Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been accused of refusing to “face up to her own failures” by “jetting off to Beijing” during a week of market turmoil.

Shadow chancellor Mel Stride accused the chancellor of ducking difficult questions as the “government was losing control of the economy” while Ms Reeves visited China over the past week with a delegation including the governor of the Bank of England and the heads of HSBC, Standard Chartered and Schroders.

On Monday, both long-term 30-year and 10-year government borrowing costs rose, with the 30-year effective interest rate (the gilt yield) reaching a new high of 5.47% – a rate not seen since mid-1998.

The pound also hit a 14-month low, prompting questions over the chancellor’s future.

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She received a slight reprieve on Tuesday morning as the pound recovered some loss and ticked up slightly to $1.22, while government borrowing costs dipped slightly.

But the Conservatives used Ms Reeves’s absence over the past week to attack her, with Mr Stride telling the Commons: “While the government was losing control of the economy, where was the chancellor?

“Her trip to China had not even begun when my urgent question was taken in the House last week, she was still in the country, but she sent the chief secretary rather than face up to her own failures.

“So can I ask (Rachel Reeves) why she chose not to respond herself? The chancellor, of course, ducked the difficult questions by jetting off to Beijing.

“I believe that in Labour circles, they are calling it the Peking duck.”

But Ms Reeves dismissed the criticism and vowed to stick to the fiscal rules she set out in the October budget – to get day-to-day spending through tax receipts and get debt down as a share of the economy.

“We remain committed to those fiscal rules and we will meet them at all times,” she said.

She also defended her trip to China, saying engaging with countries around the world will “deliver growth”, and said she brought up human rights issues with China.

“Leadership is not about ducking these challenges, it is about rising to them,” she told the Commons.

“And the economic headwinds that we face are a reminder that we should, indeed we must go further and faster in our plan to kickstart economic growth that plunged under the last government.”

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The chancellor said her trip to China has meant greater access to the Chinese market for British firms and helped safeguard the UK’s national security.

New agreements were made on vaccine approvals, fertiliser, whisky labelling, legal services, automotives and accountancy to “unlock £1bn of value for the UK economy”, she said.

Ms Reeves said she raised the case of imprisoned British citizen and media tycoon Jimmy Lai with every minister she met in China.

She said she also raised concerns about Russia’s war in Ukraine, human rights, restrictions on rights and freedoms in Hong Kong and the “completely unjustified sanctions against British parliamentarians”.

“A key outcome of this dialogue is that we have secured China’s commitment to improve existing channels so that we can openly discuss sensitive issues and the ways in which they impact our economy because if we do not engage with China, we cannot raise our real concerns,” she said.

“This dialogue is just one part of our engagement with trading partners right across the world.”

Google could be required to hand over data it collects to businesses as the UK competition regulator launched an investigation into the tech giant.

The Competition and Markets Agency (CMA) said it launched the inquiry to assess how Google‘s search and advertising services impact users and businesses such as advertisers, news websites, and rival search engines.

It will be looking to see if Google used its dominant market position to stop others from competing and if barriers are preventing potential rivals from entering the market.

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Of particular interest to the CMA is whether Google can “shape the development” of new AI services.

Also being assessed is whether Google is using its prime position to preference its own services, such as Google Shopping and Google Flights.

“Potential exploitative conduct” through Google’s collection and use of “large quantities of consumer data” without informed consent will be examined, as will the use of things like news articles without paying the publishers, the CMA said.

The CMA could compel Google to make collected data available to other businesses or order them to give publishers more control over how their data is used.

Google is by far the most popular search engine in the UK, answering more than 90% of all general search queries, and hosting more than 200,000 UK advertisers.

The investigation announced on Tuesday is the first launched under the digital markets competition regime which took effect on 1 January.

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The new regime enables the CMA to designate companies with a so-called strategic market status and impose new rules on them as a result.

Effective competition among search engines could keep down the cost of search results advertising, equivalent to nearly £500 per household per year, the CMA said.

Investigations in EU and US

The UK is just the latest country to look at Google’s search engine primacy.

A federal US court ruled in August Google illegally maintained an online search monopoly.

Meanwhile, an EU investigation into Google’s parent company Alphabet is examining whether it imposed restrictions that made it difficult for developers to promote services by other companies, looking at search results for services such as Google Shopping and Google Flights.

The UK government had ordered regulators such as the CMA to come up with ideas for growth and investment amid sluggish economic growth.

Starbucks has reversed its North American policy allowing people to sit in stores and use the loo without buying anything.

Patrons in the US and Canada now must buy something or leave.

Starbucks did not respond to questions about the impact the policy change could have on its UK shops.

Sky News asked if there was a code of conduct in UK branches, if people were required to make a purchase, and if there were plans to revise the code if one existed.

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The Seattle-headquartered coffee giant published a new coffeehouse code of conduct for its North American business to “ensure our spaces are prioritised for use by our customers”.

Anyone not adhering to the rules will be asked to leave and could have the police called on them.

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Among the prohibited behaviours is “misuse or disruption of our spaces”. Also included in the list of banned behaviours is vaping or smoking, discrimination or harassment, begging, and drinking “outside alcohol”.

“By setting clear expectations for behaviour and use of our spaces, we can create a better environment for everyone,” a Starbucks spokesperson said.

A departure from an open-door outlook

It’s a departure from previous guidelines created in 2018 after two black men were arrested in a Starbucks they went to for a business meeting. The Philadelphia coffee shop they attended had a policy of asking non-paying customers to leave and called the police on the pair. The incident was captured on camera and embarrassed the business.

In response, a regional change was designed to make an open-door policy.

Starbucks’ then-chairman Howard Schultz said: “We don’t want to become a public bathroom, but we’re going to make the right decision a hundred per cent of the time and give people the key.”

The reversal comes as Starbucks struggles with slowed sales amid pro-Palestine boycotts.

Over the summer it suddenly replaced its chief executive after the company suffered a bigger-than-expected drop in sales.

New CEO Brian Niccol was offered the use of a corporate jet for his 1,000-mile commute from his home in Newport Beach, California, to Seattle, Washington.