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Labour donor Lord Alli breached four parliamentary rules over his registration of interests, a standards watchdog has found.

Sir Keir Starmer’s largest donor was found to have failed to include all his roles at a charity, did not register he had a controlling interest in a media company and did not register he was a director of a British Virgin Islands-based firm in time.

This is unrelated to questions over his donations to politicians such as the prime minister and other ministers.

Lords Commissioner for Standards Martin Jelley said the breaches were “minor”.

Lord Alli, a TV executive who has given more than £700,000 to Labour over the past 20 years, was recommended to write a letter of apology to the chair of the Lords’ conduct committee, Baroness Manningham-Buller.

In his letter, he wrote: “I am writing to you today to offer my apology for my breach of conduct by not registering my interests correctly.

“I will endeavour to keep to the Code of Conduct at all times to avoid such circumstances again.”

The first breach said Lord Alli should have registered himself as an unremunerated director of The Charlie Parsons Foundation, as well as a trustee.

He helped set up the charity in 2011 with Charlie Parsons, who created the Survivor reality TV series, to invest in “new talent, new projects and new business ideas”, mainly in the TV and entertainment industry.

The second breach found Lord Alli removed himself prematurely as a “person with significant control” of Silvergate BP Bidco Limited, the production company that produces the Peter Rabbit television programme.

He also prematurely removed his entry saying he had a “shareholding amounting to a controlling interest” in the company.

The fourth breach was the late registration as an unremunerated director of MAC (BVI) Limited, an offshore British Virgin Islands subsidiary of 450 PLC, an investment firm based in tax haven Jersey Lord Alli had declared he was a chairman for.

Lord Alli previously said the omission was an “unintentional error” and he “had not realised” until he was asked by journalists in September.

The peer came under scrutiny in September over the tens of thousands of pounds he has given to Labour MPs to cover clothes, holidays and work events.

According to data unveiled by Sky News’ Westminster Accounts project, he gave Sir Keir more than £39,000 in gifts and hospitality over the course of the last parliament.

This year alone, the prime minister has received nearly £19,000 worth of work clothes and several pairs of glasses from Lord Alli as well as £20,000 worth of accommodation.

Sir Keir said this was to allow his son to study for his GCSEs in peace at the former TV executive’s central London flat while the family home was surrounded by media during the general election.

The PM, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and deputy PM Angela Rayner have said they will no longer accept donations to pay for clothes following the backlash.

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US government announces ChatGPT integration across agencies

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US government announces ChatGPT integration across agencies

US government announces ChatGPT integration across agencies

The deal was announced in response to the White House’s recent policy strategy to make the United States the AI capital of the world.

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Nomura’s Laser Digital to launch first regulated OTC desk for crypto options in Dubai

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<div>Nomura's Laser Digital to launch first regulated OTC desk for crypto options in Dubai</div>

<div>Nomura's Laser Digital to launch first regulated OTC desk for crypto options in Dubai</div>

Nomura’s crypto arm gains regulatory green light in Dubai to offer institutional OTC crypto options, expanding the UAE’s footprint in global digital derivatives.

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Jess Phillips condemns ‘idiot’ councils that don’t believe they have grooming gang problem

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Jess Phillips condemns 'idiot' councils that don't believe they have grooming gang problem

Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has told Sky News that councils that believe they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs are “idiots” – as she denied Elon Musk influenced the decision to have a national inquiry on the subject. 

The minister said: “I don’t follow Elon Musk’s advice on anything although maybe I too would like to go to Mars.

“Before anyone even knew Elon Musk’s name, I was working with the victims of these crimes.”

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Elon Musk. Pic: Reuters
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Elon Musk. Pic: Reuters

Mr Musk had called Ms Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” in one of a series of inflammatory posts on X in January and said she should go to jail.

Mr Musk, then a close aide of US President Donald Trump, sparked a significant political row with his comments – with the Conservative Party and Reform UK calling for a new public inquiry into grooming gangs.

At the time, Ms Phillips denied a request for a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham on the basis that it should be done at a local level.

But the government announced a national inquiry after Baroness Casey’s rapid audit on grooming gangs, which was published in June.

Asked if she thought there was, in the words of Baroness Casey, “over representation” among suspects of Asian and Pakistani men, Ms Phillips replied: “My own experience of working with many young girls in my area – yes there is a problem. There are different parts of the country where the problem will look different, organised crime has different flavours across the board.

“But I have to look at the evidence… and the government reacts to the evidence.”

Ms Phillips also said the home secretary has written to all police chiefs telling them that data collection on ethnicity “has to change”, to ensure that it is always recorded, promising “we will legislate to change the way this [collection] is done if necessary”.

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Operation Beaconport has since been established, led by the National Crime Agency (NCA), and will be reviewing more than 1,200 closed cases of child sexual exploitation.

Ms Phillips revealed that at least “five, six” councils have asked to be a part of the national review – and denounced councils that believed they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs as “idiots”.

“I don’t want [the inquiry] just to go over places that have already had inquiries and find things the Casey had already identified,” she said.

She confirmed that a shortlist for a chair has been drawn up, and she expects the inquiry to be finished within three years.

Ms Phillips’s comments come after she announced £426,000 of funding to roll out artificial intelligence tools across all 43 police forces in England and Wales to speed up investigations into modern slavery, child sex abuse and county lines gangs.

Some 13 forces have access to the AI apps, which the Home Office says have saved more than £20m and 16,000 hours for investigators.

The apps can translate large amounts of text in foreign languages and analyse data to find relationships between suspects.

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