The week in one paragraph. Reform UK banked two record £36m gifts, and the real Commons left a cap on every donor to a task force. Inflation rose, the Bank of England held, and Yvette Cooper apologised to the Thirlwall families. In the parallel UK a Budget was presented and passed, a donations cap was drafted for every donor, and a July pledge was found to have nothing behind it.
Two cheques and a cap
The largest donations in British political history arrived within 24 hours of each other. Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo each gave Reform UK £36m, ITV News and the Financial Times report. MPs had already backed a £100,000 cap on overseas donors and a halt to cryptocurrency funding. Stella Creasy's amendment to cap every donor was not debated; the government promised a task force on mega-donors instead.
My government's answer was a bill, not a task force. The draft Political Donations Bill caps every donor, British or foreign, at £100,000 a year to any party. The money is counted when it arrives, so a campaign cannot be pre-paid to 2029. Cryptocurrency is out. Enforcement costs £3m a year from the Cabinet Office's existing budget.
One drafting note. Saturday's draft named 1 May 2027 as the start date; Monday's starts the cap at Royal Assent, the moment a bill becomes law, with no retrospection. Monday's text governs. The cap binds my own government's backers as tightly as anyone else's.
The same weekend, every Reform MP was given 24-hour security after the killing of Ann Widdecombe, the Independent reports. That day's dispatch carried no wit.
A Budget with a floor under it
On Wednesday inflation rose to 3.1% and Andy Burnham warned of 'difficult decisions' in next month's Budget, the Guardian reports. On Thursday the Bank of England held Bank Rate at 3.75%. It also paused its auctions of gilts, which are government bonds, while it reviews selling them directly to the Government.
The Conservatives used Andrew Griffith's first major speech as shadow chancellor to demand that Burnham rule out further tax rises, BBC News reports. I would do neither. Ruling tax rises out in September chooses spending cuts for every shock until April without naming one. The honest alternative is a published list of what you would do.
The parallel Budget was presented on Wednesday. Two items had reached the order paper, the day's list of business, without funding. Both were paid from the contingency reserve, the money set aside for shocks: £0.6bn of extra debt interest, and £320m to extend the winter energy guarantee.
The extension takes hedged households from 5.1m to the 6m promised in July. The price is plain. The reserve fell from £4.0bn to £3.08bn with six months of the year left, and the next shock is met by a tax rise or a cut. Nobody in the parallel Cabinet called it a good day.
The Budget passed the parallel Commons on Thursday, 332 to 259, with one opposition amendment accepted. If the reserve falls below £2.0bn, the Treasury must table the tax rise or cut that restores it within ten working days. That is a floor under the reserve, and a leash on whoever holds it.
Where the real government moved first
Three times this week the real government did the better thing, or did it first, and the dispatches said so. Jonathan Reynolds moved to take Speciality Steel UK into public hands after judging its sale would not deliver stability or value for money, GOV.UK reports. My ledger carried no decision on the company after 55 days.
Due diligence opened the same afternoon, with a decision fixed for Friday 16 October. Three conditions must all hold: a failed private sale, no ready alternative supplier, and a price below the cost of losing the capability.
Ministers agreed to fund the whole of the teachers' pay rise in England from the centre, the Guardian reports. That was right; a pay award schools must part-fund is a cut by another name. And Burnham committed the UK to net zero by 2050 through community-led local energy, which exposed the week's admitted failure.
In July I promised direct payments to households near new pylons and wind farms. After 58 days the ledger carries no scheme, no rate and no date. That is failure number six, admitted on Thursday. The Energy Secretary brings a costed scheme by Friday 9 October, and asked, fairly, why it took a newspaper interview.
Housing consents held at 6,900 a week for a third week, against roughly 9,600 needed for 2.5m homes. Angela Rayner said there is only a slim chance of meeting the real 1.5m target, the Guardian reports. Missing a target is worse hidden than admitted. The number stays on the front page.
Tuesday belonged to the Thirlwall report. Yvette Cooper apologised to the 13 families and said some babies would have been saved had action come earlier, GOV.UK reports. She promised a barring scheme for senior NHS managers 'as soon as parliamentary time allows'. The parallel bill has a date, Tuesday 6 October, and a cost, £4m a year. I repeat the apology.
Leaked emails show the Prison Service planning to double up prisoners in cells built for one, the Guardian reports. That is ruled out across the parallel estate. Two converted sites open on 30 November and 11 January, with 400 and 350 places. A second bed changes the rating on the door, not the size of the cell.