6:47 am, January 9, 2023
Ministers hold series of talks with union bosses in bid to avert strikes
Ministers will hold a series of meetings with union leaders as they seek to prevent future strikes over pay in the NHS, in class rooms and on the rails.
Health secretary Steve Barclay will meet with leaders including from the Royal College of Nursing today, amid cautious optimism the government might soften its stance.
Teaching unions will attend talks with education secretary Gillian Keegan ahead of announcements this week over whether their members will go on strike. Rail minister Huw Merriman is also holding talks today with train workers after sustained action crippled services, with only one in five trains running between Tuesday and Saturday.
Treasury to announce reduced energy support scheme for businesses
The Treasury is poised to announce a reduced scheme to support businesses with their energy bills after chancellor Jeremy Hunt warned existing spending is ‘unsustainably expensive’.
The new package will be announced to MPs today, with the current cap on the unit cost of electricity and gas for firms set to expire at the end of March.
Sources said the replacement will give a discount on wholesale prices, not a fixed price, with very heavy energy-using sectors getting a larger discount than other businesses. No 11 wants the levels of support to be scaled back, arguing the current scheme costing more than £18bn cannot be sustained forever. Full story here
UK condemns ‘violent bid to undermine democracy’ by Bolsonaro backers in Brazil
Britain has condemned the ‘violent attempts to undermine democracy’ in Brazil after supporters of ousted far-right president Jair Bolsonaro stormed congress.
Foreign secretary James Cleverly pledged president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva the UK’s ‘full support’ after raids also centred on the presidential palace and the supreme court in Brasilia.
Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters who refuse to accept his election defeat invaded the buildings in the capital on Sunday, a week after his leftist rival’s inauguration.
China holds large-scale military drills aimed at Taiwan
The Chinese military held large-scale combat strike drills starting on Sunday, sending war planes and navy vessels toward Taiwan, both the Chinese and Taiwanese defence ministries said.
The exercises coincided with the visit of a group of German lawmakers who landed in Taiwan on Monday morning. Leading the delegation is Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who leads the German Parliament’s Defence Committee.
The exercises have continued into Monday, Taiwan’s defence ministry said, as it monitored Chinese warplanes and navy vessels on its missile systems.
£200m to buy care home beds in bid to ease NHS crisis
Ministers will spend up to £200m buying thousands of extra care home beds to speed up the discharge of hospital patients and reduce the strain on hospitals.
Health secretary Steve Barclay will also announce £50m additional capital funding for hospitals on Monday as the government comes under intense pressure to alleviate the crisis in the NHS.
Labour criticised the plans as ‘yet another sticking plaster’ rather than an attempt to fix the ‘buckling’ health and care services. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which is undertaking strike action over pay, argued the strategy ‘won’t make a difference’ without halting the ‘exodus”’ of staff.
Firms miss out on £300m of pandemic business rates relief
Businesses hit hard by the pandemic missed out on around £300m of business rates relief, according to analysis of new government figures.
The government has handed out only 80 per cent of the cash available from its £1.5bn Covid-19 Additional Relief Fund (CARF), which was designed to aid businesses such as commercial landlords which were not covered by other tax relief schemes, according to analysis by experts at Gerald Eve. It was intended to help those not covered by the Treasury’s Retail, Hospitality and Leisure (RHL) Relief Fund and other packages. However, the onus was put on local authorities to allocate funding to businesses and the deadline to pay the relief was September 30, 2022.
Authorities handed the support funding to the likes of office occupiers, warehouses and manufacturers. The fund was introduced to replace rates appeals made by hundreds of thousands of businesses, which the government annulled retrospectively. New government filings also revealed that only 261,520 properties benefited from the government’s RHL Relief Fund, despite promises that up to 400,000 would be able to use the scheme to claim a 50 per cent business rates discount.
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Businesses considering redundancies to manage high costs, report says
Pessimism and low confidence among British businesses has led firms’ recruitment plans to reach the lowest levels in two years, an influential report has found.
Employers are pausing hiring plans and considering redundancies to manage rising costs, accounting and advisory firm BDO said in its analysis of more than 4,000 businesses surveyed across different sectors.
Optimism and productivity eked up by a fraction in December, but it followed a significant drop in November, therefore remaining well below historic levels.
Final checks made ahead of first UK rocket launch
Final preparations are under way ahead of the first rocket launch from UK soil.
Several satellites are due to be blasted into space on Monday night from Cornwall Airport near Newquay. If all goes to plan the launch will take place at Spaceport Cornwall as part of the Start Me Up mission. The initial window for the historic mission will open at 10.16pm on Monday, with additional back-up dates continuing into mid and late January.
Named in tribute to The Rolling Stones’ 1981 hit, the mission involves a repurposed Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747 aircraft and Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket. The 747, dubbed Cosmic Girl, will take off horizontally from the new facility while carrying the rocket.
Weather outlook
A breezy day in store, reports BBC Weather, leading to bouts of sunshine and variable cloud. North-western areas will see frequent showers.
Tonight, showers will fall in central and north-western areas to begin with, before clearing later on. Clear in most areas before cloud and heavy rain reach south-western parts in the early hours.
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