Ministers are not obliged to return donations given to them since taking office despite the decision by Sir Keir Starmer to pay back more than £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality.

The Prime Minister said he would return gifts accepted by him since entering No10 after a row over the number of free tickets and clothes he has accepted.

Among those returned were six tickets to see Taylor Swift in concert at Wembley in August as well as money for clothes.

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner declared £836 worth of gifts relating to a spot in a DJ booth at nightclub Hi Ibiza.

Rayner was invited into the booth while on a personal holiday over summer and is not understood to be planning to pay the money back.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy accepted £2,300 worth of hospitality from Tottenham Hotspur FC to watch the north London derby in September, alongside the PM.

Among other ministers to accept gifts were Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens – who had two tickets to the England v Australia T20 International, worth £957.60 – Commons leader Lucy Powell – who accepted two seats for the Ashes worth £600 – and Sir Chris Bryant, tourism minister – who was given two tickets to the opera valued at £302.

Starmer and his family had already been to see Swift in June, during the first stint of her UK tour, but the PM accepted more tickets to the show on 15 August 20 August.

He also returned four tickets to the races and a clothing rental agreement for his wife, Lady Victoria Starmer.

But No10 sources said that there was no implication of wrongdoing, because everything had been declared, and therefore no expectation other ministers would have to follow the PM’s example.

The announcement from No10 that Starmer would pay back some of the donations was met with frustration from some within the Labour Party.

“It’s ridiculous that this story is still going on. It’s very disappointing for those of us who worked so hard to get this government in,” one Labour insider said. “Repaying a bit of the cash does nothing. They’re just giving this story legs.”

Another party member said that the issue had reached voters in the same way that the Covid-19 lockdown parties under Boris Johnson, known as “Partygate”, did.

“It’s cut through massively, just as much as partygate did. When we’ve gone out… it’s come up with everyone we’ve spoken to without fail,” they said.

“I see no benefit to them returning the money. They already accepted the freebie. Paying for it now doesn’t undo the damage. I just wish they hadn’t let this story get away from them.”

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And questions have been raised about the handling of the messaging from within Downing Street.

One former No10 source said: “Paying back just six grand is almost the worst of all worlds. You’re immediately going to be asked what about the rest? Obviously he didn’t fancy digging that deep into his pocket.”

Announcing the decision on Wednesday, No10 said: “The Prime Minister has commissioned a new set of principles on gifts and hospitality to be published as part of the updated ministerial code. Ahead of the publication of the new code, the Prime Minister has paid for several entries on his own register.

“This will appear in the next register of members’ interests.”

A snap YouGov poll, conducted on Thursday, found 79 per cent of respondents thought it was right that the PM had repaid the money.

But Chris Hopkins, political research director at polling firm Savanta, suggested that – in allowing the story to continue running – damage was being done to voters’ perceptions of the relatively new government.

“The Prime Minister trying to walk a donations scandal tightrope in a technocratic manner was always destined to fail, because the public will never see the argument for politicians being wined, dined and treated to opportunities that would otherwise cost hundreds of pounds – even if within the rules,” he told i.

“But the impact of this is all Labour’s doing, and much of it appears to come down to bad comms. They’ve let a story run, and run, and when you thought it had gone, they’ve reminded the public that there was perceived wrongdoing in the first place.

“Drawing public attention to bad news is, well, bad, and it’s a habit Labour need to get out of before an actual opposition exists to further hammer negative messages home to the public.”

No 10 have been approached for comment.

Mark Zuckerberg’s effort to avoid being dragged into the political arena ahead of the upcoming US presidential election is leading to a fierce debate as to whether Meta’s billionaire chief is going too far to placate critics such as Donald Trump.

Zuckerberg has spent recent weeks on a public effort to show he is above the partisan fray ahead of November’s poll, saying he had made the “political miscalculation” since 2016 of taking the blame on issues for which Facebook and Instagram were not responsible.

Election experts, civic integrity groups and former staffers told the Financial Times they were concerned Meta had rolled back certain election safety initiatives across the social network since 2020, while Zuckerberg last year embarked on a “year of efficiency”, cutting thousands of jobs at the platform under pressure from disgruntled investors to rein in costs. 

“I think it’s a low-key national emergency,” said one former elections staffer at Meta, who questioned whether the company had the “institutional capacity” to respond to major election threats.

Several people familiar with Zuckerberg’s thinking have said he is motivated by a desire to distance Meta from politics to focus on his artificial intelligence and metaverse ambitions, noting that since 2020 the company has sought to reduce the amount of political content served by its algorithms.

Meanwhile, the focus on efficiency and AI has helped boost Meta’s share price, which has risen 68 per cent this year to all-time highs, giving the company a market capitalisation of nearly $1.5tn. Zuckerberg’s net worth reached $200bn for the first time on Thursday, according to the Forbes Billionaires List.

Nick Clegg, the former UK deputy prime minister who heads Meta’s global affairs, now makes the majority of decisions on election policy, one person says. 

“[Mark] keeps trying to make people happy so they leave him alone and it’s just not going to happen,” said Katie Harbath, a former policy director who worked on Meta’s elections strategy for a decade. “On the one hand he’s right, he’s been blamed for stuff that wasn’t his fault. On the other hand, if you want to have an impact it comes with messiness.” 

Zuckerberg’s new approach comes after years of scrambling to contain criticism from politicians and the public over Meta’s impact on society, and to navigate internal and external battles over how the platform should treat elections and candidates. 

In a letter to the Republican-led House judiciary committee in August, Zuckerberg accused the Biden administration in 2021 of repeatedly pressuring Meta to “censor” certain Covid-19 content during the pandemic. He said he was “ready to push back if something like this happens again”.  

Zuckerberg has insisted he aims to be politically “neutral” in this election cycle and “not play a role one way or another — or to even appear to be playing a role”.

Critics say this messaging appears designed to placate Trump, noting that the Republican presidential candidate has repeatedly railed against — and even threatened to jail — the Big Tech chief.

“This is more of a shift in his political calculation on the balance of power in Washington and who he has to appease, rather than any underlying reality,” said the former elections staffer. 

Another former employee who had worked on Covid efforts said many who had been on the team at the time felt like the letter was “a slap in the face”, given they were trying to save lives in unprecedented circumstances.

Others argue Meta has pulled back from some of its misinformation efforts and reduced transparency, citing its decision to allow ads denying the result of the 2020 election and its shuttering in August of CrowdTangle, a tool long used by researchers to analyse the spread of content on the platform. 

One report by media non-profit Free Press found Meta was one of the worst social media offenders when it came to backsliding on policies it had in place for the 2022 midterm elections and cutting jobs relative to the size of the company, second only to Elon Musk’s X. 

Ed Bice, chief executive of non-profit Meedan, which builds digital literacy tools and provides some services to Meta’s WhatsApp, said Meta was no longer supporting “large-scale collaborative misinformation monitoring and response programs this year,” instead focusing on less expansive “artificial intelligence”-driven trust and safety work.

“The very clear, present and reasonable concern is that we will have a disputed election . . . and the fact that we don’t have a co-ordinated effort looking out across the information landscape investigating and responding to those reports,” said Bice. Meta was among the platforms used to spread widely debunked stories that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating residents’ pets. 

A Meta spokesperson said in a statement: “These are manufactured criticisms. Helping protect the US 2024 election online remains one of our top priorities, and we have around 40,000 people globally working on safety and security — more than we had during the 2020 cycle. Our integrity efforts continue to lead the industry.”

The platform will run its Election Operations Center during the November vote to address potential abuse in real time, and also has an independent fact-checking programme as part of its efforts to tackle viral misinformation.

Arie Perliger, professor in security studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, noted the platform had been largely successful in purging extremist groups in recent years. Meta last month banned Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya, or RT, from its apps “for foreign interference activity” shortly after the US government indicted two employees of the state-backed media group for their alleged involvement in a disinformation campaign.

Zuckerberg was sucked into partisan politics in the wake of the 2016 election after it emerged a Russian troll farm had used the platform for a pro-Trump disinformation campaign. He bolstered investment into election security going into the 2020 election and invested $400mn to support electoral infrastructure via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, his philanthropic group.

However, Meta was blamed by the left for playing a role in the violent uprising of the January 6 Capitol riots in 2021, accused of allowing the narrative that the election was stolen to rapidly spread across the platform.

From the right, he faced increasing allegations the company was staffed by liberals and deliberately censoring conservatives. His Chan Zuckerberg investment was interpreted as a ploy by some Republicans to boost the Democratic vote, earning the donations the nickname “Zuckerbucks”. A bipartisan government commission later reviewed the donations and concluded unanimously that they were apolitical.

This election cycle, Trump has loudly lambasted Zuckerberg, warning in July that if re-elected president he would “pursue Election Fraudsters” and send them to “prison for long periods of time”, before adding: “We already know who you are. DON’T DO IT! ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!”

Separately, days later, Meta announced it was lifting the remaining restrictions left on Trump’s Meta accounts following his suspension from the platform, adding that they had been a “response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances”. 

Zuckerberg also publicly described Trump as a “badass” for his reaction to an assassination attempt and called him to apologise after the platform mistakenly took down photos of the attack. 

Trump said in a television interview that Zuckerberg had told him on the call he would not endorse a Democrat out of respect for him. Meta said the founder was already going to refrain from endorsing a candidate. 

Zuckerberg is no longer flanked by Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s former chief operating officer and a longtime Democrat who was for years the political face of the company. Brian Rice, a former legislative assistant to Democratic senator John Kerry, is among those handling relationships with the left, while Joel Kaplan, a prominent conservative known for overseeing its relationships with Republicans, remains Meta’s vice-president of global policy.

Some suggest Zuckerberg has been emboldened by X’s Musk.

“With Elon Musk coming and literally saying ‘fuck you’ to people who think he shouldn’t run Twitter the way he has, he is dramatically lowering the bar for what is acceptable behaviour for a social media platform,” said David Evan Harris, the Chancellor’s public scholar at California University, Berkeley and a former Meta staffer. “He gives Mark Zuckerberg a lot of permission and leeway to be defiant.”

CHANCELLOR Rachel Reeves could announce several changes that may affect people on benefits when she delivers her first Budget later this month.

The head of Britain’s finances will unveil the Government’s latest plan for spending and tax on October 30.

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At the beginning of September, the Chancellor cautioned that the Budget could involve “difficult decisions” on tax, spending and also benefits.

Ms Reeves has previously warned of a £22billion financial black hole in the UK’s finances, which she claims was left by the former Conservative government.

This grave figure has led many experts to believe the upcoming Budget could spell further misery for thousands living under the cosh.

But what exactly could it mean for the 20million Brits who claim benefits?

Benefits could increase in line with inflation

In previous Budgets, benefits like Universal Credit have been increased in line with September’s inflation figure.

This was seen in the Autumn Statement delivered last November, with households on benefits ending up £470 better off as a result.

However, this has not always been the case.

The previous government froze benefits for four years in the 2010s, in a blow to people who are eligible for the help.

However, experts predict that the Government will uprate benefits in line with September’s inflation figure, which will be released next month.

Experts at Pantheon Macroeconomics are forecasting that it will be around 2%.

Cuts to benefits spending could be announced

The Chancellor is understood to be mulling a reduction in the amount the state spends on benefits.

This rumour has been further solidified by comments made by Prime Minster Sir Keir Starmer.

At the Labour Party conference in Liverpool last week, the PM said there has to be “trade-offs” between maintaining the welfare state and supporting those in need.

He admitted there would be “hard cases”, but that the Government and business must join forces to get people clocking on again.

There are around 2.8million people who are long-term sick, with numbers having surged since the pandemic.

Future cuts to working-age benefits and tax rises have also been hinted by health secretary Wes Streeting.

Working-age benefits provide financial support to individuals and families who are of working age.

There are a number of different types including Universal Credit, Jobseekers Allowance, and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).

Mr Streeting told the New Statesman that the Chancellor could make cuts to these benefits to help plug the £22billion black hole in the public purse.

It comes after the Labour government axed the £300 Winter Fuel Payment for pensioners who are not on means-tested benefits.

Mr Streeting said: “There are other choices to come and these aren’t just Rachel’s choices to face up to, these are the choices of the whole government.”

Crackdown on benefits fraud may be detailed

A crackdown on benefit fraud could also be outlined at the upcoming Budget.

The Government has previously promised to crackdown on fraudsters and get more people into work as part of a shakeup to the benefits system.

This could mean new laws will be introduced so that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) can ask banks to report fraudulent activity, for instance if a claimant has more than £16,000 in savings, or how much they earn.

Under the proposals, the DWP won’t be able to access bank accounts directly, and the exact information they can request is still to be confirmed.

The department could also be handed more powers to recover debts from those who can afford to pay it back but have avoided doing so.

Sir Keir Starmer said in his speech at the Labour Party conference: “If we want to maintain support for the welfare state, then we will legislate to stop benefit fraud.” 

Change to PIP payments may be confirmed

Personal Independent Payments (PIP) are a benefit for people who are under State Pension age and need help with day-to-day life because of a long-term illness or disability.

The previous Government began a consultation on reshaping the payment which swiftly closed a couple of weeks later.

At the time, there were suggestions that PIP payments could be changed to vouchers or one-off grants.

In August, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall unveiled a “Back to Work” plan.

As part of this move, changes to disability benefits are expected to be introduced to help cut NHS waiting lists and help people get back into work.

This has led many to believe she could roll out the changes floated by the Tory government to help aid her plan.

The Treasury has been contacted for further comment.

A strike that closed US east and Gulf coast ports will be suspended, and market reaction to escalations in the Middle East remains minimal. Plus, Italy’s government will raise more taxes from companies earning windfall profits, and luxury group LVMH will become a top sponsor of car-racing franchise Formula One.

Mentioned in this podcast:

US dockworkers suspend strike that threatened to cripple ports

Italy seeks to raise more windfall taxes from companies

The market reaction to global tensions might not follow the old script

LVMH strikes sponsorship deal with Formula 1

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Credit: CNBC, LVMH

The FT News Briefing is produced by Niamh Rowe, Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson, Kasia Broussalian and Marc Filippino. Additional help from Breen Turner, Sam Giovinco, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. Our engineer is Joseph Salcedo. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show’s theme song is by Metaphor Music.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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