Two MPs have admitted using their parliamentary offices as part of a paid meeting.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Layla Moran and senior Conservative backbencher Crispin Blunt both took part in a panel event for Bindmans legal firm regarding the treatment of detainees in Saudi Arabia.
According to her register of interests, Ms Moran has earned £3,000 for her work with Bindmans on top of her £81,932 MP salary.
Mr Blunt has registered a £6,000 payment from Bindmans for chairing a “fact-finding” panel for the firm.
Labour has urged the parliamentary commissioner for standards to investigate Sir Geoffrey’s use of a Commons office, although he denies breaching parliamentary rules.
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A code of conduct states that MPs should “ensure that their use of public resources is always in support of their parliamentary duties”.
Ms Moran has expressed her “deep regret” that she joined the Bindmans event via video-conference from her Commons office.
“With MPs from other parties, I worked on the detention of political prisoners in Saudi Arabia with Bindmans, the legal firm,” she said.
“I deeply regret that I zoomed in for one meeting from my office in parliament when COVID restrictions were in place.
“I take full responsibility for this and it will not happen again.”
Mr Blunt did not respond to a Sky News request for comment.
But he was quoted in a report on the BBC website as saying it did not occur to him that there would be an issue in using a room in parliament.
According to the report, Mr Blunt said the MPs on the panel were discussing a matter of “serious public concern” and stated he would accept the findings of any investigation by the parliamentary standards commissioner if a complaint was made.
Mr Blunt was said to have added he thought MPs were being subjected to an “absurd feeding frenzy” by the media in relation to their additional work.
Brazil’s central bank completed rules that bring crypto companies under banking-style oversight, classifying stablecoin transactions and certain self-custody wallet transfers as foreign-exchange operations.
Under Resolutions 519, 520 and 521, published Monday, the Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) established operational standards and authorization procedures for what it calls Sociedades Prestadoras de Serviços de Ativos Virtuais (SPSAVs), a new category of licensed virtual-asset service providers operating in the country.
The framework extends existing rules on consumer protection, transparency and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) to crypto brokers, custodians and intermediaries.
The rules will take effect on Feb. 2, 2026, with mandatory reporting for capital-market and cross-border operations set to begin on May 4, 2026.
Stablecoins under foreign exchange rules
Under Resolution 521, a purchase, sale or exchange of fiat-pegged virtual assets, including international transfers or payments using such assets, will be treated as foreign-exchange (FX) operations.
With this classification, stablecoin activity will be subject to the same scrutiny as cross-border remittances or currency trades.
Licensed FX institutions and the new SPSAVs will be able to perform these operations, subject to documentation and value limitations. According to the BCB, transactions with unlicensed foreign counterparts will be capped at $100,000 per transfer.
The rules also cover transfers to and from self-custodied wallets when intermediated by a service provider. This means that providers must identify the wallet’s owner and maintain their processes that verify the origin and destination of the assets, even if the transfer itself isn’t cross-border.
This provision extends AML and transparency obligations to areas previously considered outside the scope of regulated finance.
While the rules don’t explicitly ban self-custody, they close a key reporting gap, forcing regulated exchanges and brokers to treat wallet interactions like formal FX operations.
BCB says the goal is to promote efficiency and legal certainty
In the announcement, the BCB said its goal is to ensure “greater efficiency and legal certainty,” prevent regulatory arbitrage and align crypto activities with the country’s balance-of-payments (BoP) statistics, which means making stablecoin transfers visible in official financial data.
The move follows months of public consultation and growing concern from the central bank on the dominance of stablecoin use in Brazil. On Feb. 7, BCB President Gabriel Galipolo said that around 90% of crypto activity in Brazil involved stablecoins, mainly used for payments.
Galipolo said the widespread use of stablecoins in payments presented regulatory and oversight challenges, particularly in areas such as money laundering and taxation.
Brazil’s central bank said the new framework aims to curb scams and illicit activity while providing legal clarity to crypto markets.
For crypto builders, this may raise compliance costs and reshape how local platforms interact with global liquidity. Smaller crypto players will be forced to compete with bigger institutions and meet more stringent banking-grade standards.
The rules will take effect in February 2026, but market participants are expected to start restructuring before then.
For Brazil, where crypto activity is second only to Argentina in Latin America, the new regulations signal a decisive shift from experimentation to integrated oversight.
The new rules show that crypto is welcome in the Brazilian financial ecosystem, but it will have to play by the same rules as fiat money.
Institutional investors are maintaining confidence in digital assets despite a sharp market correction in October, with most planning to expand their exposure in the months ahead, according to new research.
Over 61% of institutions plan to increase their cryptocurrency investments, while 55% hold a bullish short-term outlook, Swiss crypto banking group Sygnum said in a report released on Tuesday. The survey covered 1,000 institutional investors globally.
Roughly 73% of surveyed institutions are investing in crypto due to expectations of higher future returns, despite the industry still recovering from the record $20 billion market crash at the beginning of October.
However, investor sentiment continues facing uncertainty due to delays in key market catalysts, including the Market Structure bill and the approval of more altcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
While this uncertainty may carry over into 2026, Sygnum’s lead crypto asset ecosystem researcher, Lucas Schweiger, predicts a maturing digital asset market, where institutions seek diversified exposure with long-term growth expectations.
“The story of 2025 is one of measured risk, pending regulatory decisions and powerful demand catalysts against a backdrop of fiscal and geopolitical pressures,” he said, adding:
“But investors are now better informed. Discipline has tempered exuberance, but not conviction, in the market’s long-term growth trajectory.”
Despite October’s correction, “powerful demand catalysts” and institutional participation remained at an all-time high, with the growing ETF applications signaling more institutional demand, added Schweiger.
Crypto staking ETFs may be the next institutional catalyst
Crypto staking ETFs may present the next fundamental catalyst for institutional cryptocurrency demand.
Over 80% of the surveyed institutions expressed interest in crypto ETFs beyond Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), while 70% stated that they would start investing or increase their investments if these ETFs offered staking rewards.
Staking means locking your tokens into a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain network for a predetermined period to secure the network and earn passive income in exchange.
Meanwhile, investors are now anticipating the end of the government shutdown, which could bring “bulk approvals” for altcoin ETFs from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, catalyzing the “next wave of institutional flows,” according to Sygnum.
Rachel Reeves has signalled she is going to break her manifesto tax pledges at the budget – and has given her strongest indication yet she will lift the two-child benefit cap.
The chancellor said the world has changed in the year since the last budget, when she reiterated Labour’s manifesto promise not to raise national insurance, VAT or income tax on “working people”.
“It would, of course, be possible to stick with the manifesto commitments, but that would require things like deep cuts in capital spending,” she told BBC 5Live.
“I have been very clear that we are looking at both taxes and spending,” she added.
The chancellor also gave her strongest indication yet she will lift the two-child benefit cap at the budget on 26 November, saying it is not right a child is “penalised because they are in a bigger family”.
Ms Reeves blamed poor productivity and growth over the last few years on the previous government “always taking the easy option to cut investment in rail and road projects, in energy projects and digital infrastructure”.
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She said she promised during the election campaign to “bring stability back to our economy”.
Image: Ms Reeves, here with US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick in London in September, blamed tariffs for poor growth. Pic: PA
‘I’ll always do what’s right for UK’
“What I can promise now is I will always do what I think is right for our country, not the easy choice, but the thing that I think is necessary,” she added.
The chancellor blamed the UK’s lack of growth under her tenure on global conflicts, trade and tariffs over the past year.
In a dig at Donald Trump, who has imposed wide-ranging tariffs on countries around the world, she said: “The tariffs. I don’t think anyone could have foreseen when this government was elected last year that we were going to see these big increases in global tariffs and barriers to trade.
“And I have to be chancellor in the world as it is not necessarily the world as I would like it to be. But I have to respond to those challenges, and that’s the responsible thing to do.”
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10:50
‘Shameful’ that 4.5m children in poverty
‘Children should not be penalised’
The government has, so far, resisted lifting the two-child benefit cap, which means a family can only claim child benefits for the first two children.
But, it is a contentious subject within Labour, with seven of its MPs suspended two weeks after the election for voting to scrap it, while others are aware it will cost £2.8bn to do so.
She said she saw Mr Brown at Remembrance Sunday, where they “had a good chat and we’ve emailed each other just today”, as she revealed they speak regularly.
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12:36
Labour’s child benefit cap dilemma
Ms Reeves added Mr Brown and Sir Tony Blair were big heroes of hers because they did so much to lift children out of poverty – the reason she went into politics.
Pushed on whether she would lift the cap, she said: “I don’t think that it’s right that a child is penalised because they are in a bigger family, through no fault of their own. So we will take action on child poverty.”
The latest YouGov polling found 59% of the public are in favour of keeping the cap in place, and only 26% thought it should be abolished.
Shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride said: “Rachel Reeves has borrowed, spent and taxed like there’s no tomorrow – and she’s coming back for more because she doesn’t have a plan or the strength to stand up to Labour’s backbenchers, who are now calling the shots.
“My message is clear: if Rachel Reeves reduces government spending – including the welfare bill, she doesn’t need to raise taxes again. “