Day: April 14, 2018

    Nine cabinet ministers, including the prime minister, are making more than £10,000 a year by acting as landlords, a Guardian analysis has found. Following Jeremy Hunt’s failure to declare the purchase of seven luxury flats that he subsequently rented out, an analysis of the parliamentary register of MPs’ interests shows eight other members of the cabinet own property that is rented out for a five-figure annual sum. The health secretary was forced to make an embarrassing apology on Friday after it emerged that he had failed to declare a business interest with both Companies House and the parliamentary register of MPs’ interests. Hunt has amended the register, which now shows that he has a half share of a holiday home in Italy, a half share in an office building in H...

    Russian intelligence agencies have been spying on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter for at least five years, Britain has said in the latest twist in the Salisbury nerve agent attack. National Security Security Adviser Sir Mark Sedwill said cyber specialists from the GRU Russian military intelligence targeted Yulia Skripal’s email accounts as far back as 2013. In a letter to Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Sir Mark also said that in the 2000s the Russians had begun a programme to train personnel from special units in the use of chemical warfare agents. He said that it included investigating ways of delivering nerve agents by applying them to door handles. The strongest concentration of the Novichok nerve agent found in the Salisbury incide...