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The UK has given more than £12. 5bn from energy bills to fossil fuel power plants in the past decade through a government scheme to keep the lights on during winter, according to new analysis. The research found that, since 2015, the government has offered contracts worth £20bn through a “capacity market” to create a backup reserve of generators on standby, of which about 60% were fossil fuel power plants and a quarter were energy storage and power cable projects.
The government is under growing pressure to get momentum back into the economy amid warnings that businesses plan to cut jobs and raise prices, while millions of families believe their finances will worsen this year. Before a major speech this week by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, designed to restate Labour’s commitment to improving the economy, the CBI said private sector firms were urgently assessing their budgets to offset measures announced in last October’s budget.
The UK government has reportedly approached multiple restructuring advisers for the role of special administrator for Thames Water if the troubled utility falls into bankruptcy. Teneo, Interpath and EY are among the companies contacted by the government as it prepares contingency plans should Britain’s largest water company be forced into nationalisation, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the process. – Guardian.
The government’s statistics agency is spending £8m to hire an army of low-paid temporary workers amid efforts to fix its “virtually unusable” data on unemployment and wages in Britain. Under pressure over the quality of its data, the Office for National Statistics last month agreed the multimillion-pound deal with the employment agency Randstad to recruit interviewers to help increase the reliability of its labour force survey (LFS). – Guardian.
Parliament’s spending watchdog has accused HM Revenue & Customs of deliberately running down its phone services to force people to go online after finding the average call waiting time has passed 23 minutes – almost double the figure of two years earlier. With people across the country working to finish their self-assessment return before the 31 January deadline, the public accounts committee (PAC) said it was “concerned that HMRC has degraded its own phone services” in the hope that taxpayers choose other ways to get in touch.
Donald Trump signed a memorandum on inflation and multiple orders aimed at lowering energy prices, but the incoming president’s advisers offered few details on the policies, raising serious questions about whether the new administration will be able to address one of Americans’ most pressing concerns. During a press call on Monday morning, incoming White House advisers pledged that Trump would pursue an “all of government approach to bringing down costs for American citizens” but they declined to outline concrete steps that the administration would pursue to lower prices.
TikTok said on Sunday that it was restoring services in the US after Donald Trump pledged earlier in the day to give the video app a reprieve on its US ban. Trump wrote on Truth Social that after taking office on Monday he would sign an executive order allowing the Chinese-owned video app additional time to find a buyer before facing a total shutdown, and proposing that the US or an American firm take a 50% ownership stake. – Guardian.
Rachel Reeves’s tax raid on employers will push up the price of a pint, the boss of pub chain Young’s has warned. Simon Dodd, the chief executive, said Young’s plans to increase prices between 3pc and 3. 5pc because of the increased cost of National Insurance (NI) contributions paid by employers, which comes into effect from April. – Telegraph.
The UK government has promised a record £410m investment in nuclear fusion which could help construct a world-leading fusion power project on the site of an old coal plant in Nottinghamshire. Ministers hope the funding, which will be made available for the coming financial year, will support the rapid development of the UK fusion energy sector and deliver “a future powered by limitless clean energy”. – Guardian.
The “cost of dying” has hit a record high, prompting growing numbers of grieving UK families to turn to crowdfunding or sell possessions to help pay for a funeral, according to a report. The average cost of a basic funeral has increased by 3. 5% in a year to hit an “all-time high” of £4,285, according to the insurer SunLife, which has been monitoring UK funeral costs for two decades. – Guardian.
Taxpayers are being asked to shoulder £1bn in debt amassed by a bankrupt Surrey council that will be merged in the government’s plan for the biggest transfer of powers to England’s regions this century. Posing a fresh financial headache for the government, councillors in Surrey have requested that ministers “write off” £1bn in debt held by troubled Woking borough council to enable a merger between the county’s 12 local authorities. – Guardian.
Business leaders plan to cut costs and rein in hiring in response to government tax increases set out in the autumn budget, with employment expectations taking the sharpest tumble since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. A net two-thirds of finance directors said they did not expect to increase hiring levels this year, a four-year high, with a net 26% feeling more pessimistic about the prospects for their business than three months ago, the first time sentiment had slipped into negative territory in 18 months, according to the latest survey by the accountancy firm Deloitte.
Rachel Reeves has been left facing a £50bn bill as a result of higher debt interest payments following a rout in the bond market. And City exports caution that the bill could keep climbing. Hence, the Chancellor may soon have to choose between either bending her own fiscal rules, enacting tax increases or cutting spending. The rout has seen the tiny £10bn buffer left by Reeves to meet her main fiscal rule, which requires that tax revenues cover day-to-day expenditures, evaporate.
The number of people in England and Wales who sought help with energy bills jumped by 20% last year, according to Citizens Advice, which assisted 60,000 households struggling with the soaring cost of gas and electricity. That number was double the figure for 2020, the national consumer advice charity said, with problems with billing being the single most common type of issue raised with its service providers. – Guardian.
Vacancies for permanent jobs in the UK declined at their fastest pace for four years last month, according to a new survey that adds to the gloomy economic mood. Amid febrile markets and weak economic data, the monthly jobs report from the consultancy KPMG and the recruitment firm REC shows many firms reluctant to hire. – Guardian.
The UK’s advertising watchdog has banned a campaign by an online investment company predominantly targeting Muslims that featured images of euros and US dollars and the words “The United States of America” in flames alongside a call to “join the money revolution”. Wahed Invest Ltd, an online investment platform, ran six posters on various Transport for London (TfL) services, including the London Underground and on buses, last September and October. – Guardian.
A company that has worked closely with the UK government on artificial intelligence safety, the NHS and education is also developing AI for military drones. The consultancy Faculty AI has “experience developing and deploying AI models on to UAVs”, or unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a defence industry partner company. – Guardian.
The chief executives of FTSE 100 companies will have made more money in 2025 by midday on Monday than their average worker does in a whole year, according to the latest measure of inequality between bosses and their employees. Median pay for FTSE 100 chief executives is £4. 22m, 113 times the median full-time worker’s pay of £37,430, according to the High Pay Centre, a campaign group. That means UK bosses will exceed their workers’ annual pay within 29 hours – or at about 11:30am on Monday, if they started work straight after the new year holiday.
High streets and other shopping destinations have had a “drab December”, ending another year of falling visitor numbers and raising fears of disappointing sales in the most important month for retailers. Attendance at UK shopping centres, retail parks and high streets was down 2. 2% in December compared with the same period in 2023, according to data from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and analysts at Sensormatic. The decrease was led by a 3. 3% decline at shopping centres.
The UK lost about 37 shops a day during 2024 in yet another brutal year for the high street, data suggests. Almost 13,500 retail stores closed for good in the last 12 months, a rise of 28% on 2023 – although the losses were below the levels seen each year between 2019 and 2022, according to provisional figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research. - Guardian.
