Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has blamed pornography and video games for a surge in worklessness among young men. Speaking to the House of Commons’ Work and Pensions Committee yesterday, he also said he believed social media and technology in general has led to a “very worrying” increase in mental health conditions among young people, and prompted many to drop out of the workforce. “I do think probably as a society we haven’t explored and fully opened up exactly what this technology means for young people’s mental health because I think the impacts are actually very profound and probably an area where there needs to be more research,” he told fellow MPs. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has just released new figures showing there were 900,000 young people aged between 16 and 24 who were not in education, employment or training (so-called NEETs) in January to March 2024, up from 812,000 a year earlier. The data also shows young men are driving the increase: there were 99,000 extra 16-to-24 year old men out of work by the end of March, whereas the number of women of the same age classed as NEET fell by 11,000. Around one in seven young men are now considered NEET, according to the ONS, compared to one in ten young women. In total, there are 9.4m people of working age who are ‘economically inactive,’ meaning they are not in work and not looking for work. More than 2.8m people of working age are off sick, including with mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression, up from around 2m before Covid lockdowns, which Stride also said were a less significant factor in growing worklessness. The Telegraph says a 2023 study published in the US Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease found that “stressful experiences, anxiety, and depression are strongly related to pornography consumption”. Links with gaming are less clear, the newspaper says, with a 2022 Oxford study finding that video games only harmed mental health if people struggled to stop.

Ofgem has cut its domestic energy price cap by 7%, to £1,568 a year, down £122 from the previous cap of £1,690. The cut makes the average cost of energy consumption for households in England, Wales and Scotland the lowest since the winter of 2021/2022. The cut is largely down to a fall in wholesale energy prices, analysts at Cornwall Insight say the relief from higher bills is likely to be only temporary because wholesale prices are going up again. The energy specialist expects the cap to rise again in October to £1,762 pounds.  

Retail sales fell 2.3% in April because of poor weather, according to the ONS, a far worse dip than predicted by economists who expected only a 0.2% fall. Figures for March were also revised down from showing no growth to a 0.2% fall. Non-food stores suffered particularly badly, dropping 4.1%, the joint largest fall since January 2021. “Sales volumes fell across most sectors, with clothing retailers, sports equipment, games and toys stores, and furniture stores doing badly as poor weather reduced footfall,” the ONS said. The Met Office described April as a “dull and wet month” that received 155% of average rainfall and only 79% of average sunshine.

Consumer confidence rose by two points in May, with GfK’s consumer confidence reading coming in at -17 for May, an improvement from -19 in April and -21 points in March. Joe Staton, client strategy director GfK, said: “With the latest drop in headline inflation and the prospect of interest rate cuts in due course, the trend is certainly positive after a long period of stasis which has seen the Overall Index Score stuck in the doldrums. All in all, consumers are clearly sensing that conditions are improving. This good result anticipates further growth in confidence in the months to come”.

Post Office Inquiry: Former CEO Paula Vennells has been giving evidence for the past two days, and returns to the witness stand again today. She began her evidence ono Wednesday by apologising, and saying there were “no words I can find today that will make the sorrow and what people have gone through any better”. However, her words were dismissed as “humbug” by Ed Henry KC, the lawyer for some of the Post Office victims. “There were so many forks in the road, but you always took the wrong path didn't you?” he asked, to which she replied: 'It was an extraordinarily complex undertaking and the Post Office and I didn't always take the right path”. She later insisted she believed she and the Post Office were “doing the right things” but that “clearly that was not always the case”. It has emerged throughout that she was determined to protect the Post Office’s reputation at every turn; for example she told colleagues in an email that it was “a goal” of hers “that all press, even local press,” were “scoured for negative comment and refuted”. She admitted she should have asked Fujitsu for reassurances that problems with its Horizon software had been dealt with when given the “world-changing information” there were bugs in the system. She also conceded miscarriages of justice could have been discovered sooner if the initial plan for forensic accountants Second Sight to properly scrutinise several convictions had been carried out. Vennells broke down in tears at several points during her testimony, including when questioned about sub-postmasters who were wrongly convicted, among them Martin Griffiths who killed himself. She said her mistakes would “live with me for ever.” ‘but insisted she did not think there had been any miscarriages of justice until long after she left the organisation in 2019. However, former sub-postmaster Mark Kelly dismissed her emotions as “quite well-rehearsed… a PR apology”. Writing in The Telegraph, Associate Editor Ben Marlow commented that “Vennells laid it on so thick at times, one wondered if she’d been attending amateur dramatics night classes at the local village hall in preparation,” adding that she came across as “someone who seemed content to apologise as long as she didn’t incriminate herself”.

Royal Mail’s parent company, International Distribution Services (IDS), has failed to publish its annual accounts on time because its auditors KPMG, needed additional time to complete their final audit process. The results were due at 7am this morning. A statement from IDS said: “The board confirms that it expects adjusted operating profit (excluding voluntary redundancy costs) for the 53 weeks ended 31 March 2024 to be broadly in line with previously published guidance”. It added that a further announcement would be issued as soon as possible. The market took the news badly, with shares falling by as much as 4% at open.

Moto, one of Britain's largest motorway service station operators, is reportedly preparing to put itself up for sale for up to £3bn. According to Sky News, CVC Capital Partners and the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS), which have jointly owned Moto since 2015, have hired Rothschild to oversee an auction of the company.

Tate & Lyle has reported full-year adjusted EBITDA for the year to 31^st March 2024 of £328m, a 7% year-on-year rise. Profit before tax increased 18% to £287m, driven by the growth in food and beverage, an increased share of profit from Primient - its division producing food and industrial ingredients made from plant-based, renewable sources, which it has now sold - and lower finance charges.

British technology tycoon Mike Lynch has told a US courtroom that his software company Autonomy was not “perfect” but was “extremely successful”. Lynch is on trial for fraud and false accounting, with charges stating he wildly inflated the value of Autonomy before it was sold to Hewlett Packard for $11bn (£8.7bn) in 2011. HP was later forced to write down the majority of the takeover’s value and alleged accounting improprieties. Lynch’s lawyers say he was not involved in accounting for the firm, as he was focussed on developing Autonomy’s technology. Jonathan Bloomer, the former CEO of Prudential who served on Autonomy’s board, had earlier told the court Lynch “didn’t come the audit committee and wasn’t particularly interested in the finance side”. Lynch himself told the court he could write code “but not sell toffee”. IN 2019, , Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy’s former CFO was sentenced to five years in prison over the sale, and both he and Lynch have been found liable in a civil trial in the UK over the deal, although damages have not yet been assessed. Lynch was also founding investor in Darktrace, the London-listed cybersecurity company, but no longer has a role there. Lynch denies the charges against him. He is facing up to 25 years in prison if found guilty.

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