A 17-year-old boy has died after being stabbed at the weekend.
He was injured in the early hours of Sunday at an address in Marches Road, Warnham, near Horsham, West Sussex, and taken to hospital in a critical condition.
He died on Tuesday, Sussex Police said.
A 16-year-old boy is in custody after being arrested on suspicion of murder, while a 16-year-old girl and a 52-year-old woman have been arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.
Det Ch Insp Kimball Edey, of the Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team, said: "Our thoughts are with the victim's family and friends at this incredibly difficult time.
"We know that there were a number of young people in attendance at an event, and are keen to speak to them.
"Further arrests have been made in this case, and we ask the public not to speculate about the incident on social media as it may jeopardise the ongoing investigation."
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NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose has finally stepped down effective immediately, after admitting that she leaked private banking information about Nigel Farage to the BBC.
Dame Alison fell on her sword just hours after Downing Street expressed “significant concerns” about plans for her to remain in her post.
Howard Davies, chairman of the NatWest Group Board, said in a statement: “The Board and Alison Rose have agreed, by mutual consent, that she will step down as CEO of the NatWest Group. It is a sad moment.
“She has dedicated all her working life so far to NatWest and will leave many colleagues who respect and admire her.”
Dame Alison said: “I remain immensely proud of the progress the bank has made in supporting people, families and business across the UK, and building the foundations for sustainable growth.
“My NatWest colleagues are central to that success, and so I would like to personally thank them for all that they have done.”
NatWest’s board was locked in emergency talks on Tuesday night over Dame Alison’s future. The board had initially expressed full confidence in her, but indicated it would dock her £5m a year pay and bonuses in a last ditch attempt to save her skin.
A statement from the board on Wednesday confirmed Paul Thwaite, the current chief executive of the company’s Commercial and Institutional business, would take over Dame Alison’s responsibilities for the next year, pending regulatory approval.
The appointment of a permanent successor would take place “in due course”, it said.
Dame Alison has quit her post as chief executive
Credit: Bloomberg
Dame Alison’s resignation, which was widely anticipated in Government, follows weeks of growing controversy over Coutts’ decision to “de-bank” Mr Farage because of his political views.
But it will only fuel calls for further heads to roll with Mr Davies, the chairman of the NatWest Group which owns the upmarket bank, now directly in the firing line.
Dame Alison had earlier admitted she was the source of a BBC story which claimed Mr Farage’s account was closed because he fell below Coutts’ wealth threshold.
She acknowledged the briefing was a “serious error of judgment” but said she believed the information she disclosed to the broadcaster was already in the public domain.
The Telegraph last week revealed Dame Alison had sat next to Simon Jack, the BBC’s business editor, at a charity dinner the day before the BBC article was published.
‘Serious error of judgment’
In an earlier statement, Dame Alison said: “I recognise that in my conversations with Simon Jack of the BBC, I made a serious error of judgment in discussing Mr Farage’s relationship with the bank.”
Mr Farage, the former Ukip leader, earlier said Dame Alison, Coutts CEO Peter Flavel and Sir Howard Davies, the NatWest chairman, all deserved to lose their jobs over the scandal.
Speaking on his GB News show, he said Dame Alison was “unfit” for her role, adding: “This is a serious breach. I hadn’t said to anybody that the bank I was having trouble with was Coutts... She chose to put it into the public domain with Simon Jack. She broke an essential confidence.”
Mr Farage also said he was unhappy with Dame Alison’s explanation, pointing out that the BBC had said in its own statement on Monday that it had gone back to her the next day to check its story and request approval to publish.
He wrote on Twitter:
The statements between NatWest and the BBC are contradictory. Someone is lying here. My full verdict and response at 7pm on @GBNEWS.
Meanwhile, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the banking watchdog, revealed that it had raised concerns about breaches of confidentiality by Coutts and its parent company NatWest and said it had “made clear” to the bigger bank the need for an independent review.
On Tuesday night, senior Conservative MPs demanded that Dame Alison resign or be fired from her job at a bank that is 39 per cent owned by the taxpayer.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former business secretary, said: “She has to go. She has admitted it and she has to go. She has broken one of the fundamental codes of banking and therefore she must go.”
‘She has broken the cardinal rule’
A City chief executive earlier on Tuesday said: “She has broken the cardinal rule of banking. An FCA investigation is inevitable now. Her position is untenable and she should resign. It’s ridiculous the board is backing her given the seriousness of the offence.”
The scandal engulfing NatWest comes after a Telegraph investigation revealed that Mr Farage’s accounts were closed after Coutts decided that the views of the former Ukip leader “do not align with our values”.
The BBC had previously run a story by Mr Jack that falsely claimed that Mr Farage had not met Coutts’ financial requirements. Dame Alison and Mr Jack had sat next to each other at a charity dinner the night before the BBC published its story on July 4.
Explaining what she had told Mr Jack, Dame Alison said in her statement: “Believing it was public knowledge, I confirmed that Mr Farage was a Coutts customer and that he had been offered a NatWest bank account. Alongside this, I repeated what Mr Farage had already stated, that the bank saw this as a commercial decision.”
She insisted she had not revealed “any personal financial information” about Mr Farage but admitted: “I left Mr Jack with the impression that the decision to close Mr Farage’s accounts was solely a commercial one.
“Put simply, I was wrong to respond to any question raised by the BBC about this case. I want to extend my sincere apologies to Mr Farage for the personal hurt this has caused him.”
Mr Farage earlier called for Dame Alison to quit on Twitter: “Dame Alison Rose has now admitted that she is the source. She broke client confidentiality, and is unfit to be CEO of NatWest Group.
“Meanwhile, Coutts CEO Peter Flavel must take the ultimate responsibility for de-banking me based on my political views. Sir Howard Davies is responsible for overall governance. He has clearly failed in this task, least of all by endorsing their conduct. In my view, they should all go.”
The former Brexit Party leader has accused Mr Flavel of being “asleep at the wheel” throughout the scandal. He has written to him three times, but has yet to receive a reply and has called his handling of the crisis “an absolute disgrace”.
Bank backflips
Hours before the announcement of Dame Alison’s resignation, Sir Howard Davies, NatWest’s chairman, said the bank was standing by Dame Alison.
In an earlier statement on Tuesday, he said: “This was a regrettable error of judgment on her part. The events will be taken into account in decisions on remuneration at the appropriate time.
“However, after careful reflection the board has concluded that it retains full confidence in Ms Rose as CEO of the bank.
“The board is clear that the overall handling of the circumstances surrounding Mr Farage’s accounts has been unsatisfactory, with serious consequences for the bank. The board will commission an independent review into the account closure arrangement at Coutts, and the lessons to be learnt from this.”
It is unclear whether Dame Alison’s leak to the BBC will form part of that independent inquiry. The FCA issued a warning to the bank that unless the review was “well resourced”, given full access to all “necessary” information and takes place “swiftly and fully”, it reserved the right to launch its own inquiry.
Sheldon Mills, the executive director at the FCA, said: “We have raised concerns with NatWest Group and Coutts about the allegations relating to account closures and breach of customer confidentiality since these came to light.
“We made clear our expectation that these issues should be independently reviewed and note (Tuesday’s) statement from the NatWest Group Board confirming this will happen. It is vital that the review is well resourced and those conducting it have access to all the necessary information and people in order to investigate what happened swiftly and fully.
“On the basis of the review and any steps taken by other authorities, such as the Financial Ombudsman Service or Information Commissioner, on relevant complaints, we will decide if any further action is necessary.”
The pressure on Dame Alison to admit her role in the leak had become overwhelming ahead of the publication on Friday of NatWest’s results for the first half of the year.
The announcement would have been dominated by questions over whether she was the source of the BBC story.
NatWest chief executive Dame Alison Rose has finally stepped down effective immediately, after admitting that she leaked private banking information about Nigel Farage to the BBC.
Dame Alison fell on her sword just hours after Downing Street expressed “significant concerns” about plans for her to remain in her post.
Howard Davies, chairman of the NatWest Group Board, said in a statement: “The Board and Alison Rose have agreed, by mutual consent, that she will step down as CEO of the NatWest Group. It is a sad moment.
“She has dedicated all her working life so far to NatWest and will leave many colleagues who respect and admire her.”
Dame Alison said: “I remain immensely proud of the progress the bank has made in supporting people, families and business across the UK, and building the foundations for sustainable growth.
“My NatWest colleagues are central to that success, and so I would like to personally thank them for all that they have done.”
NatWest’s board was locked in emergency talks on Tuesday night over Dame Alison’s future. The board had initially expressed full confidence in her, but indicated it would dock her £5m a year pay and bonuses in a last ditch attempt to save her skin.
A statement from the board on Wednesday confirmed Paul Thwaite, the current chief executive of the company’s Commercial and Institutional business, would take over Dame Alison’s responsibilities for the next year, pending regulatory approval.
The appointment of a permanent successor would take place “in due course”, it said.
Dame Alison has quit her post as chief executive
Credit: Bloomberg
Dame Alison’s resignation, which was widely anticipated in Government, follows weeks of growing controversy over Coutts’ decision to “de-bank” Mr Farage because of his political views.
But it will only fuel calls for further heads to roll with Mr Davies, the chairman of the NatWest Group which owns the upmarket bank, now directly in the firing line.
Dame Alison had earlier admitted she was the source of a BBC story which claimed Mr Farage’s account was closed because he fell below Coutts’ wealth threshold.
She acknowledged the briefing was a “serious error of judgment” but said she believed the information she disclosed to the broadcaster was already in the public domain.
The Telegraph last week revealed Dame Alison had sat next to Simon Jack, the BBC’s business editor, at a charity dinner the day before the BBC article was published.
‘Serious error of judgment’
In an earlier statement, Dame Alison said: “I recognise that in my conversations with Simon Jack of the BBC, I made a serious error of judgment in discussing Mr Farage’s relationship with the bank.”
Mr Farage, the former Ukip leader, earlier said Dame Alison, Coutts CEO Peter Flavel and Sir Howard Davies, the NatWest chairman, all deserved to lose their jobs over the scandal.
Speaking on his GB News show, he said Dame Alison was “unfit” for her role, adding: “This is a serious breach. I hadn’t said to anybody that the bank I was having trouble with was Coutts... She chose to put it into the public domain with Simon Jack. She broke an essential confidence.”
Mr Farage also said he was unhappy with Dame Alison’s explanation, pointing out that the BBC had said in its own statement on Monday that it had gone back to her the next day to check its story and request approval to publish.
He wrote on Twitter:
The statements between NatWest and the BBC are contradictory. Someone is lying here. My full verdict and response at 7pm on @GBNEWS.
Meanwhile, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the banking watchdog, revealed that it had raised concerns about breaches of confidentiality by Coutts and its parent company NatWest and said it had “made clear” to the bigger bank the need for an independent review.
On Tuesday night, senior Conservative MPs demanded that Dame Alison resign or be fired from her job at a bank that is 39 per cent owned by the taxpayer.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former business secretary, said: “She has to go. She has admitted it and she has to go. She has broken one of the fundamental codes of banking and therefore she must go.”
‘She has broken the cardinal rule’
A City chief executive earlier on Tuesday said: “She has broken the cardinal rule of banking. An FCA investigation is inevitable now. Her position is untenable and she should resign. It’s ridiculous the board is backing her given the seriousness of the offence.”
The scandal engulfing NatWest comes after a Telegraph investigation revealed that Mr Farage’s accounts were closed after Coutts decided that the views of the former Ukip leader “do not align with our values”.
The BBC had previously run a story by Mr Jack that falsely claimed that Mr Farage had not met Coutts’ financial requirements. Dame Alison and Mr Jack had sat next to each other at a charity dinner the night before the BBC published its story on July 4.
Explaining what she had told Mr Jack, Dame Alison said in her statement: “Believing it was public knowledge, I confirmed that Mr Farage was a Coutts customer and that he had been offered a NatWest bank account. Alongside this, I repeated what Mr Farage had already stated, that the bank saw this as a commercial decision.”
She insisted she had not revealed “any personal financial information” about Mr Farage but admitted: “I left Mr Jack with the impression that the decision to close Mr Farage’s accounts was solely a commercial one.
“Put simply, I was wrong to respond to any question raised by the BBC about this case. I want to extend my sincere apologies to Mr Farage for the personal hurt this has caused him.”
Mr Farage earlier called for Dame Alison to quit on Twitter: “Dame Alison Rose has now admitted that she is the source. She broke client confidentiality, and is unfit to be CEO of NatWest Group.
“Meanwhile, Coutts CEO Peter Flavel must take the ultimate responsibility for de-banking me based on my political views. Sir Howard Davies is responsible for overall governance. He has clearly failed in this task, least of all by endorsing their conduct. In my view, they should all go.”
The former Brexit Party leader has accused Mr Flavel of being “asleep at the wheel” throughout the scandal. He has written to him three times, but has yet to receive a reply and has called his handling of the crisis “an absolute disgrace”.
Bank backflips
Hours before the announcement of Dame Alison’s resignation, Sir Howard Davies, NatWest’s chairman, said the bank was standing by Dame Alison.
In an earlier statement on Tuesday, he said: “This was a regrettable error of judgment on her part. The events will be taken into account in decisions on remuneration at the appropriate time.
“However, after careful reflection the board has concluded that it retains full confidence in Ms Rose as CEO of the bank.
“The board is clear that the overall handling of the circumstances surrounding Mr Farage’s accounts has been unsatisfactory, with serious consequences for the bank. The board will commission an independent review into the account closure arrangement at Coutts, and the lessons to be learnt from this.”
It is unclear whether Dame Alison’s leak to the BBC will form part of that independent inquiry. The FCA issued a warning to the bank that unless the review was “well resourced”, given full access to all “necessary” information and takes place “swiftly and fully”, it reserved the right to launch its own inquiry.
Sheldon Mills, the executive director at the FCA, said: “We have raised concerns with NatWest Group and Coutts about the allegations relating to account closures and breach of customer confidentiality since these came to light.
“We made clear our expectation that these issues should be independently reviewed and note (Tuesday’s) statement from the NatWest Group Board confirming this will happen. It is vital that the review is well resourced and those conducting it have access to all the necessary information and people in order to investigate what happened swiftly and fully.
“On the basis of the review and any steps taken by other authorities, such as the Financial Ombudsman Service or Information Commissioner, on relevant complaints, we will decide if any further action is necessary.”
The pressure on Dame Alison to admit her role in the leak had become overwhelming ahead of the publication on Friday of NatWest’s results for the first half of the year.
The announcement would have been dominated by questions over whether she was the source of the BBC story.
Ministers have told police forces to rapidly cut the number of mental health-related 999 calls they respond to in order to free up an estimated million hours a year of police time, in a move that mental health experts fear could be dangerous.
Announcing a new national strategy for the police’s role in mental health emergencies, Chris Philp, the policing minister, said forces should still attend calls involving mental health issues whenever there is a risk to public safety and if there is a crime.
But 999 call handlers will be given new guidelines to divert more calls to health services amid frustration that police are being asked to do mental health welfare checks that are not related to crime or public safety.
Police officers who find themselves with non-criminal mental health incidents will be urged to hand over cases to health workers within an hour rather than spending far longer escorting them to hospital or another safe place and staying with them before handover – for as long as 14 hours in some cases.
Dr Sarah Hughes, the chief executive of Mind, the mental health charity, said the announcement was deeply worrying. “[It] goes nowhere near offering enough guarantees that these changes will be introduced safely – there is no new funding attached and no explanation of how agencies will be held accountable,” she said. “It is simply impossible to take a million hours of support out of the system without replacing it with investment, and mental health services are not resourced to step up overnight.”
The new plan, known as “right care, right person” (RCRP), looks likely to create tension between police and health services over the speed of rollout and the resources available to ensure vulnerable people do not fall between the cracks. It states that “police forces will ultimately determine the timeframe for implementing the RCRP approach locally” but it “should be established following engagement with health, social care and other relevant partners.”.
Amid increasing pressure on the NHS mental health workforce, health officials are urging a cautious pace in rolling out the change, stressing that extending the mental health workforce is “a work in progress”.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists said the plan must not be “a green light for a unilateral discontinuation” of police involvement in mental health emergencies, describing that as “a real danger to patients”.
Dr Lade Smith, the president of the RCP, called for more funding and said: “The fact is there are certain legal powers only held by the police such as the power to convey a person in crisis from a public place to a place of safety, and so mental health is always going to be police business.”
Mind said it would be “dangerous for forces to step back while local communities and health systems work out how to respond”.
The NHS mental health workforce increased by 22% overall in 2021-22 compared with 2016-17, but referrals to the services they provide were up by 44%, according to a parliamentary report last week.
NHS England’s mental health director, Claire Murdoch, said police and health services must assess “the additional resources they will need to deliver this”.
The government did not announce any new funding but cited a previously announced £2.3bn-a-year investment from next April to create an extra 2m additional mental health treatment packages and £150m for urgent and emergency mental health care services.
The Guardian revealed in May that the Met police commissioner, Mark Rowley, had set a deadline of 31 August for health services to take on mental health calls in London, saying “the status quo is untenable”. Rowley said that at times less than a third of 999 calls were crime-related. Mind said it was deeply concerned at the deadline.
Philp said that with police time freed up he expected “more visible patrolling in town centres … faster response times and … more resources dedicated to investigating crime.” Eventually, the public will be urged to call 111 instead of 999 to tackle mental health emergencies, but first 999 operators will apply a new threshold in deciding whether to escalate mental health-related cases to the police.
Senior police officers said they could not rule out that non-attendance at mental health calls by police officers might result in injuries or deaths, but said there was no evidence of that so far.
Maria Caulfield, the mental health minister, said: “Anyone going through something as awful as a mental health crisis deserves to know they’ll receive the best possible emergency response. It’s vital the right people who are trained and skilled to deal with the situation are on the scene to assist.”
Philp said there should not be a gap in response between police and health services. He wants the change complete in two years. “These are services that the NHS is in their remit to provide anyway … we’re not creating a new demand,” he said. “It’s something the NHS should always be doing.”
The National Police Chiefs Council lead for policing and mental health, Rachel Bacon, said that when police were sent, people in mental health crises often felt criminalised. “This is not about us stepping away from mental health incidents, it is about ensuring the most vulnerable people receive the appropriate care, which we are not always best placed to provide,” she said.
Perversely, a spectacular week for Labour somehow ended up with an assault on the party’s green policies, amid hints of internal wobbling. Despite a record Labour trouncing of a Tory majority in Selby and Ainsty, a 7% swing to Labour in Uxbridge and South Ruislip became a story about Labour in trouble, over a seat not even won in Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide.
Labour always struggles to make its narrative heard against the wall of sound from the massed foghorns of the Tory media, but the party needs more nimbleness to duck being defined by the enemy. Keir Starmer’s public rebuke to Sadiq Khan to “reflect” on his Ulez policy was a badly pitched red-on-red news story. Instead, they should have publicly agreed more generous car-scrappage schemes so that the cost of cleaning up child-killing pollution doesn’t have to fall on lower-paid drivers. Having also lost a council seat in Cambridge this month to a Conservative who stood on a platform of fighting a proposed congestion charge, Labour knows its green policies need to fall fairly on the broadest shoulders. Instead, it has allowed the Uxbridge result to distract from an electoral success that would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago.
Those around Starmer swear there is no green wobbling: if there was any briefing to the Murdoch press against Ed Miliband’s greenery, it must have come from some strutting loose-lipped junior. But the gossip had legs after that delay to Labour’s £28bn green investment plan – a delay devised as proof of Labour’s iron fiscal discipline. In reality, getting spades in the ground, battery factories built, workforces trained for new green jobs and wind turbines ready to whirl will take time anyway: capital spending can start rolling out as needed.
Here’s why there will be no green retreat: Labour’s green policy is no nice-to-have decoration separate from its economic strategy. That “fairer, greener future” slogan at the last Labour conference is the very heart of Starmer’s “growth, growth, growth” plan. Modelled on Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it’s an even bigger green investment per capita than Biden’s. Those billions are why Starmer dares promise to outdo the G7 on growth, with job-generating renewables publicly owned by Great British Energy, and by building new and insulating old homes.
Michael Gove set the tone for the most recent Tory attacks, accusing Labour of a “religious crusade” as he sheds his own green policies. Grant Shapps vows to “max out” Britain’s North Sea oil reserves, against Labour’s pledge to give no new licences.
But if the Tories insist on green warfare, more fool them. Labour has green policies designed to bring savings, not new costs, to voters’ energy bills.
Remember, Gove was there in 2013 beside David Cameron when he cut the “green crap” and abandoned subsidies for renewables, despite all that “vote blue, go green” husky-hugging designed to de-nasty his party. Cutting “the crap” added £2.5bn to UK household bills, while the number of homes getting their lofts insulated fell by a shocking 92%, and those getting cavity wall insulation by 74%. Abandoning the zero-carbon homes standard meant most new homes have been built with lower energy-efficiency standards – and higher energy bills. Worst of all was barring onshore wind to appease his nimby MPs: failing to use the cheapest energy costs households £180 a year – and onshore wind, even in people’s back yards, is popular.
If Labour needs more green ammunition, Gove’s attack on Natural England, undermining basic environmental standards for new developments, goes against public sentiment: Tory voters tend to like nature and hate sewage in their rivers.
If the Tories are mad and bad enough to want green wars, the public will be on Labour’s side because its green message is not about sacrifice, but about growth-inducing investment, cutting costs. Ed Miliband, who has been close to Starmer over many years, has been masterly in setting that tone as the guarantor of Labour’s green intentions. (No, Starmer never said he “hates tree-huggers” – that was a Tory lie, according to his team.)
Lisa Nandy is the other pillar of Starmer’s growth strategy, with her huge house-building ambitions, planning for 70% of people to own their own homes and the majority of the rest to have secure social housing. Decent homes standards will apply to private as well as social landlords, sparking widespread repairs – another engine of growth.
It’s a bit late for Gove’s promise to complete a million homes in this parliament, as the Conservative manifesto pledged in 2019: Knight Frank says it’s “unlikely to have a meaningful impact on housing supply”. Under the 15 Tory housing ministers since 2010, housebuilding in England is due to fall to its lowest level since the second world war, Nandy points out. Since the government caved in to its nimbys and abandoned compulsory local housing targets, 58 local authorities have delayed or withdrawn their local housing plans.
On Monday, Gove managed to simultaneously boast of exempting developments from planning permission and promise lots more planners to unblock the backlog of planning applications. But that backlog was created by his own government’s 43% cuts to the planning system since 2010. Abandoning local planning rules may please some developers, but not most voters who care about their neighbourhoods. The very word “planning” horrifies out-of-touch libertarian and anti-green Tory MPs.
Bereft battalions of old Brexiters now resurrect themselves under the anti-net zero banner, apparently oblivious to public opinion. God help us, the Sunday Telegraph is even calling for a referendum on net zero. In spirit, these MPs ally themselves to countries among the G20 who this weekend disastrously blocked a plan to phase down fossil fuels and triple renewable energy capacity – mainly Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.
These Brexiters turned climate ignorers will try to drum up anti-Labour fears among Aberdeen oil workers and the few miners elsewhere who may not believe in Labour’s new green jobs until they see them. They will try to frighten drivers, so Labour needs to be sure-footed about explaining who pays for transition costs. Just Stop Oil is the Tories’ convenient target: protesters need more cleverness in engaging the public without enraging them.
But as the world boils for all to see, a back-woods Tory campaign against good climate policies is a losing cause. The latest Office for National Statistics public opinion survey finds top issues “continued to be the cost of living (92%), the NHS (88%), the economy (79%), climate change and the environment (62%) and housing (62%).” No complacency, but the Tories are dead in the water on all of those.
Labour can make common cause with those beleaguered Tories who see sense on the climate, but they have nothing to fear from the Jacob Rees-Mogg cadre of unelectables in pursuit of the unsurvivable. Any Labour advisers urging green retreat should be sent to spend their summer holiday on the island of Rhodes.
Charlotte Owen, a former aide to Boris Johnson, has taken her seat as the youngest ever life peer in the House of Lords, despite criticism over her lack of professional experience. The 30-year-old became Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge after being formally introduced to the upper chamber on Monday afternoon.
Johnson nominated seven of his close allies to the Lords as part of his controversial resignation honours list, of which Owen was one of the last to take her seat.
Three of those nominated were in their 30s, including Ross Kempsell, a 31-year-old former journalist, and Ben Houchen, the 36-year-old Tees Valley mayor.
The former prime minister’s decision to nominate Owen was criticised not only because of her age, but also because of her relatively junior role. She was an official in Downing Street under Johnson, but her exact role and length of tenure have been questioned.
While her own LinkedIn profile states that she served as a No 10 special adviser from February 2021 until October 2022, she is not listed in the official government directory of special advisers published in June 2021.
Owen graduated from the University of York in 2015 before working for the communications firm Portland. She was a constituency intern for the Tory MP William Wragg for one month and then worked for others in the party, including Chris Heaton-Harris, Alok Sharma and Jake Berry.
Owen is not the only name on Johnson’s resignation honours list to have prompted questions. Kulveer Ranger was nominated to the Lords after serving as director of transport policy while Johnson was London mayor. But he was also credited as having been a “special adviser to the UK government on digital strategy” – a role that does not appear on his LinkedIn profile.
Houchen has been accused of “industrial-scale corruption” over a redevelopment project at the former Redcar steelworks, something he has denied.
The list also triggered upset among some of those whose names did not appear, including Nadine Dorries, who has threatened to quit as MP for Mid Bedfordshire after accusing Downing Street of having manoeuvred to make sure she would not receive a peerage. Dorries first said she would quit over a month ago immediately after the honours list was published, but has still not done so.
