Mr Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his pre-Budget statement, made hostile gestures at bonus-earning bankers to distract attention from the borrowings of £178 billion that Britain will have to make this year.
Mr Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his pre-Budget statement, made hostile gestures at bonus-earning bankers to distract attention from the borrowings of £178 billion that Britain will have to make this year. ‘Efficiencies’ promised in some departments still left total borrowing at much the same level. In a pre-emptive strike, Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, attacked a ‘culture of excess’ among higher earners in the public sector, and promised to cut the salaries of senior civil servants. Lending to small and medium-sized businesses by Royal Bank of Scotland RBS (70 per cent state-owned) and Lloyds Banking Group (43 per cent state-owned) would not meet the levels they had agreed to, according to the National Audit Office. An inquiry into the Student Loan Company found a ‘conspicuous failure’ in services as thousands of students were left unprovided for this year.
Baroness Young of Old Scone resigned as chairman of the Care Quality Commission after a year. Her departure was announced a week after a report from the Dr Foster Intelligence unit had rated a dozen hospitals as ‘significantly underperforming’, despite nine of them being rated good or excellent by the CQC. The Office for National Statistics said that 11 per cent of the British population was born abroad, with 24 per cent of births being to mothers born abroad. The number of very poor households is at its highest for 25 years, at 5.7 million, according to a study by the New Policy Institute. A house in Goldhawk Road, Shepherd’s Bush, west London, only 5ft 6in wide, went on sale for £549,950.
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