A ban on disposable vapes dominates early headlines this morning after the government yesterday confirmed its rollout. Despite the new Labour administration not including the ban in either its manifesto or the King’s Speech, the legislation (first proposed under the previous Tory government) will come into force from 1 June 2025 in England under Defra-led recycling laws, ITV News reports. Similar bans in the devolved nations are also in the works.
Sky News reports it was estimated almost five million single-use vapes were either littered or thrown away in general waste each week in the UK in 2023 – almost four times as much as the previous year. It cites Defra data which said vape usage date in England grew by more than 400% between 2012 and 2023. Some 9.1% of the British public now buy and use vapes. Businesses will have until the deadline “to sell any remaining stock they hold and prepare for the ban coming into force”.
Defra’s circular economy minister Mary Creagh said disposable vapes were “extremely wasteful and blight our towns and cities”, the BBC reports. “That is why we are banning single use vapes as we end this nation’s throwaway culture,” she adds. “This is the first step on the road to a circular economy, where we use resources for longer, reduce waste, accelerate the path to net-zero and create thousands of jobs across the country.”
Financial Times reports that inflation is fading more rapidly than central bankers expected but the UK needs to see a continued retreat in services price growth from current levels, according to the Bank of England governor.
Speaking on Wednesday after consumer price growth fell below the BoE’s 2% target, to 1.7% in September, Andrew Bailey said he was seeing a “good story” when it comes to slowing headline inflation.
But he also warned that services inflation remained above levels that were consistent with the BoE’s objectives. “Disinflation – and the UK is part of this – has actually taken place faster than we expected it to,” Bailey said at a meeting of the Institute of International Finance in Washington. “We’ve got to see services prices inflation come further down”.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is considering a tax hike for online retail giants like Amazon in an effort to level the playing field for high street competitors, The Independent reports. Big online outlets benefit from business rates, which are a tax based on the size of a firm’s stores. The tax hits physical shops harder and the edge given to online rivals has been blamed for the slow death of town centres around the country. Reeves, who will unveil her maiden budget next week, is thought to be considering a wider review of Britain’s patchwork of complex property taxes, with an increase in business rates for internet shops being one possibility, although any tax rise could hit online prices.
The chancellor told the BBC she had struck deals with all her cabinet colleagues – and in line with tradition, popped all balloons put up in the Treasury to represent each department’s funding agreement.
The Guardian reports a pay-per-mile road pricing system must be brought in now, according to Tony Blair’s thinktank, which is urging the chancellor to overhaul motoring taxes. Rachel Reeves is widely expected to confirm the end of a temporary 5p cut in fuel duty, and possibly announce an inflationary rise in the tax paid on petrol and diesel at the pumps, in her budget next Wednesday. However, the Tony Blair Institute has suggested instead of restoring fuel duty rates as planned, Reeves should introduce a simple road pricing system of 1p a mile for cars and vans, and 2.5p to 4p for lorries and heavy goods vehicles.
The Guardian also takes aim at initial comments from Starbucks’ new CEO Brian Niccol – whose sign-on pay package is worth a whopping $113m (£88m) – after he served “a dollop of platitudes about going back to the company’s roots” to investors.
Starbucks has just reported a 7% quarterly slump in like-for-like store sales and a plunge in earnings, with The Guardian’s Nils Pratley describing Niccol’s promises to turn the coffee giant round via a simplification of pricing and menus as “thin and tepid”. But “amazingly”, the stock market still thinks Starbucks is worth 25% more than before Brian Niccol was appointed, he adds.
The government is considering giving workers twice as long to strike, the BBC reports. Under existing legislation, if workers vote to take industrial action, the mandate expires after six months and unions are required to hold another ballot to extend it. But a consultation document produced by the government said the mandate could be extended to a year.
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