Ed Davey accuses care home trustee of embezzlement amid watchdog inquiry
Ed Davey has accused a trustee of a learning disability care home of embezzlement and called for watchdogs to take over the charity to resolve a crisis he described as “one my worst nightmares”.The Liberal Democrat leader’s intervention at prime minister’s questions came hours after the Guardian revealed the Charity Commission had opened a serious inquiry into concerns around financial mismanagement and potential misuse of funds at William Blake House.Families of residents at the Northamptonshire-based care home raised the alarm with the authorities after discovering that it faced imminent closure after running up a £1.6m unpaid tax bill and paying its chair of trustees £1m in consultancy fees.The home, one of only a handful of specialist providers of its kind in the country, cares for 22 adults with severe learning disabilities.
Most are non-verbal and require round-the-clock care.It relies on more than £3m a year in council and NHS funding.The Guardian revealed the parlous state of the charity’s finances this month, as well as the audacious bid by a group of families of residents to take over the running of its services after they lost confidence in the board of trustees.Davey told MPs: “It’s been revealed that a trustee of William Blake House, a care home for adults with profound disabilities, embezzled £1m.There are very few homes in the country that offer this sort of care and now it faces closure.
“As a father of a disabled son myself, can I tell the prime minister that this situation is one of my worst nightmares, and it’s one of the worst nightmares of many parents with disabled adult children,”Davey called for the Charity Commission to appoint an independent board to take over the running of William Blake House and for ministers to step in to persuade HMRC to halt a court action to wind up the charity due in five weeks’ time,He called on Keir Starmer to back a rescue plan put forward by a group of families with loved ones at William Blake House,Starmer agreed to meet the families, adding: “Can I thank him for raising this case, which is obviously a cause of considerable concern,”The Charity Commission has confirmed it will launch an inquiry examining “serious concerns around possible financial mismanagement” at William Blake House, including the robustness of its financial controls and whether the charity’s property is or has been put at risk.
It will also consider the charity’s handling of potential conflicts of interest involving trustees, whether its trustees have experienced any unauthorised personal benefit, and whether it has been run in line with its own governance rules,The inquiry is likely to examine payments totalling £1m in consultancy and strategy fees to a company solely owned by its chair, Bushra Hamid,The charity’s assets shrank from £920,000 to £200,000 between 2022 and 2024, while its auditors repeatedly warned trustees that the charity was not a viable business,William Blake House’s board has blamed its financial difficulties on high agency staff costs and the failure of local authorities to raise care fees in line with inflation,It plans to settle its tax debts by selling land to a developer.
A spokesperson for William Blake House said it was cooperating with the Charity Commission’s statutory inquiry.“This will be carried out in a professional and diligent manner so they can ascertain all the facts before drawing any conclusions,” they said.The commission’s decision to rapidly upgrade the status of its investigation into William Blake House to a formal inquiry came weeks after it opened a lesser regulatory check into the governance concerns at the charity.A formal section 46 inquiry, such as the one recently launched by the commission, is its most serious form of investigation.It is not in itself an indication of wrongdoing but reflects significant concerns over alleged misconduct or mismanagement in the running of a charity.
Treasury calls in Blair thinktank to advise on using AI across public services
Ministers have called in Tony Blair’s thinktank and private tech companies to guide them on deploying AI across the UK government in a move campaigners compared to “inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse”.James Murray, chief secretary to the Treasury, chaired a meeting on Wednesday with the director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the chair of IBM and senior executives at AI companies including Faculty AI, now part of Accenture, and Dex Hunter-Torricke, a former communications adviser at Google, Facebook and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.“These people are exactly who can help us create change across the public sector – giving us the hard truths on our approach to AI and advising where we need to prioritise our investment to support real efficiencies,” said Murray, who added that their advice will “feed into efficiency processes ahead of the next spending review”.The move came after the technology secretary, Liz Kendall, last month said the government’s goal was to “make Britain the fastest AI adoption country in the G7”.The Treasury said it showed it was committing “to private sector engagement on the deployment of artificial intelligence across the public sector so it can improve efficiency and productivity”
Facial recognition error prompts police to arrest Asian man for burglary 100 miles away
Police arrested a man for a burglary in a city he had never visited after face scanning software deployed across the UK confused him with another person of south Asian heritage.Alvi Choudhury, 26, a software engineer, was working at the home he shares with his parents in Southampton in January when police knocked on his door, handcuffed him and held him in custody for nearly 10 hours before releasing him at 2am.Thames Valley police had used automated facial recognition software which matched him with footage of a suspect of a £3,000 burglary 100 miles away in Milton Keynes, according to documents shared with the Guardian by Liberty Investigates.But the CCTV footage showed a noticeably younger man with different features apart from similar curly hair, said Choudhury, who was left confused about why he had been arrested.“I was very angry, because the kid looked about 10 years younger than me,” said Choudhury, who wears a beard
Tech legend Stewart Brand on Musk, Bezos and his extraordinary life: ‘We don’t need to passively accept our fate’
He was at the heart of 1960s counterculture, then paved the way for the libertarian mindset of Silicon Valley. At 87, Brand is still keen to ensure the world is maintained properly – not just today, but for the next 10,000 yearsThe Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.Stewart Brand thinks big and long
Signs of psychosis seen in Australian users’ interactions with AI chatbots, expert warns
A leading AI expert has warned some Australians are showing signs of psychosis or mania in their interactions with chatbots, arguing Silicon Valley is being “careless” with the technology amid a pursuit of profit.During an address at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Toby Walsh, scientia professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, said he believed the AI race will be both “boom and doom”, with some benefits.But his speech – a copy of which was provided to Guardian Australia – also warned about dangers he said had outraged him since the technology began maturing in recent years.“My childhood dreams are turning into a reality that is both good and bad,” he said in his prepared remarks.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailWalsh’s speech highlighted the legal case against OpenAI by the family of US teenager Adam Raine – along with its data that showed more than a million of its users each week send messages that include “explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent”
Reddit fined £14.5m in UK over use of under-13s’ data
The UK information regulator has fined the social news service Reddit £14.5m for using the data of children under the age of 13 unlawfully and potentially exposing them to inappropriate and harmful content.The hefty punishment from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the largest fine yet for a breach of children’s privacy and comes after the US-based company introduced age checks in July, including age verification to access mature content. Prior to this, the ICO said, there were “a large number of children under 13 on the platform and Reddit did not have a lawful basis for processing their personal information”.Reddit asks users to declare their age when opening an account but the ICO said relying on self-declaration presented risks to children as it was easy to bypass
‘A feedback loop with no brake’: how an AI doomsday report shook US markets
US stock markets have been hit by a further wave of AI jitters, this time from yet another viral – and completely speculative – warning about the impact of the technology on the world’s largest economy.The latest foreboding is from Citrini Research, a little-known US firm that provides insights on “transformative ‘megatrends’”. Its post on Substack, which it called a “scenario, not a prediction”, rattled investors by portraying a near future in which autonomous AI systems – or agents – upend the entire US economy, from jobs to markets and mortgages.Citrini’s scenario begins now and ends in June 2028, with US unemployment cresting over 10% and an Occupy Silicon Valley movement setting up camp outside OpenAI and Anthropic’s offices. In the interim, a series of events triggered by the widespread use of AI agents guts software companies and ripples outwards, hitting private credit and mortgages, and leading to an unchecked downward spiral
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