logo
National Wealth Fund to put £28m into carbon capture project

National Wealth Fund to put £28m into carbon capture project

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has said that workers in 'Britain's manufacturing heartlands' will benefit from the investment in the Peak Cluster works.
Peak Cluster is working towards a pipeline that will take carbon emissions from cement and lime companies in the Peak District and store them below the Irish Sea.
The £28.6 million is coming from the National Wealth Fund (NWF) a body announced by the Government last year with £27.8 billion to invest in clean energy and growth industries, in the hope of catalysing other private investment.
Peak Cluster is also backed by £31 million from the private sector, the Treasury said, and will be the NWF's first investment in carbon capture, since Rachel Reeves said in March that it should be a priority.
The Chancellor said: 'We're modernising the cement and lime industry, delivering vital carbon capture infrastructure and creating jobs across Derbyshire, Staffordshire and the North West to put more money into working people's pockets.'
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband described the investment as a 'landmark' that could help 'deliver thousands of highly skilled jobs'.
'Workers in the North Sea and Britain's manufacturing heartlands will drive forward the country's industrial renewal, positioning them at the forefront of the UK's clean energy transition,' he added.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Reeves ‘eyes £5bn windfall from sale of seized cryptocurrency'
Reeves ‘eyes £5bn windfall from sale of seized cryptocurrency'

The Independent

time40 minutes ago

  • The Independent

Reeves ‘eyes £5bn windfall from sale of seized cryptocurrency'

Rachel Reeves is eyeing up a £5bn pre-Budget windfall as the government considers selling off seized cryptocurrency to plug a hole in the public finances. The Home Office is reportedly working with police forces to offload at least £5bn worth of Bitcoin and other currencies taken from criminals. It is planning to develop a storage system for the currencies to handle their sale, it has emerged, as concerns about Labour's spending plans mount ahead of the autumn Budget. Home Office plans for a 'crypto storage and realisation framework' would allow law enforcement to securely store frozen digital currencies and sell them, The Sunday Telegraph reported. Ms Reeves has been left with a gap of at least £5bn to fill when she sets out the government's spending plans this autumn, with the government's chaotic U-turn on planned benefit cuts raising the likelihood of tax hikes. The chancellor and Sir Keir Starmer have left the door open to a wealth tax to cover the shortfall. As well as the £5bn black hole left by the welfare climbdown, the impact of sluggish economic growth and Donald Trump 's trade war could leave the Treasury scrambling to find as much as £20bn in tax hikes or spending cuts elsewhere. It is not known how much cryptocurrency law enforcement agencies currently have, but one 2018 raid saw 61,000 Bitcoin seized from a Chinese Ponzi scheme. The value of Bitcoin has surged since Mr Trump's return to the White House, meaning the haul could be worth more than £5.4bn. Responding to the suggestion Ms Reeves could sell the reserves, Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf said: 'This would be a terrible decision. The UK should be implementing Reform's Crypto Bill and increasing its Bitcoin reserves. 'Selling now will go down as a far worse decision than Gordon Brown's fire sale of our gold. 'The Westminster class are dinosaurs who don't get the future.' But Aidan Larkin, the chief executive of seizure company Asset Reality, told The Sunday Telegraph: 'There is oil under our feet in terms of digital assets, from an illicit perspective, that could have hundreds of millions of pounds coming back into the UK each year.' Bitcoin investors have been spurred on by Mr Trump, who has lent his support to the market both by promising new legislation and regulatory changes, but also even launching his own digital currencies. The leading cryptocurrency reached $120,000, marking both an all-time high and an important landmark for those who believe that bitcoin is undervalued.

NHS managers who silence whistleblowers to be banned from senior roles
NHS managers who silence whistleblowers to be banned from senior roles

Telegraph

time41 minutes ago

  • Telegraph

NHS managers who silence whistleblowers to be banned from senior roles

NHS managers who silence whistleblowers will be banned from taking up other senior health service roles, the Government has announced. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the proposals will ensure those who commit serious misconduct are no longer able to work in senior NHS management positions. Legislation is set to be put forward to Parliament next year to introduce professional standards and regulation of NHS managers. Tens of thousands of clinical and non-clinical managers work in the NHS but there is currently no regulatory framework specifically for managers, as there is for doctors and nurses. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said the reforms will 'slam the door in the face of unsuitable managers'. Mr Streeting added: 'I'm determined to create a culture of honesty and openness in the NHS where whistleblowers are protected, and that demands tough enforcement. 'If you silence whistleblowers, you will never work in the NHS again. 'We've got to create the conditions where staff are free to come forward and sound the alarm when things go wrong. Protecting the reputation of the NHS should never be put before protecting patient safety. 'Most NHS leaders are doing a fantastic job, but we need to stop the revolving door that allows managers sacked for misconduct or incompetence to be quietly moved to another well-paid role in another part of the NHS.' DHSC said a public consultation launched in November last year received more than 4,900 contributions on ways in which managers and leaders could be regulated. The statutory barring system will be for board-level directors and their direct reports within NHS bodies. Further legislation will set out new statutory powers for the Health and Care Professions Council to disbar NHS leaders in senior roles who have committed serious misconduct. DHSC said separate NHS England professional standards for managers will establish a 'consistent, national set of expectations about NHS management and leadership competency and conduct'. Positive move to weed out poor leadership Tom Kark KC, the author of the Kark Review into the effectiveness of the fit and proper person test within the NHS, said: 'I am pleased that the recommendation made in my report into the application of the NHS fit and proper person test to create a power to disqualify board directors found guilty of serious misconduct is being implemented. 'Along with the ongoing implementation of my other recommendations for improving board competence, this is a positive move to strengthen management in the NHS by weeding out poor leadership. 'This is good news for whistleblowers and those looking for accountability in senior management which has long been lacking.'

The quiet, matter of fact takeover of women holding senior economist roles
The quiet, matter of fact takeover of women holding senior economist roles

The Guardian

time2 hours ago

  • The Guardian

The quiet, matter of fact takeover of women holding senior economist roles

Rachel Reeves is rightly proud of being the first woman chancellor of the exchequer, but she is far from alone: the commanding heights of economic policymaking in the UK are becoming much less male. At a Westminster thinktank event last week about whether Labour is still a 'mission-led government', one of the most striking things was not the panel's answer, which you can probably guess, but the fact that it was made up of three women, and one token man. The Institute for Government's director, Hannah White, was joined by its chief economist, Gemma Tetlow, and the no-nonsense new director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Helen Miller – as well as the FT's Stephen Bush. Elsewhere, the Resolution Foundation is now run by Ruth Curtice, a former Treasury economist. Rain Newton-Smith, another economist, has the task of repairing the CBI's scandal-rocked reputation as its director general. Two of the four deputy governors of the Bank of England are women, too – as are the leaders of a string of powerful trades unions. This female takeover has been a quiet and matter of fact one – but it marks a significant change, very noticeable upon returning to covering the field, after a few years away. It has not yet been reflected in the gender balance of students picking economics at GCSE, A-level or as a degree, unfortunately. Research commissioned by the Bank of England showed earlier this year that economics classes at all levels remain about 70% male. But if anything, that makes it all the more striking that many of the most authoritative voices we will hear, in the run-up to Reeves's autumn budget, will be female. Aside from straightforward fairness, there are at least three potential benefits of this feminisation of the economic debate. The first, which Reeves herself has talked about directly, is the simple power of example: giving girls and young women the perception they could do jobs such as these. And while it must have been shattering, shedding a few tears at the dispatch box was a powerful part of that: many women of every age will have identified with her. Women just do cry more than men (a YouGov poll in 2015 found that 45% of women had cried at least once a month in the past year; for men, it was 11%). This has zero bearing on their ability to do their job – and if anything, may point to sincerity, rather than insouciance. Whatever you think of their policies, Theresa May's tears as she resigned, surely reflected better on her character than David Cameron's jaunty little hum. A second potential benefit of having women at the top of economic policymaking should be better decision-making. Jill Rutter, a former Treasury official and now senior research fellow at thinktank UK in a Changing Europe, recalls that back in the 1980s, 'there were virtually no women around the table making tax policy decisions, and it was very interesting, because almost all the senior people there had non-working wives'. She recalls being stared at if, as the junior official present, she piped up to ask how a particular policy might go down with women. Four decades later, Boris Johnson's bloke-heavy government was apparently capable of similar myopia. When senior Cabinet Office official Helen MacNamara testified at the Covid Inquiry, she argued that senior women's voices were all but absent from decision-making in the pandemic. 'Decisions were being taken where the impact on women was either lost or ignored,' she said in her written evidence. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion MacNamara pointed to a lack of consideration about the demands that school closures would place on families; the potential impact of lockdown on domestic violence victims; and the rules around pregnancy and birth. By contrast, she said, time was found to discuss the implications for, 'hunting, shooting and fishing'. Across today's economic landscape, there are plenty of pressing issues women may feel particularly moved to pursue – not least the gender pay gap (13%), which Reeves has pledged to narrow, and its less-noticed sister, the gender pensions gap (standing at a shocking 35% for private pension savings), which the work and pensions secretary, Liz Kendall, is expected to highlight in a speech on Monday. The third and more speculative potential upside of having more female economic policymakers, is a shift in the tone of debate. Not all women are moderate, or reasonable, or ground their arguments in the everyday – Liz Truss is certainly a counterexample – but I would gently suggest that on average, they tend to be a bit less prone to bluster, bravado, and what the kids call 'main character syndrome'. That was why it was depressing last week to see Reeves at the Mansion House, describing regulation as the 'boot on the neck' of British enterprise, in danger of 'choking off' innovation. No doubt the violent language was aimed at grabbing headlines (which it did) and communicating a clear message to her City audience. But it was jarring to read such a brute phrase in a public speech by the UK's most powerful woman. There is no shortage of tedious macho language around Keir Starmer – with anonymous briefers proudly telling columnists the prime minister's politics are 'hard Labour', and accusing MPs of 'knobheadery'. Perhaps as her crunch autumn budget approaches, Reeves can help the government to find a different, more relatable vocabulary. Judging by the comments of that mainly-female panel about Labour's first year in power last week, the debate in the coming months will be every bit as robust as ever. But it will be fascinating to see if it can be conducted in a different, calmer way: and perhaps more closely anchored to what MacNamara argued was missing from that shameful Johnson period: people, and families, and how people actually live their lives.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store