Luton residents told to stay at home amid fears of local lockdown July 24, 2020 Council leaders in Luton have told residents to stay at home as much as possible amid fears that a rise in infections in the town could lead to a local lockdown. Luton has been designated as an “intervention area” by the government, meaning the town’s infection rate is being monitored closely and further spike in [...]
Lidl to open 25 new stores in the UK this year creating 1,000 jobs July 14, 2020 Lidl has said it plans to open a new store every week until Christmas, seeing 25 new branches and 1,000 more jobs. The budget supermarket also plans to invest £1.3bn in the UK for 2021 and 2022, which will see the creation of 100 new stores and around 4,000 new jobs. Lidl aims to have [...]
Workplaces should be a lifeline for those suffering domestic abuse July 13, 2020 At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we asked people to stay at home to protect themselves and others from the virus. The home should be a safe haven. But for victims of domestic abuse, it can be a very dangerous place to be. National abuse helpline Refuge reported a 25 per cent increase in [...]
Quiz suspends supplier after Leicester factory exploitation claims July 13, 2020 Fashion brand Quiz has suspended one of its suppliers after reports that the supplier was failing to pay workers at a factory in Leicester the minimum wage. Over the weekend, an investigation by the Times found that the supplier had offered employees just £3 an hour to make clothes for the brand. The minimum wage [...]
Lockdown Generation: Without support, young people face a health crisis as well as an economic one July 10, 2020 What do you remember about your first job? The friends and connections you made? The skills you learned? The feeling of being able to support yourself financially? It is well known that all these factors can shape our career trajectories. That they are involved in shaping your future health outcomes and development is less widely [...]
Rishi Sunak Summer Statement: All the Chancellor’s spending pledges July 8, 2020 Chancellor Rishi Sunak today announced a raft of measures in his Summer Statement in a bid to help the UK economy recover from the worst effects of coronavirus. The Treasury boss revealed massive public spending to bolster the UK economy in what people are calling his mini-Budget. While he did not extend the government’s furlough [...]
New job retention bonus at heart of Rishi Sunak’s £30bn spending spree July 8, 2020 UK chancellor Rishi Sunak today put a new “job retention bonus” programme to encourage companies to bring back furloughed workers at the centre of a £30bn package aimed at kickstarting the economy. In his summer statement, Sunak said employers who take back furloughed workers until the end of January will receive a £1,000 payment for [...]
Labour calls for no tax rises to pay for coronavirus spending July 8, 2020 Labour shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds will urge the government to commit to not raising taxes tomorrow in her response to Rishi Sunak’s economic statement. Dodds is expected to respond to the chancellor’s mini budget by saying that Labour is “not calling for tax rises – we are calling for growth”. The shadow chancellor is expected [...]
To avert an unemployment crisis, the government must act now and equip workers for the post-pandemic world July 7, 2020 Tomorrow, the chancellor will rise to make his economic statement with the country teetering on the edge of the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. Around 10 million people face the possibility of losing their jobs. Clearly not all of them will, but as the furlough scheme unwinds, half of businesses say they expect [...]
Tax system to the rescue: Six policy tweaks that could kickstart the economy June 23, 2020 The past three months have seen a deluge of economic, political, and legal moves that would have been unthinkable at the start of the year. As civil liberties were curtailed on a scale never seen in peacetime and ten million children were turned away from school, new hospitals were built in a matter of weeks, [...]