Kwasi Kwarteng’s champagne reception may have broken ministerial code
The head of the civil service is facing calls to order an investigation into whether Kwasi Kwarteng breached the ministerial code when he attended a champagne reception with hedge fund managers after his mini-budget.
The chancellor has conceded that “with hindsight it probably wasn’t the best day to go” to the gathering following his statement, which included scrapping the bankers’ bonus cap and the abolition of the 45p top rate of tax. He was later forced to U-turn on his 45p plan.
While some hedge fund managers stood to profit from the fall in the pound that followed Kwarteng’s statement, his team have said that any suggestion that the gathering was given privileged information was “total nonsense”.
However, he is being asked to clarify whether he adhered to the ministerial code at the Conservative party gathering. The code states that ministers who discuss official business at a “social occasion” while not in the presence of civil servants must report the content of discussions to their department as soon as possible.
The event took place at the luxury west London home of Andrew Law, a financier and Conservative party donor, on the evening after the mini-budget. Initial reports suggested that the chancellor spoke about forthcoming spending, though his team said that his ambitions to lower the tax burden were “hardly a state secret”.
Kwarteng subsequently declared there was “more to come” in terms of tax cuts in an interview that many blamed for spooking the markets and causing a temporary collapse in the pound.
Among those to attend the Chelsea gathering were stockbroker Howard Shore, banker Sir Henry Angest, corporate financier and Lord Leigh of Hurley and Selva Pankaj, a merchant banker.
The previous week, it was revealed
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