Two years ago, the House of Lords looked into whether the Bank of England should issue digital pounds to be held in electronic wallets. Peers were unconvinced, asking if this wasn’t “a solution in search of a problem”. Last December, MPs on the Treasury select committee said the same thing. The government’s response, however, was to tell the public to prepare for a “Britcoin” to be in use by the end of the decade. Physical money has been around for thousands of years for good reason. Cash is convenient, reliable and…
Tag: House of Lords
Sunak branded ‘inaction man’ at PMQs as Starmer attacks record on schools, prisons and China – as it happened
From 19h ago Sunak branded ‘inaction man’ at PMQs as Starmer attacks his record on schools, prisons and China Here is the PA Media story on PMQs. Rishi Sunak has been branded “inaction man” by the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, as the government grapples with crumbling schools, Chinese espionage, and a prisoner on the run. Starmer urged the prime minister to call a general election, as he accused the government of failing to heed warnings which led to a series of crises for ministers over the last week. But Sunak…
TikTok to be banned from UK parliamentary devices
Parliament is to ban the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from “all parliamentary devices and the wider parliamentary network”, citing the need for cybersecurity. The move goes further than the ban last week of the app on government mobile phones and devices, covering the whole parliamentary network. That means that MPs and parliamentary staff who continue to have TikTok installed on personal devices will find the service blocked if they try to access it over parliamentary wifi. A parliament spokesperson said on Thursday: “Following the government’s decision to ban TikTok from…
No 10 signals Rishi Sunak no longer committed to blocking all new onshore windfarm developments – UK politics live
From 3h ago No 10 signals Sunak no longer committed to blocking all new onshore windfarm developments At the Downing Street lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson signalled that Rishi Sunak is no longer trying to block new onshore windfarm developments. The spokesperson did not accept that Grant Shapps’ comments in interviews this morning showed that the government had already implemented a U-turn. He claimed that Shapps’ references to community consent were a description of rules that are in force now. And the spokesperson would not commit the government to accepting…
MI5 warning on lawyer ‘sends a clear message to China’s allies in UK’
The suggestion that a British Chinese solicitor has been allegedly working on behalf of China to influence UK politics adds further evidence of the bilateral relationship mutating from a “golden era” to an “ice age”. The latest development will clearly not help improve ties and, along with previous incidents, make the “China v the west” narrative increasingly look like an early cold war plot: suspected influence operations and – although not apparently the case here – alleged espionage as well as expulsion of personnel. On Thursday, the British political establishment…
MI5 accuses lawyer of trying to influence politicians on behalf of China
A security warning from MI5 has been circulated to MPs and peers accusing the lawyer Christine Lee of seeking to improperly influence parliamentarians on behalf of China’s ruling Communist party. The “interference alert” from the security service names and pictures Christine Ching Kui Lee as an individual who has allegedly “knowingly engaged in political interference activities on behalf of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party”. The notice added that the UFWD “is seeking to covertly interfere in UK politics through establishing links with established and aspiring…