Rishi Sunak

Official Portrait: 2022

Chief Secretary to the Treasury (24th July 2019 – 13th February 2020)

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government (9th January 2018 – 24th July 2019)

## Personal Information

### Children

Anoushka Sunak
Krishna Sunak

### Parents

Yashvir Sunak
Usha Sunak

### Sibling(s)

Sanjay Sunak
Raakhi Sunak

### Education

Winchester College

Rishi Sunak's Signature

**Rishi Sunak** (born 12 May 1980) is a British politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022, having previously served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2019 to 2020. A member of the Conservative Party, he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015.

Born in Southampton to Indian parents who had emigrated from East Africa, Sunak was educated at Winchester College. He subsequently read philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford, and later gained an MBA from Stanford University as a Fulbright Scholar. While studying at Stanford, he met his future wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, the Indian billionaire businessman who founded Infosys. Sunak and Murthy are the 222nd richest people in Britain, with a combined fortune of £730m as of 2022. After graduating, he worked for Goldman Sachs and later as a partner at the hedge fund firms The Children's Investment Fund Management and Theleme Partners.

Elected for Richmond (Yorks) at the 2015 general election, he served in Theresa May's second government as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government. He voted three times in favour of May's Brexit withdrawal agreement. After May resigned, Sunak was a supporter of Boris Johnson's campaign to become Conservative leader. After Johnson was elected and appointed Prime Minister, he appointed Sunak as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Sunak replaced Sajid Javid as Chancellor of the Exchequer after his resignation in February 2020.

As Chancellor, Sunak was prominent in the government's economic response to the economic ramifications of the government's decision to impose lockdown to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. In April 2022, he became the first Chancellor in British history to have been sanctioned for breaking the law while in office after being issued a fixed penalty notice for breaching COVID-19 regulations during lockdowns. He resigned as Chancellor on 5 July 2022, citing the economic policy differences between himself and Johnson in his resignation letter. On 8 July 2022, he announced his candidacy to replace Johnson in the 2022 Conservative party leadership election. Sunak successfully stood in the October 2022 Conservative Party leadership election, after the other declared candidates withdrew.

## Early life and education

Sunak was born on 12 May 1980 in Southampton to Indian parents Yashvir and Usha Sunak. He is the eldest of three siblings. His father Yashvir was born and raised in the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya (present-day Kenya), while his mother Usha was born in Tanganyika (which later became part of Tanzania). His grandparents were born in Punjab Province, British India, and emigrated from East Africa with their children to the UK in the 1960s. Yashvir was a general practitioner, and Usha was a pharmacist who ran a local pharmacy.

Sunak attended Stroud School, a preparatory school in Romsey, Hampshire, and Winchester College, a boys' independent boarding school, where he was head boy and the editor of the school paper. He waited tables at a curry house in Southampton during his summer holidays. He read philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford, graduating with a first in 2001. While he was still at university, he undertook an internship at Conservative Campaign Headquarters. In 2001, he was interviewed along with his parents for the BBC documentary *Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl*, during which he remarked, "I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper class, I have friends who are working class… well, not working class". In 2006, he gained an MBA from Stanford University, where he was a Fulbright scholar.

## Business career

Sunak worked as an analyst for the investment bank Goldman Sachs between 2001 and 2004. He then worked for the hedge fund management firm The Children's Investment Fund Management, becoming a partner in September 2006. He left in November 2009 in order to join former colleagues at a new hedge fund firm, Theleme Partners, which launched in October 2010 with $700 million under management. He was also a director of the investment firm Catamaran Ventures, owned by his father-in-law, Indian businessman N. R. Narayana Murthy.

## Early political career

### Member of Parliament

Sunak was selected as the Conservative candidate for Richmond (Yorks) in October 2014. The seat had previously been held by William Hague, a former leader of the party, Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State, who chose to stand down at the following general election. The seat is one of the safest Conservative seats in the United Kingdom and has been held by the party for over 100 years. In the same year Sunak was head of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Research Unit of centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, for which he co-wrote a report on BME communities in the UK. He was elected as MP for the constituency at the 2015 general election with a majority of 19,550 (36.2%). During the 2015–2017 parliament he was a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee.

Sunak supported the UK leaving the European Union at the June 2016 membership referendum. That year, he wrote a report for the Centre for Policy Studies (a Thatcherite think tank) supporting the establishment of free ports after Brexit, and the following year wrote a report advocating the creation of a retail bond market for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Sunak was re-elected at the 2017 general election, with an increased majority of 23,108 (40.5%). He served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Local Government between January 2018 and July 2019. Sunak voted for then-Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit withdrawal agreement on all three occasions and voted against a referendum on any withdrawal agreement. He supported Boris Johnson in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election and co-wrote an article in *The Times* newspaper with fellow MPs Robert Jenrick, and Oliver Dowden to advocate for Johnson during the campaign in June.

### Chief Secretary to the Treasury

Sunak was appointed as Chief Secretary to the Treasury by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on 24th July 2019, serving under Chancellor Sajid Javid. He became a member of the Privy Council the next day.

Sunak was re-elected in the 2019 general election with an increased majority of 27,210 (47.2%). During the election campaign, Sunak represented the Conservatives in both the BBC's and ITV's seven-way election debates.

## Chancellor of the Exchequer (2020–2022)

### Appointment

In the weeks leading up to Sunak's appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer, a number of briefings in the press had suggested that a new economic ministry led by Sunak might be established, to reduce the power and political influence of Chancellor Sajid Javid at the Treasury. Sunak was considered to be a Johnson loyalist, favoured by Dominic Cummings, and seen as the "rising star" minister who had ably represented the Prime Minister during the 2019 election debates. By February 2020, it was reported by *The Guardian* that Javid would remain in his role as Chancellor and that Sunak would stay on as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in order for the Prime Minister's Chief Adviser, Cummings, to "keep an eye" on Javid.

Sunak was promoted to Chancellor on 13 February 2020 as part of a cabinet reshuffle, after the resignation of his predecessor, Javid, on the same day. Javid had resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer following a meeting with Prime Minister Johnson. During the meeting, Johnson had offered to keep his position on the condition that he dismiss all of his advisers at the Treasury, to be replaced with individuals selected by Cummings. Upon resigning, Javid told the Press Association that "no self-respecting minister would accept those terms". Some political commentators saw Sunak's appointment as signalling the end of the Treasury's independence from Downing Street, with Robert Shrimsley, chief political commentator of the *Financial Times*, arguing that "good government often depends on senior ministers – and the Chancellor in particular – being able to fight bad ideas".

### COVID-19 pandemic

Sunak's first budget took place on 11 March 2020. This included an announcement of £30 billion of additional spending, of which £12 billion was allocated for mitigation of the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the pandemic generated financial consequences, Chancellor Sunak's measures received criticism as some workers were unable to qualify for the Treasury's income support measures. The acting leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey, said that people were being unfairly "hung out to dry", with "their dream jobs turning into nightmares" after hundreds of MPs contacted the Chancellor. The Institute for Employment Studies estimated that 100,000 people could not be eligible for any type of government help as they started a new job too late to be included on the job retention scheme, while the British Hospitality Association informed the Treasury Select Committee that between 350,000 and 500,000 workers in its sector were not eligible.

Sunak was part of a committee of Cabinet ministers (also comprising Johnson, Matt Hancock, and Michael Gove) that made decisions on the pandemic.

Sunak was fined alongside Johnson for attending a party, but he did not deliver statement or resign.

#### Job retention scheme

On 17 March, Sunak announced £330 billion in emergency support for businesses, as well as a furlough scheme for employees. This was the first time a British government had created such an employee retention scheme. The scheme was announced on 20 March 2020 as providing grants to employers to pay 80% of a staff wage and employment costs each month, up to a total of £2,500 per person per month. The cost has been estimated at £14 billion a month to run.

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme initially ran for three months and was backdated to 1 March. Following a three-week extension of the countrywide lockdown the scheme was extended by Sunak until the end of June 2020. At the end of May, Sunak extended the scheme until the end of October 2020. The decision to extend the job retention scheme was made to avoid or defer mass redundancies, company bankruptcies and potential unemployment levels not seen since the 1930s. After a second lockdown in England was announced on 31 October 2020, a further extension was announced until 2 December 2020, this was followed on 5 November 2020 by a lengthy extension until 31 March 2021. A further extension until 30 April 2021 was announced by Sunak on 17 December 2020. In the 2021 United Kingdom budget held on 3 March 2021, Sunak confirmed that the scheme had been extended once more until 30 September 2021.

Following changes to the scheme at the end of May, the director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium said that being asked to pay wages when businesses had not been trading was an added pressure, while the Federation of Small Businesses was surprised that the Chancellor had announced a tapering of the scheme when ending it. Northern Ireland's economy minister Diane Dodds said that changes to the scheme could be very difficult for some sectors uncertain about when they can reopen, particularly in the hospitality and retail sector, whilst finance minister Conor Murphy said that it was too early in the economic recovery. By 15 August 80,433 firms had returned £215,756,121 that had been claimed under the scheme. Other companies had claimed smaller amounts of grant cash on the next instalment to compensate for any overpayment. HM Revenue and Customs officials believed that £3.5 billion may have been paid out in error or to fraudsters.

#### Fraud against the schemes

In June 2020, David Clarke, chair of the Fraud Advisory Panel charity and a group of top white collar crime experts wrote a letter to Sunak, the National Audit Office, and others, to alert them the risk of fraud against the government tax-payer backed stimulus schemes. They called for publication of the names of companies receiving Bounce Back Loans to enable data matching to prevent, deter and detect fraud. In September 2020, it emerged that Government Ministers were warned about the risk of fraud against the financial support schemes by Keith Morgan, CEO of the state owned British Business Bank who had concerns about the BBLS and Future Fund. In December 2020, it was reported that banks and the National Crime Agency also had concerns about fraudulent abuse of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme. In January 2021, the NCA reported that three city workers who worked for the same London financial institution had been arrested as part of an investigation into fraudulent Bounce Back Loans totalling £6 million. The NCA said the men were suspected of using their "specialist knowledge" to carry out the fraud. This form of insider fraud was a risk highlighted in the letter sent to Sunak in June 2020.

#### Eat Out to Help Out

In July, he unveiled a plan for a further £30 billion of spending which included a stamp duty holiday, a cut to value-added tax (VAT) for the hospitality sector, the Eat Out to Help Out scheme, and a job retention bonus for employers. Eat Out to Help Out was announced to support and create jobs in the hospitality industry. The government subsidised food and soft drinks at participating cafes, pubs and restaurants at 50%, up to £10 per person. The offer was available from 3 to 31 August on Monday to Wednesday each week. In total, the scheme subsidised £849 million in meals. Some consider the scheme to be a success in boosting the hospitality industry, however others disagree. In terms of the COVID-19 pandemic, a study at the University of Warwick concluded that the scheme contributed to a rise in COVID-19 infections of between 8% and 17%.

In an Ipsos MORI poll in September 2020, Sunak had the highest satisfaction score of any British Chancellor since Labour's Denis Healey in April 1978.

On 26 September, Sunak was said to have opposed a second lockdown with the threat of his resignation, due to what he saw as the dire economic consequences it would have and the responsibility he would have to suffer for that.

#### March 2021 budget

In his March 2021 budget, he announced that the deficit had risen to £355 billion in the fiscal year 2020/2021, the highest in peacetime. The budget included an increase in the rate of corporation tax from 19% to 25% in 2023, a five-year freeze in the tax-free personal allowance and the higher rate income tax threshold, and the extension of the furlough scheme until the end of September. Sunak was the first Chancellor to raise the corporation tax rate since Healey in 1974.

#### Fixed penalty notice

On 12 April 2022, Sunak was issued with a fixed penalty notice for breaching COVID-19 regulations during lockdowns. A number of others also received fixed penalty notices including Johnson. Sunak become the first Chancellor in British history to have been found to have broken the law while in office.

### Register of ministers' interests

In November 2020, Sunak was reported by *The Guardian* to have not declared a significant amount of his wife and family's financial interests on the register of ministers' interests, including a combined £1.7 billion shareholding in the Indian company Infosys. Sunak is required under the ministerial code to declare interests that are "relevant" to his responsibilities and "which might be thought to give rise to a conflict" with his public duties. The independent adviser on ministers' interests investigated and concluded that Sunak had not broken any rules.

### G7 tax reform

In June 2021, at the G7 summit hosted by Sunak at Lancaster House in London, a tax reform agreement was signed, which in principle, sought to establish a global minimum tax on multinationals and online technology companies. In October 2021, the OECD signed an accord to join the tax reform plan.

### Cost of living crisis

In October 2021, Sunak made his third budget statement. It included substantial spending promises to a large extent related to science and education.

Sunak made his spring statement on 23 March 2022. He said that the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic had been disrupted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He cut fuel duty, removed VAT on energy saving equipment (such as solar panels and insulation) and reduced national insurance payments for small businesses and while continuing with a planned national insurance rise in April he promised to align the primary threshold with the basic personal income allowance as of July. He also promises a reduction in income tax in 2024. The Office for Budget Responsibility said that the tax burden would reach its highest level since the 1940s. Sunak also provided some funding to help vulnerable people cope with the rising cost of living.

In April 2022, Keir Starmer said that Sunak was out of touch with the struggles of ordinary people due to the cost of living crisis.

### Cryptocurrencies and NFTs

As Chancellor, Sunak was pushing ahead with a new law that would pave the way for stable coins to be used for everyday payments, despite fears from the Bank of England about the financial stability of the technology. In April 2022, Sunak ordered the Royal Mint to create a UK government-backed Non-fungible token (NFT) to be issued by summer 2022.

### Non-domiciled status of his wife and green card

Sunak's wife Akshata Murty has non-domiciled status, which means she does not have to pay tax on income earned abroad while living in the UK. She pays around £30,000 to secure the status, which allows her to avoid paying an estimated £20 million in UK taxes. Following media controversy, Murty announced on 8 April that she would pay UK taxes on her global income, adding in a statement that she didn't want the issue "to be a distraction for my husband". On 10 April it was announced that a Whitehall inquiry had been launched into who had leaked the details of her tax status. On 11 April 2022 *The Guardian* wrote, "Keir Starmer has accused Rishi Sunak of taxation "hypocrisy" on the grounds that he is putting up taxes for ordinary Britons while his family has been reducing its own tax liabilities."

Reporting around this time also revealed that Sunak had continued to hold the U.S. permanent resident card he had acquired in the 2000s until 2021, including for 18 months after he was Chancellor, which required filing U.S. tax returns. An investigation into both his wife's tax status and his residency status found that Sunak had not broken ministerial rules.

### Resignation

On 5 July 2022, Sunak resigned as chancellor moments after Sajid Javid resigned as health secretary amid a controversy surrounding the sexual harassment allegations against Chris Pincher MP. In his resignation letter Sunak said, "... the public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously. I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning... In preparation for our proposed joint speech on the economy next week, it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different." After further resignations, Johnson announced his intention to resign as leader of the party.

## Leadership bid

On 8 July 2022, Sunak announced that he would stand as a candidate in the 2022 Conservative party leadership election to replace Johnson.

Conservative politicians who had supported Johnson criticised Sunak as "leading the charge in bringing down the prime minister", and Jacob Rees-Mogg called him a "high tax chancellor".

The domain readyforrishi.com was first registered with GoDaddy on 23 December 2021, while ready4rishi.com was registered on 6 July 2022, two days after Sunak resigned as Chancellor. The former domain acts as a redirect to the latter.