British food and drink exports to the EU have tumbled by more than a third since Brexit, reports The Guardian, citing new Food & Drink Federation figures highlighting how bureaucratic barriers have changed the relationship between the UK and its most important trading partner.
Gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 0.1% in the month to January, down from growth of 0.4% in December, the ONS said today. Analysts had expected the economy to expand by 0.1%, reports The Times. The paper said the data was “illustrating the challenging backdrop looming over Rachel Reeves’s spring statement later this month”.
The Financial Times said it was “delivering a blow” to Reeves ahead of “her high-stakes” statement.
The Guardian, covering a report by the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, reports that farmers’ incomes have remained stagnant since the 1970s despite improvements in productivity and a fall in the workforce. “This has been driven by falling prices for farm produce; as the UK has become more reliant on imports, supermarkets have taken over grocery shopping, and households are eating more ultra-processed food,” the article states.
Every McDonald’s in Britain has been warned its owners could face legal action if they fail to take steps to protect staff from sexual abuse, reports the BBC. The equality watchdog has written to all 1,400 branches telling them they must comply with their legal duties, or risk enforcement action, after a BBC investigation uncovered claims of a toxic culture of sexual assault and harassment.
The ONS yesterday postponed the imminent release of trade data after it identified an error dating back to 2023, reports The Financial Times, “in a further admission of the problems the body faces assuring the quality of its figures”.
It plans to publish the corrected trade data for both goods and services in full on 28 March. The delay, announced with one day’s notice, “will fuel questions over the reliability of figures produced by the ONS”, the paper reports, after “long-running problems with a key survey on the state of the labour market were criticised by politicians and the Bank of England”.
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