Marketing Newscast

Is Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer plotting new ‘stealth taxes?’ That was the claim made yesterday during Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons, when Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch confronted him about his economic plans ahead of next week’s Spring Statement. Branding the fiscal event an “emergency budget,” Badenoch called on Starmer to repeat Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ pledge to unfreeze income tax thresholds, but he refused to do so, instead launching an attack on the Conservatives’ record in Government. Later, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman also avoided confirming Reeves’ pledge. When income tax thresholds are frozen, more people pay more tax on their incomes as they rise with inflation, forcing them into higher tax brackets, a situation known as ‘fiscal drag’.

Wage growth is continuing its upward trend. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that annual regular pay, excluding bonuses, grew 5.9% between November 2024 and January 2025, unchanged from the previous three months, but still outstripping inflation, which rose to 3% in January. Total pay growth, including bonuses, increased by 5.8 %. Unemployment remained unchanged at 4.4%, while the number of payrolled employees rose by 21,000 in February. There were 816,000 job vacancies available from December to February, again broadly unchanged on the previous three months. This data gives more weight to expectations that the Bank of England will keep interest rates on hold at 4.5% today – an announcement will be made at midday.

The number of people employed by the State has risen again, to 6.14m, the highest level since 2011. According to the ONS public sector employment was up by 53,000 from the end of 2023 and by well over half a million compared with the eve of the first Covid lockdown in March 2020.

Firms in London say they are struggling to recruit staff; four in five have vacancies, according to a new survey of 1,000 companies by BusinessLDN. Almost half saying applicants have become choosier: over a quarter said there was a lack of interest in roles, while 45% claimed home-working demands prevented hiring. One in five also said applicants’ English skills were not good enough, and basic maths skills were also reported to be lacking. The sectors most likely to have open vacancies include communication and finance, BusinessLDN said.

Scotland’s last remaining oil refinery could be used to turn pine trees into petrol under a £225m taxpayer-funded plan proposed by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, The Telegraph reports. Grangemouth, refinery is set to close this summer, with the loss of 500 direct jobs and 2,500 more in the supply chain. This is said to have triggered a call from Miliband to find other,“low carbon” uses for the site. £200m has been pledged by the Government to this end, and the Scottish Government will stump up a further £25m. The plans involve timber harvested in Scotland being taken to Grangemouth “fermented” into bioethanol for blending into fuel, or used to produce chemicals and cosmetics. This is one of nine options for the site put forward in a £1.5m feasibility study by EY, commissioned jointly by Miliband, the Scottish Government and Petroineos, the refinery owners. the report warned the bioethanol plant would be a highly risky investment that would require Government subsidies.

Burger King UK is launching refinancing talks with a group of lenders. The Bridgepoint-owned fast-food restaurant operator is seeking an additional £40m of borrowing headroom to fund the delivery of its post-pandemic expansion plans, Sky News reports.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is set to take on 150 specialist EV technicians ahead of the launch of its all-electric Range Rover later this year. Around 50 of the new roles will be based at the luxury marque’s Solihull plant in Warwickshire, and the rest at its electric propulsion manufacturing centre in Wolverhampton. Around 57,000 drivers have signed up to the waiting list for the new model. JLR says.

Cereal Partners UK & Ireland, which makes breakfast cereals including Shreddies, is shutting its factory in Merseyside, and moving production to a different factory in Staverton, Wiltshire. The firm says it will also stop producing own-label cereals for supermarkets. The changes will lead to the loss of 300 jobs. Cereal Partners blamed the changes on a “significant decline owing to the changing habits of UK and Irish consumers and greater competition from alternative breakfast options”. According to data firm NIQ, the UK’s top 10 cereal brands sold 10.1m kg less over the year to 7^th September.

The Law Society of England and Wales is claiming that US President Donald Trump’s criticism of lawyers risk undermining Britain’s legal system. The Telegraph reports how Law Society President Richard Atkinson has singled out Trump’s attacks on American law firms over their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, saying his administration’s decision to investigate them on the basis of their DEI programmes represents “a flagrant disregard for the fundamental principle of the rule of law”, which serves as the “bedrock of freedom and justice worldwide”. On Monday, the US Government sent letters to 20 leading US law firms, warning them that their DEI policies may be in breach of American equality laws. “The Law Society stands by our US colleagues being targeted by the US government in respect of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. We are pushing for change and progress towards greater diversity and inclusion in the legal sector because we believe that a diverse and inclusive profession is a resilient one,” Atkinson said.

The US Federal Reserve has slashed its growth forecast for the world’s largest economy to 1.7%, down from 2.1% forecast in December, before President Donald Trump tool office, while warning of looming “uncertainty” fuelled by his trade war. The central bank also held interest rates at 4.5% after raising inflation forecasts from 2.5% to 2.7%. pc.

The European Commission is proceeding with regulatory action against Apple and Google under its new Digital Markets Act, saying its "preliminary view" is that Google's search engine prioritises results linking to its parent company Alphabet's own services over those of its rivals, breaching the requirement to treat third-party services in a "transparent, fair and non-discriminatory" way. Regarding Apple, it said it wanted to see a detailed timeline and methodology on how it will respond to requests from app developers to open up its systems.

Dame Bernadette Kelly, the top civil servant at the Department for Transport (DfT), is retiring after nearly eight years in the role, and 39 years in the civil service. Kelly led work on a string of major projects including HS2 and the Elizabeth Line, and was awarded a Damehood in 2022 for her services to transport. She has recently come under fire for the escalating costs of the HS2 project, and it was alleged in 2021 that she had misinformed the Public Accounts Committee about the budget for HS2’s Old Oak Common station in London. It emerged the former cabinet secretary Simon Case had passed on calls for an investigation into her conduct to Kelly herself, who responded that the allegations were baseless.