Bank of England says UK inflation has peaked after leaving rates at 4%; US job cuts jump as firms turn to AI – as it happened

Newsflash: The Bank of England believes the recent rise in UK inflation is over.Announcing today’s decision to leave interest rates on hold, the Bank declares “CPI inflation is judged to have peaked.”UK inflation has been recorded at 3.8% in July, August and September – and the Bank is expressing confidence that the process of ‘disinflation’ isn’t over.Its latest Monetary Policy Report, just released, predicts that inflation is likely to fall to close to 3% early next year before gradually returning towards to the 2% target over the subsequent year

Sainsbury’s says shoppers are delaying spending in run-up to budget

The boss of Sainsbury’s has urged Rachel Reeves not to fuel inflation with tax rises on retailers and their suppliers and says shoppers are delaying spending in the lead-up to her budget later this month.Simon Roberts, the chief executive of the UK’s second biggest supermarket, which also owns Argos and Habitat, said his customers were “going to be cautious on discretionary spending, not least because of uncertainty out there and [household] budgets are tight”.He said Argos had launched its deals for the Black Friday promotional event earlier than last year to try to tempt out shoppers as it was seeing “some delayed spend” while households waited to see if they would have to pay more tax.Roberts said it was not clear if food price inflation had peaked, adding: “The inflationary pressures on cost base have been significant this year … What we don’t want to see [in the budget] is further impacts that may cause further inflation.“No one wants to see inflation go any higher

Bank of England’s decision to keep interest rates at 4% is not all doom and gloom

There were reasons to be cheerful contained within the Bank of England’s latest verdict on the outlook for the UK economy, released alongside its decision to leave interest rates unchanged at 4%.Inflation, it said, had peaked at 3.8% and was expected to fall steadily back to the Bank’s 2% target sometime in 2027. That is an improvement on its thinking in August (the last time it published forecasts), when inflation was expected to peak at 4%.As inflation falls, economic growth picks up from 1

NHS won’t get cutting-edge drugs unless it pays more, says AstraZeneca boss

The boss of AstraZeneca has said that unless the UK ramps up spending on new drugs, it could be on a trajectory to only being able to afford cheap, generic medicines rather than cutting-edge treatments.Pascal Soriot made the remarks amid an acrimonious standoff between the pharmaceutical industry and the government over drug pricing, which has been blamed for drugmakers pausing or ditching nearly £2bn of investments in the UK this year.Britain has been heavily criticised by pharma executives, as well as high-profile scientists such as Sir John Bell, for not spending more on medicines, putting it out of line with other countries.“To say that countries will only be able to afford generics [drugs] is only an extreme case,” Soriot said on Thursday, emphasising that “it’s not the case today of course, but if things continue to deteriorate the way they do … it is actually possible that it happens over time, if the ongoing trend that has been in place for 15-20 years doesn’t change.”Soriot noted that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) cost-effectiveness thresholds for new drugs had not changed for two decades, “and we’ve had a lot of inflation in the last five years”

Banks poised to escape tax rises in Rachel Reeves’s budget

The chancellor has decided against increasing taxes on banks in this month’s budget, according to reports, which sent UK bank shares higher on Thursday.Shares in the high street banks NatWest and Lloyds rose by about 2%, putting them among the top risers on London’s FTSE 100.Despite speculation in the run-up to the 26 November budget, Rachel Reeves has reportedly told colleagues that she does not intend to impose further taxes on the UK banking sector, as she wants it to remain competitive to help support economic growth, according to the Financial Times.Banks currently pay a corporation tax rate of 28%, which includes a 3% surcharge on top of the standard corporation tax rate of 25%.Fresh calls for a new tax raid on lenders were raised in August in a paper by the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank, which calculated such a move could raise as much as £8bn

Illegal tobacco burns $3.3bn hole in Australia’s tax revenue, crime agency says

The illegal tobacco market has left a $3.3bn hole in the federal government’s finances, with Australia’s national criminal intelligence agency warning organised crime’s dominance of the market is continuing to grow.The Australian Taxation Office believes the illegal trade now accounts for one in five tobacco sales, which has led to reduced tax revenues despite the government’s excise on legal cigarettes reaching almost $30 for a pack of 20 sticks in September. The excise has increased almost eightfold since 2006, when it was $4.65