Two charities that received £1.1m from Sackler Trust kept anonymous to prevent ‘serious prejudice’
Two charities that received a combined total of more than £1,1m from the British charitable trust run by the Sackler family were kept out of its latest accounts to protect their reputations from “serious prejudice”,The trust, which draws on the Sackler fortune that came out of the US opioid crisis, gave £3,8m to arts, eduction and science bodies in 2024, according to its latest accounts, filed on New Year’s Eve,The largest named recipients – each receiving £250,000 – were Veterans Aid, which tackles homelessness in the ex-service community, and the Belvoir Cricket and Countryside Trust, which works to develop an appreciation for the British countryside and promotes a love of sport, especially cricket.
The Sackler Trust is shunned by leading arts bodies and others who have refused donations or stopped accepting them because of the Sackler family’s links to the US opioid crisis and the painkiller OxyContin,The National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Royal Opera House, Shakespeare’s Globe and Tate were among the institutions to cut ties or drop grants in the face of pressure over the family’s ownership and control of Purdue Pharma, the company that developed and aggressively marketed the addictive painkiller OxyContin,The trust announced in 2019 it was pausing all new donations, but quietly resumed doing so in 2020,Its latest accounts, as has been the case in recent years, exempts the names of a number of entities receiving grants,The accounts state: “The trust considers that further reporting will expose the recipients to serious prejudice and impair the furtherance of their charitable activities.
”Recipients who were named and who received £60,000 or more include Happy Day Ministries, Peterborough Asylum and Refugee Community Association, Waterlife Recovery Trust, Cliftonville Community Centre, Inside Job/Beating Time, Living Room, Mustard Tree and Not Beyond Redemption.Two recipients of grants – totalling £1,150,000 – were exempted from disclosure in the accounts filed to Companies House.A total of 98 grants were issued in 2024, compared with 69 in the previous year.The trust was committed to £7.4m of grants at the end of 2024, which included some carrying over from the previous year.
The trust gave £5.27m in grants in 2022.The Sackler Trust continues to be chaired by Dame Theresa Sackler, a former trustee of the V&A who sat on the Purdue board from 1993-2018.She is the widow of Mortimer Sackler, one of the three brothers who ran Purdue Pharma.Dame Theresa’s children – Michael, Marissa and Sophia – are trustees of the family charity, which has assets totalling £50m.
A US judge said in November he would approve Purdue Pharma’s latest deal to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids that includes some money for thousands of victims of the epidemic.The deal, overseen by the US bankruptcy judge Sean Lane, would require some of the multibillionaire members of the semi-reclusive Sackler family who own the company to contribute up to $7bn (£5bn) and give up ownership of the Connecticut-based company.Members of the Sackler family who own the privately held Purdue, which now-deceased members of the family grew into a specialist in pain treatment in the early 1990s, became philanthropists using the huge profits generated by sales of OxyContin.The Sackler family’s reputation took a dive when investigative journalism and activism exposed the company’s expansionist drive to increase prescriptions of the opioid despite growing addiction and deaths across the US.While the Sacklers have donated millions over the years to charitable interests, some have accused them of using the giving of money as a means of “reputation laundering”.
The Sackler Trust has been approached for comment.At the time of its move to pause the trust’s giving, Dame Theresa said in a statement issued on behalf of the trustees: “I am deeply saddened by the addiction crisis in America and support the actions Purdue Pharma is taking to help tackle the situation, whilst still rejecting the false allegations made against the company and several members of the Sackler family.”
Labour needs complete ‘reset’ to defeat Reform UK threat, says strategist
Keir Starmer does not have enough of a plan to defeat the “existential threat” that populism poses to UK democracy and should undertake a “fundamental reset”, New Labour’s former advertising strategist Sir Chris Powell has warned.Powell, who is the brother of Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser, warned there were just three years to stop the “new and terrifying threat” of populists, suggesting Reform UK could represent a danger to democracy and national institutions.Writing for the Guardian, he said: “Here in the UK, where is the urgently needed counter plan on a huge scale, to thwart and head off such an existential threat? It is simply not in place, nor does it appear to be even at the planning stage.“We are at a very dangerous moment. We simply cannot afford to allow Reform UK to have a free run, and become established and entrenched as a credible potential government in the minds of disenchanted voters
‘They misjudged Caerphilly’: how the Reform juggernaut backfired in Welsh byelection
Yuliia Bond works two jobs, raises two children and is studying at university. In the autumn, she also found time to take on Reform UK when it tried to win the Caerphilly byelection.Bond, a Ukrainian refugee who has settled in south Wales, said she could not remain silent as Reform tried to win the seat in the Senedd (Welsh parliament ).“Members of our Ukrainian community spoke up,” Bond said. “We challenged the disinformation because we didn’t want our neighbours to be misled into resenting us
Keir Starmer to woo voters and MPs with new year plan to cut cost of living
Keir Starmer will attempt to rescue his relationship with disillusioned voters and his own fractious MPs in a new year push to reduce the cost of living.The prime minister will give a speech in the coming days focusing on how his government is bringing down living costs, highlighting recent cuts to energy bills and interest rates and the end of the two-child benefit cap.He will reinforce the message with a series of new year drinks receptions for Labour MPs at Chequers as he hopes to dispel angst about local and devolved elections in 2026, at which the party is expecting heavy losses.In his new year message, the prime minister said voters would begin to see their lives improving in 2026 in what his chief adviser, Morgan McSweeney, has called “the year of proof”.Starmer said: “In 2026, the choices we’ve made will mean more people will begin to feel positive change in your bills, your communities and your health service
UK ministers accused of ‘embarrassing failures’ in Abd el-Fattah case
The government could have avoided “embarrassing failures” in the case of Alaa Abd el-Fattah by having a special envoy deal with complex cases involving Britons detained abroad, Emily Thornberry has said.The chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee criticised “serious shortcomings” in information sharing, which she said could have been resolved by having a dedicated official carry out background checks.Former foreign secretary David Lammy said in 2024 that the government would appoint an envoy to deal with “complex detention cases” involving Britons abroad but no such figure has been named.In a letter to the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, Thornberry said: “Had an envoy been established [in 2024] … it is clear to me that such embarrassing failures of due diligence and information sharing would have been avoided.“It would have been firmly within the envoy’s remit to carry out appropriate background and social media checks
Greens’ Polanski prepared to work with Burnham but not Starmer ‘to stop Reform’
The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, has said he would refuse to work with Keir Starmer but could work with Andy Burnham, Starmer’s potential rival for the Labour leadership, to keep Reform out of power.Polanski said he would not enter a political partnership with Labour under the current prime minister, but would consider it if the mayor of Greater Manchester took the helm.He told the Financial Times: “I could see the potential to work with Andy Burnham to stop Reform and to challenge the rise of the far right. I would rule it out with Keir Starmer, but I wouldn’t rule it out with Burnham.”A coalition would require the Greens getting an adequate number of seats at the next general election to make the party useful to Labour, and would also need Burnham to once again gain a seat as an MP
Zack Polanski offering voters fantasy solutions, says head of Fabian Society
The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, is offering voters “unicorns” and Labour must confront his “fantasy” solutions such as the idea that a wealth tax would fix the public finances, according to the Fabian Society’s general secretary, Joe Dromey.Much of the government’s fire is trained on Nigel Farage. But in an end-of-year interview, the head of Labour’s internal thinktank urges his party to take on the “twin populisms” of Reform and Polanski.“We’ve got the populism of the left in Polanski. And the populism of the right in Farage
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