The results are in – and surprise, surprise Northern communities are bearing the brunt of water companies capitalising on the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Universal Credit deductions scheme.

As the Canary previously revealed, across 18 months, water firms robbed welfare claimants of £32.4m in Universal Credit.

However, the scale of individual water firms milking this punitive DWP debt clawback mechanism has been a mystery – until now.

Using a combination of publicly available data and Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, the Canary has been able to calculate ballpark figures revealing the likely biggest culprits snatching millions in welfare from some of the poorest households.

And among privatised providers engaged in routine sewage dumping, rampant profiteering, and opportunistic bill hikes, certain companies stood out as clear exploiters of this DWP deductions regime.

DWP Universal Credit deductions: the water companies cashing in

Unlike other services, monopoly suppliers dominate by location. What this means is that water companies serve fixed regional areas. Thanks to this, the Canary was able to estimate how much each company might have taken in UC deductions. However, there are a number of significant caveats to the following data, explained here.

Through an FOI, the Canary acquired UC deductions data for every parliamentary constituency in England and Wales. The data spans the 18 months between March 2024 – August 2025.

However, water company coverage does not exactly match up with regional boundaries. This meant we had to use water company parliamentary constituency data to collate the FOI information into our own dataset. Once we had this, we could make estimates for each water company:

So in total, constituencies that the regional water monopolies cover accounted for approximately £28.7m. However, it’s important to note that this will include significant double-counting, since suppliers will crossover in some constituencies.

Together, these regional companies supply water services to 30,099,891 postcodes. Small new entrant companies account for the remaining 159,524.

The most reliable data we have

Then, if we estimate deductions for the joint water and sewerage suppliers only, excluding parliamentary constituencies where the water company was different to the sewerage company, we get the following:

The above data was complicated by the fact that companies wouldn’t always cover the same number of postcodes for water services versus sewerage in any one given constituency.

As such, we only used data wherever sewerage postcodes were within 10% of the number of water postcodes.

The bottom line all this speculative data underscores is that it’s hard to know with any certainty how much each of the major water companies is extracting in Universal Credit deductions.

The key culprits

Nevertheless, the tentative estimates still provide a general idea of which companies are cashing in at welfare claimant’s expense.

United Utilities appears the most prolific user of the deductions regime by some margin. For a start, the company seems to make up the largest chunk of the £32.4m in deductions. Under all calculations, United Utilities nabbed somewhere north of £9m in Universal Credit. Moreover, even proportional to the number of postcodes it covers, the company is the clear forerunner.

In January 2025, regulator Ofwat greenlit United Utilities hiking customer bills by 32% over the next five years. Since it began raising bills in April, it has seen a 131% profit surge.

Meanwhile, Yorkshire Water and Northumbrian Water extracted the next largest sums from customer’s Universal Credit. At more than £2.95m and £2.65m respectively, the two northern utility giants also ranked high as a proportion of the postcodes they covered. For Yorkshire Water, it came in fourth behind United Utilities, Northumbrian in second place, and Dwr Cymru in third place as a ratio of deductions to the postcodes they supply services to.

In October 2025, Northumbrian Water was among five companies that lobbied the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for further bill hikes. The company had already secured permission in January to increase bills by 21%.

And of course, Ofwat slapped both United Utilities and Yorkshire Water with boss’s bonus bans in November. These were due to category 1 pollution incidents in 2024. In Yorkshire Water’s case, it was also down to its “serious failures” over sewage, which had resulted in “excessive spills”.

So as these companies provided atrocious services and mass polluted watercourses, they were also running roughshod over some of their poorest customers.

Northern water utilities running roughshod over welfare claimants

What’s immediately noticeable here is that, with the exception of Dwr Cymru, the biggest culprits are the companies administering water and sewerage in the North.

It tallies with broader statistics on Universal Credit deductions. During the same 12-month period, the North East had the highest number of Universal Credit households where the government or third parties had made one or more deductions. Specifically, it stood at 53%.The North West followed this, at 50%.

The North East (21.5%) and North West (20.2%) also has the highest number of highly deprived neighbourhoods in England. On the one hand, the high levels of deprivation offer an explanation for the significant scale of water debt. This is because, it logically follows that more people would be experiencing debt thanks to state-sanctioned poverty. However, on the other, it points to water companies and their extortionate bill hikes exacerbating the problem. And of course, eating into customer’s social security will also only compound this deprivation further.

Ultimately, the key point is that going after some of the poorest customers for outstanding payments is a choice. Water companies reporting mega-profits aren’t strapped for cash – and could easily take the hit. These unscrupulous firms are robbing welfare claimants of their social security to fund eye-watering shareholder dividends and executive pay packages. This needs to be recognised for the absolute scandal it is.

As ever, the most marginalised – particularly Northern – communities are bearing the brunt of this egregious cost of greed crisis fuelled by the DWP. This data shows clearly that it’s one in which the privatised water racket is undoubtedly playing a significant part.

Featured image via the Canary

The BBC has reported that a ‘”brazen” rail fare dodger’ has been fined over £3,600 for not paying for hundreds of journeys. However, it quickly becomes clear that the man is actually homeless and was sleeping on the trains. So why didn’t the BBC cover it that way?

BBC paints a homeless man as a criminal

The BBC article reports that Charles Brohiri, 29, “travelled” on Govia Thameslink Railway trains 112 times “without buying a ticket” in just under two years. He was given a suspended sentence and ordered to pay back £3,629. Brohiri had previously been sentenced for 36 charges of failing to pay for a ticket in August 2024. He pleaded guilty to 76 recent charges.

The judge at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, Nina Tempia, said Brohiri had a “sense of entitlement” and “acted as if he was invincible.”

The BBC also mentions that he continued to travel without paying after initially being charged in court in January, right up until the day before the current hearing. Apparently, there have been a further 16 offences since then.

What it glosses over, though, is the reason why Brohiri continued to commit the ‘crime’. He’s actually been homeless for the last three years and has had no choice but to sleep on trains, as well as in hospitals and libraries.

State incompetence to blame

His defence, Eleanor Curzon, said Brohiri had attempted to get support but struggled to engage with charities. She said it was:

a combination of a lack of support, a negative mental health space and not knowing how to go about maintaining support from services

Curzon also told the court that Brohiri wanted to make a change in his life, and getting sober three years ago demonstrated that. She also pointed out that he had always complied when caught by authorities.

Brohiri has admitted his crimes and wants to be given a chance to get into work and be supported back into having somewhere to live. Curzon told the court:

He reiterated to me this morning that if he is given the opportunity to work with probation they can assist him in securing accommodation and employment.

It is really these two factors which will put an end to Mr Brohiri’s offending.

BBC thinks homeless man not paying £15k is a bad thing

Thankfully, Brohiri was given a suspended sentence. He has, however, been ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work. Hopefully, he will also be able to get paid employment alongside that, so he can live safely.

While Brohiri has to (somehow) pay the fine, he thankfully doesn’t have to pay the £15,120 prosecution fees. The article frames this as a bad thing, naturally. This is the part where they finally quote Govia Thameslink, who say that people not paying fares:

diverted public funding away from improving services for passengers. That is unfair both on taxpayers and on the vast majority of passengers who pay for their journeys.

However, if they hadn’t prosecuted a homeless man for the ‘crime’ of literally sleeping somewhere safe, that money could’ve been spent on homeless services.

As Adam Smith said on Twitter:

And we’re supposed to think our justice system is working? That £15,000 couldn’t have been spent actually helping this guy, and many others like him?

No, instead we’ll hound someone for money they don’t have. Like they do to all of us, these days.

BBC puts corporations before people’s lives, as usual

This is clearly a story about how the system is failing vulnerable people who fall through the cracks. The fact that the BBC frames this as a “fare dodger brought to justice” and not a sharp look at the way the state treats poor people tells you everything you need to know about who the BBC serves. And let’s be honest, the BBC aren’t strangers to twisting the truth to fit their narrative. 

When it was discovered that Brohiri was repeatedly ‘offending’ because he had nowhere to sleep, the effort should’ve been on finding him somewhere safe. Instead, the system punished him and slapped a fine on a man with no possible means of paying it.

The true injustice in this story is being done to people like Brohiri every day. Not faceless corporations — worth millions — that force the taxpayer to pay for their sham trials. That’s what the BBC should be reporting on, instead of sucking off scumbag CEOs.

Featured image via Housing Digital

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, co-owner of Manchester United, has come under heavy criticism for saying that immigrants are “colonising” the UK. He said:

You can’t have an economy with nine million people on benefits and huge levels of immigrants coming in. I mean, the UK has been colonised. It’s costing too much money.

The UK has been colonised by immigrants, really, hasn’t it?

The racist shithead also claimed that the UK’s population grew by 12 million people in 5 years. That’s bollocks too, as BBC Verify reported:

it’s actually increased by 2.7 million.

And, that statistic doesn’t take into account the economic benefit of immigrants doing all the shitty jobs white people don’t want. And that, in turn, doesn’t take into account that we’re talking about people – people who have a right to safety and welcome.

Manchester United began in 1878 as Newton Heath, formed by railway workers who wanted solidarity and community within industrial labour. The club grew from working-class collectivism. Migrant communities in Manchester sustained it. Players of colour built its modern success. When the co-owner describes immigrants as colonisers, he positions himself against the communities that shaped the institution he now partially controls.

The Politics of His Non-Apology

Keir Starmer waded in to urge Ratcliffe to apologise:

Offensive and wrong.

Britain is a proud, tolerant and diverse country.

Jim Ratcliffe should apologise.https://t.co/7mSnVV33oo

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— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) February 11, 2026

That would be the same man who made the now infamous “island of strangers” speech.

There is something deeply unsettling about watching Britain distance itself from the language of colonisation while still struggling to confront what that word represents in its own history. The state can condemn vocabulary, yet condemnation does not equal reckoning, especially when the same political culture continues to frame immigration through the language of control, pressure, and strain.

Starmer’s objection might sound firm, but it is utterly meaningless when his government are overseeing a hostile environment for immigrants.

His apology doesn’t change his stance

Ratcliffe did eventually apologise, but it was predictably a non-apology:

I am sorry that my choice of language has offended some people in the UK and Europe and caused concern but it is important to raise the issue of controlled and well-managed immigration that supports economic growth.

The apology focused on offence rather than on the framing itself. While discomfort was acknowledged, the imagery of invasion was left untouched. He did not withdraw the claim. He softened it. As a result, the premise stayed in place, only dressed in calmer language.

Language like this does not appear from nowhere, particularly not from someone operating at that level of influence. Words reflect assumptions. When a historically loaded term such as colonisation is replaced with managerial phrasing about “management” and “control,” the logic beneath it does not disappear; it becomes easier to defend. The adjustment feels strategic rather than reflective.

Meanwhile, the political exchange unfolds in a predictable way. Disapproval is voiced. An apology is requested. Regret is offered in careful terms. Yet ownership remains intact and authority remains intact. The tone shifts, but the structure does not.

Ultimately, this episode exposes more than a dispute over wording. It shows how power can absorb backlash without surrendering position, how language can be recalibrated without the worldview behind it being unsettled, and how accountability can be signalled without materially changing who controls the narrative.

Featured image via the Canary

The Palestine Youth Movement (PYM) joined community members in Lambeth on Thursday 5 February to kick Labour out of their hometown. As a result, local people realised their democratic power in being the first community in the UK to launch the ‘Vote Palestine’ pledge campaign for the upcoming local elections in May.

Lambeth leading the way

The Lambeth event was led by Mariam of the PYM and London Votes Palestine campaign. Mariam gave an inspiring masterclass in how ordinary people can come together. In turn, she showed how voters across the country can use their democratic power to get the change they want to see in their hometowns.

Activists from Jewish Voice for Liberation (JVL) and Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) joined other local activists and people who have had enough of Labour’s ongoing complicity and willingness to ignore Israel’s flagrant breaches to countless international laws. Former ANC member and arms trade corruption investigator Andrew Feinstein also attended the event.

In true unity and solidarity, organisers inspired and energised local people to get Palestine on the ballot.

‘No divestment: No votes’

Mariam of the Palestine Youth Movement passionately introduced the Lambeth campaign and what it hopes to achieve:

Lambeth Vote Palestine is not just launching here, but it’s part of a national campaign that is launching in 12 boroughs across London because people are fed up of Labour councils that are not listening to people that are pushing resolutions for divestment from genocide. It’s launching in Manchester, in Greater Manchester, in Newcastle, in Birmingham and in Sheffield. And the first national launch is taking place here today in Brixton in Lambeth.

So, the way that Vote Palestine came together has essentially come from all these local organisers that have tried to push divestment resolutions to get money out of Israel and money into our council and into the people of this council. But we know that Labour councillors have lied to us about just how much political power they have in order to take on divestment. We know that Labour councillors have watered down resolutions that have managed to pass and protests have been tried, resolutions have been tried, all sorts of attention against Labour majority councils have been tried.

And we know that they’re not interested in divestment from Israel because it’s a party of genocide. It’s a party that’s done nothing against austerity. It’s a party that with Rachel Reeves’ latest budget is raising taxes on ordinary working people. And we see this in Lambeth as well. It is a council that has ignored us time and time again.

So up and down the country, We know that the elections are coming in May 2026. And we’ve gotten started a little bit early, but actually right now, Labour is preparing itself for who’s going to be standing in the next election, and preparing its candidates and other parties are doing that as well. But so is Vote Palestine. We are preparing to say: no divestment, no vote. So, we are asking two things nationally, as well as here in Lambeth.

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The first is what’s called a councillor’s pledge. We are asking that any sitting councillor or new candidate signs a councillor’s pledge that commits them to getting money out of Israel and money into our communities. No divestment, no votes.

But there’s a second portion to this, because this is also a grassroots campaign and a people-driven campaign, one that’s going to be powered forward by us giving it a little bit of time every month and getting a big impact out through just a little bit of labour together. And that is the People’s Pledge. So we are also asking voters to take a pledge that will say, ‘if this candidate has not endorsed the councillor’s pledge, we will not be voting for them’. And we’re going to take that to councillor’s and say, ‘hey, you know what? In Lambeth, hundreds of people have committed to the Palestine pledge, to the people’s pledge, and these people will not be voting for candidates that have not endorsed divestment, that have not endorsed Palestine.’

Mariam later referred to the response they receive on the ground from constituents in London, adding:

We’ve been talking to people all over London around what’s the issue that needs more funding? And no one says genocide. So this campaign is really about… We’re putting Palestine on the ballot. We know that the people are with Palestine. We also know from the last election, with the election of the Gaza Independents, that there is a Palestine-first voter. It’s time to show that in the local elections. And we’re going to make that known.

From Lambeth, from Brixton, all the way up to Newcastle and the country over, we’re going to put Palestine on the ballot and make it a non-negotiable issue. No divestment, no votes.

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‘At the expense of our NHS, our benefit system, and all local services’

In Lambeth, Feinstein discussed the clear corruption at the heart of our current UK government, namely Keir Starmer’s lucrative relationship with billionaire-owned Quadrature:

And the reality is, I’ve just come from a Zoom meeting with four Palestinian journalists who are fortunate to be alive. What sort of a sick world do we live in? When journalists start a conversation when they introduce themselves by saying, I’m thankful to be alive. Because hundreds of their colleagues are not.

But what relevance does that have for Brixton and for Lambeth? It has every relevance. The reality is that the biggest political donation in British electoral history was paid by a company called Quadrature Capital to the campaign of Keir Starmer for the 2024 local election. That resulted in a situation where Starmer, who didn’t once show his face in his own constituency because he knows he would have been drummed out of town, spent tens of thousands of pounds on direct social media advertising. Our independent campaign was allowed to spend £17k in total on everything. Because the political system here is fixed.

Within three weeks of coming to power, Keir Starmer announced two policy proposals. One is he went back on his commitment to a new green economic plan that he’d committed at least £20bn to. And then he increased defence spending by £3.5bn a year until 2027. At which point, defense spending will increase by £15.4bn. Quadrature capital’s asset value at the end of those three weeks of Starmer being in power increased exponentially for the expenditure of £5m in their political donations.

And that is why Britain today lives in the best democracy money can buy. Our politicians are bought and paid for. Keir Starmer is a puppet. He is a puppet, not just of Morgan McSweeney, the little worm who is his chief of staff, but he is the puppet of billionaires and corporate interests like Quadrature. Quadrature has invested primarily in fossil fuels and arms company. Of that £15.4bn increase in our defense budget in 2027, a huge proportion of it will land up being used against the people of Palestine.

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And that £15.4 bn is at the expense of our NHS, our benefit system, and all of our local services. Because frankly, and I’ll ask you to excuse my language here, but as you might gather, I’m a little bit angry about this. People like Keir Starmer and all of our establishment politicians don’t give a fuck about us. And if ever that was brought to our attention, it’s in the reality that people like them were more concerned about the fact that Jeremy Corbyn could not pronounce Jeffrey Epstein’s name properly, which they regarded as anti-Semitic. Then they are about the fact that Lord Peter Mandelson was who is an architect of the Starmer Project, is closest friends with a paedophile, with a man who has abused and sex-trafficked hundreds and hundreds of children for abuse by the old white men who run this world and profit from it.

‘Legal responsibility to take action’ in Lambeth

Local activist Jan O’Malley gave an eye-opening and inspiring speech about the sheer scale of Lambeth council investment in Israel and its ongoing genocide. Referring to the power of the BDS movement, O’Malley said:

BDS, you all know about BDS, boycott, divestment and sanctions. We are the D in BDS. So how big is this problem? PSC has done a massive amount of work on research on this, which has been a great resource for us all. And they have found that 81 local government pension schemes have collectively invested over £12bn in companies complicit with Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. It’s genocide, it’s apartheid and it’s illegal occupation. And the British government as a party to the genocide convention has a legal responsibility to take action to prevent further genocide.

PSC has sent a letter to every pension committee member across the country, telling them about this legal duty. It’s not worth waiting until the ICJ finally concludes there is a genocide, they’re meant to prevent genocides. And this means that we take immediate action to start divesting. So, in Lambeth, how big is the problem? Well, the figures that we got from FOIs that PSC did was that the Lambeth Pension Fund had £52.4m invested in companies complicit with Israel. And this included £25m in Amazon, £20m in Alphabet.

They may say, ‘oh, we all use them’, and at the council meeting, they were joking about that. ‘Do you mean we ought to stop us using Amazon and Uber and things in our everyday lives? This is what these unrealistic people who are petitioning us are saying.’ But both of those companies are involved in providing Project Nimbus, which is a computing technology system of surveillance, which has been used to target the journalists, the doctors, the people in Gaza that they wanted to target…. it’s used and bought and helps and supports the Israeli government and military. Other investments are arms companies like Boeing, Rolls Royce, but also Israeli government bonds, which are actually lending money to the Israeli government, and Barclays, which funds so many arms companies.

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Referring to a petition sent to Lambeth Council and its pensions committee, O’Malley finished by saying:

We took our petition. We presented it middle of November last year, thinking the council needed time to check the addresses and everything. And then we had to give them enough time. And they were meant to let us know in 10 days, if there was anything wrong with our petition. They didn’t until the day before the full council meeting, when they rejected the petition on the grounds that it was about something that they do not control, and they pointed a little item J in their constitution about petitions which will be rejected. They’re saying they’ve changed their constitution to take out the word control and amend all the weaselly words. They only administer.

So, what has the Pensions Committee been doing every three months when they meet and take decisions? It’s a total farce. It’s ludicrous. It’s dishonest. So shame on Lambeth Council. I was really shocked at this. It took me, I’m quite cynical and I’ve been demonstrating an activism since I was 14, but I’ve not known a council behave like this in my lifetime. So it shocked me. I wasn’t ready for it. So what are we going to do? We’re going to challenge. this attack on solidarity with Palestine, which is what it is, and democracy, which is what it is, by all available means, including in the local elections in May, which leads us to why we’re here tonight. And we will support alternative candidates who take the pledge for Palestine. And we will challenge Labour councillors who refuse to take the pledge and collude with this despicable denial of democracy. So let’s challenge them on the doorsteps. Let’s get busy with Lambeth Votes Palestine.

‘Get these shits out of their offices’

As ever, another powerful speech in Lambeth was delivered by Glyn Secker of what was formerly Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL). First Secker told us that the ‘L’ no longer stands for Labour, as a result of their pro-genocide actions, but now stands for ‘liberation’ in solidarity with Palestinians. Secker has long refused to be connected to the hostile state of Zionist Israel particularly as a Jewish man, stating:

We represent a very different perspective on what it means to be a Jew in this country, a very different point of view from the Jewish establishment, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council. I’m going to give you a perspective, a historical one, tied up with where we are now.

Jews in this country represent 0.5% of the population. Muslims represent about 5%. So you might ask, why is the Israeli lobby so damn powerful? Why is their establishment here has minimal concerns with Islamophobia, but maximal focus on anti-Semitism and its weaponization?

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But we can do no more than understand racism without understanding imperialism and slavery, than we can understand Islamophobia without understanding oil imperialism, which replaced slavery as a financial driver of the second stage of the development of international capitalism.

The economic foundations of Israel were laid by mercantile Jews, traders, financiers, and then developing into international bankers. the privileged upper-class Jews with a role in developing the first stage of capitalism. To jump very quickly from that to Israel and Zionism, Zionism translated that role into a nationalist form, a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of hostile Arabism, as a British colonial agent in the Middle East described it at the time. And what happened was the development of Israel took over that role of Jewish capital when the bankers began, the Jewish bankers, Rothschilds and so on, began to give way to the large financial institutions developing in the States.

And so Israel took on that role of American imperial interest in the Middle East. Like the financials before them, they slotted neatly into servicing the dominant economic and political order. And so you have the United States’ multi-billion pound transfers to Israel, not just now during the genocide, but it’s accelerated. It’s been going on for decades, from the beginning of Israel’s inception, pretty much. So it’s imperative to draw a distinction between Israel and its ideology, political Zionism and Jew. Because I have nothing to do with what’s going on there, as far as I’m concerned, and I will not be identified with that. And there are many hundreds of thousands, probably a couple of million of us around the country.

Secker finished with a bit of advice for those out on doorsteps facing the inevitable allegations of antisemitism for refusing to support mass-murder, advising:

So what do you do on the doorstep when you’re told that it’s anti-Semitic? Well, you just say, there’s a whole lot of Jews in this country, who are deeply committed to it, because they’re deeply committed against genocide, who are deeply committed against any Holocaust, whoever perpetrates it.

And if it’s Jews, well for me, I’m deeply against that from the bottom of my being, because that is not something that I identify with in terms of my integrity and my humanity. So, I can’t tolerate, as a Jewish pensioner, drawing a lamb of pension that my deferred wages are invested in weapons companies that are slaughtering Palestinians.

So, I am deeply behind this campaign to get these shits out of their offices so we can disinvest.

Featured image via the Canary

Chris Wormald was appointed cabinet secretary in December 2024 (Alamy)

2 min read33 min

For an interim period, the responsibilities of the cabinet secretary will be shared by Cabinet Office permanent secretary Catherine Little, Home Office permanent secretary Dame Antonia Romeo, and Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler.

A new cabinet secretary will be appointed “shortly”, according to the government.

Wormald was appointed as head of the civil service in December 2024, having previously served as the permanent secretary for the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education.

In a statement on Thursday, Wormald said: “It has been an honour and a privilege to serve as a civil servant for the past 35 years, and a particular distinction to lead the Service as Cabinet Secretary.

“I want to place on record my sincere thanks to the extraordinary civil servants, public servants, ministers, and advisers I have worked with. Our country is fortunate to have such dedicated individuals devoted to public service, and I wish them every success for the future.”

Starmer said: “I am very grateful to Sir Chris for his long and distinguished career of public service, spanning more than 35 years, and for the support that he has given me over the past year. I have agreed with him that he will step down as Cabinet Secretary today. I wish him the very best for the future.”

It has been widely briefed that Starmer intends to replace Wormald with Romeo.

However, in an extraordinary intervention on Wednesday, former senior civil servant Simon McDonald said the government must carry out “more due diligence” before appointing her.

McDonald, the former permanent secretary of the Foreign Office, told Channel 4: “The due diligence needs to be thorough. If the candidate mentioned in the media is the one, in my view, the due diligence has some way still to go.”

The Home Office permanent secretary was previously investigated by the Foreign Office while serving as Consul General in New York in 2017, over allegations of bullying, harassment, discrimination and misusing expenses.

Wormald is the latest senior figure to depart the top of government in recent days.

Morgan McSweeney has resigned as Starmer’s chief of staff, and Tim Allan has stepped down as the No 10 director of communications, amid severe criticism of Starmer’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite being aware of his links to Jeffrey Epstein.