Friday newspaper round-up: Electric car sales, SSE, small businesses

Rachel Reeves is paving the way for a multibillion-pound increase in public-sector investment at the budget after the government announced plans to commit almost £22bn over 25 years to fund carbon capture and storage projects. In what is expected to be one of the biggest green spending promises of the parliament, the chancellor, prime minister and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, will unveil the details on a visit to the Liverpool city region on Friday declaring a “new era” for clean energy jobs. – Guardian

UK electric car sales hit a record high in September, even as bosses from big carmakers told the chancellor that government targets were putting too much pressure on the industry. The British industry sold 56,300 electric cars during the month, the highest on record, according to preliminary data published by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), a lobby group. – Guardian

Sadiq Khan has called opponents of more taxpayer spending on London “unpatriotic” as he pressed the Government to support as much as £10bn of new investment into the capital’s railways. The Mayor said London was locked in a competition with cities such as Paris, New York, Hong Kong and Singapore, and must not be held back by squabbles over whether cash would be better directed elsewhere in the UK. – Telegraph

The first phase of a project to build one of the world’s largest wind farms in British waters has been pushed back to the second half of next year. Dogger Bank A, which together with its two sister wind farms will have a combined installed capacity of 3.6 gigawatts, was due for completion during the six months to the end of September. SSE, the FTSE 100 energy group, has blamed stormy weather for further delays to the development, which had initially been expected to be finished this year. However, “project returns are not expected to be materially impacted”, the company said. – The Times

Britain has lost half a million small businesses since its withdrawal from the European Union and the onset of the pandemic, official figures show. The total number of private sector businesses fell by 56,000 to 5.5 million in the year to the start of 2024, the Department for Business and Trade said in its annual official estimate. It takes the total decline to about 500,000 since the stock of businesses peaked at six million at the start of 2020. – The Times