As shivering Britain battles the cost of living crisis and skyrocketing fuel bills, the Prime Minister was feeling the heat.
Rishi Sunak’s millionaire wife has escaped it all by jetting off with the children on a luxury, money-no-object sunshine holiday, and it’s added uproar from critics over a Prime Minister happy to let money-grabbing energy goliaths make record returns as hard-up customers face crippling rising bills, with no chance of any type of holiday this year.
Akshata Murty, 42, left her husband’s Richmond constituency in North Yorkshire, where temperatures dropped to 2C this week with 70mph winds, to lap up India’s 36C sunshine on the costly paradise beaches of Goa along with daughter’s Krishna, 11, nine-year-old Anoushka, and billionaire parents Naranya and Sudha.
The family enjoyed speedboat and jet ski rides across crystal clear Goan waters and Ms Murty, who has a £690 million stake in her father’s tech company Infosys, was photographed basking on Benaulim beach where a seven-night full-board holiday costs £7,500.
Meanwhile, her husband is under fire back home, blamed by unions for failing to impose a tough windfall tax on money-grabbing energy goliaths.
British Gas owner Centrica has coined in record earnings of £3.3 billion while sending bailiffs to force fit prepayment meters on vulnerable customers.
A couple of weeks ago Shell announced doubled returns at £32.2 billion while BP banked £23 billion, and hiking up electricity prices helped the United Kingdom wing of France-owned EDF Energy turn a £1.12 billion profit.
Labour MP Justin Madders stormed that the contrast between the Prime Minister’s wife soaking up the sun in the lap of luxury and the people of the United Kingdom paying exorbitant prices to greedy energy companies couldn’t be starker.
Gavin Sibthorpe of the GMB union said that millions were struggling as a direct result of policies forcing millions of households to cut back, with bills going up and their pay down and that many were questioning whether they could afford any kind of break this year.
He said that Rishi Sunak will never have a clue how that feels and that he and his ministers were completely out of touch.
Meanwhile, back in Goa, Indian heiress Ms Murty, who used her former non-dom status to save an estimated £20 million in taxes, went on a £10 a head jet ski ride with a local fisherman who runs water sports for sightseers.
Some might say that people of wealth shouldn’t be shamed because they have money and that they shouldn’t have to stop spending it or hide away eating ready meals so that they don’t offend others, and that might be true, but she’s the Prime Minister’s wife, which makes it slightly different.
And apparently, Rishi Sunak’s wife potentially dodged up to £20 million in UK tax by being non-domiciled and paid £30,000 a year to keep the status, disclosures that came amid increasing political tension.
Akshata Murty gets around £11.5 million a year in dividends from a stake in an Indian IT company and declared non-dom status, which permits people to evade tax on foreign earnings.
Apparently, the required tax was paid by Ms Murty but refused to say where, as the information wasn’t relevant, and evidently, it’s possible for someone in the multimillionaire position to take advantage of tax havens on income earned outside the United Kingdom.
However, now, Rishi Sunak’s wife has now given up her non-dom status after a political row, which threatened to jeopardise her husband’s career prospects, and Ms Murty revealed that she would start paying British taxes on all her worldwide income, although she insisted that the move was solely voluntary.
The bottom line is that Ms Murty isn’t using taxpayer’s money, she’s a multimillionaire, and she’s spending her own money. However, she is in the public eye because of her Prime Minister husband.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 