Published: 20 December 2022
By Suzanne Evans, Director, Political Insight
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will set out a spring budget on 15 March 2023, the Treasury has announced. Meanwhile, in a budget U-turn, Hunt now says he will freeze taxes on alcohol until August, reversing a decision he announced just two months ago, and partially reinstating a tax hold put forward by his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng.
NHS paramedic ambulance crew and nurses are on strike again today.
New banknotes featuring the face of King Charles III have been unveiled by the Bank of England, with plans for them to enter circulation mid-2024. The central bank says the King’s portrait will be the only change to the existing designs of its £5, £10, £20 and £50 polymer plastic notes; all existing characters on the rear and the colour sequencing will remain the same.
The Mortgage Guarantee Scheme to help first-time buyers will be extended by a year to the end of December 2023, the government has announced. The scheme offers lenders the option to purchase a guarantee on mortgages where a borrower only has 5% deposit. Launched in April 2021, over 24,000 households have obtained a mortgage under the scheme, meaning the government has underwritten £4.4bn in home loans since it was launched last year, amid fears that first-time buyers could be frozen out of the mortgage market.
Figures from The Office for National Statistics reveal that tenants in London are now paying an average rent of £1,430 a month, roughly 40% of their annual pay. Across the rest of England, the average rent is £730 a month, the equivalent of 26% of an average household income of £2,825 per month. In both Wales and Northern Ireland tenants spending around 23% of their income on rents of around £600 per month.
Retail footfall across Britain fell 4.6% last week versus the week before, with rail strikes and cold snowy weather dealing another blow to the country's retailers, market researcher Springboard says. It said shopper numbers in the week to 17th December, a key Christmas trading period, was 0.9% lower than last year and 20.1% lower than the 2019 level. Springboard said high streets were hit hardest, with footfall down 10.2% week on week.
British factories' output and export orders fell this month, data from the latest regular survey by The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) reveals. Its gauge of new orders cooled to -6 in December from -5 in November, a smaller drop than the decline to -9 which economists had forecast in a Reuters poll, and still above the series' long-run average. However, export orders fell sharply to -19 from -18, their lowest level since September 2020. The CBI says the data underlines the troubles faced by the manufacturing sector, including high inflation and a weak global economy. "The corrosive effect of higher inflation on demand is increasingly clear, as manufacturing output contracted at the fastest pace in two years over the last quarter," CBI deputy chief economist Anna Leach said. The survey of 220 manufacturing companies took place between 23rd November and 12th December.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined British bank TSB £48.65m over a botched IT platform migration in 2018 that locked millions of its customers out of their accounts for several weeks. The FCA found TSB failed to organise and control the migration from an old system run by its former parent bank, Lloyds, to one managed by its current Spanish owner, Sabadell, and failed to manage operational risks from its IT outsourcing setup. "The failings in this case were widespread and serious which had a real impact on the day-to-day lives of a significant proportion of TSB's customers, including those who were vulnerable," said Mark Steward, executive director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA. The FCA said while data itself was transferred successfully, the IT platform "immediately experienced technical failures". All areas of TSB's services were affected, including branch, telephone and online banking. The problems were not fully resolved for eight months and "a significant proportion of its 5.2 million customers were affected by the initial issues", the FCA added. The FCA fine is in addition to £32.7m TSB has already paid out to customers in compensation.
Three North Sea operators have been fined by the regulator The North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) for breaching rules on emissions and security of supply. London-listed oil and gas firm EnQuest was fined £150,000, and Norway's Equinor £65,000, both for excess gas flaring – when gas that comes out of the ground when drilling for oil is burnt off, a practice widely acknowledged as harmful for the environment as well as a waste of fuel. The NSTA said EnQuest flared an excess 262 tonnes of gas on the Magnus Field between 30th November and 1st December 2021, despite knowing it did not have the necessary consent in place. Equinor - which is 67% owned by the Norwegian state - flared "at least" 348 tonnes of CO2 above the amount permitted on the Barnacle Field between June and November 2020, NSTA said. Meanwhile, exploration and production firm Spirit Energy was fined £50,000 for exceeding maximum allowed production volumes from two fields over three years.
Tesco, Britain's largest retailer, is facing legal action from a group of 130 migrant workers from Myanmar who are alleging dire working conditions at a Thai factory which made clothes for the group's F&F range, Reuters reports. Law firm Leigh Day says the claim is against Tesco, Ek-Chai Distribution System Company Limited (which was owned by Tesco until 2020), and auditing companies Intertek Group and Intertek Testing Services (Thailand) Limited. The migrants say they were made to work up to 99 hours a week on unlawful wages and in forced labour conditions at the V.K Garments factory in Mae Sot between 2017 and 2020, allegations that were first reported by The Guardian. Although Tesco was not involved in running the factory, it is being accused of negligence "for permitting, facilitating and/or failing to prevent the unlawful working and housing conditions which caused the workers injuries and losses," and of being "unjustly enriched" at the expense of the workers, Leigh Day says. Leigh Day has asked Tesco and Intertek to settle the workers’ claim, adding that if this doesn't happen, the workers will consider progressing the matter in the High Court. “The allegations highlighted in this report are incredibly serious, and had we identified issues like this at the time they took place, we would have ended our relationship with this supplier immediately," a Tesco spokesperson said.
British Airways (BA) has apologised after flights due to depart from the US were grounded for several hours, the BBC reports. The airline said a technical issue that affected some of its long-haul flight planning systems during the night had now been resolved. BA passengers reported waiting for several hours in airports, with flights eventually departing after long delays.
Irn Bru maker AG Barr has taken full ownership of Moma Foods, having bought the remaining 38.2% stake in the business from founder Tom Mercer and the other minority shareholders for £3.4m. The company already owned a 61.8% stake in the plant-based milk business, which it bought in December 2021. At the time, Barr entered into an option deed with Mercer and the other shareholders which gave it an agreed path to full ownership in the following three years.
Jo Johnson, brother of former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has resigned from the UK advisory board of Bifinity, a payments technology company launched by cryptocurrency exchange Binance in March this year. Johnson joined the board in September. The Telegraph, which first reported news of his exit, says celebrities and other prominent proponents of crypto have sought to distance themselves from the nascent asset class after Binance rival FTX filed for bankruptcy last month. However, Binance suggested Johnson stepped down to manage his workload. "Lord Johnson has recently taken on the role of Executive Chairman of FutureLearn. He will be focusing on his new role within the digital learning platform, and is looking to scale back other activities," the firm said in a statement. Last year, The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) warned that Binance did not hold any form of permission to offer services regulated by Britain.
Sam Bankman-Fried has decided to agree to be extradited to the United States to face fraud charges, a person familiar with the matter said, just hours after the FTX founder's lawyer told a Bahamas judge he was not ready to consent, Reuters reports.
Will Elon Musk step down as CEO of Twitter less than two months after his $33bn takeover of the social media platform? Having posted a poll asking whether he should, and saying he would abide by the result, 57.5% Twitter users voted ‘Yes.’ Musk has not commented on the matter since, except to tweet: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it,” before the poll closed, but when it was clear it was not going the way of affirming his position.
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