How to balance the UK books: six options open to Rachel Reeves

Rachel Reeves is under pressure to tackle a multibillion-pound shortfall in the government finances.Labour’s high-stakes welfare U-turn and a spike in bond markets prompted by speculation over the chancellor’s position has dragged the government’s tax and spending plans into the spotlight.Ministers have warned of “financial consequences” after the backtracking on disability benefits and winter fuel payments for pensioners, which have a price tag north of £6bn.Alongside a sluggish economic outlook and possible downgrade in productivity forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility at the autumn budget, economists at Deutsche Bank predict that Reeves could face a £30bn shortfall against her self-imposed fiscal rules.This has raised questions over how the chancellor responds

Trump celebrates tax bill passing, Reeves must boost headroom to £30bn, says ex-Bank of England deputy – as it happened

Time to recap…Donald Trump is preparing to send letters to trading partners, setting out tariff rates that countries will have to pay from the beginning of next month.The US president has said he will send out about “10 or 12” letters on Friday, with further letters over the next few days, as the 90-day pause on his “reciprocal tariffs” comes to an end.Trade tensions are bubbling at the second biggest economy in the world too. China announced new tariffs of up to 35% on brandy from the European Union, condemned as ‘unfair’ by an EU spokesperson.The Chinese tariffs will range from 27

Songwriters ‘missing millions in royalties from more than 100,000 UK gigs’

Songwriters are missing out on millions of pounds a year in royalties because the agency responsible for collecting and distributing payments cannot identify when their songs have been performed at more than 100,000 gigs and performances across the UK.PRS for Music is responsible for collecting royalties for writers when music is played, including on the radio, streaming services, in shops and at live events from pubs to stadiums and festivals.In the case of live music, PRS takes a small percentage cut of gross ticket sales from every performance, and after taking a cut for administration redistributes the royalties after successfully matching the setlist performed with the relevant songwriters.However, at a ballooning number of gigs, classical performances and theatre and variety shows, the collection agency has taken a cut of ticket sales but not been able to allocate it to songwriters because of a lack of information about songs played.In the music industry this growing pot of income at PRS is referred to as the “black box” and the agency is facing legal action about how it ultimately ends out distributing this money

‘The bubble had to burst’: the inside story of the Lindsey oil refinery collapse

It was mid-April and the government had just finished nationalising British Steel, to prevent thousands of job losses at the Scunthorpe steelworks, when word reached Whitehall that another national infrastructure asset was wobbling.Prax Group, owner of the Lindsey oil refinery on the Humber estuary in northern England, was rumoured to be in financial trouble, stoking fears about jobs and disruption to critical fuel supplies.In a hastily arranged meeting at the department for energy security and net zero (DESNZ) on 13 May, well-placed sources said, a concerned Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, took solace from Prax’s owner and sole director, Winston Soosaipillai.Prax had suffered some setbacks, the seldom-seen oil boss is understood to have said, but it was not in any imminent danger and was even planning investment for the future. Within weeks, these assurances had crumbled to dust

Rachel Reeves needs wider headroom against fiscal rules, ex-Bank of England deputy says

The former Bank of England deputy governor Charlie Bean has urged Rachel Reeves to create much wider headroom against her fiscal rules – a decision likely to require significant tax rises or spending cuts.Bean suggested that the current slim margin of less than £10bn, had led the chancellor to “fine-tune” the government’s tax and spending plans to meet the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) forecasts five years ahead.“Government spending is about one and a quarter trillion, so £10bn is a small number … and it is a small number in the context of typical forecasting errors,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.He added: “She should aim to operate with a larger margin of headroom, so previous chancellors have typically operated with headroom of the order of £30bn.“Because she has chosen about a third of that … it is very easy for numbers to go in the wrong direction and she finds she has to neurotically fine-tune taxes to control the OBR forecast that is several years ahead

‘An unjust transition’? Teesside locals divided over net zero after deindustrialisation

“We’re basically going through a deindustrialisation of the country at the moment and I think we’re losing a lot of jobs,” says John Mac, over a pot of tea in a bustling Caffè Nero in the centre of Stockton-on-Tees.The local candidate for Reform UK worked for years at the Billingham plant of Imperial Chemical Industries’s (ICI), before taking voluntary redundancy in the 1990s.Having witnessed decades of industrial decline on Teesside first-hand, including the dismantling of the once-mighty industrial behemoth, Nigel Farage’s pivot to court the working class is speaking Mac’s language.The Reform leader is targeting voters in post-industrial communities across Britain, outlined in a Guardian series showing how Farage views the “next Brexit” as reversing net zero to create a manufacturing renaissance.This, the third in the series, looks at the future of another of Britain’s industrial heartlands