Evening summary Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day: Rishi Sunak’s multi-millionaire wife claims non-domicile status, it has emerged, which allows her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire. Akshata Murty, who receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from her stake in the Indian IT services company Infosys, declares non-dom status, a scheme that allows people to avoid tax on foreign earnings. Several leading international tax experts have disputed Akshata Murty’s claim that must be treated as a non-dom for UK tax because she is an Indian citizen, saying tax domicile status is a choice and not connected with a person’s nationality. Those resident in the UK do not have to have a British passport in order to pay British taxes, meaning Murty could have paid UK tax at any time. Labour has called for clarity and “complete transparency” over why Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, uses non-domicile status. Keir Starmer, asked about Rishi Sunak’s wife holding non-domiciled status, said: “If it now transpires that his wife has been using schemes to reduce her own tax then I’m afraid that is breathtaking hypocrisy.” Rishi Sunak’s wife pays £30,000 a year to secure her non-domiciled tax status, her spokesperson has confirmed and accepted it was possible that Akshata Murty uses the status to take advantage of tax havens for income earned outside the UK. As political pressure increased on the chancellor and his spouse, the spokesperson said Murty had no plans to say where she pays tax on overseas income as that information was not “relevant”. The business secretary has admitted that the government’s energy security strategy will do little to help alleviate soaring fuel bills now. Kwasi Kwarteng said that it’s “more of a medium three, four, five year answer” ahead of its reveal later today. Keir Starmer said the government’s energy strategy “won’t help those who only last week saw their energy bills go up by hundreds of pounds”. What people wanted from the government was a response that met that challenge, he said. Boris Johnson said “nuclear is coming home” as a result of the government’s energy strategy. In a social media video to promote the plan, which was finally released today after repeated delays and cabinet wrangling, the prime minister said: “We’ve got the ambition, we’ve got the plan and we are going to bring clean, affordable secure power to the people for generations to come.” Rishi Sunak vetoed plans to ease the cost of living crisis for millions of households after proposals to more than double the energy bill rebate scheme were rejected, according to a document leaked to the i paper. The UK government has confirmed that no new nuclear power stations will be built in Scotland, as the Holyrood government – which is opposed to nuclear energy – dismissed new plans to install eight reactors at existing sites as “risky and expensive”. Kwasi Kwarteng confirmed there were “no plans to impose nuclear reactors in Scotland” in future. Ed Miliband said the government should ban transgender conversion therapy. He said: “Trans people face incredible barriers and stigma in our society” and that the debate on trans issues was “really awful” for many trans people. That’s it from me today. Thanks for joining me. Akshata Murty says it’s not ‘relevant’ to say where she pays tax overseas Rishi Sunak’s wife pays £30,000 a year to secure her non-domiciled tax status, her spokesperson has confirmed and accepted it was possible that Akshata Murty uses the status to take advantage of tax havens for income earned outside the UK. As political pressure increased on the chancellor and his spouse, the spokesperson said Murty had no plans to say where she pays tax on overseas income as that information was not “relevant”. The spokesperson declined to elaborate on the initial explanation for Murty’s non-dom tax status – the fact she has Indian citizenship – when this would still mean such a tax arrangement was a choice. They accepted it was possible that Murty’s arrangements meant she minimised her tax using tax havens. They said no further details would be given, other than to say that Murty abided by all necessary rules. Labour called for clarity over her tax arrangements, while Keir Starmer said it would be “breathtaking hypocrisy” if she had been reducing her liabilities while the chancellor was raising taxes on others. There was also concern from some Conservative MPs, with one former minister saying the revelation was particularly unfortunate on the day the national insurance rise came into force. The perception is, what is the problem? Here is someone worth £3bn who has a different tax arrangement. I’m sure everything is above board but that’s not the point. Murty receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from a stake in her family’s IT business empire, Infosys, which is headquartered in Bengaluru, India, and listed on the Indian and New York stock exchanges. Under UK tax laws, Murty’s status as a non-dom means she does not have to pay tax on dividend payments from overseas companies. UK resident taxpayers currently pay up to 39.35% tax on foreign dividend payouts. It is not known where she pays tax on this overseas income. It previously emerged that Murty is a shareholder in a restaurant business that funnelled investments through the tax haven of Mauritius. Asked where Murty paid tax on her overseas income, a spokesperson said Murty had no plans to comment on this because it “doesn’t seem relevant”. This is the government form that the chancellor’s wife Akshata Murty will have filled in to apply for non-domiciled status in order to avoid paying UK tax on tens of millions in dividends collected from her family’s Indian IT business empire. When it was revealed on Wednesday that Murty was a non-dom, and therebynot required to pay UK tax on about £11.5m in annual dividends from her stake in Infosys, her spokeswoman said Murty “is treated as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes” suggesting that she had no control over her UK tax status. However, all UK residents must actively apply for non-dom status by filing in government tax form SA109 to claim the tax relief. Murty’s spokeswoman suggested that because Murty was an Indian citizen she cannot also hold UK citizenship and therefore must be treated as a non-dom for UK tax. Akshata Murty is a citizen of India, the country of her birth and parents’ home. India does not allow its citizens to hold the citizenship of another country simultaneously. So, according to British law, Ms Murty is treated as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes. She has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her UK income. However, several leading international tax experts have disputed this and said tax domicile status is not connected with a person’s nationality. Those resident in the UK do not have to have a British passport in order to pay British taxes, meaning Murty could have paid UK tax at any time. Richard Murphy, a professor of accounting at Sheffield University management school and tax justice campaigner, said: Domicile has nothing to do with a person’s nationality. Nor does it have anything to do with not being able to have a British passport because a person holds citizenship from another country. And non-domiciled status is certainly never given for that reason. Murphy said non-dom status is only given to people who applied for it. In that case the implication in Ms Murty’s statement that she has to be treated as non-domiciled is simply wrong. She is only non-domiciled because she asked to be so. She can also give up the claim to be non-domiciled at any time,Just because she was non-domiciled when she arrived in the UK as a newly married person does not mean she has to keep the status now. So the fact she’s still non-dom is also a choice. Arun Advani, assistant professor at the University of Warwick’s economics department and an expert on non-dom tax law, said: “Citizenship has nothing to do with whether you choose to/not to claim remittance basis in the UK.” Rishi Sunak vetoed plans to ease the cost of living crisis for millions of households after proposals to more than double the energy bill rebate scheme were rejected, according to a document leaked to Richard Vaughan and Paul Waugh at the i paper. The i reports: An earlier draft of the energy security strategy drawn up by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng’s department and obtained by i included measures to increase the £200 energy rebate to “£500 or more” for either all households or just “fuel poor” homes. But the policy recommendation was rejected by the Treasury, despite growing fears within government over damage soaring energy bills would have on household budgets. An alternative suggestion was to delay the repayment of the energy rebate or to extend the repayment period for either all households or the poorest was also dismissed. So too was a policy proposal to exempt the poorest homes from having to repay the rebate. Full story: UK’s energy strategy may take years to bring down bills, says Kwarteng Aubrey Allegretti Boris Johnson’s new energy strategy could take up to five years to start shaving money off people’s bills, the business secretary has admitted, as the prime minister announced a drastic expansion of nuclear reactors. Kwasi Kwarteng said the plan for cutting reliance on imported energy in response to soaring prices caused in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was more of a medium-term way to increase homegrown energy production. Johnson declared that the long-delayed energy security strategy meant “nuclear is coming home” – but the review declined to set targets for onshore wind and committed to continuing the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas. Days after 22 million people were hit by the energy price cap rising by 54%, Kwarteng suggested it would be years until the benefits of the strategy would be felt by consumers. The business secretary told Sky News: The strategy is more of a medium-term three, four, five-year answer. I think it’s really important that we get an energy strategy that means we can have more security and independence in the years ahead. We want to have security of supply, we want to live in a world where we’re not dependent on what Russian policy is, but we have more control over energy sources here in Britain. The cost of offshore wind had decreased enormously in the past 10 years, Kwarteng said, adding: Some of these benefits can happen quite quickly. But we need to start the planning process and the strategy now. And that’s what this security strategy is all about. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, attempted to intervene in the cost of living crisis at the end of March, but was accused of not doing enough to help struggling households expected to face the biggest fall in living standards since modern records began in the 1950s. The “cold hand of the chancellor” should not prevent the government from investing more in insulating homes in the UK, ministers have been told. The crossbench peer Lady Hayman questioned whether reluctance from the Treasury was responsible for the lack of action on insulating homes in early information from the government’s energy strategy. The strategy was published today as western countries wrestle with high prices and how to reduce reliance on Russian oil and gas, and in the face of calls to end the fossil fuel era to tackle dangerous climate change. In the Lords, Hayman – a former minister – criticised early information from the strategy, released yesterday. She said: What has been published is in the week of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most frightening warnings yet on global warming and when customers and consumers face horrifying energy bills. It is deeply dispiriting to see a set of policies outlined that concentrate on the expensive and the long-term and fail to support what would work immediately and help both consumers and the climate. Why are there no extra measures to support consumers in insulating their homes? We have some of the worst housing stock in the world and it is an absolute no-brainer to reduce demand and to support. Is that the result of the cold hand of the chancellor? The business minister Lord Callanan said the government was “already spending a lot of money on energy efficiency programmes”. He also said: We are rolling out the development and the formation of low carbon sources of power, be it nuclear, be it offshore wind and we are going to go further on onshore wind. I know it is a subject she feels passionately about. We must do so in full recognition of the concerns of many local communities so we want to take people with us – when we do that we will be seeking a number of pilots to take those policies forward. Full story: Labour says Rishi Sunak must ‘come clean’ about wife’s non-dom tax status Labour has called for clarity over why Rishi Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, uses non-domicile status, as Keir Starmer said it would be “breathtaking hypocrisy” if she had been reducing her tax liabilities while the chancellor was raising taxes on others. Murty receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from a stake in her family’s IT business empire, Infosys. Under UK tax laws, Murty’s status as a non-dom means she would not have to pay tax on dividend payments from overseas companies. Infosys is headquartered in Bengaluru, India, and listed on the Indian and New York stock exchanges. UK resident taxpayers pay a 38.1% tax on dividend payouts. After her status was revealed by the Independent a spokesperson for Murty said that because she was a citizen of India, which does not allow Indians to hold the citizenship of another country simultaneously, she “is treated as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes”. They added: “She has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her UK income.” However, tax experts have said non-dom status is not automatic but a choice. Prof Richard Murphy, a Sheffield University academic who co-founded the Tax Justice Network, said: Domicile has nothing to do with a person’s nationality. In other words, the claims made in the statement issued by Ms Murty are wrong, and as evidence, just because a person has Indian citizenship will never automatically grant them non-dom status in the UK. The Labour MP Chris Bryant said the statement needed to be clarified: This is just wrong. Non-dom status is not automatic and the Treasury needs to urgently clarify this inaccurate statement. After shutting down legitimate questions about Infosys and its operations in Russia last week, it’s time for Rishi Sunak to come clean. Starmer said Sunak “has very, very serious questions to answer”. Labour leader calls for "complete transparency" on Rishi Sunak’s wife"s non-domiciled status Keir Starmer, asked about Rishi Sunak’s wife holding non-domiciled status, told broadcasters: A chancellor who says to the British public that he will tax them – he’s introduced 15 tax rises, and he says all of this is necessary, there’s no option – if it now transpires that his wife has been using schemes to reduce her own tax then I’m afraid that is breathtaking hypocrisy, and it shows yet again that we have got a chancellor who is completely out of touch with the struggles that so many people in this country are going through at the moment with this cost-of-living crisis. Asked if Akshata Murty should change her tax status, Starmer added: We need complete transparency on this so that we can all understand what schemes she may have been using to reduce her own tax. But to use a scheme when the Chancellor is out there day after day saying we need tax rises on millions of people in this country who are really, really struggling is breathtaking hypocrisy. More than one in 10 residents of some of London’s wealthiest neighbourhoods have claimed “non-dom” status at some point, meaning they paid no tax on their offshore income. UK-based people who have benefited from this special tax status by claiming another country as their legal “domicile” made up more than 12% of residents in two parliamentary constituencies in 2018 – Kensington, and the Cities of London and Westminster, according to an analysis of HM Revenue and Customs data. In five of the most affluent council wards they accounted for more than a quarter of residents. The study by the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick found that the number of people who had ever claimed non-dom status in the UK rose from 162,000 in 2001 to 238,000 in 2018. The findings were published after it emerged that Akshata Murty, the wife of Rishi Sunak, claims non-dom status, which would allow her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire. The study found that more than 93% of non-doms were born abroad, coming mainly from the US, India – of which Murty is a citizen – and western Europe, especially France, Germany and Italy, the study found. The number of Indian non-doms has risen most rapidly, from about 4% of the total in 2001 (3,200) to almost 14% in 2018 (22,700). The UK government has confirmed that no new nuclear power stations will be built in Scotland, as the Holyrood government – which is opposed to nuclear energy – dismissed new plans to install eight reactors at existing sites as “risky and expensive”. The Scottish government’s energy secretary Michael Matheson told BBC Radio Scotland this morning: Not only is there environmental risk associated with that, there is also the issue that this is likely to drive up the cost of household bills - whereas renewables such as wind and marine tidal in the future would actually reduce the cost of electricity. I think the UK government might have allowed themselves to be wrapped up in the nuclear lobby here. His UK counterpart Kwasi Kwarteng said there were “no plans to impose nuclear reactors in Scotland” in future. The UK government plans also proposed a new licensing round for oil and gas projects in the North Sea – but Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has previously said that ramping up North Sea oil and gas is not a short-term solution to Europe’s reliance on Russian supplies. Keir Starmer said the government’s energy strategy “won’t help those who only last week saw their energy bills go up by hundreds of pounds”. What they want from the government is a response that meets that challenge, he said. The Labour leader told broadcasters that “because of political squabbling it leaves out of account really important initiatives like keeping homes warm, insulating homes, which I’ve seen for myself can make a huge difference and reduce bills by up to 400, that’s the sort of real action we were looking for today”. Asked if the strategy will help the UK achieve energy security, he said: Anything that makes us less reliant on importing our energy is a good thing, which is why I didn’t think the prime minister was doing the right thing by saying we’re going to stop our reliance on Russia, but then go to Saudi Arabia. But anything that keeps our supply in Britain is a good thing because we do need a secure energy supply. Speaking about what Labour would do, Starmer said: What we’ve been calling for a number of years now is turbo-charging on renewables, including onshore wind turbines, fast-forwarding nuclear, that should have happened over the last decade and it hasn’t happened, there’s been a real failure there, developing on hydrogen, but also very importantly insulating our homes so that we reduce our energy intake and reduce bills for people. Because at the moment I think the thing that most people are worried about is how on earth they are going to pay their energy bills, and we need real answers to that question right now.