afghans who entered the UK on the scheme brought more than 20 relatives with them. Four such Taliban sympathisers who are said to have entered the UK under the airlift scheme have reportedly been named so far. One, who came to this country before Kabul fell in 2021, is understood to have arranged for other Taliban-connected relatives to accompany him. The MoD confirmed he is living in Britain - but did not confirm or deny whether his Taliban sympathiser family followed him. It also confirmed another man - who was jailed for four years for selling Coalition weapons to the Taliban before his release when Kabul fell - is living in the UK too. A third person, an alleged sexual offender, is understood not to have moved here yet - but his case is being worked through, according to defence sources. The final individual is a British passport holder who allegedly vouched for Taliban sympathisers getting airlifted to the UK. An MoD spokesperson did not comment directly on the claim this fourth person brought Taliban-connected people to the UK. They simply said vetting procedures include biographic and document checks, not just recommendations. It has previously been reported former soldier and reservist Robert Clark, who worked on the scheme, had been told by MoD officials full vetting had not been completed. The Ministry of Defence has been contacted for comment. It comes after the horrifying discovery Taliban warlords are on a vengeful killing spree against hundreds of Afghans after the British Government lost the top secret database. One man was shot by a gunman who stepped from an alley earlier this month and fired four bullets at close range into his chest – one of three assassinations in the past seven days. Panic has been spreading since Afghans were officially informed their personal details had been lost in the UK's worst ever data blunder, putting 100,000 'at risk of death'. Thousands received 'notifications' from His Majesty's Government saying sorry, and adding: 'We understand this news may be concerning.' It is not known if the Taliban actually has the database, which includes names of Afghans who helped the UK, as well as members of the British intelligence community, it is understood. But one Afghan soldier, who fled to Britain for fear of retribution, believes his brother was gunned down in the street this week because the militant group was aware of his affiliation to the UK. He said: 'If or when the Taliban have this list, then killings will increase – and it will be Britain's fault. There will be many more executions like the one on Monday.' The Mail has seen a dossier of more than 300 murders that include those who worked with the UK and some who had applied for the UK scheme, the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP). The murdered include Colonel Shafiq Ahmad Khan, a senior Afghan intelligence officer who had worked alongside British forces. The 61-year-old grandfather was lured into a trap and shot twice in the heart on his doorstep in May 2022. Others include commando Ahjmadzai, who applied for sanctuary in the UK, and soldier Qassim, both killed in April 2023.
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Health
- Telegraph
This killer of men can no longer be ignored
In medical circles, prostate cancer is often known as 'the invisible killer'. Its early symptoms are hard to detect and it may remain undiagnosed until too late. Some 10,000 men a year are diagnosed with prostate cancer only after at least three visits to their GP. And every year, some 12,000 lives are cut short unnecessarily by the failure to treat this hidden menace before it has spread beyond the prostate gland. So The Telegraph is proud to announce a new campaign calling for a targeted National Health Service screening programme for prostate cancer. It is nothing short of a scandal that such a programme does not already exist. We ardently hope that you, our readers, will join us in a mission to right this wrong and thereby save, over time, many thousands of lives. The importance of early detection and diagnosis has been demonstrated by the huge improvement in survival rates for breast cancer since mass screening for women aged 50-70 was introduced by the NHS in 1988. Since then, it has reduced deaths from breast cancer by at least 20 per cent. The NHS is now extending breast screening to women in their 40s and 70s. Yet there is still no equivalent mass programme for prostate cancer, which is the most common form of cancer for men and the second biggest killer. Middle-aged men are notoriously reluctant to visit the doctor. Prostate cancer presents a particular problem, because patients are embarrassed and may have unjustified fears that a medical examination would be unpleasant. A mass screening programme would help to remove the myths and stigma. The reality is that PSA blood tests — which are simple, cheap and painless — should be routinely offered to patients who are at risk of prostate cancer, especially if they have a family history of the disease. Yet in reality many GPs seem reluctant to do so: more than 5 per cent of prostate sufferers had to make five surgery visits before being offered a PSA test. The answer to this injustice is to roll out a national screening programme, as Prostate Cancer Research and many experts have long advocated. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, has lent his support to the Telegraph campaign, but the decision lies with the UK National Screening Committee. We can only hope that its members recognise the overwhelming body of evidence in favour of screening for prostate cancer. The Telegraph will play its part in making sure that the invisible killer can no longer be ignored.
Russia Today
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Ex-PM ‘sad' Brits losing interest in Ukraine
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said he is 'quite sad' about what he describes as waning interest in the UK in supporting Ukraine. Speaking to The Telegraph at the Ukrainian embassy in London on Saturday, he lamented that support for Ukraine in the UK is declining. 'The interest in Ukraine and the appetite is so low nowadays. I find it quite sad,' Johnson said. When asked to evaluate how well current Prime Minister Keir Starmer's administration has handled the Ukraine conflict, he responded: 'There are a lot of domestic issues that are very difficult right now, and you can see why they're distracted.' Support among the British public for aid to Ukraine has fallen in recent years, polls suggest. A YouGov poll from February 2023 showed that nearly three-quarters of respondents believed the UK was not providing Kiev with enough aid, whereas only 3% thought it was giving too much. However, an Ipsos survey from this past February indicated that just over half of Britons supported the current level of aid, whereas nearly one in five said too much support was being provided. The UK has committed £18.3 billion ($24.5 billion) in total aid to Ukraine, including £13 billion ($17.4 billion) in military assistance. London has increasingly lobbied to deploy 'peacekeeping' troops to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire as part of a so-called 'coalition of the willing.' Last week, Starmer's government announced that the coalition would set up permanent headquarters in Paris to coordinate with Kiev to 'regenerate land forces' for Ukraine and 'secure' its skies with fighter jets if there is a cessation in the hostilities. Moscow has stressed that it views the initiative as preparation for a military intervention and warned that it views any NATO troops – under the guise of peacekeepers or not – in Ukraine as hostile. Johnson resigned as UK prime minister in 2022, a few months after the escalation of the conflict. He torpedoed the first peace talks between Moscow and Kiev in Istanbul that year by convincing the latter to withdraw from the negotiations, according to the Ukrainian head negotiator at the time, David Arakhamia.
Telegraph
19-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Starmer and the EU are still trying to punish Britain for Brexit
We are reaching the scorched earth stage. Labour senses that it will lose the next election. The EU senses it, too. So both sides have decided to lock the UK into its subordinate status, to sign 'Farage-proof' agreements that future governments will struggle to unpick. The Telegraph has seen the texts on agriculture and energy policy that Sir Keir Starmer agreed in May. No wonder the PM was reluctant to get into specifics. Britain has accepted permanent and unilateral EU control of its food and energy regulations. Worse, it is agreeing to pay for the privilege of being slapped about. The ins and outs of the deals, unlike Starmer's soft-soap salesmanship at the time, are brutal. We are to become the EU's helots. 'Neither agreement should give the United Kingdom the right to participate in the Union's decision-making,' the text proclaims, without diplomatic niceties. Yet, at the same time: 'The United Kingdom should contribute financially to supporting the relevant costs associated with the Union's work in these policy areas. This includes financial contribution to inter alia the functioning of the relevant Union agencies, systems and databases.' To see how abusive the relationship is, try to picture it the other way around. Imagine a British Government insisting that trade with the EU is contingent on Brussels making financial transfers to the Treasury; that disputes will be arbitrated by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom; that Brussels must label its goods to avoid leakage into Northern Ireland; that British fishermen should have access to EU waters; that the EU might be allowed to defend British interests militarily, but only if it pays for the privilege; that any change in future British regulations will automatically be shadowed on the Continent. Such things are, of course, unimaginable. British Euro-fanatics maintain that this asymmetry simply reflects the difference in the size of our economies, but that is nonsense. We are the sixth-largest economy in the world, for Heaven's sake, and we are accepting terms that far smaller EU trading partners would not countenance. Indeed, nowhere else in the world are trade deals dependent on the deliberate subjection of one of the contracting parties. Australia and New Zealand have perhaps the most comprehensive trade agreement on the planet, but it would not occur to either side that the Kiwis should make budgetary transfers or hand over their fishing grounds as a participation fee. Talking of which, New Zealand has a mutual recognition deal on agrifoods with the EU of a kind not uncommon among developed economies. Each side agrees to trust the other's regulators. If a consignment of Danish bacon is approved by local inspectors, that is good enough for the Kiwis, and vice versa. There was no reason for the EU not to have a similar deal with Britain, whose food standards were not simply compatible with its own, but identical. But Eurocrats were feeling vindictive. They wanted to punish us for the referendum. More than this, they fretted that, if Britain was allowed to opt out of the more unscientific and onerous Brussels regulations, it might import food from the rest of the world. It might, for example, go back to buying its beef from Australia and Canada rather than Ireland and France. So Eurocrats demanded 'dynamic alignment' (an odd phrase, few things being less dynamic than the EU). They insisted that the UK should not simply meet EU standards when selling to the EU, but should impose them domestically. And they insisted that the deal should be open-ended, so that future changes in those regulations would be automatically applied in Britain. The last Government was having none of it. It was well aware of the statistics. EU food exports to the UK were worth around four times as much as the reverse. And many British exports were in categories where safety checks did not apply: Scotch whisky, for example. It was Brussels that was, in diplomatic parlance, the demander here. The UK buys around £40 billion of EU food each year – a quarter of everything Europe exports. We take twice as much as the EU's next biggest customer (the US), and four times as much as the one after that (China). If Brussels wanted a New Zealand-style mutual recognition deal, said the Conservative Government, great; but the idea that Britain would invite foreign officials to regulate its domestic food standards was a non-starter. Then came Starmer and everything changed. The hapless Labour leader was not interested in cost-benefit analyses. Rather, he approached the EU in the spirit of a mediaeval penitent, a man who wanted the sin of Brexit to be scourged from him. Deep down, he shared the European view that his country deserved to pay a price. So he reversed the previous Government's position and invited Brussels to tell him what to do. More than this, he agreed to pay for it. As the text spells out: 'The United Kingdom should bear appropriate costs for participation in the common sanitary and phytosanitary area and for the implementation of the agreement to link the United Kingdom and the Union's greenhouse emissions trading systems.' In exchange for what? Insults, chiefly. Again, try to imagine it the other way around. Imagine that, at every summit with a European leader, the British began by saying how wrong the other country was to allow its laws to be set abroad. 'I deplore Germany's decision to hand over its democracy to unelected Brussels functionaries, but I accept the decision of the German electorate.' You can't, can you? Yet we barely notice any more when European leaders say, as the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz did at his summit with Starmer this week: 'The UK, and I personally deplore this deeply, decided to leave the European Union.' The reason he gets away with it, of course, is that Starmer agrees. So, indeed, does the Cabinet. The Europhile think-tank, UK in a Changing Europe, writes quarterly reports monitoring the extent of divergence between Britain and the EU. Its latest, published last week, finds an unprecedented degree of alignment across 21 areas including energy policy, fisheries, trade, energy and competition. The few areas in which Britain had been diverging – the freedom to grow precision crops, for example – are being brought into line. Leftists often have a false idea of what conservatives believe, and Labour came to office genuinely convinced that the Tories were rejecting collaboration with the EU out of xenophobia. As a Number 10 spokesman told this newspaper last week: 'The Tory method was making bad choices because they were stuck in the ideological treacle of the past. We're not going to continue that.' The truth – that Britain had pushed for close economic relations and had baulked only at the Carthaginian terms demanded by the other side – never entered Labour heads. Thinking that they were putting pragmatism above ideology, Labour accepted the EU's terms, to the incredulity of Brussels functionaries, who are now rushing to lock the deal in permanently. Britain's paltry asks – easier access for touring artists, equivalence for our financial services companies – were dropped during the talks. The sole claimed victory – the use of e-gates for British passport holders, something the EU could have done at any time, as Britain does for EU passports – turned out not to have been agreed. On the other hand, Brussels got absolutely everything it wanted, from guarantees against British competition and a UK defence commitment down to a British agreement to subsidise the university fees of EU students, something that matters enormously to the children of Eurocrats (Eurobrats, as it were). It was an EU clean sweep. So long, and thanks for all the fish. I suppose there is one silver lining. When, as seems inevitable, Labour's fiscal incontinence brings a full-scale financial crisis, not even the #FBPE halfwits will be able to blame Brexit.
