Business leaders want next government to build two more runways

Business reporter(wp):
Business leaders have called for the next government to build two more runways, demanding that a follow-up Airports Commission be established only months after Heathrow’s third runway was approved.

The Institute of Directors urged that a fast-track commission be set up immediately after the election to recommend locations for two additional runways within a year. The controversial expansion of Heathrow has yet to be finally voted through parliament, almost five years after the first Airport Commission was established by David Cameron, and is not expected to be completed before at least 2025.

The IoD, which represents 30,000 UK company directors, said that the commission had underestimated demand for air travel and said Gatwick would also be full before Heathrow, Britain’s main hub airport, was enlarged. Almost 45 million passengers travelled through Gatwick in the last year, a 9% increase.

Dan Lewis, senior infrastructure adviser at the Institute of Directors, said: “The growth in passenger numbers is far ahead of what the Airports Commission said it would be. This is a fast-moving target.

“Whoever wins the next election, they will face a serious challenge in upgrading the UK’s transport and communications network. The years of dawdling on new airport capacity have left us lagging well behind European competitors. Expanding Heathrow is not enough.”

Plans for a third Heathrow runway were cancelled by the coalition in 2009, before renewed pressure from business groups, the aviation industry and backbench MPs pushed the prime minister to reopen the issue of airport expansion. Sir Howard Davies’ commission said only one runway could be built before 2030 within Britain’s climate change obligations.

The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry has also called for the next government to enable a second runway at Gatwick to help create a “megacity”. While Gatwick was shortlisted as a candidate for a new runway, other airports such as Stansted and Birmingham would be likely to push hard should a future opportunity emerge.

A Heathrow spokesperson said: “We’re getting on with expanding Britain’s only hub airport – with the new runway on track to open in 2025, doubling cargo capacity and adding 50% more flights. Heathrow continues to support the growth of aviation capacity in the UK in line with strict environmental targets.”

John Stewart, chair of anti-Heathrow expansion group Hacan, said the IoD was “living in a fantasy world”. He added: “Because of the opposition, it takes years to build one runway. To try to build three at a time would create a nationwide network of opposition from local resident groups and climate change activists, the likes of which the UK has not seen before.”

The IoD also urged a roadmap for building Crossrail 2, the north-south rail line that Transport for London has insisted will be crucial to meet the needs of the capital, particularly once HS2 is operational.

Although it was identified by the National Infrastructure Commission as the single most important project for development, the preferred route has yet to be published by the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, and political impetus for the rail line appears to have diminished. Lewis said: “Since Theresa May took over, it’s back-pedalled a bit. Certainly there’s a sensitivity about it looking like a London project – but you can’t ignore the national importance.”

In a manifesto paper, the business group said that the government should also prioritise ultrafast broadband and 4G coverage. Lewis said: “Ultrafast broadband could mean a rural economy renaissance, it could drive growth and make places with low land values good economic prospects.” The IoD said that there should be a commitment to switching from copper to fibre networks by 2025.

Labour’s leaked manifesto has backed superfast broadband for every home by 2022.

Labour and Tories to woo working-class voters with new policies

Political reporter(wp):

Labour and the Conservatives are to intensify their bidding war for working-class voters with a number of eye-catching policies on workers’ rights and the NHS, as the general election campaign steps up a gear with just over three weeks to go until polling day.

Jeremy Corbyn will promise on Monday to take a million patients off NHS waiting lists by 2020 and Theresa May will announce what she claims is the biggest extension of workers’ rights by any Conservative government, as the parties compete for the backing of what the prime minister calls “ordinary working-class people”.

Corbyn will address an audience of 3,000 nurses on Monday at the annual Royal College of Nursingconference in Liverpool, where he will promise that Labour will spend an extra £37bn over the next parliament on a “new deal” for the NHS.

The party calculates the sum would allow the NHS to take a million people off waiting lists by the end of this parliament by guaranteeing access to treatment within 18 weeks, and to ensure that patients could always be seen in A&E within four hours.

The Labour leader will repeat the party’s pledge to lift the 1% pay cap for public sector workers that has restrained nurses’ wages. He will tell nurses, who voted on Sunday to ballot for strike action over pay: “Imagine what would happen to the NHS if the Conservatives under Theresa May were to have another five years in power. It would be unrecognisable: a national health service in name, cut back, broken up and plundered by private corporations.”

May will spend Monday morning at a workplace in south-east England, where she will announce plans for new statutory rights to unpaid leave for carers and bereaved parents, fresh protections for workers with mental illness and safeguards against pensions mismanagement. Workers will be allowed to take up to 12 months’ unpaid leave to care for family members with an illness or disability under the proposals.

The pledges are the latest step in the prime minister’s strategy of rebranding the Tories as the party of working people in an attempt to seize seats across a swath of traditional Labourterritory.

The Conservatives will also commit to increase the “national living wage” each year in line with average earnings over the course of the next parliament. That is likely to be significantly less generous than Labour’s pledge to raise the minimum wage for all workers, not only the over-25s, to £10 an hour.

Many of the Tory proposals are likely to be regarded by the right of May’s party as imposing burdensome red tape on businesses, but May has openly rejected the laissez-faire approach of David Cameron, urging Conservative members in her party conference speech last October to “put the power of government squarely at the service of ordinary working-class people”

The Conservatives know some of Labour’s tax-and-spending pledges poll well, after almost a decade of austerity. But they are hammering home the message that Labour’s sums do not add up and are relying on other levers, such as new rules and regulations, to show they are on the public’s side.

Labour’s promised boost to NHS funding includes £10bn for extra capital investment, including in IT systems, which were subject to a damaging cyberattack on Friday. This would be funded through borrowing, while the rest of the new spending would be paid for by tax increases, including higher income tax for the top 5% of earners.

Labour’s shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said the “substantial amount” of extra NHS funding would come from higher income tax on those earning above £80,000.

“We are being entirely upfront that people above £80,000 will pay more tax under a Labour government,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday. “And we believe that every penny piece that is raised from that tax will go into our National Health Service.”

There would be an extra £10bn for capital spending from the planned £250m capital investment fund, and some more from corporation tax, Ashworth added.

All would be revealed in the full manifesto, he said: “I think that the IFS [Institute for Fiscal Studies] and others will be reassured when they see [shadow chancellor] John McDonnell’s sums tomorrow.”

A Conservative spokesman said: “Jeremy Corbyn can’t deliver any of this because his nonsensical economic policies would damage our economy and mean less money for the NHS, not more.”

As well as announcing new workers’ rights, May will repeat her promise to maintain all of the protections currently underpinned by the EU, which include maternity leave and paid holidays.

Damian Green, the work and pensions secretary, said the workplace changes would also see employees offered a voice on company boards, though he said this would not necessarily be a staff representative.

He denied this amounted to a climbdown on what May had promised when she stood for the Tory leadership in July, a plan from which she later backed away.

“We haven’t watered it down at all,” Green told Today. “What we are saying today, we actually said in the green paper we put out about this idea. What Theresa said when she when she first brought this up during the leadership election campaign last year was that there needs to be a worker’s voice on board.”

This could be one of three things, he said – a worker on the board; a non-executive director representing staff, or some form of workers’ advisory board.

Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, told the WP the real test of May’s pledge to govern for working people would be whether she was willing to write such protections into the trade deal Britain signs with the rest of the EU after Brexit.

O’Grady, who represents almost 6 million union members, said the Conservative manifesto should include a clear promise to ensure Brexit was not used as an excuse for a “race to the bottom”. In particular, she said, she would like to see the final Brexit deal include a promise not to undercut European social standards.

“This is not about sovereignty; this is about saying there will be a level playing field and nobody will fall below this basic standard,” she said.

“Now, of course, Theresa May has already said that she won’t just protect rights, she will enhance them – so it should cause no problem whatsoever for the Conservative party to sign up to a commitment that British workers will not fall behind rights in other countries.”

That idea has already been included in plans for the talks by the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, after lobbying from trade unions. The European council’s negotiating guidelines say of any future trade deal with the UK: “It must ensure a level playing field, notably in terms of competition and state aid, and in this regard encompass safeguards against unfair competitive advantages through, inter alia, tax, social, environmental and regulatory measures and practices.”

The prime minister is expected to promise to enhance protections for workers in the gig economy, whose precarious status has become a focus after a series of investigations, including by the Guardian, revealed that many survive on poverty pay rates, with little or no job security.

However, the Conservative manifesto is not expected to give details of fresh rights, instead promising to await the findings of a review into the 21st-century workplace being carried out by a former adviser to Tony Blair, Matthew Taylor.

O’Grady said: “I don’t think it’s going to be good enough at this stage to talk about reviewing things or developing things. I don’t think that’s going to cut much ice.”

As well as Corbyn, the RCN conference in Liverpool will hear from the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, who will echo Corbyn’s pledge to lift the ceiling on public sector pay.

The Lib Dems’ Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, said: “Public sector workers are facing a double blow at the hands of this Conservative government, with years of pitiful increases to pay combined with a Brexit squeeze caused by soaring inflation. Living standards are falling, prices are rising and nurses are going to food banks – but Theresa May doesn’t care.”

Man fighting for life after being knifed in head near murder scene

Crime reporter(wp/es):

A man is fighting for life after he was stabbed in the head just yards from a murder scene in north London.

Police rushed to Southbury Road in Enfield on Sunday at 2pm after reports a man was injured near a Tesco car park.

Paramedics also arrived and London’s Air Ambulance landed nearby.

They found a man in his 20s suffering from stab wounds to his head and leg.

He was taken to an east London hospital where he remains in a life threatening condition.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “At this stage officers believe that the man was stabbed following an altercation with a group of males in Exeter Road.

“The victim was placed in a vehicle by friends who attempted to seek help.

“The vehicle stopped in Southbury Road where the emergency services were called.”

The crime scene was minutes from Hertford Road, the scene of a triple stabbing on Saturday night that saw an 18-year-old die and left two other youths injured.

No arrests have been made over Sunday’s attack.

Man shot and stabbed in broad daylight east London attack

Crime reporter(wp/es):

A man who died after a broad daylight attack in east London was shot and stabbed, police say.

Emergency services rushed to the scene in Eagling Close, Bow, just before 4.30pm on Saturday where the 41-year-old man was lying injured.

Paramedics, including those from the Air Ambulance, battled to save his life but he was pronounced dead at the scene just over an hour later.

Detectives revealed on Sunday they believe the man was both shot and stabbed.

Police are now looking for anyone who may have seen what happened, including a woman wearing pink trousers who was spotted in the area.

Detective Chief Inspector Gary Holmes, from the Met’s Homicide and Major Crime Command said: "This was a violent murder that happened in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon.

"There will be witnesses who have yet to speak with police who may have seen something significant.

“I want to hear from anyone with information, and in particular from anyone who may have seen or heard anything suspicious between around 4.20pm and 4.40pm in the area of Eagling Close.

He added: "I am aware of a white female wearing pink trousers who was seen in Eagling Close around the time of the murder.

“Even if she doesn't think she saw anything significant, it is vital that this person makes contact with police."

Two men have been arrested over the killing and remain in custody at east London police stations.

The latest attack came just a day after the WT launched an investigation into the capital's knife crime epidemic, with 11 Londoners killed in just 16 days.

Final taxpayer shares in Lloyds Banking Group to be sold off

Business reporter(wp):

The government is expected to sell off its remaining shares in Lloyds Banking Group in the coming week, marking a watershed moment for the sector after the financial crisis.

Eight years after pumping in £20bn to prevent the bank from collapsing, taxpayers will no longer own any shares in an institution that was created in the depths of the financial crisis when Lloyds TSB rescued HBOS.

The share sale, in the midst of the general election campaign, will highlight the contrast between the progress of Lloyds and that of Royal Bank of Scotland, which is still 73% owned by the government and has yet to make an annual profit since its bailout.

At its peak, the taxpayer holding in Lloyds stood at 43% and first started to be scaled back in September 2013. Last week, the bank’s chairman, Lord Blackwell, told shareholders at its annual general meeting that the stake had fallen to 0.25%, with those final shares expected to be disposed of in the coming days.

They will not be sold with the fanfare envisioned by George Osborne when he was chancellor. He had ambitions for a discounted share sale to the public, which had to be abandoned a year later by his successor, Philip Hammond, because of the fall in the bank’s shares after the Brexit vote.

Instead the shares are being sold off on the stock market through the investment bank Morgan Stanley at prices below the 73.6p average that taxpayers paid during the three-stage bailout that began in January 2009.

Hammond has said that despite some of the shares being sold at a loss, the government has still recouped all the £20.3bn used to buy shares. However, that does not take into account the £3.6bn cost incurred by the government although the bank’s chief executive, António Horta-Osório, told last week’s AGM that the government would make at least £500m from the bailout.

The return to the private sector has led to 57,000 job cuts – in part because of cost-cutting implemented in the merger but also subsequent efficiency drives to boost profitability.

The bailout also required a restructuring of the bank. While a competition inquiry was averted after the HBOS deal was clinched at the height of the crisis, the EU required 600 branches to be sold off. Those TSB branches are now owned by Sabadell of Spain. Lloyds still has a 25% share of current accounts, 22% of retail deposits and 21% of the mortgage market, largely through Halifax.

The recovery of Lloyds has also been held back by a bill of more than £17bn to compensate customers missold payment protection insurance (PPI) – about half the industry’s total.

Horta-Osório, who has been paid more than £30m since becoming chief executive in 2011, will now face questions about his own plans. He has focused the bank on the UK, which now accounts for 97% of its business, after retreating from 30 countries to six.

The Portuguese banker is also expanding into credit cards, buying MBNA for £1.9bn to increase Lloyds’ market share from 15% to 26%, at a time when concerns are being raised about the speed of consumer credit growth.

Horta-Osório is also facing anger from businesses hit by the loans scam at the HBOS branch in Reading. Six people were jailed in February after a jury heard they splashed out on superyachts and sex parties, while destroying businesses they had been lending to. Lloyds has set aside £100m to compensate 64 victims including the TV presenter Noel Edmonds but is facing questions about whether it will be enough.

Timeline

September 2008 A £12bn takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB comes just days after the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent shockwaves through financial markets. The Financial Services Authority, then the City regulator, says the deal will “enhance finance stability”.

October 2008 As financial instability mounts the government announces a bailout of the banking system. Lloyds TSB renegotiates the takeover of HBOS to 0.605 Lloyds TSB shares for every one HBOS share, from 0.833 a month earlier.

January 2009 Lloyds Banking Group is created from the purchase of HBOS by Lloyds TSB. The government begins first of a three-tranche bailout of the group, pumping in £13bn.

May 2009 Sir Victor Blank is forced to step down as chairman of Lloyds.

June 2009 The government puts in another £1.5bn.

December 2009 The government backs cash call, buying £5.8bn of shares. Total rescue deal amounts to £20.3bn. Taxpayer stake stands at 43%.

March 2011 Eric Daniels leaves and António Horta-Osório takes over as chief executive.

May 2011 Lloyds takes first provision for payment protection insurance of £3.2bn. The bank’s bill eventually tops £17bn.

November 2011 Horta-Osório takes leave, citing fatigue. He returns to work in January.

September 2013 The taxpayer stake gradually reduces from 43% to 39% for technical results. It is cut to 33% when a formal sell-off of Lloyds shares begins: £2.3bn of shares sold to big City investors at 75p a share.

March 2014 £4.2bn of shares sold at 75.5p, taking the taxpayer holding to 24%.

February 2015 Dividends to resume for first time since the bailout.

December 2014 George Osborne announces a plan to dribble out shares into the market.

October 2015 Osborne unveils plans for a cut-price sale to the public.

October 2016 Philip Hammond, the new chancellor, abandons his predecessor’s pledge to sell cut-price shares to the public.

May 2017 The taxpayer is expected to exit Lloyds Banking Group.

independent Scotland may need 'phased' return to EU

Political reporter(wp):

Nicola Sturgeon has said Scotland may not rejoin the European Union if she wins a second independence referendum but could instead apply to join the European free trade area.

Even though most Scottish voters oppose a referendum before Brexit, the first minister has insisted another vote on independence is needed because Scotlandhas been taken out of the EU “against its will” after 62% of Scots voted to remain. 

Sturgeon has now indicated she may not seek immediate reentry to the EU after independence after all, confirming speculation she could instead propose Scotland takes the “Norway option” by joining the Efta free trade area instead.

Sturgeon also indicated that even if she chose to recommend Scotland immediately seeks membership of the EU, it could be forced to reapply from scratch after independence and after the UK leaves the EU.

In her reference to Scotland “regaining” membership, Sturgeon confirmed previous hints she accepts she may have to retreat from her preferred timescale of staging a referendum between autumn 2018 and spring 2019, before Brexit takes place.

Asked by Andrew Marr on BBC1 on Sunday whether joining Efta would be an acceptable compromise, Sturgeon said a “phased approach” to rejoining the EU may be needed.

“My position is I want Scotland to be in the EU. Now we have to set out if we’re in an independence referendum, and we’re not in that right now, the process for regaining or retaining, depending where we are in the Brexit process, EU membership.

“Now it may be that we have a phased approach to that by necessity.”

Asked by Marr to confirm that meant joining Efta first and then seeking EU membership later, Sturgeon replied: “Well, it may be by necessity but we don’t want that. We have to set that out at the time because there are still some uncertainties, many uncertainties, around the Brexit process.”

Despite implying a delay in EU membership could be forced on her by the terms of the UK’s Brexit deal, Sturgeon’s problems with her Europe strategy are chiefly domestic. The European commission has also made clear Scotland can only apply to join once it is independent. 

About a third of SNP supporters voted to leave the EU last June, and some would oppose independence if it meant rejoining. Sturgeon would also face vehement opposition from the vocal Scottish fishing industry, which opposes rejoining the common fisheries policy (CFP).

In a clear hint she is leaving her options open on EU membership, she has repeatedly stressed that her main goal is to rejoin the single market. That would be achieved if Scotland joined Efta instead, allowing Scotland to also remain outside the CFP.

Sturgeon has tried to downplay the referendum question during the general election campaign, insisting that last year’s victory in the Holyrood elections gave her party the mandate she needs to call for a second independence vote.

She has also delayed setting out how she will press on with preparing for that referendum until after the election. The former first minister Alex Salmond has repeatedly said a general election victory for the SNP would be a renewed mandate for that referendum.

Jackson Carlaw, the Scottish Conservative leader, said Sturgeon was playing political games with the electorate. “She claims we must have a referendum on independence because we’re leaving the EU. Now, in a cynical attempt to win back leave voters who have deserted the SNP, she refuses to say whether an independent Scotland would go back in,” he said.

“And her flirtation with Efta would leave us with all the obligations of the EU but no voice in EU decision-making.”

Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, said the first minister “is trying to use Brexit as the excuse for another divisive referendum, but won’t be straight with people about her position on EU membership. People in Scotland can see through Nicola Sturgeon’s contortions on Europe, which is why a majority don’t want another divisive referendum.”

Sturgeon was also pressed hard by Marr on recent data showing a continued decline in reading and writing standards among Scottish school pupils, after a Scottish government study found about one in six 13- to 14-year-olds was functionally illiterate – double the rate in 2012.

She admitted “we have a particular challenge” in those areas, adding: “I absolutely, readily accept there are areas where we need to do better.”

The survey also found less than half of young teenagers could write well or very well and only 40% did well or very well in numeracy. At the same time, there had been a worsening performance gap between the least and most well-off pupils, after 10 years of Scottish National party government.

Sturgeon said that overall Scottish pupils were performing well, with record numbers of passes in Highers, the equivalent of A-levels, and Advanced Highers. She added that literacy rates improved among pupils in their third year.

Cyber-attack could escalate as working week begins, experts warn

ICT reporter(wp):

NHS chiefs and Europol have warned of possible fresh disruption from the global cyber-attack when workers switch on their computers for the first time at the start of the working week.

The pan-EU crime-fighting agency said the threat from the attack was escalating and predicted the number of “ransomware” victims was likely to grow across the private and public sectors.

Many of England’s 8,000 GP surgeries have been closed all weekend following the attack, which started on Friday afternoon. The NHS fears many could be affected for the first time on Monday.

“Given the timing of the cyber-attack, some parts of the NHS will not have clocked there is an issue,” a spokeswoman for NHS Digital told the WT. “If that is going to happen it is more likely to be primary care trusts.”

Surgeries were sent a bulletin on Sunday advising them what to do if they discover their computers have been hacked and how to get support from NHS Digital and the National Cyber Security Centre, which is handling the response.

Speaking about the impact of the malware attack, which not only disrupted patients and doctors at one in five NHS trusts but also hit companies around the world from Australia to Russia, the director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, said: “The numbers are going up. I am worried about how the numbers will continue to grow when people go to work and turn their machines on on Monday morning. The latest count is over 200,000 victims in at least 150 countries. Many of those will be businesses including large corporations.”

About one in five NHS trusts responsible for hospitals have already been affected by the cyber-attack using “WannaCry” malware, which disables computer systems and presents users with a ransom demand. Six trusts were still affected 24 hours after it began, amid concerns networks were left vulnerable partly because they still used outdated Windows XP software and also because security upgrades issued last month had not been installed.

Ambulances were directed away from some A&E units, some non-urgent operations were cancelled, and diagnoses were delayed as doctors had to wait for porters to bring hard copies of patients’ scans.

Organisations across the globe, including investigators from Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA), are hunting for those behind the attack in what is described by Europol as a complex international investigation. As yet, the culprits have not been found.

“Cyber criminals may believe they are anonymous but we will use all the tools at our disposal to bring them to justice,” said Oliver Gower from the National Crime Agency.

A computer security expert credited with stopping the spread of the ransomware on Saturday by activating a digital “kill switch” warned on Sunday that a fresh attack was likely.

The expert, known only as MalwareTech on Twitter, said hackers could upgrade the virus. “Version 1 of WannaCrypt was stoppable but version 2.0 will likely remove the flaw,” he said on Twitter. “You’re only safe if you patch ASAP.”

On Sunday, Microsoft issued a security bulletin marked “critical” including security updates that it said “resolves vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows”.

It emerged over the weekend that NHS Digital last month emailed 10,000 individuals in NHS organisations warning them to protect themselves against the specific threat of ransomware and included a software patch to block such hacks on the majority of systems. However, it would not work with outdated Windows XP systems that still run on about 5% of NHS devices.

NHS Digital said it did not yet know how many organisations installed the update and this would be revealed in a later analysis of the incident.

The hack sparked a bitter political row, with Labour blaming the Conservatives for cutting funding for NHS infrastructure.

The shadow health secretary, Jon Ashworth, on Sunday demanded the publication of the Department of Health’s “risk register” to show how seriously the government had taken a potential cyber-attack.

“If the Conservative prime minister thinks they were taking it seriously, then she shouldn’t have any problem in publishing that register,” he said.

He accused the government of “huge investment cuts in the infrastructure of the NHS” and said £1bn had been taken out in the last year.

He said “a big priority” of Labour’s promise to spend an extra £10bn on NHS infrastructure would “go to investing in cyber security and upgrading our IT”.

On Saturday, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Brian Paddick, said: “A combination of warnings and plain common sense should have told ministers that there is a growing and dangerous threat to our cyber security.”

Amber Rudd, the home secretary, who is leading the response to the attack, said the same day: “I don’t think it’s to do with ... preparedness. There’s always more we can all do to make sure we’re secure against viruses, but I think there have already been good preparations in place by the NHS to make sure they were ready for this sort of attack.”