Andy Burnham’s drive to “buy British” when upgrading the power network that supplies every home could push up household energy bills, ministers have admitted.
UK businesses are set to be prioritised for work on the multi-million pound upgrade under guidance laid before Parliament this month.
“The Government recognises that this may come with a short-term cost trade-off,” the policy document concedes.
More than half of international students are influenced by British fictional characters when deciding to study at universities here.
2,500 UK-based students from the US, China, India, Pakistan and Nigeria were surveyed for the British Council.
What are the key findings?
- It found that 83 per cent of international students said British culture was an important reason why they decided to study here.
- 59 per cent said fictional British characters were a draw, with 19 per cent citing Peppa Pig and 21 per cent Mr Bean as examples.
- British cultural icons like Princess Diana and David Beckham were also a major influence.
2 min read
Importance of soft power
A majority (62 per cent) of respondents said the UK music scene had been a major or strong influence on their decision to study here.
Among those who cited music, Ed Sheeran was the top named artist with 18 per cent, followed by Dua Lipa, Coldplay and Harry Styles.
What does this mean?
Catriona McCarthy, the British Council’s interim director for education, said the results tell us it is “crucial” that Britain remains “culturally vibrant” in order to retain its status as a global leader in higher education and attract the best students from around the world.
3 min read
How AI could help screen for type 2 diabetes
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology could be used to analyse speech to screen people for the disease, a study suggests.
What you need to know
- The tool was trained using more than 63,000 voice samples from more than 21,000 people in the UK and US.
- It was trained to detect changes in speech which have been linked to type 2 diabetes, such as increased hoarseness and an inability to control breath.
- The study found that the speech model gave a higher risk score to those who reported having type 2 diabetes 80 per cent of the time.
5 min read
How effective is it?
Giedre Cepukaityte, research scientist at tech company thymia, said the technology “opens a new route to screening for diabetes”. But she emphasised it is “not a replacement for a blood test”.
The technology performed well across different ages and genders, but its performance was lower on black patients.
It also wasn’t as effective with recordings from people with heart disease, high blood pressure or obesity.
2 min read
AI gets a cautious welcome
Dr Lucy Chambers, head of research impact and communications at Diabetes UK, said: “AI-based technologies could help identify more people who may benefit from diagnostic blood tests, but it’s crucial that they are rigorously designed and tested to make sure no-one slips through the net.”
5 min read
How quickly triple lock could end – and possible replacement
The future of the triple lock has been thrown into question after reports Andy Burnham is being told to scrap the scheme to fund his social care plans.
Experts say that at some point, the policy will have to be replaced with a way of increasing the state pension that is “more sustainable”.
A ‘double lock’
- A double lock linked to either earnings growth or inflation has been suggested as a possible alternative.
- Tom Selby, director of public policy at AJ Bell, said the starting point for this would determine what a “reasonable value” for the state pension should be, most likely as a percentage of median earnings.
- After deciding that figure, Selby said, you put in place “a sensible plan to reach that level”.
Link to earnings
Maike Currie, vice president of personal finance at PensionBee, said the simplest replacement would be an earnings-only link. This would mean the state pension broadly maintains its value relative to working people’s incomes.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies has previously recommended introducing the ‘smoothed’ earnings link, which means pensioners receive inflation protection if inflation exceeds earnings.
Simple link to inflation
- Former pensions minister, Steve Webb, said another approach could link the state pension to inflation.
- This approach would create “big savings”, he said.
- But it would also substantially weaken the state pension at a time when millions of retirees are coming up to state pension age with very modest private savings.
2 min read
Who will be the most affected?
Currie said the triple lock being scrapped would impact people of all ages.
“For someone close to retirement, scrapping it could have a more immediate impact on their expected income,” she said.
As for younger generations, “the effect could potentially be greater over the long term, as smaller annual increases compound over decades”.
3 min read
3 min read
The northern pub chain offering £3 pints in London
Amber Taverns is adding a boozer in Bromley, a southeastern suburb of London, to its repertoire of 175 pubs, mainly based in the North West and North East of England.
It comes as pubs get increasingly expensive in the capital, where almost two pubs are closing every day.
Bromley’s new local
The Blackpool-based chain pours pints as cheap as £2.50 – a stark difference for Londoners accustomed to an average £6.50 per pint.
It keeps costs down by buying “unloved” former pubs and sticking to the basics. No hot food means no kitchen and no extra costs.
The Saving Grace will open on the former site of the Barrel and Horn on Bromley High Street.
It follows a spate of new openings in the south of England, including The Erasmus Wolfe in Gosport, Hampshire.
The future of pubs
James Baer, chairman of Amber Taverns, said: “People do still want to very much go to the pub, it’s just a matter of offering good value and a warm welcome. Amber remains a testament to the validity of thriving community pubs.”
He added he thinks there will be more opportunity for the chain to expand in the south of England in the future.
4 min read
7 min read
Angela Scanlon takes over Sara Cox’s Radio 2 drivetime slot
Angela Scanlon will take over the 4pm to 7pm slot on BBC Radio 2 every weekday from November.
Scanlon emerged victorious from a raft of presenters who covered the show over the summer, and will replace DJ Sara Cox.
What you need to know
Since Cox took up the mantle of BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show, the drivetime slot has been up for grabs.
Scanlon, who has previously hosted a Sunday morning programme on the station, has been appointed her successor.
She is also known for presenting The One Show, This Morning, the Get a Grip podcast and for starring in cing in 2023.
‘Every weekday, I’ll be in your ears’
Scanlon said it was “properly exciting” to host the show, adding: “Every weekday, I’ll be in your ears, your cars and your kitchens – on the school run, on the way home, or standing at the hob wondering what on earth to feed a small but hungry mob.”
BBC Radio 2 controller Helen Thomas said she was chosen because she is “incredibly warm and quick witted”.
4 min read
Putin’s drone threat to France should be a wake-up call
Russian affairs commentator
Russia has a wide range of choices if it continues stepping up its campaign against Europe.
It could develop its more furtive programme of attacks targeting countries including France, Italy and Britain with actions that are akin to low-grade state terrorism.
The shadow fleet threat
Spanish newspaper described Russian plans to mount attack drones in containers on its shadow fleet, to launch them against France, Spain and Italy.
The plot was disclosed following what’s been widely described as a warning to those countries from the CIA, although both France and Italy denied receiving any specific warning from the US.
4 min read
The weakest parts
- This month, Emmanuel Macron called leaders into the country’s crisis centre for a briefing on Russian threats.
- Many previously imagined that lying at the far end of Europe from Russia, France was not in immediate danger.
- But that overlooked Russia’s long-term investment in delivering damage at enormous distances through cyber and proxy attacks.
- That means Putin can strike not just at those parts of Nato that it can drive to, but at the weakest parts of the alliance.
Putin’s grey war
- A Russian “attack” can mean everything from a full-blown invasion of a Nato country, to what is already happening, like sponsoring more and bigger proxy and cyber attacks far behind the front lines.
Denmark’s Defence Intelligence Service has said there are no signs Russia is preparing for an “invasion” of another neighbour, but that the risk of some other form of military attack is “low but growing”.
Sunday morning’s arrests in a small village near RAF Fairford, with the involvement of counter-terrorism police, show the threat of hostile action in the UK is real.
Ofgem, the energy regulator, has also been told to give more weight to UK jobs and manufacturing “rather than prioritising only near-term lowest cost considerations”.
The revelation comes ahead of a speech in which Burnham will announce plans to bring down energy costs by introducing greater public control in the system.
A new publicly owned body within Great British Energy – Great British Grid (GB Grid) – will be launched with the aim of speeding up grid connections for businesses and reducing the cost of bills. It is described as the “first publicly owned player in electricity networks since privatisation”.
Burnham will say: “Within 10 years, I want our energy costs to be in line with other nations in Europe – that means we must reform a broken energy market so it serves the public interest.
“Great British Grid will increase competition to drive down costs and speed up delivery so businesses can connect faster and grow quicker. This is what more public control can do.”
Household energy costs are expected to climb to a three-year high this winter as the impact of the Middle East war wipes out Burnham’s tax cut on electricity bills.
The Ofgem cap on energy prices is already set to rise by four per cent from next month, adding £60 to the typical annual bill and taking it to £1,723.
The power grid, which is privately owned but regulated by Ofgem, is undergoing its biggest expansion in decades as demand for renewables and electricity grow.
The regulator can set how much network companies can spend and recover through charges on energy bills – which means upgrades are effectively paid for by households.
Before the “buy British” pledge, Ofgem approved £28bn of investment in the UK’s electricity networks last December, part of a wider grid upgrade programme estimated to cost £90bn by 2031.
The regulator said at the time that £108 would be added to bills by 2031 – £48 for gas and £60 for electricity – offset by about £80 in savings from a bigger grid, leaving a net increase of “around £30 or less than £3 per month”.
Ofgem has been asked to encourage network companies to consider the “social value” – including British jobs and skills – that a bidder offers when choosing contractors for the work, rather than looking at price and quality alone.
It means a more expensive bid could win if it scores well on British jobs.
Ministers have not calculated what the policy could cost bill-payers. The memorandum confirms that no full impact assessment was carried out.
The guidance was published less than two weeks after the Prime Minister told MPs that household energy bills in Britain were “the highest in Europe” and that “life is too expensive and too hard for too many”.
Although the “buy British” policy is expected to push up bills in the short term, there is no getting away from the need to upgrade the power grid as demand for renewables grows, and Burnham clearly spies an opportunity to boost UK jobs and skills.
Ofgem has pushed back against the guidance, saying it sees no need for new rules.
Shadow Energy Secretary Andrew Bowie said Labour’s drive for clean power by 2030, and net zero by 2050, was being pursued “without a plan” and showed a “lack of planning”. He argued that ministers had failed to grasp the scale of the cost of living pressures facing households and businesses.
Bowie claimed consumers were being asked to pay for “an ideological project” that would deliver little benefit for decades, and said the cost of reaching net zero should not be placed on “already struggling bill-payers up and down the UK”.
In a response to the energy department’s own consultation, one of the points most frequently raised was the “risk that the use of social value considerations would feed through to higher costs for consumer bills; or that Ofgem’s consumer protection obligations would be eroded or removed.”
An Ofgem spokesperson told The i Paper: “Protecting the interests of existing and future consumers remains Ofgem’s principal objective. We assess proposals and decisions against our statutory duties, including ensuring consumers pay no more than necessary while supporting a secure and resilient energy system.”
In its consultation response, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) said the guidance “does not require Ofgem to prioritise growth or social value over consumer protection or overall value for money” and that “Ofgem’s statutory duties, including on affordability, remain fully in place”.
It argued that a more resilient supply chain would lower costs by reducing delays, equipment shortages and exposure to global market shocks.
The guidance takes effect on 17 November unless either House of Parliament votes against it within 40 days.
A DESNZ spokesperson said: “We know families are worried about the cost of energy, which is why we’re reversing decades of underinvestment in our grid to help reduce our reliance on volatile fossil fuels and bring down bills for good.
“Ofgem already oversees all network investment to ensure consumers are protected, while also promoting economic growth. Our draft guidance builds on this.”