‘Serious concern’: City watchdog accused of withholding information in motor finance row Banking The City watchdog is coming under pressure to release its communications with the Treasury and modelling data for its controversial motor finance redress scheme, City AM can reveal. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is facing legal challenges from the finance arms of Volkswagen and Mercedes Benz as well as French-owned CA Auto Finance over its [...]
Reeves beats Kwarteng to ‘worst chancellor’ in new ranking Politics Just months after her exit from Number 11, Rachel Reeves has been given the dubious honour of being voted “worst chancellor”, in a new survey. According to an AJ Bell survey, Reeves was the least popular of the last five chancellors, and even ranked below Kwasi Kwarteng, who held the role for just over a [...]
Aviation bosses confident Burnham won’t abandon third runway Aviation The aviation industry is confident that Andy Burnham won’t abandon the government’s flagship expansion of Heathrow, despite the Prime Minister and transport secretary distancing themselves from the megaproject at Labour conference. Several industry figures told City AM that ministers’ refusal to endorse the multibillion-pound third runway development was a sign Burnham had not yet evaluated [...]
Legal sector warns against tax ‘raid’ proposal on client account interest ahead of Budget September 29, 2026 London’s legal sector has sounded the alarm over government plans to cut interest on law firms’ client accounts to fund the justice department, warning it could drive some law firms out of business. The Ministry of Justice’s consultation on a proposal to introduce an Interest on Lawyers’ Client Accounts Scheme (ICLA) closed in March after [...]
Andy Burnham can’t treat Heathrow expansion as a local planning issue September 29, 2026 Has Andy Burnham’s commitment to devolution morphed into a convenient excuse not to lead? I ask, because he seems to have excused himself from the debate about a critical £50bn national infrastructure project: Heathrow’s third runway. The project has been debated since the 1980s but officially kicked off in 2003 when Labour’s Alistair Darling, then [...]
Healey: We don’t have as much money as we did under New Labour September 28, 2026 Chancellor John Healey has warned Labour members that the government does not have available funds to spend more on public services. In his address to party activists, Healey said Tony Blair’s government in the late 1990s and early 2000s had more flexibility with public finances given higher growth rates and lower amounts of debt. The [...]
Stamp out pension tax speculation or risk another cash grab, industry warns Healey September 24, 2026 The pension industry has warned Healey not to allow pension tax speculation to go “unchecked” in the run up to his maiden Autumn Budget, after rumours led savers to pull millions from pension pots last year. UK savers pulled £91bn from their pension pots before last year’s Autumn Budget as they looked to dodge Labour’s [...]
Frozen tax thresholds to hold back Brits for ten miserable years September 23, 2026 In March 2021 Chancellor Rishi Sunak described it as “a tax policy that is progressive and fair.” In November 2022, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt extended the policy, describing it as necessary and fair. In October 2024, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced an end to the policy, saying extending it beyond 2028 “would hurt working people.” Alas, a [...]
‘Worryingly large’: Labour’s debt cost racks up to £200bn September 22, 2026 More than £200bn has now been spent on covering government debt since Labour came into power, official figures show, reflecting the pressure bond traders have put on public finances in the last two years. Analysis of public finances data by City AM shows that debt interest payable to the government’s lenders in bond markets since [...]
Will our fiscal psychodrama never end? September 22, 2026 I’m sure it wasn’t always like this. There was a time, really not that long ago in the grand scheme of things, when trying to predict the contents of an upcoming Budget was limited to dedicated policy wonks and Westminster’s most dogged journalists. These days, fiscal speculation is a major occupation for several months of [...]