Wage rate growth slows as bank interest rate cut ‘more likely' next month
Average weekly earnings, excluding and including bonuses, rose by 5% between March and May, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
1
When adjusted for inflation, annual wage growth in real terms was 1.1% for regular pay and 1% for total pay across the same three months.
However, this is slightly higher than economists had predicted, with those polled by Reuters forecasting it would slow to 4.9%.
The latest wage figures show wage growth is slowing, with ONS figures between January and March showing annual wage growth in real terms when adjusted for inflation for both regular pay and total pay was 2.6%.
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The Sun
16 minutes ago
- The Sun
M&S to make huge change by launching first-of-its-kind store perfect for holiday goers and it opens in just HOURS
M&S is making a huge change by opening a first-of-its-kind store that is perfect for Brits jetting off on their summer holidays. The home of Percy Pig will open its first ever airside store at Heathrow Airport on Monday, July 21. 1 It means jet setters will be able to stock up on iconic M&S food after going through security. From tomorrow, holiday goers will be able to pick up sandwiches and sweets from its new branch at Gate A, located within Terminal 5 of the busy airport. Later this week a second store will open at Gate B, which will sell gifts such as its popular biscuit tins as well as prepackaged food. Alex Freudmann, managing director at M&S Food said: "This launch builds on the success of our well-established landside airport stores across the UK and allows us to serve customers even closer to their departure gates. "Whether travellers are looking for breakfast, lunch or dinner, or a British gift to take home, we're aiming to bring some M&S magic to their journey through Heathrow.' The high street stalwart already has seven branches across popular UK airports, including Luton and Manchester. But this is the first time flyers can get their hands on its products after passing through security and waiting to board the plane. It is not the first time in recent months that M&S has spruced up its store estate. Last Autumn it opened its first ever standalone clothes store in London's Battersea Power Station. The new store features a curated selection of women's and men's clothing, focusing on premium lines and beauty products. Shoppers race to M&S as one of their best selling items which is a mum-essential viral are scanning for just 63 PENCE Earlier this year, the brand also said it would open six Foodhalls across London and revamp nearly a dozen sites after committing £90million to the investment. It builds on the previous £30million investment made last year, and the extra £50million investment in stores across the Northwest of England. The brand-new Foodhalls will open their doors in Covent Garden, Leytonstone, Clapham Common, Putney, New Malden and Fulham Broadway. They will be completed "over the next few years, pending planning permisison", according to M&S. What else is new at M&S Elsewhere, M&S said it would dish out treats to millions of customers as a thank you following its cyber attack. Over 1.8 million customers will receive birthday gifts this month, and those who missed out in May and June will also be rewarded. Eager customers will be able to choose between one of two of M&S' bestselling food products. These could include Percy Pigs or a Swiss Truffle Assortment Box, a Bouquet of Flowers or bottle of Prosecco, a punnet of Grapes or a packet of Outrageously Chocolatey Round Biscuits. Sparks birthday treats were among the casualties of the cyber attack for those who had a birthday over the spring and early summer. It comes after M&S is picking up the pieces from a vicious cyber attack which occurred in April and cost the firm £300million in lost profits. For weeks the beloved retailer was unable to process online orders and store shelves were left bare. Last week, three teenagers and a woman were arrested in the UK as part of an investigation into attacks, which also targeted Co-op and Harrods. They have since been released on bail. HISTORY OF M&S M&S was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer in Leeds. The first official Marks and Spencer store opened in Manchester in 1901. Throughout the 1920s, M&SA gre rapidly, opening more and more stores across the country. The retailer made its reputation in the early 20th century by selling only British-made products. It began textile sales in 1926 and started selling food from 1931. The St Michael trademark was introduced in 1928 as a guarantee of quality and value. This was initially used only for a small range of textiles but was extended over the years to cover all goods sold by M&S. M&S introduced its first in-store cafe in 1935 in the Leeds store. It provided cheap, hygienic, and nutritious mass catering. By 1942, M&S opened 82 cafes across its estate. At the outbreak of the Second World War, M&S had 234 stores. By 1945, over 100 of these had been damaged by bombs, and 16 had been completely destroyed. BY 1960, M&S pioneered in the sale of fresh poultry following the invention of the cold-chain process. In the 1970s and 1980s, M&S pushed into international markets including the US, Canada and France. In 1979, M&S introduced the Chicken Kiev to its food halls across the UK. In 1992, Percy Pigs were launched. The Autograph range of clothing was introduced in 2000, and the St Michael brand was slowly phased out. In 2019, the group announced 110 store closures as part of its plans, affecting several longstanding high-street shops. In September 2020, M&S partnered with Ocado to allow for home delivery of the chain's full food range. M&S has recently announced new stores and is freshening up a swathe of others in a boost for shoppers.
Times
16 minutes ago
- Times
How to get a nation of savers investing
A string of policy reforms that the government described as the 'widest-ranging' changes to the financial world in more than a decade are on their way. In a bid to create a wave of new investors, banks and other financial firms will be allowed to push savers towards the stock market; risk warnings on investment products could be watered down; and there will be an advertising campaign spelling out the benefits of investing. The changes have the potential to encourage the millions of savers with hefty amounts of cash languishing in low interest accounts to consider the stock market as an option for their savings. A new form of 'targeted support' could help those who cannot or do not want to pay for financial advice but could use some guidance on big decisions. The City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, found that 71 per cent of us hold a savings account, but just 39 per cent hold investments. We are far more likely to save into cash Isas than investment ones — £41.6 billion was paid into cash Isas compared with £28 billion into investment Isas in 2022-23, according to HM Revenue & Customs. The Barclays Equity Gilts study, which tracks the performance of different asset classes back to 1899, found that stocks have returned an average of 4.8 per cent a year after inflation over the past 125 years, compared with 0.5 per cent a year for cash savings. In the ten years to the end of 2024, stocks returned 1.8 per cent a year while cash lost 2.9 per cent a year in real terms. But there are risks with investing that many ordinary savers may be reluctant to take on. Here are some safeguards that we think the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, should consider. • The cheap and easy way to invest (without the risk) Industry experts warned that the Leeds Reforms, revealed after Reeves shelved plans to cut the cash Isa limit to nudge more savers towards the stock market, could amount to a quiet eroding of consumer protections. To make Reeves's revolution pay off, campaigners say that the government should ensure that City firms are not allowed to cash in through excessive charges and commissions. 'There is good in Reeves's plan. There's no doubt that people have far too much money in cash accounts and that they will struggle in retirement as a result,' said Robin Powell, who runs the investment education website The Evidence-Based Investor. 'But there's a risk that we are experiencing 'regulatory amnesia' — our collective tendency to forget why rules were put in place once the immediate crisis fades. Light regulation leads to crisis, crisis leads to tighter rules, tighter rules lead to calls for 'red tape cutting', which leads to light regulation. 'This is why we need a strong set of rules that dictate how banks and other financial companies behave when it comes to putting these reforms into practice.' Investors are typically charged a fee for the investment products they use. Investment fund fees, which are usually charged as a percentage of how much money you hold, range from as little as 0.05 per cent to 1.5 per cent or higher. These fees can eat into your returns over the long term. A fund that returns 3 per cent a year and costs 0.5 per cent would be worth about £37,500 over 30 years, but the same fund with a 2 per cent fee would be worth just £24,300. James Daley from the consumer consultancy Fairer Finance said: 'One of my main concerns is that financial firms will push consumers towards investments that are high-cost. They should have an obligation to only nudge consumers towards low-cost options. There is only one certainty when it comes to investing — and that is cost.' One way to manage this risk would be to introduce a fee cap on investment products that savers are nudged towards. It could work in a similar way to the cap on default pension funds, which workers are automatically enrolled into by their employers. These pensions cannot charge fees of more than 0.75 per cent, thereby protecting savers. It works well, and in reality most schemes charge significantly less than the cap. These rules could also be extended to investment exit fees and charges for buying and selling shares. Under its consumer duty rules, the Financial Conduct Authority already requires companies to ensure that any exit fees — charged when a customer wants to move their money out of an investment product — are fair and reflect the actual cost. These exit fees could also apply to any investment products that savers are 'nudged' into, and a cap that matches the average dealing charge across the industry could be placed on such products too. The chancellor suggests that 'savers with cash sitting in low-interest accounts' would be helped by the Leeds Reforms. While it is likely that many of these savers could benefit from considering the stock market as an alternative place for their cash, it will be less suitable for others — such as those who have the money lined up for a house deposit within the next year, or who use the account for their rainy day savings. Financial companies could use pop-up warnings, similar to the fraud warnings on mobile banking apps, that flag to the end user that there are circumstances where these 'nudges' might not apply or be beneficial. Powell said pop-up warnings should be added to private equity and alternative investments, which are being pushed under the reforms. Such investing often involves putting cash behind small, illiquid companies that have the potential to grow a lot — and quickly — but also come with a higher chance of failure. He said: 'Given the government's push towards these investments, we need mandatory risk warnings that actually mean something. People need to understand that these products cost more, that they're more complex, that you cannot get your money out easily and that they are far less transparent than traditional investments. Make these warnings unavoidable.' • How to build a portfolio that keeps its value At the moment there is a limit on the amount of compensation that the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) can demand for the mis-selling of financial products. The FOS is a free dispute resolution service that settles complaints between consumers and the financial firms that they use. It can demand that a business pays compensation and puts customers back in the financial position that they would have been if they had not been given bad advice, but the compensation is limited to £430,000 for complaints from April last year. The limit is £415,000 for complaints brought to the FOS the year before. Scrapping the limit would give consumers more confidence about any 'nudges' they get from investment firms over what to do with their cash. Since 2012 commission-based payments for investment advice have generally been banned in the UK. When financial advisers recommend a product, they are not allowed to take a percentage of the money you put into that product, but instead must charge you specifically for the advice — as a percentage fee or in pounds and pence terms. But the investment 'nudges' or recommendations that would be allowed under the new rules will not fall under investment advice, but instead be deemed 'targeted support'. While it is unlikely that the FCA will allow old-style commission to creep back into the selling or recommending of investment products, a strict ban on commission could be put in place to ensure that financial firms do not profit from pushing savers towards certain riskier products. Daley said: 'Just 20 years ago most of the banks were selling investment products and getting large fines for poor conduct and bad outcomes. We need to ensure we don't forget the lessons that we should have been learning from over the past couple of decades.' • Reeves is right, but she is walking a tightrope — with our cash Another risk for investors is 'consumer inertia' — where you end up paying more (or gaining less) for a financial product because you stick with a firm you already use. If your high street bank 'nudges' you towards an investment product, it might be easier to stick with the bank rather than to shop around. This could be fixed with a requirement that any firm 'nudging' a cash saver towards the stock market give information that relates to the whole of the market. For example, under rules from the Competition and Markets Authority, banks that offer current accounts have to display 'clearly and prominently' the satisfaction ratings scored by their competitors in comparison to their own scores. A similar approach could be taken under the reforms. For example, if a high street bank offers a ready-made investment portfolio with a fee of 0.7 per cent, it should be forced to flag that other companies offer a similar product for 0.3 per cent (even if both fall below the charge cap). If a financial company recommends a product, information could also be provided on alternative choices in the wider market. For example, a company that does not offer a low-cost global tracker fund should still need to explain the benefits of such a product to their customer. Tom Selby from the investment platform AJ Bell said: 'Investing is often seen as something that is only for relatively wealthy people, or something which you need a great deal of financial knowledge to get involved in. In fact, it is relatively easy, with straightforward products designed for ordinary people. And you don't need tens of thousands of pounds to get started. 'There is still a lot of work to be done to develop the plan, but this campaign could help to break some of the taboo around investing and encourage more people to get started.' How can the government protect consumers while getting us investing? Let us know in the comments
The Independent
17 minutes ago
- The Independent
Government unveils bold plan to clean our polluted rivers
Environment Secretary Steve Reed is set to pledge a halving of sewage pollution from water companies by 2030, aiming for Britain's cleanest rivers on record. The plan includes a £104bn investment to rebuild crumbling sewage pipes, introduce strict new rules, and overhaul the regulation of water companies. This commitment precedes the publication of the Independent Water Commission's landmark review into the water sector, expected on Monday. The pledge addresses public outrage over record sewage spills and rising bills, with serious pollution incidents by water firms increasing by 60 per cent in 2024. Further measures include banning bonuses for water company executives, increasing funding for the Environment Agency, and working towards a ban on plastic-containing wet wipes.
