11. Weekly Newsletter
UK shift in green policy
Rishi Sunak has backed investing more in gas-fired power plants as he wants to take a cautious approach in tackling climate change. Sunak stated this week that he would not “gamble” with the UK’s energy security whilst still attaining the goal of decarbonising the electricity grid by 2035. The secretary of state also backed his support for energy security and claimed that we could expect blackouts unless we backed gas-fired power plants more over the next few years.
This view is entirely contradicted by the Labour Party, who announced they would decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030, pushing the plans forward by five years. There is a feeling that it will be a struggle to reach decarbonisation seamlessly, with gas-fired power plants accounting for around 40% of the UK’s annual electricity. There are also concerns about energy security on a day-to-day basis, as when output from wind turbines is low, there is a lot of strain on making sure there is enough energy.
Newspapers
Over the last seven days, the UK’s front page news cycle has covered topics such as UK migration detention capacity falls short of Sunak’s ambitions, Everton FC bidder has a funding crisis, and Elliott abandons effort to buy UK electronics retailer Currys. Some of the newspaper headlines from this week were:
- Financial Times- ‘Publishers call for support to boost UK’s £11bn book industry’
- Financial Times- ‘UK restaurant sector hit by cost of living and Covid legacy’
- Financial Times- ‘Hunt’s windfall tax on oil and gas spells trouble for Scottish Tories’
- Financial Times- ‘UK competition regulator raises price concerns over sugar deal
- The Times- ‘Green drive ‘threat’ to UK farming
Banks in UK given more time to investigate fraudulent payments
New anti-scam legislation, expected to be published this week, will give banks more time to investigate potentially fraudulent payments. The legislation will enable banks to delay transactions up to 72 hours if they have reasonable grounds to suspect criminal activity. This will be a significant change from current legislation whereby banks must process payments by the end of the following business day, hindering their ability to identify criminal transactions properly.
The aim is to curb things like ‘pushed payment fraud’, whereby a customer is tricked into authorising a transaction through manipulation. Victims of this type of fraud experience a loss of almost £500 million per year, and this legislation will give the banks time to contact potential victims and prevent this from happening.
