Chancellor Rachel Reeves is said by The Telegraph to be considering a ‘tax raid on jobs’ by hiking employers’ National Insurance contributions as she takes “the difficult decisions necessary to get Britain’s finances back on track”. It was revealed yesterday that Government borrowing was almost £5bn more than forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility in the first four months of this financial year. Yesterday, Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury, told Times Radio: “We will have to consider some tax measures at the Budget on October 30^th whilst honouring that promise to the public not to increase income tax, employee National Insurance or VAT”. Previously, the Chancellor pledged to simply “not increase National Insurance” without any caveats regarding whether that applied to employers or employees. Neil Carberry, CEO of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation expressed concerns that an uncreased “jobs tax” would lead to lower wages and would hurt growth. “Higher employers’ NI increases the cost of employment, a change which either reduces firms’ ability to hire, or leads to costs being passed on in the form of lower wage awards,” he said, adding: “Too often, politicians see it as an ‘easy’ tax rise, but it contributes to a whole range of longer term issues.” Tina McKenzie, policy chair at the Federation of Small Businesses argued increasing the tax would break the manifesto pledges on which Labour was elected. “Labour made a cast-iron manifesto commitment not to increase National Insurance contributions, including on small employers,” she said. “Taxes on employers must be cut, not raised”. A Conservative Party spokesman said any increase would be “blatantly dishonest” and “increase the cost to businesses of employing someone, leading to lower wages and higher unemployment.”

The Treasury is concerned a new fraud refund scheme could do long-lasting damage to the banking and payments industry, City A.M. reports. From 7^th October, new rules introduced by the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) means banks and fintechs will be forced to fully reimburse victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud up to a limit of £415,000, with the cost split between the firms used to send and receive the payment. City minister Tulip Siddiq is said to be “very worried” that the October deadline may be too tight, as is Chancellor Rachel Reeves, three people familiar with the matter told the newspaper. The industry has long warned that smaller payment firms in particular may struggle to use the claims management system designed to implement the regime and reimburse for any fraud within five days, as required, and that the whole payments system could collapse as financial institutions become over-cautious and block legitimate payments. Last week, concerns were also raised that criminals are planning to exploit the new rules. Another industry source said the previous Conservative government likely regretted giving the PSR “so much leeway” in Section 72 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, under which it developed the rules, and that former City minister Bim Afolami told industry bosses he wanted to “fire” the PSR’s then head Chris Hemsley in December when it refused to heed Treasury requests for a lower threshold than £415,000. Afolami said publicly in May that the rules had “significant problems”.  Hemsley resigned abruptly stepped the following week. Both the Treasury and the PSR declined to comment on City A.M,’s story. Britons lost £459.7m to APP fraud last year, according to banking trade body UK Finance.

Five bodies have been found after the luxury yacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily on Monday morning. They are those of UK tech mogul Mike Lynch and his daughter, Hannah; Morgan Stanley International Bank chair Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy; and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda.

Train drivers’ union Aslef is calling on London North Eastern Railway (LNER) to hire the Royal Mail train drivers who are being let go by the postal service. This, Aslef says, could help avoid industrial action by drivers on LNER expresses between London and Edinburgh, who are set to walk out each weekend between the end of August and mid-November, in a row over labour agreements that is said to be exacerbated by a driver shortage at the nationalised firm. Royal Mail is scrapping its dedicated postal trains from October. Those drivers are also represented by Aslef.

The Post Office has spent £256.9m on legal fees linked to the Horizon IT scandal so far, a sum almost equivalent to the compensation paid out to the victims. 15 law firms and two barrister’s chambers were the recipients of the fees between September 2014 and March 2024, The Lawyer magazine discovered, after submitting a Freedom of Information Act request. City law firm Herbert Smith Freehills received the bulk of the cash - £163.5m - for its work. £261m in compensation was paid out to victims as of July.

Waitrose is spending £1bn to open up to 100 convenience shops and upgrade existing supermarkets over the next five years. "The convenience store will trigger one of our biggest periods of expansion as we look to reach more customers having served a record 15 million last year," Waitrose said in a statement yesterday. The company, part of the John Lewis Partnership, also announced plans to open its first new store in six years, in Hampton Hill, within the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.

McDonald's plans to open over 200 restaurants across the UK and Ireland over the next four years in a £1bn expansion drive.

Cineworld’s US backers are proposing to invest £35m in modernising its UK cinemas if a rescue plan to be voted on by creditors next month is successful, Sky News says, adding that doubts are growing about the ability of unhappy landlords to block the proposals.

Hobbycraft is said by Sky News to be on the brink of being sold to Modella Capital, a specialist investor whose executives have backed chains including Paperchase and Tie Rack. The arts and crafts retailer is currently owned by private equity firm Bridgepoint.

Buy-now pay-later (BNPL) giant Klarna has bought collapsed Kiwi fintech rival Laybuy, City A.M. has learned. Laybuy, which launched in 2017 and once boasted around 766,000 customers across the UK, Australia and New Zealand, was put into receivership in June after an emergency sale process failed to yield a buyer.

FTSE 250-listed British outsourcing giant Serco has won a $320m (£250m) four year contract to manage the electrical modernisation of the US Space Force’s Pituffik Space Base in Greenland.

Jamie Oliver’s business, which includes his restaurant chain and recipe books, has reported a turnover of £27m for 2023, up on the £23.6m received in 2022, according to newly-filed accounts with Companies House. However, the group’s pre-tax profit dipped from £5.4m to £3.3m over the same period, due to a rise in operating expenses as a result of an increase in staff costs due to “investment for future growth” and the additional costs of opening a new flagship London restaurant.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has closed its investigations into concerns that Google's Play Store and Apple's App Store were leveraging their dominant market positions to impose unfair terms on UK app developers, saying it would wait until the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act comes into force. "Once the new pro-competition digital markets regime comes into force, we'll be able to consider applying those new powers to concerns we have already identified through our existing work," said Will Hayter, executive director for digital markets at the CMA.

Puregym has hired Clive Chesser, CEO of Punch Pubs & Co, as its new boss, He succeeds Humphrey Cobbold, who will become Puregym’s new chair. Both are expected to take on their new roles on 6^th November. Punch, meanwhile, says its current COO Andy Spencer, will become its new CEO from 27^th September.

The price ofgold hit an all-time high of $2,513.79 (£1,932.87) per ounce on Tuesday morning.

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