Up to 660,000 jobs – many in the UK’s industrial heartlands – are at risk unless Boris Johnson speeds up green investment and moving to “net zero” carbon dioxide emissions, according to a major study.
Many of the areas where jobs are most under threat include the “red wall” constituencies won by the Conservatives from Labour at the last election, and the unemployment threat will worry Tory MPs from these areas.
The warning comes in analysis by the TUC as it begins a three-day conference and just weeks before the Prime Minister welcomes world leaders including President Biden to the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow.
Besides climate change, being debated on day one, the TUC’s part-virtual conference at its London HQ will be dominated by protecting jobs post-COVID, opposition to last week’s national insurance hike and the planned £20 universal credit cut next month.
Spelling out the jobs warning, general secretary Frances O’Grady, who speaks in person on day two of the conference, declared: “The world is moving very clearly in one direction – away from carbon and toward net zero. The UK must keep up with the pace of change.
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“There’s still time to protect vital jobs in manufacturing and its supply chains. But the clock is ticking.
“Unless the government urgently scales up investment in green tech and industry, we risk losing hundreds of thousands of decent jobs to competitor nations.
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“If we move quickly, we can still safeguard Britain’s industrial heartlands. The government should boost investment to at least the G7 average and commit to the Green Jobs Taskforce plans in full.
“Then today’s workers will know that their jobs are safe, and the future can be bright with decent jobs for their children too.”
The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer will address the conference in person on Tuesday, in what is likely to be a dress rehearsal for his Labour conference speech in Brighton two weeks later, which critics claim will be make-or-break for his leadership.
The conference will also see the public debut of new Unite general secretary Sharon Graham, elected last month, who is also due to speak on Tuesday, in support of a TUC motion demanding an end to “fire and rehire” by employers.
The TUC’s job losses analysis is based on data from the Office of National Statistics and researchers Catapult Energy Systems, a company funded by the government through Innovate UK, the UK’s innovation agency.
The unions want the government to implement recommendations in a report in July by its Green Jobs Taskforce, chaired by Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, and launch an £85bn green recovery package to create 1.24 million green jobs.
The TUC claims that unless the government acts now nearly 260,000 manufacturing jobs and more than 400,000 in supply chains could be moved offshore to countries that offer superior green infrastructure and greater support for decarbonising industry.
According to a TUC report in June, the UK Treasury is investing £180 per person on green recovery and jobs over the next decade, compared to President Biden planning £2,960 per person on green recovery, jobs and programmes like public transport, electric vehicles and energy efficiency.
The industries facing the biggest job losses, according to the TUC analysis, are:
• Rubber and plastics: nearly 80,000 jobs; • Chemicals: 63,000; • Glass and ceramics: more than 40,000; • Iron and steel: nearly 27,000; • Textiles: 18,000; • Paper, pulp and printing: 15,500.
Supply chain jobs threatened include those in construction, producing and maintaining industrial machinery, transport, and trade, bringing the total number of jobs at risk to 660,000, according to the TUC.
The TUC also claims workers in the UK’s industrial heartlands are particularly at risk, with nearly 40,000 under threat in North West England, nearly 37,000 in Yorkshire and the Humber and more than 30,000 in the West Midlands.
According to the TUC,jobs in the steel industry are at a high risk because manufacturing is currently dependent on burning coal for high temperatures required to produce high-grade steel.
Alan Coombs, who has worked at Port Talbot steelworks for 40 years, said: “Companies overseas are already setting target dates for green steel. But the UK isn’t even putting our toe in the water.
“We have families here who are third or fourth generation working at the plant. If we don’t have apprenticeships in green steel technology soon, there won’t be another generation.
“If we put ourselves at forefront of green innovation, we can protect the workforce. But it needs government action.”
Barclays has been fined £40m over capital raising that averted its need for taxpayer aid during the 2008 financial crisis.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) found that the bank should have disclosed more details to the stock market about the £11.8bn in funding, from Qatari and other sovereign investors, that it had previously described as “reckless” and lacking integrity.
The penalty followed a protracted investigation that began in 2013 but was held up by criminal proceedings brought by the Serious Fraud Office that led to the acquittal of all defendants charged, including Barclays.
A decision by the bank not to refer the FCA’s enforcement case to an Upper Tribunal meant that the watchdog’s planned fine could be imposed.
Its regulatory action concerned Barclays’ navigation of the events of 2008 when the-then Labour government took huge stakes in major lenders, including Lloyds and RBS – now NatWest – to prevent a collapse of the banking system.
The FCA said of its action: “The events in 2008 were of national importance as banks sought emergency recapitalisation.
“The FCA has a primary objective to ensure market integrity. Banks should treat their obligations to the market and shareholders seriously.”
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Barclays was yet to comment.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
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Tax rises announced during the recent budget will hit businesses rather than encourage growth, the head of one of the UK’s most prominent business groups will warn on Monday.
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has joined a choir of voices opposing Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s fiscal measures, which the Labour Party claims are needed to plug a £22bn “black hole” left by 14 years of Tory government.
Labour put growth at the heart of their campaigning during the last general election, but business believe the £40bn tax rises announced last month – the largest such increase at a budget since John Major’s government in 1993 – will stifle investment.
Rain Newton-Smith, who heads the CBI, is expected to say at the group’s annual conference in London that “too many businesses are having to compromise on their plans for growth”.
She will say: “Across the board, in so many sectors, margins are being squeezed and profits are being hit by a tough trading environment that just got tougher.
“And here’s the rub, profits aren’t just extra money for companies to stuff in a pillowcase. Profits are investment.”
Ms Newton-Smith will add: “When you hit profits, you hit competitiveness, you hit investment, you hit growth.”
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which monitors the government’s spending plans and performance, has previously said most of the burden from the tax increase will be passed on to workers through lower wages, and consumers through higher prices.
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Last week, dozens of retail bosses signed a letter to the chancellor warning of dire consequences for the economy and jobs if she pushes ahead with budget plans.
Up to 79 signatories joined British Retail Consortium’s (BRC’s) scathing response to the fiscal announcement, which claimed Labour’s tax rises would increase their costs by £7bn next year alone.
It warned that higher costs, from measures such as higher employer National Insurance contributions and National Living Wage increases next year, would be passed on to shoppers and hit employment and investment.
The letter, backed by the UK boss of the country’s largest retailer Tesco, said: “The sheer scale of new costs and the speed with which they occur create a cumulative burden that will make job losses inevitable, and higher prices a certainty.”
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1:22
From October: ‘Raising taxes was not an easy decision’
‘Businesses will now have to make a choice’
A few days after the budget, Chancellor Reeves admitted she was “wrong” to say higher taxes were not needed during the election campaign – as she warned businesses may have to make less money or pay staff less to cover a tax increase.
But she claimed the previous government had “hid” the “huge black hole” in finances and she only discovered the extent of it once her party was voted in.
She told Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips: “Yes, businesses will now have to make a choice, whether they will absorb that through efficiency and productivity gains, whether it will be through lower profits or perhaps through lower wage growth.”
Potential suitors have again begun circling ITV, Britain’s biggest terrestrial commercial broadcaster, after a prolonged period of share price weakness and renewed questions about its long-term strategic destiny.
Sky News has learnt that a number of possible bidders for parts or all of the company, whose biggest shows include Love Island, have in recent weeks held early-stage discussions about teaming up to pursue a potential transaction.
TV industry sources said this weekend that CVC Capital Partners and a major European broadcaster – thought to be France’s Groupe TF1 – were among those which had been starting to study the merits of a potential offer.
The sources added that RedBird Capital-owned All3Media and Mediawan, which is backed by the private equity giant KKR, were also on the list of potential suitors for the ITV Studios production arm.
One cautioned this weekend that none of the work on potential bids was at a sufficiently advanced stage to require disclosure under the UK’s stock market disclosure rules, and suggested that ITV’s board – chaired by Andrew Cosslett – had not received any recent unsolicited approaches.
That meant that the prospects of any formal approach materialising was highly uncertain.
The person added, however, that Dame Carolyn McCall, ITV’s long-serving chief executive, had been discussing with the company’s financial advisers the merits of a demerger or other form of separation of its two main business units.
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Its main banking advisers are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Robey Warshaw.
ITV’s shares are languishing at just 65.5p, giving the whole company a market capitalisation of £2.51bn.
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The stock rose more than 5% on Friday amid vague market chatter about a possible takeover bid.
Bankers and analysts believe that ITV Studios, which made Disney+’s hit show, Rivals, would be worth more than the entire company’s market capitalisation in a break-up of ITV.
People close to the situation said that under one possible plan being studied, CVC could be interested in acquiring ITV Studios, with a European broadcast partner taking over its broadcasting arm, including the ITVX streaming platform.
“At the right price, it would make sense if CVC wanted the undervalued production business, with TF1 wanting an English language streaming service in ITVX, along with the cashflows of the declining channels,” one broadcasting industry veteran said this weekend.
“They would only get the assets, though, in a deal worth double the current share price.”
Takeover speculation about ITV, which competes with Sky News’ parent company, has been a recurring theme since the company was created from the merger of Carlton and Granada more than 20 years ago.
ITV said this month that it would seek additional cost savings of £20m this year as it continued to deal with the fallout from last year’s strikes by Hollywood writers and actors.
It added that revenues at the Studios arm would decline over the current financial year, with advertising revenues sharply lower in the fourth quarter than in the same period a year earlier because of the tough comparison with 2023’s Rugby World Cup.
Allies of Dame Carolyn, who has run ITV since 2018, argue that she has transformed ITV, diversifying further into production and overhauling its digital capabilities.
The majority of ITV’s revenue now comes from profitable and growing areas, including ITVX and the Studios arm, they said.
By 2026, those areas are expected to account for more than two-thirds of the group’s sales.
This year, its production arm was responsible for the most-viewed drama of the year on any channel or platform, Mr Bates versus The Post Office.
In its third-quarter update earlier this month, Dame Carolyn said the company’s “good strategic progress has continued in the first nine months of 2024 driven by strong execution and industry-leading creativity”.
“ITV Studios is performing well despite the expected impact of both the writer’s strike and a softer market from free-to-air broadcasters.”
She said the unit would achieve record profits this year.
ITV and CVC declined to comment, while TF1, RedBird and Mediawan did not respond to requests for comment.