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Live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as minister says water company’s leadership has been a ‘disgrace’
The UK government has said it is prepared for “a range of scenarios” for Thames Water.
A government spokesperson said:
Like any company needing to secure new investment there are a wide range of options available to water companies, including the injection of new equity from any prospective investors.
Ofwat, as the financial regulator of the water sector, continues to engage with Thames Water to improve its financial resilience.
I don’t want to pollute rivers, and nor does anyone in Thames Water. I would point out that E coli has many different sources. It’s not just from sewage; it’s also from land run-off, it is from highway run-off; it is from animal faeces. All of those things contribute to the problem.
And I am absolutely determined that at Thames, that we will pay our part in cleaning up the problem, and so the Thames is a river that people can use as they would like to every day.
Greater fall per head and latest trade data illustrate longer term decline of economy
• Blow for Sunak as revised figures confirm UK went into recession last year
As the UK economy struggled for momentum, with households tightening their belts, higher defence spending in the second half of last year was a factor that prevented it from contracting by more than it did.
The second estimate by the Office for National Statistics of national income, as measured by gross domestic product last year, showed that extra cash for the military, and an increase in government spending more generally, masked a deep and persistent recession in manufacturing and downturns in several other sectors of the economy.
Although there are significant financial and emotional benefits to returning to the nest, it should be a choice
The 2021 census already confirmed it: more adult children than ever are still living with their parents. But the Financial Times has recently revealed just how drastically the scales have tipped: about 40% of 18- to 34-year-olds now live with their parents, making it the most common domestic arrangement for this age group. Previously, it was living as a couple with children.
It’s not just an epidemic of Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum – I’ve moved back home twice since graduating in 2018, and I know plenty of young well-to-do professionals who have felt obliged to do the same, or not moved out at all. There are also plenty of people who are unable to live in their family home due to distance and perhaps wish they could.
Latest estimate from ONS says GDP declined by 0.3% in final quarter of 2023
• Why recession may be deeper than headline GDP falls suggest
Official figures have confirmed that the UK economy went into recession at the end of last year, after the latest estimate found it contracted in the last two quarters of 2023.
In a blow to the government’s economic standing, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the economy, as measured by gross domestic product, shrank by 0.3% in the last three months of the year, unrevised from an earlier estimate.
The Israeli-American’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, was a worldwide bestseller with revolutionary ideas about human error and bias
Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who pioneered theories in behavioural economics that heavily influenced the discipline, and won him a Nobel prize, has died at age 90.
Kahneman, who wrote bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow, argued against the notion that people’s behaviour is rooted in a rational decision-making process – rather that it is often based on instinct.
Senior policymaker says UK central bank is unlikely to move before US Federal Reserve
A senior Bank of England policymaker has warned that financial markets are expecting too many interest rate cuts this year and that the UK central bank is unlikely to move before the US Federal Reserve.
Catherine Mann, an external member of the Bank’s rate-setting monetary policy committee (MPC), said there were risks that UK inflation could persist at higher levels than in the US or the eurozone.
Waitrose and Ocado win new shoppers while a quarter of households are feeling the squeeze
Grocery price inflation in Great Britain has slowed to 4.5%, its lowest level since February 2022, but one in four households are still struggling financially, retail researchers have found.
However, the figures also suggest a change in sentiment with upmarket retailers Waitrose and Ocado the only grocers to win new shoppers in the past three months, according to the latest monthly figures from the analysts Kantar, as growth in more expensive branded groceries outstripped supermarket own-label.
It took working on a podcast about what’s happening to young people for me to let go of the idealism about my future and face the sobering reality
The uncertainty facing my generation was not new to me. I have read articles just like the one I am now trying to write. I have seen the reports. I have watched the TikToks.
But the life I am living was by far the biggest clue that my generation is facing a growing economic crisis.
Prime minister has ruled out May election but households face high prices for sometime to come
There had been feverish speculation it would be this week. The drive to Buckingham Palace, police outriders and news helicopters in tow. The lectern on Downing Street. The prime minister announcing a general election.
Tuesday is the final day Rishi Sunak could dissolve parliament if he were to send voters to the polls on 2 May, one of the key dates in the 2024 election-watchers’ diaries, when local elections are also taking place. However, after the prime minister ruled out the possibility earlier this month, the waiting game continues.
Despite being called continuity Hunt, the shadow chancellor has set out a proposal for meaningful change
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt likes to tell business leaders not to worry about political instability and more policy upset. He claims to be carefully building policy that will survive – win or lose the next election. If the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, succeeds him, accepting nearly all his proposals, be reassured, he says, there will be continuity rather than change. In the run-up to her important Mais lecture last week, the pre-briefings seemed to warrant his judgment.
She would reaffirm her iron attachment to fiscal rules and budgetary discipline, we were told. After all, she had beaten a wholesale retreat from Labour’s cornerstone £28bn green spending commitment. In successive fiscal “events”, she has accepted all the proposed tax cuts, not even reinstating the cap on bank bonuses. There was chatter describing her as “continuity Hunt”. Even Margaret Thatcher, we read, would be invoked as a change agent she admired. Unite sharpened its claws, writing off the lecture even as Reeves spoke as “for the birds”. Only a “sustained rise in public investment in infrastructure”, declared general secretary Sharon Graham, “can turn the tide on decline”. Two days later, columnist Owen Jones resigned from the Labour party, citing the refusal to challenge catastrophic Tory policies in “a race to the bottom”.
The 25-year-old pay floor is justly celebrated but doesn’t tackle issues that mean exploitation and misery for many
Next month will mark 25 years since the national minimum wage was first paid in Britain: a quarter of a century during which what was once seen as a radical leftwing policy has won broad cross-party support.
Over the past 14 years, the Conservatives have appropriated and expanded the policy, despite adopting a laissez-faire approach to other aspects of labour market regulation.
Resolution Foundation points to legacy of Covid as it warns that near-record 2.7m people are too ill to work
Britain is going through the longest sustained rise in the number of working-age adults who are too sick to work since the 1990s, according to a report warning that a benefits crackdown is unlikely to solve the country’s jobless crisis.
The Resolution Foundation said economic inactivity due to long-term sickness – when people aged 16-64 are neither in work nor looking for a job because of a health condition – had increased in each year since July 2019, the longest sustained rise since 1994 to 1998.
Comments come after MPC spoke of ‘encouraging signs’ of falling inflation that could lead to cuts
The governor of the Bank of England has said interest rate cuts will be “in play” at forthcoming policy meetings amid progress in sharply reducing the UK’s headline rate of inflation over the past year.
In a signal that Threadneedle Street is preparing the ground for a cut in borrowing costs within months, Andrew Bailey told the Financial Times: “All our meetings are in play. We take a fresh decision every time.”
Nearly fifth of population struggled with basic needs, it emerges, as charities accuse government of failing poorest
About 300,000 more children were plunged into absolute poverty in a single year at the height of the cost of living crisis amid soaring levels of hunger and food bank use, official figures show, prompting calls for an overhaul of the UK’s creaking welfare safety net.
Campaigners accused the government of failing to protect the UK’s poorest families as the latest poverty statistics showed 600,000 more people fell into absolute poverty – ministers’ preferred poverty measure – in 2022-23 when inflation was at its 10% peak.
More than two-thirds (69%) of UK children in poverty lived in families where at least one parent works, while 44% of children in lone-parent families were in poverty.
An estimated 2.9 million children were in deep poverty, meaning their income was at least 50% below the poverty line. Nearly half (46%) of all families with three or more children were in poverty.
Nearly one in 10 (8%) of pensioners struggled to eat regularly, pay essential bills or keep their home warm, up 2 percentage points year on year, and the first increase in material hardship measures among the over-65s since 2014.
We’d like to hear from people who decided not to take up a job offer because they could not find affordable housing close enough to the workplace
We’re interested to hear from people who have recently opted to turn down a job offer they were interested in because they found housing in the area of the workplace too expensive.
Whether you turned down a job because of unaffordable sale or rental prices for property within a reasonable distance to the workplace in question, and whether you chose to pass on the job offer or had no other choice, we’d like to hear from you.