One of Britain’s richest men, who donated £1m to Brexit campaigns, says he’s considering moving permanently to Australia after delivering a damning assessment of a UK “in chaos”.
Lord Edmiston was ranked 187th on the Sunday Times Rich list this year with an estimated wealth of £855m, after making his fortune through his IM Group empire, which started by importing cars and later expanded into property and finance.
In 2011 he was made a Conservative life peer before he retired from the House of Lords four years later to focus on his evangelical charity, Christian Vision, where his donations make him one of the UK’s biggest philanthropic donors.
The devout Christian has also donated £1m to pro-Brexit campaigns, including £850,000 to Vote Leave through his company before the 2016 EU referendum.
But with his son, Andrew, taking a bigger hand in running the West Midlands-based business, Lord Edmiston told The Independent he is spending more time out of the UK, having semi-retired to Portugal in 2016 and built a property in Australia.
Now, he has revealed that he and his wife Lady Edmiston are considering going a step further by applying for permanent residency in Australia. He put it down to family reasons and a warmer climate, but also fired off criticism of the NHS and the country’s tax system.
Lord Edmiston, who said he would still return to the UK, said: “It hasn’t been a final decision, but my brother lives there [Australia], my sister lives there and one of my daughters lives there…. and I’ve got a charity base there. It’s a place we’ve built ourselves a nice house. So, we are basically temporary residents, and at some point, we’ll probably become permanent residents.”
Asked why he would make the move, Lord Edmiston said he liked the weather and praised the country’s health service, which operates under a hybrid model where more than half of the population have private health insurance.
He said: “As you get older, the health service becomes quite important and the health service is excellent in Australia.”
Speaking earlier, while clicking his fingers, Lord Edmiston said in Australia he could get a doctor’s appointment “like that”, followed by a blood test and a hospital appointment in under a month. The NHS waiting list of hospital treatment stood at 6.25m patients in March.
He said: “Why can’t we [UK] do that? Because there’s some sacred cows in there, we can’t touch that. If things stay like they are forever… we’re not going to be able to cope, and we’re not coping.
“How much did they say, a number of people waiting six months to go to hospital? Or we don’t have preventive medicines in here, we have medicine that when you have an issue, then we’ll deal with it and maybe three months we’ll get to it, and maybe it’s too late.
“I just think we’ve got to stand back, because if someone comes along and says they are going to touch the NHS, well, all hell will break loose. But I think, increasingly, the public is starting to see it isn’t working, it’s broken.”
Lord Edmiston also criticised the tax system in the UK. IM Group paid almost £14.5m in tax on its £56m profit in 2024, according to the latest accounts published on Companies House.
After he said there were “multiple reasons” for considering moving to Australia, he said: “The tax system here… if I think about it, let’s say even my business, it just seems there’s a bunch of people wanting to throw obstacles in your way all the time.”
He added: “It’s one of those things that if you win, they tax you heavily, and you don’t keep much of it. If you lose, you lose, and the whole environment has been very difficult for a number of years.”
He earlier voiced concern over speculated tax rises in the upcoming Autumn budget, and the November date for the announcement, which he said was stalling his own business decisions.
“Business operates on confidence,” he said. “If you know that something’s coming down the road, but you don’t quite know what, you’re not going to keep your foot on the accelerator are you? You’re going to put it on the brake and wait to see if that a train coming.”
After also talking about the impact of electric cars and a need for office-based working, he said: “There’s 101 things I think we could do, but at the moment I think we’re in full panic mode where we think the only solution is tax… what it means for consumers [is] they’re not going to buy as much, so it’s going to be bad for industry.”
According to the polls, for many, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party is the answer.
Asked if he would consider switching his allegiance, he said: “I really don’t want to get into the political element because I tend to be quite loyal but I have to accept we [Conservatives] didn’t do a good job last time around, and I don’t think we deserved to win, personally, and we have a nasty habit of knifing ourselves in the back.
“Having said that, I think what’s happening with Labour also… I think the country is in chaos.”
