2 2GN The Sunday Times May 22, 2022
NEWS
FIND US ONfindings are reported for the
first time today.
The whistleblowers, who
claim they were bullied and
victimised, were offered non-
disclosure agreements by
NEAS this year worth more
than £40,000.
The agreements bar them
from reporting further
concerns to the authorities —
including the Care Quality
Commission and the police —
in return for the payments.
Such gagging clauses were
supposed to have been
banned in the NHS by Jeremy
Hunt, then the health
secretary, in 2014.
Some of the families
affected by the cover-up
believe they were lied to by
the NEAS.
“They just covered it upNHS
covered
up deaths
scandal
and covered it up,” said
Tracey Beadle, Quinn’s
mother. “You just can’t
believe that a service that’s
supposed to look after people
could lie to you like that.”
Because of the delays in
ambulance services across
the country, patients with a
suspected heart attack or
stroke — who should be
reached within 18 minutes —
waited longer than 50
minutes in April.
The NEAS’s medical
director, Dr Mathew Beattie,
said that in 2019 concerns
were raised by staff relating to
the “quality and timeliness of
documents disclosed to
coroners”.
He said a “task and finish
group” established to deal
with the concerns had been
“concluded in January 2021
with these actions completed
and assurances provided to
our board of directors that
significant improvement had
been achieved”.
Concerns raised after that
date involved “minor issues”
of procedure and policy
being followed and did not
affect any families, he said.
@DavidCollinsST
Investigation, pages 8-→Continued from page 1PM’s police
pick risks
claims of
cronyism
crime, became vacant in
October 2021 when Dame
Lynne Owens stepped down
as director-general. It is
regarded as the second most
prestigious role in policing
after Met commissioner,
which is also vacant.
Hogan-Howe, who was
ennobled by Theresa May, is
believed to have made it to
the last four candidates. The
two who went through to the
final round of interviews are
understood to be Neil Basu,
former head of UK counter-
terrorism, and Graeme
Biggar, the NCA’s acting head.
However, neither has been
told if he will get the job. The
home secretary is responsible
for the appointment but it
must be approved by No 10.
Basu, 53, an assistantcommissioner at the Met and
the son of an Indian father
and Welsh mother, had been
tipped as front-runner. Last
month his wife, Dr Nina
Cope, said she was leaving
her NCA post in a move that
would avoid any conflict of
interest. However, Basu has
riled Johnson over the latter’s
description of black people as
“piccaninnies”.
Before he left the Met with
a pension pot said to be
worth at least £5 million,
Hogan-Howe was forced to
apologise to those traduced
by Operation Midland. The
inquiry saw detectives fall for
the lies of Carl Beech, a
fantasist and paedophile who
claimed he had been the
victim of an establishment
sex abuse ring. Those whose
reputations were besmirched
included Field Marshal Lord
Bramall, the former chief of
defence staff, and Lord
Brittan of Spennithorne, the
former home secretary.
Hogan-Howe could not be
reached for comment. A
Downing Street source said:
“The PM has no formal role in
the appointment process.”
The Home Office said: “A
fair and open recruitment
campaign is under way.”→Continued from page 112, 25, 37, 48, 51, 57
Bonus 8
SATURDAY
MAY 21
8, 22, 23, 32, 50
Lucky Stars 3, 9
FRIDAY
MAY 20Sunak and
Johnson
windfall
tax clash
decision in this parliament.
A further £385 million was
committed for research
and development and
£120 million to a future
nuclear-enabling fund to
address barriers to entry intothe market.The budget and
the spending review will also
provide £380 million to fund
offshore wind schemes. But
the figures for both were far
short of what Johnson
wanted.
A senior No 10 official
complained that the Treasury
had consistently blocked the
prime minister’s wish to
rebalance Britain’s energy
supply away from imported
oil and gas. “Boris wants to
spend money on things that
bring noticeable, tangible
benefits in the long term,” he
said. “Spending money on
nuclear power stations and
offshore wind: fantastic. The
Treasury seemed to make→Continued from page 1that as excruciatingly difficult
as they possibly could.”
Others are concerned
that Sunak’s plan is not
enough to address the
problem. One ally of the
chancellor said: “He needs to
blow the doors off. At the
moment, only the door
handle is being troubled.”
Cabinet ministers who
have opposed a windfall tax
include Liz Truss, the foreign
secretary, and Suella
Braverman, the attorney
general. Brandon Lewis, the
Northern Ireland secretary,
and Kwasi Kwarteng, the
business secretary, urged
Sunak to cut corporation tax
in a meeting last week.A source close to the prime
minister made clear that
although Johnson did not
want a windfall tax, he was
prepared to sell one to the
public in the right
circumstances: “The starting
point for all of us is that
Tories don’t do windfall
taxes. If we have to, it has to
be because it raises a lot of
money, it has to be worth it;
and it has to be because we
are going to do something
better with it than the private
sector will do for themselves.
None of which has been
articulated compellingly
enough by anyone.”
Politics, pages 12-HOME
The latest accounts of the
Duke of Westminster’s
Grosvenor Group, reports
that the value of the family’s
main company is down £377.
million during the year.
The Cadogan dynasty,
which has owned swathes of
Chelsea and Knightsbridge in
west London for more than
300 years, have seen their
wealth fall by £679 million
over the past year.
The Howard de Walden
family, who own 850
buildings across some 92
acres of Marylebone, have
seen the holdings in their
main company fall by more
than £105 million.
The Rich List 2022,
MagazineCoffee, a hit for the girl band
All Saints. Although she has
previously appeared in The
Rich List alongside her
husband, a £400 million
divorce settlement ensures
she features in her own right
for the first time.
By contrast the Queen’s
£375 million wealth is largely
derived from her personal
ownership of Balmoral, her
Scottish castle, and
Sandringham, her Norfolk
country estate.
Fellow blue-blooded
entries are nursing large
losses, because of the falling
value of their estates. Three
of the grandest names in
London property have seen
their wealth drop by more
than £1.1 billion.years. However, not all of the
super-rich have seen their
bank balances soar. The
working-from-home trend
and rise of online shopping
has taken its toll on some of
Britain’s property aristocrats.
Bertarelli, 50, appears in
this year’s wealth rankings
after her divorce from
Ernesto Bertarelli, 56, the
pharmaceuticals billionaire.
The couple had been
married for 21 years and had
three children. For her 40th
birthday he gave her a 315ft
yacht, The Vava II.
In 1988, while still in her
teens, she was crowned Miss
UK. After dabbling in
modelling, Bertarelli attained
some success as a singer-
songwriter, co-writing BlackTrains, SouthEastern, South Western-
Railway, Island Line, Govia Thameslink
Railway including Gatwick Express,
TransPennine Express, Avanti West
Coast, and West Midlands Trains. The
result will be known on Wednesday.
The union also intends to ballot mem-
bers in Scotland for strike action, follow-
ing what it describes as a “derisory”
2.2 per cent pay offer by ScotRail and pro-
posed timetable changes which it
branded a “kick in the teeth” to workers.
ScotRail will tomorrow begin to cut
700 services because of a driver shortage.
Another union, the Transport Salaried
Staffs’ Association, has warned of a “sum-
mer of discontent” with similar action on
the way unless pay disputes are resolved.
The transport secretary will meet
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak this week
to discuss the threat amid fears in White-
hall that the action could be worse than
the junior doctor walkout in 2015. This
weekend, Shapps accused the unions of
“jumping the gun” and urged them to
come to the table to discuss their
demands for a double-digit pay increase.
He said: “I don’t want to be in a fight
with the unions on this. I love the rail-
ways. I’m sure they love the railways as
well. I want them to be a massive success
in the future. But I also recognise we need
to work harder than ever before to make
the railways an attractive way to travel.
“Not least because... people have got
a choice of literally not travelling and
working from home. We need to be...
doing the opposite to this. We need to be
encouraging people back to the railway.
But the unions don’t quite seem to realise
that this seismic shift is taking place.”
Shapps said the railways were alreadyNEWSPAPERS
SUPPORT RECYCLING
The recycled paper content of UK
newspapers in 2020 was 67%WE’RE STILL
ROLLING
The three
remaining Stones
on healthy living
and life after
Charlie WattsA TASTE OF
BOLOGNA
The Big Weekend
returns with a
guide to Italy’s
food-obsessed
third citySTYLE CULTURE
TRAVEL
10.05am Anne-Marie Trevelyan,
secretary of state for international trade
10.35am Pat McFadden, shadow chief
secretary to the Treasury
12.35pm Alexander Downer,
Australian former foreign minister and
high commissioner to the UK
4.05pm Lord Heseltine, defencesecretary under Thatcher and deputy
prime minister under Major
6.40pm Siobhán McSweeney, who
played Sister Michael in Derry GirlsThis week in The Sunday Times
Also on our phone app, on tablet
and online at thesundaytimes.co.uk The transport secretary has told rail
unions that threatened strike action risks
“fatally damaging the railways” and will
deliver a “massive blow to the country”
as it emerges from the pandemic.
Grant Shapps said union bosses were
in danger of an act of “self-harm” and
urged them to “wake up and smell the
coffee”.
Plans are being drawn up for freight
trains to take priority over passenger ser-
vices to keep supermarket shelves
stocked in the event of industrial action
after unions warned of “potentially the
biggest rail strike in modern history”.
The Rail, Maritime and Transport
(RMT) union is balloting 40,000 mem-
bers on the move, which network sour-
ces reportedly said would create “serious
challenges” in keeping goods moving and
supermarket shelves stocked.
The vote, due to close on Tuesday,
includes staff on Network Rail and 15
train operating companies, with the RMT
saying action would be over pay, compul-
sory redundancies and safety concerns.
The ballot will be among the union’s
members on Network Rail, Chiltern Rail-
ways, CrossCountry Trains, Greater
Anglia, LNER, East Midlands Railway,
c2c, Great Western Railway, Northern
on “life support” despite the government
injecting £16 billion into the industry dur-
ing the pandemic, which is the equivalent
of £600 for every household in Britain or
£166,000 for every railway worker.
He said: “During the pandemic we
ensured through the investment of
£16 billion that not a single one of them
[rail worker] lost their jobs. Not a single
one of them had to be furloughed, and we
kept the whole show on the road.
“The public paid for that to happen.
And I do not think the public will with
people taking industrial action when
their jobs were protected all the way
through the pandemic when lots of other
people’s jobs were lost.”
Shapps said that rail workers had
already received greater pay increases in
the past decade than teachers, nurses,
firefighters and ambulance staff.
“It’s not like there is an open-ended
cheque book,” he said. “No one is saying
that we’re freezing their salaries again.
They have been frozen for a couple of
years, like other public workers.
“No one’s saying that is going to hap-
pen again so it’s just not the time to strike.
That would be irresponsible and will risk
doing serious damage to a sector that I
know they love. So why do it?”
Mick Lynch, general secretary of the
RMT, said: “We believe in modernising
the railways but we do not believe in sac-
rificing thousands of jobs, constant pay
freezes or making the railways unsafe.
“That is what government plans will
mean for the railways if RMT and other
transport unions don’t mount a compre-
hensive defence of the industry.”
Editorial, page 22Shapps: Strikes will
be ‘fatal’ for railways
Commuters will vote
with their feet and work
from home for good if
walkouts go ahead, says
the transport secretaryCaroline Wheeler Political EditorShe is the former beauty
queen now worth more than
Her Majesty.
Kirsty Bertarelli, a former
Miss UK, has entered The
Sunday Times Rich List for
the first time in her own right.
Her estimated wealth is put
at £700 million, almost twice
as much as the Queen’s £
million personal fortune.
Bertarelli, who has tasted
chart success as a singer-
songwriter, is one of the more
glamorous new entries in this
year’s list, which uncovers a
record 177 UK billionaires,
together sharing wealth of
£653 billion, up a third in twoRobert Watts
Compiler of The Sunday
Times Rich ListRich List 2022 reveals former Miss
UK is worth more than the Queen
1, 13, 23, 31, 35
Bonus 7SATURDAY
MAY 21SCHOOL FOR
SANDALS
The best slides
and platforms
and shock news
on how to wear
them: with socksAN EYE FOR BEAUTY
From the Silver Edge to
the Party Dress, the iris
can bring class
to any garden
DAVID COLLINS AND
HANNAH AL-OTHMAN
Our reporters are finalists for the
top two awards in investigative
journalism: the Paul Foot Award
and the Orwell Prize. Their
account of the murder of a Kenyan
woman by a British soldier and
its cover-up sent shockwavesthrough the establishment,
revealing a “disturbing culture of
misogyny, secrecy and impunity in
the British Army”, judges said.
The Paul Foot Award will be
presented on June 14 and the
Orwell Prize on July 14Banca do Antfer
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