14 leading City economists polled by City A.M. all agree Labour will have to put up taxes if it wins the General Election on 4^th July, and put up more taxes than those it has announced already. Asked which specific tax Labour would be most likely to raise, 12 said Capital Gains Tax (CGT). Reports over the weekend claimed Labour has written draft papers on how to raise taxes, with ideas including extra wealth taxes, increases in CGT and changes to Inheritance Tax rules. The Guardian, for example, cited a Labour memo estimating increases to CGT could bring in £8bn for The Treasury in the long term. Although Labour says it will not raise Income Tax, Corporation Tax, National Insurance (NI) or VAT, which together represent around two-thirds of government revenue, one economist, who asked not to be named while discussing political matters, said Labour would need to raise Income Tax and NI. “Their current plans are not credible and simply won’t raise enough revenue for their proposed spending plans,” they added. Other options under consideration by Labour are said to be allowing increases to Council Tax and the re-banding homes for Council Tax purposes, as well as cutting relief on retirement savings. Labour denied this however, saying in response to City A.M.‘s survey: “We have set out fully costed, fully funded plans, with very specific tax loopholes we would close. Nothing in our plans requires any additional tax to be increased.”

Unison, one of The Labour Party’s biggest donors, is calling for a Labour government to enshrine the right to a four-day work week “for all” in law. Unison’s members have backed the idea. The trade union, which represents public service workers including NHS staff and the police, said: “Trade unions fought for an eight-hour day in the 19th century and a two-day weekend in the 20th. In the 21st, it is time to take the next step and win a four-day week with fair pay for all”. Unison has donated over £8m to Labour since 2019. It represents staff at South Cambridgeshire District Council, the first local authority to introduce a four-day week without cutting pay. The Government has been monitoring the authority since the policy was introduced last year amid concerns it is failing taxpayers, the Telegraph says.

The Bank of England’s decision to keep interest rates on hold at 5.25% last week has been labelled “political” by some Conservative MPs.  Former Business Secretary Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “It is a political decision by the Bank of England. Inflation is now on target and rates need to be cut. That we are in an election period ought to make no difference but the Bank has made a decision based on short-term politics rather than economics”. Inflation fell back to the central bank’s 2% target last week. Bob Blackman MP also said: “You’ve got to ask the question why they are not cutting. They have got to justify the decision not to cut interest rates.” Danny Kruger, a former member of the Treasury select committee agreed that the Bank has held rates too high for too long, saying: “Rates should have come down at the last meeting and it’s a great shame the [Monetary Policy Committee] MPC are holding off yet again. Inflation is now back to target and businesses and mortgage holders badly need a rate cut to get the economy growing again”. The minutes of theMCP meeting said the election “was not relevant” to the decision to hold interest rates.

Rishi Sunak’s Covid start-up fund has pushed dozens of companies into liquidation in an attempt to recover the taxpayer loans that were offered, The Telegraph reports. The Future Fund has issued winding up petitions to 32 companies it backed during the pandemic according to court records, and 23 of those have been ordered to cease trading, without the Fund recouping its investment. The scheme was championed by the Prime Minster in 2020 when he was Chancellor as a way to support loss-making start-ups during the pandemic. It lent £1.1bn to 1,191 companies on three-year terms, with the loans converting into shares when the businesses raised a “follow-on” investment. If the companies did not raise further investment, they were required to repay the loans back double and with interest. At the end of March, the Future Fund had converted 712 loans into stakes in companies, and 211 loans were outstanding. A total 202 companies have become insolvent, while 66 have resulted in cash returns for the fund. Last year, the BBB said the fund had lost £289m on a fair value basis. A spokesman for the British Business Bank, which operates the fund, said it had “a duty to protect the interests of taxpayers” and that it had granted extensions to the majority of companies rather than demand repayment on loan maturity.

Salaries fell slightly for the first time in six months, dipping 0.1% to £38,765 on average between April to May, according to Adzuna’s closely-watched jobs report. Job vacancies flat in the period, rising by just 77 vacancies to 854,248.

Retail sales rose 2.9% last month, according to the Office for National Statistics. Sales were especially strong across clothing retailers and furniture stores: non-food stores sales volumes rose by 3.5%, the largest monthly rise since April 2021. In April, sales dropped 1.8%, a dip attributed to unseasonably bad weather..

Octopus Energy says it will pay back to The Treasury in September the £3bn in public money it received when it took over collapsed energy supplier Bulb.

Motorola is suing The Home Office for more than £14m, claiming it has not paid in full bills for the Airwave network that supports Britain’s police radio network and provides the UK’s 999 services with critical communications. Motorola owns the network and, according to court documents seen by The Telegraph, claims the Government has been underpaying it since March 2023. Previously however, The Home Office has accused Motorola of profiteering from the monopoly network. Last year, The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found Motorola stood to make “supernormal” profits from Airwave of more than £1bn over the decade. The two parties are also arguing over a much-delayed upgrade programme which has been repeatedly pushed back, costing the taxpayer billions of pounds, the newspaper says. It adds that The Home Office has yet to file a defence to the claim.

Anglian Water, one of Britain’s biggest water companies, is planning to pay shareholders a near-£89m dividend despite being convicted earlier this month for failing to provide records related to its sewage works, The Telegraph reports. Anglian, which has more than 6m customers in the East of England and Hartlepool, was found guilty by Peterborough Magistrates’s Court of not complying with a requirement to provide financial records for its wastewater treatment works, with sentencing to be confirmed next month. A spokesman for the Environment Agency confirmed that Anglian’s maximum punishment is an unlimited fine. Anglian Water was also fined £2.65m in May last year for allowing untreated sewage to overflow into the North Sea in 2018, although that fine was later reduced to £300,000.

Trade union Unite said on Friday that around 1,500 Tata workers based at steelworks in Port Talbot and Llanwern would start an all-out indefinite strike, starting on 8^th July, in response to Tata's plans to cut 2,800 jobs and shut down its blast furnaces. It will be the first strike by UK steel workers in more than 40 years. Workers have already initiated a work-to-rule and overtime ban.  "Tata's workers are not just fighting for their jobs - they are fighting for the future of their communities and the future of steel in Wales," Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said. She added: "The strikes will go on until Tata halts its disastrous plans. Unite is backing Tata's workers to the hilt in their historic battle to save the Welsh steel industry and give it the bright future it deserves".  

The Competition and Markets Authority has launched an investigation into Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proposed $14bn takeover of Juniper Networks, saying it wants to assess whether the planned tie-up could result in a substantial lessening of competition. America's HPE, which manufacturers hardware and software for data centres, agreed to pay Juniper's shareholders $40 per share in January.

Sainsbury’s Bank is being taken over by NatWest. The supermarket will pay £125m to NatWest to take on the assets, which include about one million customer accounts, £1.4bn of unsecured personal loans, £1.1bn of credit card balances, and some £2.6bn in customer deposits. The sale is expected to complete in the first half of 2025. The sale means M&S is the only supermarket still involved in financial services, although that bank has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of HSBC since 2004.

JP Morgan Chase is scrapping the cap on bonuses for its UK bankers, raising its bonus cap threshold from two times fixed pay to ten times, meaning a UK-based JP Morgan banker or trader earning £2m per year would now be eligible for a bonus of up to £20m, rather than up to £4m, Sky News says.

Standard Chartered is reportedly setting up a trading desk for Bitcoin and Ether. Bloomberg cited people familiar with the matter as saying that the new crypto desk is close to starting operations; be part of the bank's FX trading unit; and be run from London.

Britvic rejected a 1250p per share offer from Carlsberg Group last week. The offer, which values the soft drink maker at around £31bn, undervalued the business “significantly”, it said. Earlier, the Danish brewer had offered 1200p per share for Britvic.

Tate & Lyle is to buy Atlanta-based pectin, gums and specialty ingredients firm CP Kelco from JM Huber Corporation for $1.8bn. Huber will take a 16% stake in Tate & Lyle and be allowed to appoint two non-executive directors to the London-listed firm’s board.

Blackstone, the private equity giant, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in Ambassador Theatre Group, owner of venues including the Lyceum and Duke of York’s, Sky News reports.

THG has agreed to sell its portfolio of luxury goods websites to Mike Ashley's Frasers Group for an undisclosed sum. THG and Frasers have also agreed on a partnership across several areas including with THG Ingenuity, the online platform that serves third-party brands, and online sports nutrition brand Myprotein.

Ferrari is preparing to launch its first electric car with a price tag of more than €500,000.

The European Commission has agreed to open negotiations with China regarding the EU’s plans to raise tariffs of up to 48% on electric vehicle imports from China. EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and Chinese commerce minister Wang Wentao agreed to further talks after a “candid and constructive” telephone call, EU trade spokesman Olof Gill said.

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