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Times
a day ago
- Business
- Times
‘No Carbon' Carney has left us high and dry
A bit like a sort of unreliable boyfriend. This, rather brilliantly, was the description of the record of the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, by the Labour MP Pat McFadden, then a member of the Treasury select committee. That was in 2014, when the handsome Canadian, hailed as the 'George Clooney of central banking', was just a year into his tenure. McFadden was not talking about Carney's personal life: it was a metaphor for his policy of interest rate 'forward guidance', which was proving no sort of guidance at all. It was all over the place. In one respect, however, there was complete consistency in Carney's record over seven years as this country's most powerful unelected figure. He determinedly used his position to push Britain's banks into defunding the oil and gas industry, on the grounds that man-made climate change was of primary importance, and that financial institutions should base their investment decisions on the proposition that 80 per cent of the planet's hydrocarbon reserves were 'un-burnable'. His wise predecessor, Mervyn King, questioned the decision to make fighting climate change part of the Bank of England's remit, arguing that it made 'absolutely no sense' to add 'net zero' to its responsibilities, and that the Bank should stick to its knitting (interest rates and price stability) and leave environmental policies to the politicians. However, after leaving the Bank in 2020, Carney stuck to his mission. Under the auspices of the UN, he set up the Net Zero Banking Alliance, co-opting a large number of the world's biggest banks, representing $74 trillion in assets, into basing their lending on the mission to achieve 'net zero by 2050'. This, combined with the Labour government's policies under Ed Miliband, has meant that, as one British oil company executive put it to me, 'Not a single UK bank will lend to the North Sea industry'. The Net Zero Banking Alliance, more recently, has suffered an exodus of its American members, which have fallen in line with Donald Trump's agenda (summarised as 'Drill, baby, drill'). But surely, now that Carney has at last achieved his ambition of becoming Canadian prime minister, he is using all the power of that position to fight the good fight. Er, no. One reason Carney actually won the recent election was that he pledged to scrap the 'carbon tax' implemented by Justin Trudeau, for which he had previously proselytised. In office Carney has kept that promise — and in recent weeks gone much further in the opposite direction to everything he did when Bank of England governor. He appointed as energy minister a man who was an executive of an oil exploration and production company in Alberta, the heart of Canada's vast hydrocarbon reserves. These are known as the Alberta oil sands, covering an area the size of England and described some years ago by National Geographic (not a fan) as 'the world's largest industrial project … Especially north of Fort McMurray, where the boreal forest has been razed and bitumen is mined from the ground in immense open pits, the blot on the landscape is incomparable.' Carney has relaxed the emission restrictions that hampered this development (among others) and declared two weeks ago that he wanted Canada to be 'an energy superpower … in both clean and conventional energies. And, yes, that does mean oil and gas. It means using our oil and gas here in Canada to displace imports wherever possible, particularly from the United States. It makes no sense to be sending that money south of the border or across the ocean, so, yes, it also means more oil and gas exports, without question.' • The oil-rich Canadian cowboys who want their own Brexit What accounts for this remarkable transformation? Pure political expediency. Trudeau's policy had been profoundly unpopular, and the Conservative candidate, Pierre Poilievre, constantly referred to 'carbon tax Carney'. So, shamelessly disowning his own previous advocacy, Carney dumped it. Then there were the idiotic threats from Trump to annex Canada. While that will 'never happen' (to quote Carney), the prospect of Albertan secession was less improbable, as that province had been sorely provoked by the ecologically motivated threats to its hydrocarbon industry. Canada as a whole could not afford such a secession, and immediately after Carney's election win, the premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, introduced a bill to make a referendum on the matter much simpler to implement. She simultaneously called on Carney to make various concessions, which 'must include abandoning the unconstitutional oil and gas production cap'. He got the message. It was no coincidence that, as host of last week's G7 summit, Carney chose to hold it in Alberta. In the final communiqué, the topic of climate change was barely mentioned. To put it mildly, this has confused those who deeply admired Carney, not least in this country, for his previously passionate campaigning against oil and gas investment. But when I asked someone who worked closely with the man at the Bank of England what had happened to his old boss, he laughed and said: 'I must have told you before that Mark is fundamentally a trader, and therefore prepared to adapt principles to circumstances.' This was partly a reference to the fact that Carney's career before becoming a central banker was at Goldman Sachs. But what does this mean for the UK, still thoroughly enmeshed by the net zero policies in which Carney played such a central role? As Brendan Long, a Canadian energy analyst, told The Daily Telegraph last week: 'It means that while Canada's oil and gas industry is ramping up production under Carney, the UK remains aligned with the anti-oil and gas ideology he promoted when he was governor of the Bank of England.' Although Ed Miliband has now indicated a reversal of his opposition to the development of two North Sea fields, known as Rosebank and Jackdaw, the government is keeping its radical policy of banning all new exploration; across the median line, Norway has declared it will be boosting its North Sea exploration and production to the highest level since 2010. The crazy point, which fits in with the government's target but not the national interest, is that if we buy Norwegian gas, it does not come out of our 'carbon budget', as administered by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Similarly, when we've shut down our entire domestic oil and gas operation and are buying the Canadian hydrocarbons that Carney is now so keen to boost, we will make the (unelected) Climate Change Committee — charged with setting our carbon budgets and invigilating our progress to purity — happy. Not so much the British voters, I fear, come our own general election in a few years' time.
Bloomberg
10-06-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Flight From UK Markets Is Broader Than Listing Rules, Rathi Says
The exodus of companies from the London stock market is driven by volatility in the pound, tax and pension policies as well as the 'sheer size of the US market,' rather than its listing rules, according to the Financial Conduct Authority Chief Executive Officer Nikhil Rathi. 'I'm not hearing that it's regulatory, I'm hearing that it's much wider in terms of what's happening in UK, European and indeed certain other non-European capital markets,' Rathi told the Treasury select committee on Tuesday.
Spectator
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Mel Stride's ‘mea culpa' for Liz Truss
The Shadow Chancellor's speech this morning was a predictable one. Mel Stride is the kind of Conservative who spin doctors love to send out on the media round: smart, well-briefed and able to stick to the party line. He is also the kind of Conservative who was very much not a fan of Liz Truss, in both temperament and in substance. Tory Kremlinologists will recall that he was one of the most ardent internal critics of her mini-Budget of September 2022, as the-then Treasury Select Committee chair. So, it was no surprise then that the top line from his speech was an apologia for Truss. 'Never again', promised Stride, 'will the Conservative party undermine fiscal credibility by making promises that we cannot afford.' Contrasting the 'mistakes' of Truss's tenure with the Tory record from 2010 to 2022, he said that 'the mini-Budget of September 2022 undermined those stable foundations we had built, and we will never allow that to happen again.'
Daily Mail
05-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Uber announces major shake up to the way customers can pay for rides
Uber has announced a major shake up by allowing customers to pay for their rides by cash. The app-based firm said it wanted to make transport more accessible for its passengers as it announced an 18-month trial in several cities would be extended across Britain, apart from in London. Uber's pilot scheme in Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham and Stoke found that some customers had preferred to use cash when it came to paying for their rides. The cash option will now show on the app, but drivers can opt out of accepting notes and coins if they can't provide change or if they fear for their safety by carrying money. If drivers are unable to provide any change then Uber will credit the customer's account on the app. The option of paying by cash is still under review by local authorities in the capital and can't be used for Uber Eats or any other form of transport on the app. The move has been heralded by campaigners as Uber now 'believing in the future of cash in the UK' and comes on the back of the Treasury Committee finding that a growing number of retailers and services are rejecting cash payments. The cross-party committee warned the country could become a 'two-tier society' unless the problem was tackled where vulnerable groups become excluded from community spaces. A spokesman for Uber said: 'We believe that movement should be accessible to everyone, so following successful pilots in some UK cities over the last 18 months, we have decided to give passengers outside of London the option to pay for trips with cash.' Ron Delnevo, chair of the Payment Choice Alliance, told the BBC that Uber's decision 'demonstrates that they now believe in the future of cash in the UK' and called on government to go one step by further by making it a law for shops and services to accept cash. The Treasury Select Committee last week urged the public to hoard cash for cyberattacks and blackouts. The Treasury Select Committee mooted the drastic advice as it warned over the growing shift away from coins and banknotes. The MPs said businesses might have to be forced to accept hard currency to stop the UK sleepwalking to becoming a cashless society. One in two shoppers have recently been somewhere that did not accept, or discouraged the use of, cash, according to research from ATM network Link published last year. Around a fifth experienced this in a cafe, restaurant or when paying for parking, and one in ten on public transport or in a pub. Charities also told the Committee that local government funded services, such as leisure centres, are increasingly cashless. Vulnerable groups who rely on cash, including elderly people, those with learning disabilities and domestic abuse victims, told the Committee that they are forced to pay more for essential goods and services because the number of places where they can spend cash is reduced. The Committee suggested the Government could recommend that households hold cash in case of a national emergency. 'In discharging its responsibility for national security and resilience, HM Treasury must consider the value of physical cash in emergency preparedness,' the report said. 'This may include recommending that cash is held by individuals in case of emergency, and considering what role cash distribution might play in a severe payment systems outage.'
The Independent
02-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Are LISAs fit for purpose?
Given sky-high rent prices eating into people's ability to save a deposit to buy a house, every penny helps. The average private rent in Great Britain was £1,332 per month in January 2025 – 8.7 per cent higher than 12 months previously, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS). The LISA enables people to save up to £4,000 per year and receive a 25 per cent government top-up. Save the full £4,000 and you'll receive a £1,000 boost. Except, the savings product has flaws. Not least that you can only use it to buy a property priced up to £450,000. This is a problem considering average house prices in London (£549,000) and the South East of England (£384,000), according to ONS data. Withdrawal penalty Tied into that is the withdrawal penalty. If you withdraw money for anything other than buying your first home or retirement – which is the other use of Lifetime ISAs – you'll face a 25 per cent penalty. And this means savers lose some of their own money, too. For example, if you've saved £4,000 into your LISA, the 25 per cent government bonus brings your total savings to £5,000. If you need to withdraw your savings to buy a home but the property costs more than £450,000, you'll have to pay the 25 per cent penalty. £5,000 x 25 per cent = £1,250 penalty. This leaves you with £3,750. That's £250 less than the original £4,000 you've saved. Is that fair? I think not. Age limit Then there's the age limit. You can open a LISA between the ages of 18 and 39. I've spoken to several fortysomethings, wanting to get on the property ladder, who, upon finding out about the LISA, are gutted they've missed the boat and can't open one. Given the rising age of first-time buyers, which currently stands at 34 according to government figures, being able to open a LISA beyond the age of 40 seems fair to me. For these reasons and more, LISAs are under review. On Wednesday, members of the Treasury Select Committee heard from a range of industry experts, LISA providers and consumer champions including Martin Lewis and family finance expert and founder of Hoops Finance, Funmi Olufunwa. LISA awareness Ms Olufunwa says: 'The LISA has two main objectives – to help people buy their first home or to save for retirement. The vast majority of people use it to buy a home and from that point of view, it's a workable product. But for a minority of people it doesn't work because of the £450,000 property price cap. 'This can make people wary of taking out a LISA, as they don't want to run the risk of losing not just the government bonus but some of their own money too. 'Most people save a long time to buy a home and if house prices rise over that time, then you risk being penalised due to circumstances beyond your control. That's unfair.' There's also a lack of awareness about the existence of the LISA, which has been around since 2017. Ms Olufunwa says: 'I was surprised how many people haven't heard of it. And I think this is for a number of reasons. First, none of the main high-street providers offer a Lifetime ISA, so it's not the typical product you see on a savings page. Someone needs to tell you about it. 'Secondly, the name of it isn't very helpful. People knew what the Help to Buy ISA did, similarly, the Help to Save scheme is well-named. With the Lifetime ISA or LISA however, people don't readily think 'that's going to help me with money towards buying a home'.' 'My cousin told me about it' I spoke to one prospective buyer who found out about the LISA though a conversation with her cousin and says more awareness is needed. Michelle, 35, is a singer and lives in Watford, Hertfordshire. She says: 'I opened my Lifetime ISA in 2023. My cousin of mine who is good with her finances, so across things like this, told me about it. She was saying that she'd got her daughter to open one which is how it came up in conversation. That how I first found out about it. 'I do want to buy a home so I thought let me take advantage of it, given that you get a 25 per cent government bonus. Savings boost 'I've since told people about the Lifetime ISA and more often than not they've been unaware of it, even those who are saving to buy, so I do think the advertising could be better. I also don't think people realise you're getting free money to boost your savings. 'I've maxed out my LISA for two years now. With the government bonus and interest, my balance stands at £10,601. I actually like the fact that you can't touch the money without penalty. I'm loathe to lose any of my own money. Of course, I do think it's unfair for buyers in more expensive areas face who could lose their own money. 'Watford is expensive but not as pricey as London. I'll be buying by myself and I'm looking at two-bed flats around £240,000 to £250,000. I want to save a 10 per cent deposit. I'm saving into a Cash ISA too, where I match what I save in my Lifetime ISA – just without the government bonus, of course. This means I'm on track to buy in the next two years.' The Treasury Select Committee will report back on its LISA review in due course – no date has been set. But in the meantime, let's spread the word. Talia Loderick is a Money Coach. Talia helps people understand and take control of their behaviour with money so they can stop stressing about money and have enough to live well – now and in future. Visit:
