Tory peer Lord Hayward joins calls for Nadhim Zahawi to ‘consider his position’ over tax row
A Conservative peer has become the latest senior Tory to call on Nadhim Zahawi to consider his position.
Lord Hayward said the Tory Party chairman should think about “standing aside” while parliament’s ethics watchdog investigates his tax affairs.
“We don’t know what the timescales are for the inquiry, and I think that’s key,” he told Sky News.
Politics live: Rishi Sunak preparing for tough PMQs
“I think he should be considering whether he stands aside for the period of the inquiry.”
Lord Hayward
It comes after former minister Caroline Nokes said there were “too many unanswered questions” over the tax row and said Mr Zahawi should “stand aside and let the investigation run its course”.
The inquiry by new ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus is expected to focus on whether the cabinet minister breached the ministerial code with the estimated £4.8m HMRC settlement he made while he was chancellor, but it could extend to his prior tax arrangement and whether he lied to the media.
Rishi Sunak said there are “questions that need answering” but has come under criticism for resisting calls to sack him.
It is unclear what the prime minister knew about Mr Zahawi’s dealings with the tax office when he appointed him to his cabinet in October.
Lord Hayward is also a polling expert, and advised previous Conservative governments heading into elections.
He said that the issues Mr Sunak is facing at the moment, including Mr Zahawi’s tax affairs, are working in tandem with the ongoing strikes to “flatline” the Conservative Party’s popularity.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is likely to seize on the fallout from Mr Zahawi’s multi-million pound settlement at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday.
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Zahawi refuses to answer questions on political future
During last week’s PMQS, Mr Sunak said that Mr Zahawi had “already addressed this matter in full” as questions starting swirling about his tax affairs.
But this was before the cabinet minister released a statement admitting he paid what HMRC said “was due” after it “disagreed about the exact allocation” of shares in YouGov – the polling company he co-founded – an error he noted was “careless not deliberate”.
Sky News understands that, as part of a settlement with HMRC, Mr Zahawi paid a penalty to the tax collector.
Sources close to Mr Zahawi have said he is “absolutely not standing down” and in a statement on Monday he said: “I am confident I acted properly throughout and look forward to answering any and all specific questions in a formal setting to Sir Laurie.”
Elon Musk could be on track for a $1trn pay packet.
Tesla shareholders have approved the whopping financial package for the CEO – who’s already worth an estimated $491bn – if he hits a series of ambitious targets over the next 10 years.
But that $1trn figure (or £761,910,000,000) – which is both one thousand billion and one million million – is almost impossible to imagine for most people.
Even so, we have drilled down into the numbers and examined what you can do with a trillion US dollars – and it turns out, quite a lot.
Show me the money
Laid end to end, a trillion one-dollar bills would cover a distance of approximately 156 billion metres.
That could wrap around the equator 3,890 times, easily reach the sun from Earth (around 149.6 million km) or loop from Earth to the moon 405 times.
That many one-dollar notes could cover a massive area (roughly 10,339 km squared), meaning you could blanket nearly all of Lebanon or Jamaica in bills.
Spend it on sport
You could splash out on virtually all of the world’s major sporting leagues.
The clubs which make up the Premier League are relatively cheap ($30bn), and even when snapping up the UEFA Champions League clubs and the big five top divisions of Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, there’s still $858bn left in the kitty.
The four major US sports leagues for ice hockey, baseball, basketball, and American football (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL) have a rough valuation of $544bn, according to Sportico.
But then add the IPL cricket league ($120bn) and F1 ($23.1bn) and Musk still has change from an estimated total spend of $829.7bn.
Elon Musk is in the money if he hits targets set by Tesla’s shareholders. File pic: AP
Take over Tesla’s rivals
He could buy up the top 15 largest publicly traded automakers (excluding Tesla) by market capitalisation.
They would include firms like Japan’s Toyota ($275bn), Chinese automaker BYD ($120bn), and luxury brands like Ferrari ($81bn) and Mercedes-Benz ($62bn), as well as BMW ($52bn), Volkswagen ($50bn) and Ford ($48bn).
But there would still be a little change left over; the total bill would be an eye-watering $992bn.
Buy up San Diego
He could buy up every single residential property in San Diego County – valued at a total of $1trn. Seattle is just slightly out of reach at $1.1trn, according to recent data from real estate firm Zillow.
But if he wanted to buy big – there is always Tennessee. The total value of homes in the US state is estimated at $957bn. Or there is Maryland, which at $1.01trn could be bought if he can find a little more cash behind the sofa.
Sadly, he would struggle to scoop up London’s entire housing stock, which in February was valued at just under £2trn ($2.53trn), according to agents Savills.
Cities like New York ($4.6trn) and Los Angeles ($3.9trn) are also not within his budget, hosting America’s most expensive residential markets.
Do something charitable?
There is always the possibility Musk could follow in the footsteps of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who intends to give away 99% of his vast fortune over the next 20 years.
He could give every single man, woman, and child in the US a share of his cash pile. They would receive approximately $2,917.32 (£2,223.29), based on a population estimate of 342.7 million.
Although it would be roughly $14,348.79 (£10,935.20) for every person (roughly 69.6 million) in the UK.
If he wanted to give the entire globe an early Christmas present, then based on the rough world population estimate of 8.2 billion, everyone would receive $121.80 (£92.87).
Pay off the credit card
With $1trn, he could instantly rewrite history and erase debt interest payments and the government debt from dozens of the world’s sovereign nations.
Or Musk could wipe out the debts of Singapore ($1trn) or South Korea ($0.99trn) in one go, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook (Oct 2025).
But when it comes to the biggest debt-laden countries, $1trn would not even touch the sides.
The US has $38.3trn of government debt (just over one third of the total global debt pile) while the UK has a modest $4.1trn.
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