Published: 15 December 2022
By Suzanne Evans, Director, Political Insight
NHS nurses are on strike today in their first ever national walkout. Some 100,000 nurses are believed to have walked out of 76 hospitals and health centres, leading to the cancellation of thousands of non-urgent operations and tens of thousands of outpatient appointments. Health Minister Steve Barclay said: “It is deeply regrettable some union members are going ahead with strike action. I’ve been working across government and with medics outside the public sector to ensure safe staffing levels - but I do remain concerned about the risk that strikes pose to patients." Nurses want a 19% pay rise, while the government is offering 4-5% rises based on recommendations from the independent NHS Pay Review Body.
Strikes by 100 security staff on Eurostar trains at London St Pancras station planned for this week have been called off to let union members vote on a fresh pay offer. Members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, employed by Mitie, were due to walk out on Friday and Sunday in a dispute over wages. Strikes for December 22 and 23 next week remain on. None of Eurostar’s own staff are involved in the dispute.
Eleven trade unions have been given permission by the High Court to bring a legal challenge against the Government over regulations introduced earlier this year allowing companies to hire agency staff to fill in for striking workers. The Trade Unions Congress (TUC), which is coordinating the legal action, said a full hearing will be held next year to challenge the then-Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng’s decision. They say he failed to consult unions about the rules, which they also say are illegal and violate trade union rights.
The Government has paused its 'green taxonomy' scheme intended to guide companies and investors on green investments; basically setting conditions for labelling an activity "sustainable" to help the economy meet net zero targets. Ministers had indicated it would base the scheme on the year-old EU counterpart and bring in legislation by the end of this year, to enable compliance with mandatory climate-related disclosures to investors being rolled out in 2023. However, Financial Services Minister Andrew Griffith said yesterday that developing a UK taxonomy was a complex exercise linked to multiple sectors of the economy. "This complexity is also becoming apparent in the European Union, where challenges have arisen during the implementation of the EU's taxonomy," Griffith said in a statement to parliament. Therefore, the government will not make secondary legislation under the Taxonomy Regulations this year". Instead, Griffith said, it will use powers under its Financial Services and Markets Bill being approved in parliament to repeal an obligation on Britain to make taxonomy related rules by January and then decide whether to change its approach to taxonomies, with an update in early 2023. The UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association told Reuters it was "hugely disappointed" with the statement from Griffith after a lack of clarity on the issue throughout this year.
The average UK house price was £296,000 in October 2022, the Office for National Statistics says this morning. This is £33,000 higher than the same period a year ago and little changed from last month. Average house prices increased over the year by 13.2% in England to £316,000; 11.8% in Wales to £224,000; 8.5% in Scotland to £195,000; and 10.7% Northern Ireland to £176,000. London saw the lowest annual house price growth, being the only area to register a drop in average prices between September and October 2022. Homes in the North East saw the highest annual growth. Private rental prices paid by tenants in the UK also rose, by 4.0% in the 12 months to November 2022. This was up from 3.8% in October 2022. Rentals in the East Midlands delivered the highest increases, while Wales replaced London as the region with the lowest.
More than a million households in the UK have signed up to a scheme which will see them get paid to cut their electricity use during specific times to help prevent power shortages this winter, National Grid (NG) said yesterday. The demand flexibility service (DFS) was launched after NG warned in October that homes could face three-hour rolling power cuts this winter if the country is unable to secure enough gas and electricity imports. So far, homes have saved a total of around £2.8m during the five tests of the service it has held to date, NG said.
Nokia has extended its partnership with BT Group in a five-year deal for its AVA Analytics software. Nokia said the deal will give BT’s call centre agents a “real-time, full view of the operator's network, from individual subscribers to devices, in order to quickly correct access and in home issues, and provide the best service across all its phone and digital channels”. Nick Lane, managing director for consumer customer services at BT, said: "Our expanded partnership with Nokia is another demonstration of our commitment to providing the best customer experience by investing in AI, analytics, and other state-of the-art technology. Our partnership will help BT's customer service agents provide the best service across all phone and digital channels and continue to make BT the only network to answer 100% of customer calls in the UK."
FTSE 250 travel operator TUI has announced a return to annual profit. Europe’s largest holiday company reported revenues of €16.55bn (£14.24bn) in the year to September 30, up from €4.73bn (£4.03bn) the previous year, declaring underlying pre-tax profit of €409m (£351m). Last year, the firm suffered heavy losses of €2.08bn (£1.79bn) because of covid travel restrictions. TUI stated that prices for its services rose 23% between October 2022 and March 2023 compared with the same period in 2018-19. An increase amid a cost of living crisis that has not stopped travellers, it said, with UK sales 5% ahead of where they were before the COVID crisis.
Two internet ticket touts who resold tickets for events by artists including Ed Sheeran, Madness, and McBusted, have been given three months to repay more than £6m or face an extra eight years in prison, the BBC reports. Peter Hunter and David Smith, were convicted in 2020 of three counts of fraudulent trading and one of possessing articles for fraud, having made almost £9m through their business, BZZ Limited, between May 2010 and December 2017, Leeds Crown Court was told. In February 2020, Hunter was jailed for four years and Smith for two-and-a-half years. At their trial, it emerged that in one year alone they bought more than 750 tickets for Sheeran events. They used at least 97 different names, 88 postal addresses and more than 290 email addresses to evade platform restrictions on multiple purchases. Their prosecution was the UK's first successful conviction against a company fraudulently reselling tickets on a large scale, National Trading Standards said, and followed a lengthy investigation and a complex financial investigation conducted by the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Economic Crime Unit. Ruth Andrews, from National Trading Standards, said the "landmark" case showed buying large numbers of tickets and reselling them at inflated prices was "an unacceptable, illegal and fraudulent practice". An appeal against their conviction was rejected by the Court of Appeal in November 2021.
James Stunt, the socialite and ex-husband of F1 heiress Petra Ecclestone, has been cleared of forgery charges at Leeds Cloth Hall Court, but the jury has failed to reach a verdict on a money-laundering charge, after a seven-month trial. Stunt was one of eight defendants accused of being part an alleged £266m criminal enterprise which deposited huge sums of cash in the accounts of Bradford gold dealer Fowler Oldfield between January 2014 and September 2016. Prosecutor Nicholas Clarke KC told the court there would be a retrial for the four defendants, including Stunt, on whom the jury could not reach a verdict.
US prosecutors yesterday charged eight individuals in a securities fraud scheme, alleging they reaped about $114 m (£91.83m) by using Twitter and Discord to manipulate stocks in a ‘pump and dump’ scheme. The eight men allegedly purported to be successful traders on the social media platforms and then hyped particular stocks to their followers with the intent to dump them once prices had risen, according to prosecutors in the Southern District of Texas. "Securities fraud victimises innocent investors and undermines the integrity of our public markets,” said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite of the Justice Department's Criminal Division.
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