Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner’s pledge to legislate to let workers “switch off” at work is going to be ditched, The Sunday Times said yesterday. The policy was a key part of Labour’s New Deal for Working People and would have made it illegal for employers to expect their staff to be contactable outside working hours. While the proposal does not form part of the Employment Bill, which is currently making its way through Parliament, Ministers promised ‘switching off’ would be a legal right at some point in the future. However, Government sources have now told the newspaper, the “right to switch off is dead.” They added it was a casualty of a bid to boost business confidence following numerous surveys highlighting just how much companies are worried about the impact of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first Budget which has placed significant extra costs on firms in the form of hikes to Employer National Insurance Contributions and a minimum wage increase, among other new costs.

And right on cue, another gloomy business confidence survey says Britain’s private sector is facing a year of decline. According to The Confederation of British Industry’s (CBI) latest monthly poll, bosses anticipate a sustained contraction until at least May. The CBI said it was now forecasting four straight quarters of decline for private businesses, lasting from the middle of last year to the middle of 2025. “While many bosses were optimistic about a Labour government before and immediately after last July’s election, optimism quickly evaporated after Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, claimed they had discovered a £22bn black hole in public finances,” The Telegraph’s Deputy Economics Editor Tim Wallace writes this morning. Meanwhile, a separate survey of chief executives by accounting firm BDO suggests just over a quarter of bosses of mid-sized companies are concerned about rising employment costs, and 17% more bosses expect contraction rather than growth. Growth expectations are particularly bleak in consumer services, with a net balance of 55% anticipating a decline, the worst reading since September 2022. Professional services executives are also concerned, but manufacturers anticipate a modest return to growth. Alpesh Paleja, a CBI economist, said this data provided “glimmers of hope ... but overall, the data still paints a picture of a tough operating environment for businesses, with consumer-facing sectors faring particularly badly”.

Net zero initiatives have made us poorer, according to analysis by Peel Hunt, which has drawn an intrinsic correlation between a “precipitous” decline in electricity supply since the early 2000s and much slower growth in living standards. The investment bank’s analysis of almost 190 economies showed energy was closely linked to economic prosperity because of its key role in production. Kallum Pickering, Peel Hunt’s chief economist, who conducted the research, explained: “Put simply, once the electricity available to the UK economy starts to decline, the trend rate of productivity slows sharply. If an economy throttles its production of energy, it impairs its capacity to produce all types of goods and services. Productivity is the major driver of per capita GDP.” Last week, Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, said Britain’s “sinister” goal of hitting net zero by 2050 is “impoverishing” millions of households poorer, a comment this survey seems to confirm. He also called it “a “delusion” that this is somehow going to make the world a better place”. However, Chancellor Rachel Reeves continues to insist there is “no trade-off between economic growth and net zero. Quite the opposite”. A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesman said: “We do not recognise these findings. The clean energy transition is the economic opportunity of the 21st century. Our clean power mission will replace our dependency on unstable fossil fuel markets with homegrown clean power controlled in Britain – and create a new generation of good jobs across the country.”

Young women in Britain now earn £2,200 more than men on average, according to the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) think-tank, which flags a gender gap “crisis” among boys and teenagers, saying they are falling behind at every stage, from early education to the workforce. The average 16 to 24-year old woman in full-time work earned £26,500 per year in 2022-23, nearly a tenth more than men of the same age who earned £24,300, a stark contrast to 2020-21 when the average young man earned £1,000 per year more than women. The issue has become starker since Covid lockdowns: the number of 16 to 24-year-old men who are not in education, employment or training (Neet) has surged by 40% since Covid, while the equivalent increase for women of the same age was just 7%. Miriam Cates, a CSJ senior fellow and former Conservative MP, said: “We have let down a generation of young boys and men. For too long, politicians, policy makers, the media and the arts have turned a blind eye to the needs of boys in the name of ‘equality’. We are now reaping the whirlwind as we see the devastating impacts of ignoring the challenges facing young men in Britain. Far from creating equality, we have penalised young men for the crime of being male, labelling them as ‘toxic’ and ‘problematic’, and failing to provide a positive vision of masculinity.”

More than 10,000 Asda managers will not be getting any bonuses this year, they have been told, because of the supermarket’s poor performance over the past 12 months. During this time its market share has declined from 13.7% to 12.6%. and it had its worst Christmas sales in 10 years. Previously, managers have received bonuses in the first three months of each year.

Microsoft has announced it is shutting down Skype, its voice and video-conferencing product in May to focus on its more popular Teams offering. Users will be able to sign into the free version of Microsoft Teams with their Skype account, where they will still be able to access their call history, contacts, group chats and other data, the company said. Skype was launched in 2003 and bought by Microsoft in 2011 for $8.5bn but had latterly struggled in the face of competition from Zoom, Slack, and Teams.

US tech firms Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok and Google-owned YouTube, meanwhile, are being sued by Stuart Stephens, the father of 13-year old Olly who was murdered in 2021 by two schoolchildren in a killing planned on Snapchat. He is accusing them of causing his son “serious mental health harms” including “depression, anxiety, sleep deprivation [and] suicidality” and of triggering an “unprecedented mental health crisis”. Stephens, who lives in Reading, Berkshire, has joined 18 other families based in the US in legal action against the American businesses brought by the Social Media Victims Law Center. The lawsuit claims Olly fell into an “engineered addiction”, before the apps “pushed him into engaging with strangers” who claimed they were his “friends” but who went on to kill him after he attempted to stop them bullying another child. None of the firms named in the suit responded to a request from The Daily Telegraph for comment.

Jess Staley, the banker who was banned for life from the City by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) three years ago because of his links to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, is at the High Court today, attempting to get the ban overturned. The anticipated 12-day hearing is expected to include four days of testimony from Staley himself and the airing of some 1,800 FCA emails, as well as correspondence from Epstein. Epstein killed himself in a New York prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

And finally… the 21^st century space race has stepped up another gear: Texas start-up Firefly Aerospace landed its robot-driven craft Blue Ghost on the Moon on Sunday, making it the second commercial space company to land on the lunar surface. [1] The mission was undertaken in partnership with NASA, which provided $101.5m (£80.3m) in funding. During its 14-day mission Blue Ghost will drill into the Moon’s surface to monitor its temperature; capture high-definition imagery of a total eclipse when the Earth blocks the sun above the Moon’s horizon; capture the lunar sunset; and collect data on the “lunar horizon glow”, a phenomenon first documented by Apollo 17 when lunar dust particles levitate and scatter the light. On Friday, singer Katy Perry announced she would lead an all-female space mission on one of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rockets. Other firms in the sector include Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which is exploring space tourism, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which aims to start a human colony on Mars.

Please note: there will be no Daily Business News on Thursday this week as I am at a family funeral.

[1] Houston-based Intuitive Machines became the first private company to land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon last year.

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