Rupert Murdoch met Rishi Sunak five times in 12-month period
Media mogul met government representatives 12 times in 2022-23 when he was chair of News Corp
The media mogul Rupert Murdoch met Rishi Sunak five times over a 12-month period before he stepped down as the chair of News Corp in September last year, according to government records.
Official records of government meetings, analysed by the campaign group Hacked Off, show that the former head of News Corp – which owns the Times and the Sun newspapers in the UK – personally met government representatives 12 times between October 2022 and September 2023, including five meetings with the prime minister.
These include a dinner in December 2022 and a meeting the following day with Robert Thomson, the CEO of News Corp, Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of News UK, the Times editor Tony Gallagher, former Sunday Times editor Emma Tucker and Sun editor Victoria Newton to “discuss the PM’s priorities”.
The two men then met again in May 2023 for a “politician discussion” and again in June for the Times CEO summit and subsequent party, and in September last year for a “social meeting”. There are no publicly available minutes of the meetings.
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The actor and Hacked Off campaigner Hugh Grant, whose damages claim against the Sun publisher News Group Newspapers (a subsidiary of News Corp) is expected to go to trial next year, called for an end to “secretive” meetings between media barons and the government, after the records showed that there were 534 meetings between the press and the government over a 12-month period.
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Rishi Sunak only has himself to blame for failing to bring NHS waiting lists down
Sunak’s pledge to bring down the NHS waiting lists wasn’t an off-hand pledge, an off-the-cuff remark, or a long-term policy proposal
Dr Julia Patterson is Chief Executive of EveryDoctor, a doctor-led campaign organisation fighting to save the NHS
We’ve been hearing Rishi Sunak blaming the length of the NHS waiting lists on striking NHS staff for many months now. Despite recent analysis from The Health Foundation which showed that industrial action from consultants and junior doctors had only contributed to 3% of the overall size of the waiting list, he has repeated his rhetoric again and again.
Several days ago, Sunak admitted for the first time (to Piers Morgan during an interview) that he had failed his pledge to bring down the NHS waiting lists. This received a huge amount of attention in the national media, and for good reason. Sunak’s pledge to bring down the NHS waiting lists wasn’t an off-hand pledge, an off-the-cuff remark, or a long-term policy proposal. It was one of the 5 key pledges he made as Prime Minister in January 2023, and it was made in the midst of the worst NHS winter crisis that we have ever experienced.
Several days before Sunak’s pledge was made, Dr Adrian Boyle (president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine) had publicly stated that up to 500 people could be dying each week because of their inability to access urgent care within the NHS. The situation was incredibly stark. I run the organisation EveryDoctor (www.everydoctor.org.uk) and we were hearing from both NHS staff and patients who were experiencing terrifying situations. Patients were calling for ambulances which simply never arrived. GPs were driving emergency patients to hospital in their own cars, because they had no other option. When patients arrived at A and E departments, they were met often with chaos. Beds had been removed from A and E cubicles to make way for 6 patients to sit on chairs. Patients were receiving life-saving treatment in non-clinical areas, in corridors, even on the floor, as staff held up sheets to try to preserve their dignity.
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Nearly half of voters think current Tory government is more corrupt than previous governments, poll finds
Concerns over corruption in government have been rising over recent years.
In yet another damning poll for Rishi Sunak’s government, almost half of voters believe that the current Tory government is more corrupt than previous UK governments.
The poll, carried out by Savanta, found that 47% of voters think the current government is more corrupt than previous governments. Only 7% of voters thought it was less corrupt.
57% of 25-34 year olds say that they think the current government is more corrupt than previous governments, while the figure drops to 41% for those aged 65 and over.
When it comes to party affiliation, while only 27% of Tory voters think that the current government is more corrupt, that figure jumps to 67% among Labour Party voters and 57% of Lib Dem voters.
Concerns over corruption in government have been rising after it was found that 1 in 5 government Covid contracts awarded between February and November 2020 contained one or more red flags for possible corruption and require urgent further investigation, according to Transparency International.
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Two-thirds of voters say Britain has got worse under the Tories since 2010, poll finds
LFF’s poll shows the sheer scale of dissatisfaction with the Tory government in a general election year.
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Exclusive polling carried out for Left Foot Forward by Savanta, of 2260 voters, found that 66% of voters believe that Britain is now in a worse state than in 2010, compared to just 14% who say things have got better.
While half of 18-24 year olds say that Britain has got worse since 2010, the figure rises to 72% among those aged 65 and over. 71% of those aged 55-64 say they also think things have got worse, as do 66% of those aged between 35-44.
When it comes to party affiliation, even a majority of Tory party voters, 61%, say that Britain is now worse than in 2010, along with 68% of Labour Party voters, 67% of Lib Dem voters and 70% of Green Party voters.
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