Thousands offered UK asylum in secret scheme after personal data of Afghans who helped British forces leaked by mistake – as it happened

Healey says the leak happened when an official sent an email which he thought had the names of 150 people who were applying for resettlement under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (Arap).But in fact the email contained the names of almost 19,000 Afghans who had applied for either the Arap scheme or the ex-gratia scheme, another programme open to Afghans who worked for the British in Afghanistan before the military drawdown.Journalists became aware of the leak, and a court granted a superinjunction preventing reporting of this.He says eight organisations and journalists have been told not to report what happened under this superinjunction, which has been in place for nearly two years.He says a scheme was set up to relocate Afghans particularly at risk

UK should consider banning cryptocurrency political donations, minister says

Election officials should consider banning political donations made in cryptocurrency, a minister has said, amid concerns that foreign powers are using untraceable money to influence British politics.Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister and close ally of the prime minister, Keir Starmer, told MPs on Monday he thought there was a case for preventing crypto donations given how hard it was to trace their source.His comments come two months after Nigel Farage announced his Reform UK party would become the first in British politics to accept donations in bitcoin, mirroring a similar move made by Donald Trump in the 2024 US presidential election.The campaign group Spotlight on Corruption has warned this practice could allow foreign countries to undermine British democracy, saying digital currencies “may play a role in future political interference schemes”.McFadden was asked by his Labour colleague Liam Byrne about banning cryptocurrency for political donations during a meeting of a joint Commons and Lords committee on the national security strategy

UK ex-Middle East minister accused of transparency rule breach over Bahrain advisory role

A former UK Middle East minister has been accused of breaching transparency rules over a paid advisory role with an influential Bahraini centre that has links to the Gulf state’s government.The Conservative peer Tariq Ahmad, who denies wrongdoing, was cleared by a watchdog to take up his role as a paid adviser to the King Hamad Global Center for Peaceful Coexistence (KHC).The centre is supervised by Bahrain’s ministry of foreign affairs, but the UK’s Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) said Lord Ahmad was free to undertake the role – for which the salary has not been disclosed – because he said he “did not have official dealings/contact with the KHC during [his] time in office.”Documents unearthed by human rights activists appear to show that Ahmad, who served between 2017 and 2025, had official contact with the centre while in office, visiting it at least twice and holding meetings on official trips in 2022 and 2023.The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird) said that Acoba should now review its advice and it has submitted a formal complaint

What is a wealth tax and would it work in the UK?

A wealth tax is an annual levy on an individual’s total net assets – property, investments, cash, even antiques or art – above a given threshold. The idea is to directly target accumulated wealth, not just income. In the UK there are already some taxes on wealth – inheritance tax, capital gains tax, and council tax – that could be tightened up before a new tax is introduced.A modest wealth tax aimed at the ultra-rich, for example those with assets over £10m, could generate significant funds. One study suggests a global levy on the top 0

Is Reform UK a radical party or a home for ‘disgruntled former Conservatives’, asks James Cleverly

Reform UK might have to choose between presenting itself as a new and radical political party or as a home for “disgruntled former Conservatives” who lost their seats at the election, James Cleverly has said.Cleverly, the former home and foreign secretary, who stood to replace Rishi Sunak as Tory leader, also argued that Nigel Farage’s party could suffer if the councils it now runs struggle to properly manage key everyday services such as bin collections and social care.Speaking at an event in Westminster organised by the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank, Cleverly discounted the idea that he hoped to replace Kemi Badenoch, saying his party had to “get out of this habit of cycling through leaders in the hope that ditching this one and picking a new one will make life easy for us”.Answering questions following a speech about how mainstream rightwing parties can take on the threat from populism, Cleverly noted the way that Reform had absorbed a series of former Tory MPs, most recently Jake Berry, the former party chair, who whose defection was announced last week.“If their sales pitch is, ‘We’re not like the old political parties,’ but they are mainly populated with people from my political party, it’s going to be really hard for them to reconcile that sales pitch,” he said

Tory benches almost deserted as Philp cops a lesson on small boats | John Crace

It was all a bit of a mystery. Just where were the Tories? Had they just got their dates confused? Thought that recess started this week rather than next? Or had they all bunked off to Lord’s to see England beat India in a tight finish? Or maybe some – caught up in the entente amicale aftermath of Emmanuel Macron’s state visit – had taken the Eurostar to Paris to enjoy steak frites on Bastille Day?You’d have thought the Conservative backbenchers would have wanted to be out in force to hear Yvette Cooper’s statement on the new arrangements for dealing with small boats. After all, this is the stuff that Kemi Badenoch and Chris Philp live and breathe. The reason they get up in the morning. To wage a two-person war on those making the Channel crossing