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George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the British economy was ‘turning a corner’, with ‘tentative signs of a balanced, broad based and sustainable recovery’. Unemployment fell to 7.7 per cent for the quarter May to July from 7.8 in the previous quarter. Jaguar Land Rover is to create 1,700 jobs at Solihull, where it is planning production of aluminium chassis. The Highways Agency published details of a new 25-mile stretch of toll-road on the A14 bypassing Huntingdon. Churches on the Isle of Sheppey held prayers of thanksgiving that no one was killed in a crash in the fog involving 130 cars on the bridge to the island. The HS2 rail link could benefit the economy by £15 billion a year by 2037, according to a report by KPMG the accountants. Shop vacancies in the top 650 high streets remained at just over 14 per cent, with Blackburn recording the highest rate at 26.9 per cent. Britain is to adopt plastic banknotes in 2016.
The Commons public accounts committee, looking into payments of millions of pounds to departing executives of the BBC beyond their contractual entitlements, heard evidence from Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, Mark Thompson, a former director-general of the BBC, and others. Mr Thompson helpfully supplied a 12,000-word memo. Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party, told the Trades Union Congress why the end of automatic affiliation of union members to the party was a good thing. A secret Labour party report had found that no rules were broken over the selection for the Falkirk constituency of a candidate favoured by the union Unite. The GMB union said it was cutting affiliation funds to the party from £1.2 million to £150,000.
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