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Rishi Sunak will not face a sanction for breaching confidentiality rules around the investigation into his failure to declare his wife’s shares in a childcare company that benefitted from the budget.

Parliament’s standards committee, which scrutinises the behaviour of MPs, found Mr Sunak’s breach of confidentiality rules was “inadvertent”.

Standards commissioner Daniel Greenberg opened an investigation into the prime minister at the end of March following a complaint he failed to declare his wife’s shares in childcare company Koru Kids during a session before the liaison committee.

After a Downing Street spokesperson was reported as saying Mr Sunak would co-operate with the inquiry, it was expanded to examine a potential breach of the rules about confidentiality.

Mr Greenberg found Mr Sunak had broken the confidentiality rules, but noted he co-operated fully and subsequently said that “with hindsight, he would have made arrangements to restrict the disclosure of information by his office on his behalf”.

However, the matter was still referred to the standards committee as a breach was found.

The committee agreed with the findings, but also found that it was inadvertent, writing that no details that were not already public were disclosed, and not all communications from Downing Street would be directly authorised by the prime minister himself.

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Rachel Reeves acknowledges damage of ‘too many’ budget leaks

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Rachel Reeves acknowledges damage of 'too many' budget leaks

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has acknowledged there were “too many leaks” in the run-up to last month’s budget.

The flow of budget content to news organisations was “very damaging”, Ms Reeves told MPs on the Treasury select committee on Wednesday.

“Leaks are unacceptable. The budget had too much speculation. There were too many leaks, and much of those leaks and speculation were inaccurate, very damaging”, she said.

Money blog: Nine-year-old set up Christmas tree business to pay for university

The cost of UK government borrowing briefly spiked after news reports that income taxes would not rise as first expected and Labour would not break its manifesto pledge.

An inquiry into the leaks from the Treasury to members of the media is to take place. But James Bowler, the Treasury’s top official, who was also giving evidence to MPs, would not say the results of it would be published.

Committee chair Dame Meg Hillier asked if the group of MPs could see the full inquiry.

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“I’d have to engage with the people in the inquiry about the views on that”, replied Mr Bowler, permanent secretary to the Treasury.

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OBR leak ‘a mistake of such gravity’

The entire contents of the budget ended up being released 40 minutes early via independent forecasters, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

A report into this error found the OBR had uploaded documents containing their calculations of budget numbers to a link on the watchdog’s website it had mistakenly believed was inaccessible to the public.

Tax rises ruled out

The chancellor ruled out future revenue-raising measures, including applying capital gains tax to primary residences and changing the state pension triple.

Committee member and former chair Dame Harriet Baldwin had noted that the chancellor’s previous statement to the MPs when she said she would not overhaul council tax and look at road pricing, turned out to be inaccurate.

During the budget, an electric vehicle charge per mile was introduced, as was an additional council tax for those with properties worth £2m or more.

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Strategy responds to MSCI letter, makes case for index inclusion

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Strategy responds to MSCI letter, makes case for index inclusion

Strategy, the largest Bitcoin treasury company, submitted feedback to index company MSCI on Wednesday about the proposed policy change that would exclude digital asset treasury companies holding 50% or more in crypto on their balance sheets from stock market index inclusion.

Digital asset treasury companies are operating companies that can actively adjust their businesses, according to the letter, which cited Strategy’s Bitcoin-backed credit instruments as an example.

The proposed policy change would bias the MSCI against crypto as an asset class, instead of the index company acting as a neutral arbiter, the letter said.

Bitcoin Regulation, Stocks, MicroStrategy
The first page of Strategy’s letter to the MSCI pushes back against the proposed eligibility criteria change. Source: Strategy

The MSCI does not exclude other types of businesses that invest in a single asset class, including real estate investment trusts (REITs), oil companies and media portfolios, according to Strategy. The letter said:

“Many financial institutions primarily hold certain types of assets and then package and sell derivatives backed by those assets, like residential mortgage-backed securities.”

The letter also said implementing the change “undermines” US President Donald Trump’s goal of making the United States the global leader in crypto. However, critics argue that including crypto treasury companies in global indexes poses several risks.