Published: 12 January 2024
By Suzanne Evans, Director, Political Insight
The UK economy grew by 0.3% in November, The Office for National Statistics has announced this morning. So, Britain has once again avoided recession, albeit narrowly, following the 0.3% contraction in October. ONS Chief Economist Grant Fitzner said: “The economy contracted a little over the three months to November, with widespread falls across manufacturing industries, which were partially offset by increases in public services, which saw less impact from strike action”. GDP bounced back mainly because of growth in the services sector, with retail, car leasing and computer games “all having a buoyant month”. He cautioned, however, that: “The longer-term picture remains one of an economy that has shown little growth over the last year.” Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said: “While growth in November is welcome news, it will be slower as we bring inflation back to its two per cent target. But we have seen that advanced economies with lower taxes have grown more rapidly, so our tax cuts for businesses and workers put the UK in a strong position for growth into the future.” Dr Roger Barker, director of policy at the Institute of Directors, said in a press release: “Over a longer time horizon, the economy is not going anywhere. November’s increase merely clawed back the ground lost in October. We will still need to wait for December’s GDP figure to find out if the UK avoided a technical recession in 2023”.
Global trade dropped by 1.3% in December as a consequence of Houthi attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea disrupting operations, according to figures from IfW Kiel. The German economic institute found a 60% drop in the number of containers travelling through the Red Sea, down from 500,000 per day in November, to 200,000 last month. Meanwhile, Vincent Clerc, CEO of global shipping company Maersk, said the “brutal and dramatic” attacks by Houthi militants could last for months and lead to further inflation across the global economy, as Tesco CEO Ken Murphy told The Telegraph he thought the disruption risked sending the price of some items higher. Marks & Spencer’s boss Stuart Machin is anticipating delays of clothing and homeware items. Tesla, meanwhile, is suspending most car production at its Berlin factory for almost two weeks from 29th January because of disruption to supplies caused by the attacks. The threat to life and trade led US air forces to intervene in recent weeks, and now British forces have launched targeted strikes against military facilities used by the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Defence Secretary Grant Shapps tweeted early this morning: “Four Royal Air Force Typhoons have conducted precision strikes on two Houthi military targets alongside US forces. The threat to innocent lives and global trade has become so great that this action was not only necessary, it was our duty to protect vessels & freedom of navigation”. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched 25 attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea since November, doing so, they say, in protest at and with the aim of ending Israel’s air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip following the 7th October attacks by Hamas.
Ex-Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw gave evidence to the Post Office inquiry yesterday - the first hearing since since its Christmas break - and denied he and colleagues behaved like "mafia gangsters" towards those he was investigating, or that he intimidated or mislead wrongly accused sub-postmasters. His evidence contradicted that made in the form of a statement by Shazia Saddiq, a former sub-postmistress who ran three Post Offices in Newcastle. She claimed he made intimidating telephone calls to her, including one in which he called her “a bitch”, which she said, she found “extremely distressing." Saddiq also said she and her children - who lived above one of their Post Offices - were physically assaulted due to the false allegations against her. "People chucked flour and eggs at us and after that, we fled and I've never been back. My daughter was eight and my son four; we left so quickly that all they packed were their teddies," she told the BBC. Bradshaw called her claims against him "completely untrue". Meanwhile, Jacqueline McDonald, who was wrongly jailed over a supposed theft in 2011, also accused Bradshaw of bullying, saying he had accused her of l telling him a "pack of lies" while she was under investigation, an allegation he also refuted. Bradshaw also told the inquiry that yes, he had signed a statement in 2012 saying he had "absolute confidence" in the integrity of the IT system, but that he was not "technically minded" and the statement had in fact been written by lawyers. "In hindsight... there probably should have been another line stating, 'These are not my words'," he said.
Meal-kit delivery company Hello Fresh has been fined £140,000 for sending 79m spam emails and 1m spam texts in a seven-month period, an investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) found, in a "clear breach of trust". Investigations began in March 2022 after 14 complaints made directly to the regulator, and another 8,729 via the 7726 spam message reporting service. The ICO found HelloFresh continued to contact some individuals even after they had asked it to stop. HelloFresh says it has since made changes to its SMS and email policy.
London law firm Clyde & Co has been ordered to pay a £500,000 fine by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) after failing to comply with anti-money laundering regulations. Legal regulator the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), referred the law firm and a former partner, Ed Mills-Webb to the SDT last year following an investigation. Clyde & Co and Mills-Webb admitted to the breaches during a hearing on Tuesday. It is not the first time the firm has been fined for breaching accounting and anti-money laundering rules, having received a £50,000 for the same charge in 2017. A spokesperson for the law firm said: “Clyde & Co sincerely regrets any compliance failings – relating to a series of client shipping transactions that we identified in 2018 – which led to this hearing… Under the firm’s current leadership, we have significantly enhanced our risk management and regulatory compliance capabilities”.
Carl Borg-Neal, the former Lloyds Bank manager fired for using the full ‘n- word’ during a race education training session has been awarded almost £800,000 by the Employment Tribunal for wrongful dismissal. He wrote yesterday about his ordeal in the MailOnline, saying he was “racked by stress,” was unable to sleep or leave his home, hence he was put “on a cocktail of drugs, from the strong painkiller codeine to anti-anxiety medication”. Borg-Neal had asked during the training how he should respond if someone from an ethnic minority used a word that would otherwise be considered offensive if used by a white person and gave the “common example” of the n-word. Although he apologised immediately, when the trainer objected, the bank dismissed him, saying the trainer had been off work for four to five days as a result. In his newspaper article, Borg-Neal said his dyslexia means he often struggles to articulate himself, and that his use of the word was an honest mistake with no racists intention, but “a typical example of my disability clouding my judgment”. “I realise I was the victim of an insidious corporate culture in which an arguably well-intentioned 'zero-tolerance' policy on racism translated to a grotesque and inhumane practice of firing employees without a fair or balanced process,” he wrote.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has dismissed a case brought by British entrepreneur and Brexit supporter Sir James Dyson in a decade-long dispute over energy labels on vacuum cleaners. Dyson had attempted to secure €176.1m (£151.5m) from the EU to cover losses incurred when it used faulty efficiency tests that put Dyson’s bagless machines at a disadvantage to those using bags. The tests, conducted only on empty vacuum cleaners, meant Dyson’s performance was judged unfairly against other models whose performance deteriorated as their bags filled up. However, the ECJ ruled the European Commission “did not commit a sufficiently serious breach of EU law” to justify paying damages, despite Dyson having succeeded in getting labelling rules that ranked vacuums on a scale from A to G thrown out in 2018.
Plans to build the UK's first large-scale hydrogen production plant at the Stanlow Manufacturing Complex in Ellesmere Port have been approved Cheshire West and Chester Council planning committee. Consisting of two plants, EET Hydrogen's new production hub will supply the Essar refinery and other major manufacturers in the region, including Tata Chemicals, Encirc and Pilkington, creating the first low-carbon refining operations, glass and chemicals manufacturing sites in the world.
Andrew Nisbets, founder of privately-owned catering equipment company Nisbets, is reportedly in talks about a potential sale to FTSE 100 distribution and outsourcing company Bunzl that would value the firm at between £450m and £500m. According to Sky News, the deal, which could be struck within weeks, would propel Nisbet and his family into the ranks of Britain's wealthiest people. He founded the company in 1983. In the latest three years, Bunzl has spent an average of £425m on buying smaller companies in its sector.
One of Donald Trump's luxury golf courses in Scotland has finally made a profit, while another remains firmly in the red. The Daily Mail reports that Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire, which boasts three courses and a hotel, has been loss-making since the former US president bought it for close to £50m in 2014. But accounts filed at Companies House show it finally made a profit of £517,000 in 2022 following a loss of £3.7m the previous year. However, Trump International Golf Club Scotland, which owns a resort near Aberdeen, lost another £738,000 in 2022, after losses of almost £697,000 in 2021.
John Lewis is appointing its former fashion boss Peter Ruis to the position of Executive Director in an attempt to turn around the struggling department store, which is floundering under the Chairmanship of Dame Sharon White, the former Ofcom boss who had no retail experience when she took over in early 2020. Ruis has spent more than ten years running other retailers including Jigsaw and Anthropologie since he left John Lewis, most recently as CEO of Canada’s Indigo books and homewares chain. Ruis worked previously at John Lewis between 2005 and 2013, and starts next week, replacing Naomi Simcock, who will take up a new role as operations director for the chain. “It’s a great privilege to return to the John Lewis Partnership after 10 years,” he said in a statement. “The John Lewis brand is iconic, loved and trusted by millions of customers across the UK and I’m excited to lead the next phase of the transformation”.
US car rental giant Hertz is selling off thousands of Teslas because weak demand and higher repair costs are forcing it to replace 20,000 electric cars with petrol-powered vehicles, The Telegraph reports. Three years ago, Hertz announced plans to buy 100,000 Tesla electric cars, a move that pushed Tesla’s market value beyond $1tn. Now, Hertz says it plans to sell many of the vehicles over the next year and take a $245m (£193m) hit as it reverses plans to massively expand its electric car fleet. More than 600 Teslas are already listed for sale on its used car website.
Airbus secured net orders for 2,094 aircraft last year - the first time the world's biggest producer of commercial airliners has achieved more than 2,000 net orders in a single year. The orders include one from Indian airline IndiGo for 500 Airbus A320 Family aircraft, the largest single purchase agreement in the history of commercial aviation. Airbus recently announced plans to create more than 1,100 jobs in Britain, increasing its 11,500-strong UK workforce by almost 10%.
Shares in iRobot fell yesterday after Amazon failed to provide solutions to address concerns raised by EU competition regulators regarding its $1.4bn acquisition of the US domestic robotics giant. The absence of any proposed remedies from Amazon mean there are now two potential outcomes - either unconditional approval from the EC, or a European veto of the acquisition, Sharecast News says.
US consumer price inflation rose by 3.4%, up from 3.1% in November and above economists' expectations of a 3.2% increase. Higher housing costs were the main reason for the rise. Core inflation - which strips out volatile food and energy prices – dropped to 3.9% from 4%. Economics were expecting 3.8% growth.
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