the times | Friday May 27 2022 29
Leading articles
The new package does at least contain plenty of
targeted support for the poorest households. This
includes a one-off payment of £650 for anyone on
means-tested benefits, a £300 payment for pen-
sioners and a £150 payment to those on disability
benefits. Add in the £200 rebate, which has now
been converted into a £400 grant, and eight mil-
lion households will receive at least £1,050,
enough to offset the likely rise in the energy price
cap. It is also more than they would have received
if the chancellor had instead chosen to increase
universal credit in line with inflation.
Nonetheless, in correcting his initial mistake,
Mr Sunak committed two more. One was to aban-
don his opposition to a windfall tax. He said he
now recognised that the scale of the oil and gas
profits justifies the tax raid. More likely, he looked
at polling that showed a windfall tax was highly
popular, including with Conservative voters. Pop-
ular does not make a policy sound. Although Mr
Sunak attempted to sugar the pill with a generous
allowance for investment, albeit bizarrely only for
hydrocarbons, the new tax risks deterring invest-
ment by undermining confidence in the predicta-
bility of the tax regime. Indeed the timing of the
U-turn, one day after the publication of the Sue
Gray report, will only deepen the concern that thisis a rudderless government that blows with the
political wind. The result is likely to be a higher
risk premium and increased cost of capital that
drags on all British investment.
The chancellor’s other mistake was to make the
package larger and broader than it needed to be.
This too, one suspects, was driven by politics, not
sound economics. A £400 grant for every energy
customer in the country is an unwarranted bung
that comes with a £6 billion price tag. What’s
more, £10 billion of the £15 billion package will be
funded by new borrowing. At a time when prices
are already rising by 9 per cent a year and there is
a serious risk of a wage-price spiral, Mr Sunak’s fis-
cal loosening risks throwing further fuel on the in-
flationary fire. That could force the Bank of En-
gland into extra rate hikes, increasing the chances
of a recession.
Nor can Mr Sunak be confident he will get much
political credit for his return to the role of big
spender. The economic conditions today are very
different to those during the pandemic. His new
measures are a one-off, yet all the evidence points
to a protracted cost-of-living crisis. That is bound
to lead to pleas for further interventions, which he
will have to resist, at least if he is to avoid making
an even bigger mistake.students applied for undergraduate courses in
2021, with renewed interest as Britain emerges
from the pandemic. It estimates the figure will in-
crease to 208,500 by 2026. This is not an arbitrary
extrapolation. It reflects consistently expressed
views of students. British universities consistently
feature in the top-ranked institutions globally.
Ucas reports that during the pandemic 88 per
cent of overseas students saw Britain as a “posi-
tive” or “very positive” place to study, while 77 per
cent said they wanted to come because of its aca-
demic reputation. The overseas student popula-
tion is heavily weighted to certain countries, with
more than half coming from China, India, Hong
Kong, Malaysia, Portugal, the US and Ireland. The
very diversity of these countries illustrates the
broad attractions of a British degree course.
Britain has inherent advantages in offering
higher education to overseas applicants, not least
in being a centre of English-language tuition. The
quid pro quo is huge. Overseas students expand
the pool of talent in the country’s education
system, helping to maintain high standards. They
also typically pay higher fees than their Britishcounterparts, thereby increasing revenues. Re-
gardless of their destination on graduating, they
help this country earn its way in the world. If they
return to their home country, they do so with
goodwill and enduring ties, which may help to win
British business decades hence. If they remain,
their skills directly contribute to wealth creation.
There is every reason why Britain should want
more of these ambitious and enterprising young
people to study here, and it should offer generous
visa arrangements.
British universities gained a tarnished reputa-
tion during the pandemic for not taking their
teaching responsibilities sufficiently seriously.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development warned in September that UK
universities would not be providing value for
money if they persisted with online learning to the
detriment of in-person tuition. Yet Britain’s higher
education sector, provided it does not take its
success for granted, can still capitalise on these
strengths rather than squander them. In a post-
Brexit era, this country needs allies and export
earnings. Its universities can help to secure both.Indeed, were Lord Hogan-Howe not an ally of
Boris Johnson from the time when the prime min-
ister was mayor of London, it is unlikely he would
be in the running at all. He did not make the final
shortlist when the job was first advertised. The in-
terview process did not result in an appointment
with the two eminently qualified candidates being
told applications were instead being reopened.
The suspicion lingers this manoeuvre is designed
to accommodate the prime minister’s preferred
choice, thus subverting a supposedly independent
selection process.
Since retiring and being ennobled, Lord Hogan-Howe has been given several advisory roles by the
government. As the incoming boss of the NCA, he
would be dogged from the outset by allegations of
benefitting from cronyism.
At Scotland Yard, Lord Hogan-Howe oversaw
flawed inquiries into child abuse allegations that
hinged on the lies told by the fantasist Carl Beech,
now serving a lengthy jail sentence. Not a single
police officer has been called to account for this
disgraceful persecution of the innocent. To reward
the man who presided over this shambles with
another lucrative post would be to add insult to the
unforgivable injury already inflicted.Big Spender
Rishi Sunak was right to increase support for poorer households to ease the cost of
higher energy bills. But his £15 billion mini-budget showed political weakness
“We all make mistakes,” Rishi Sunak acknowl-
edged. “And being able to change course is not a
weakness but a strength”. The chancellor was re-
sponding to Labour taunts that after five months
of rejecting its call for a windfall tax on oil and gas
companies, he had just announced such a tax. Mr
Sunak’s new “temporary energy profits levy” will
hit the sector with a 25 per cent surcharge on “ex-
traordinary profits” arising from the recent oil and
gas wholesale price spikes for the next three years.
That will rake in an anticipated £5 billion from the
industry, which will be used to part-fund a £15 bil-
lion package of giveaways to help households deal
with soaring energy bills.
Mr Sunak has certainly made mistakes but not
the one to which he confessed. His first was to have
failed to recognise the scale of the cost-of-living
crisis when he delivered his spring statement in
March. Although he spent £22 billion on measures
to ease the pressure of soaring energy bills, his
mini-budget lacked targeted support for the poor-
est households. Instead he squandered £5 billion
on an ill-judged cut in fuel duty that hasn’t been
fully passed on. And he spent £3 billion on a £200
energy bill “rebate” that turned out to be a loan.
Inevitably, the budget bombed, which is why he
had to come back two months later for another go.Education Exports
Britain’s universities remain a magnet for ambitious overseas students
Britain has not always valued foreign students.
Fred Mulley, when he was education secretary,
warned in 1977 that the Labour government “can-
not accept the continued rapid growth in the num-
ber of overseas students coming to our institu-
tions”. Fortunately, shortsighted political consid-
erations have done little to diminish the appetite
of overseas students to pursue higher education in
Britain. The Universities and Colleges Admissions
Service (Ucas) projects an increase in the number
of foreign students in Britain by almost 50 per cent
over the next five years.
This is excellent news. A renewal of demand
from foreign students in the wake of the pandemic
is a sign of confidence in the quality of Britain’s
higher education sector, which is a vital source of
export earnings and also a vehicle for burnishing
this country’s reputation across the globe. The
task for Britain’s policymakers is to ensure over-
seas students know they are welcome, and for its
educational institutions not to become compla-
cent concerning their attractions in a highly com-
petitive international marketplace.
Ucas figures show that about 144,000 overseasUnfair Cop
Lord Hogan-Howe is not a suitable person to head the National Crime Agency
Among the scandals in which the Metropolitan
Police have been embroiled in recent years is the
Operation Midland investigation, which falsely
accused eminent and entirely respectable public
figures of child abuse. To have presided over this
fiasco should disqualify anyone from a responsible
position in public life. Yet Lord Hogan-Howe,
who served as Met commissioner from 2011 to
2017, is being considered as director-general of
the National Crime Agency (NCA), sometimes
referred to as Britain’s equivalent of the FBI, even
though he failed to make it into the final round
of candidates.UK: Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is
among speakers at the Social Fabric Summit
in Halifax, focusing on how to repair society
after the pandemic.
The gannet pair
stood together on a
ledge. A thousand
feet below them, the
North Sea broke on
rocks. In their
precipitous nest of
seaweed, fishing nets and cliff-edge grass,
their single chick had just been fed and the
adult female was keeping the fluffy
youngster warm between her black webbed
feet. Suddenly, the male’s angel-white wings
flashed in the late spring sun. Lifting from
the nest, he headed out over the sea
searching for the next meal. The northern
gannet’s wingspan is nearly 7ft, but when it
dives into a shoal of herring or mackerel, its
giant, black-tipped wings fold right into the
body, and thus the expert sea flyer becomes
a torpedo. jonathan tulloch
In 1964 Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister
of India, died aged 74 after suffering a stroke.
He had been in power since independence
was granted on August 15, 1947.
Henry Kissinger,
pictured, US secretary of
state (1973-77), 99;
Admiral of the Fleet Sir
Benjamin Bathurst, first
sea lord and chief of
naval staff (1993-95), 86;
Paul Bettany, actor,
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the
Wo r l d (2003), The Da Vinci Code (2006),
WandaVision (2021), 51; Heston Blumenthal,
chef, 56; Dee Dee Bridgewater, jazz singer,
Good Morning Heartache (2011), 72; Rebekah
Brooks, chief executive, News UK, 54; Pat
Cash, tennis player, Wimbledon men’s
singles winner (1987), 57; Alina Cojocaru,
principal dancer, English National Ballet
(2013-21), 41; John Conteh, boxer, world
light-heavyweight boxing champion
(1974-77), 71; Sarah Dines, Conservative MP
for Derbyshire Dales, assistant whip and
co-parliamentary private secretary to the
prime minister, 57; Tim Farron, MP for
Westmorland and Lonsdale, leader of the
Liberal Democrats (2015-17), 52; Joseph
Fiennes, actor, Shakespeare in Love (1998),
The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-21), 52; Lord
(Roger) Freeman, chancellor of the Duchy
of Lancaster (1995-97), vice-chairman,
Conservative Party (1997-2001), 80; Duncan
Goodhew, swimmer, Olympic gold medallist
(1980), 65; David Mundell, Conservative MP
for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and
Tweeddale, secretary of state for Scotland
(2015-19), 60; Jamie Oliver, chef and
restaurateur, 47; Miah Persson, soprano, 53;
Edwin Poots, leader of the Democratic
Unionist Party (2021), 57; Jussi Pylkkänen,
global president, Christie’s, 59; Gerald
Ronson, property tycoon, 83; Ravi Shastri,
cricketer, India (1981-92), head coach of
India’s national cricket team (2019-21), 60;
Siouxsie Sioux, singer-songwriter, Siouxsie
and the Banshees, 65; Dame Rosemary
Squire, co-founder, Ambassador Theatre
Group and Trafalgar Entertainment, 66;
Donna Strickland, optical physicist, Nobel
prize in physics for inventions in laser
physics (2018), 63; Sophie Walker, founding
leader, Women’s Equality Party (2015-19), 51.
“Those who wish to appear wise among fools,
among the wise seem foolish.” Quintilian,
Roman teacher and rhetorician, De
Institutione Oratoria (c AD95)
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