Pound dips after UK economy doesn’t grow in July; Ocado shares slide 20% amid robotic warehouses demand fears – as it happened

The pound has weakened since today’s GDP report showed the UK economy failed to grow in July.Sterling is down 0.2% at $1.355 against the US dollar this morning.Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, points out there is “not much to like” from the July monthly GDP update, with zero growth in the economy at the start of the third quarter

Barclays boss urges UK ministers to limit public sector pay rises

The chief executive of Barclays has said the UK government needs to limit pay rises for public sector workers and resist a further “squeeze” on banks with tax increases.CS Venkatakrishnan said the government needed to look at its own spending levels as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, seeks ways to address a fiscal hole when she announces her budget in November.“We need to curb expenditure at the government level,” he told the Financial Times. “We need to find a way to curb wage inflation.”Venkatakrishnan said that while the government needed to restrict rising “public sector” wages, the inflationary impact of pay rises was an issue across the UK economy

UK economy flatlines in July in grim news for Rachel Reeves

The UK economy flatlined in July, according to official figures, in grim news for Rachel Reeves as she gears up for a challenging budget.It was a slowdown compared with June, when the economy grew by 0.4%, according to the Office for National Statistics.GDP expanded strongly in the first half of the year, making the UK the fastest-growing economy in the G7, but it had been widely expected to slow in the second half.The ONS said that growth in the services and construction sectors in July was offset by a 0

Stagnant GDP shows scale of challenge for Rachel Reeves at autumn budget

“Our economy isn’t broken, but it does feel stuck,” is the message from Rachel Reeves.Having made rebooting the economy the No 1 priority for government, it is a brutally honest assessment from a chancellor more than a year into the job.The latest GDP figures, released on Friday, highlight the scale of the challenge for Reeves at her autumn budget. Growth flatlined in July, slowing from 0.4% in June, as the economy struggled for momentum over the summer

Britain is ‘a terrible place’ to sell medicines, says drug firm executive

A senior pharmaceuticals executive has called on the government to come up with a “proper” roadmap for raising spending on new medicines, saying Britain is “not a good place” to develop or sell drugs.Paul Naish, the UK head of market access for the French company Sanofi, said Britain was “at a critical point”.He added: “We’ve still got the best universities, we’ve got some of the best scientists in the world, but it’s not a good place to do the development work for medicines. It’s an expensive place to operate, and it’s a terrible place to sell medicines.”The drugmaker MSD, known as Merck in the US, this week ditched its under-construction £1bn research centre in London

Business rates rise would put hundreds of big shops at risk, say UK retailers

Up to 400 large shops are at risk of closure with as many as 100,000 jobs at risk if the government goes ahead with plans to hit stores with higher business rates, retailers have warned.Some of the UK’s largest retail premises, including supermarkets and department stores, would face higher property tax charges under new rules being considered by the government before November’s budget.The higher charges for larger sites, including warehouses, offices and other premises, are intended to pay for discounts for smaller business properties, such as independent retailers, cafes and pubs, after the Labour government pledged to make the business rates system fairer.The bosses of big retailers including John Lewis, Lidl and B&Q met the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, last week to ask her to exclude retail from the surcharge.The new rules are targeted at all business premises with a rateable value – a figure linked to rents – of more than £500,000