News

MPs have approved Doug Gurr as fit to become the next permanent chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), but warned ministers that additional safeguards are needed to protect the regulator’s independence and address potential conflicts of interest. In a report published on Thursday following a pre-appointment hearing earlier this week, the House of Commons Business and Trade Committee said it was satisfied that Mr Gurr has “the professional competence and independence required” to...

Instagram will begin notifying parents if their teenagers repeatedly search for suicide or self-harm related content, marking the first time owner Meta has proactively flagged search behaviour rather than simply blocking it. From next week, parents and teenagers enrolled in Instagram’s “Teen Accounts” supervision programme in the UK, US, Australia and Canada will receive alerts if a young user searches for harmful terms within a short period of time. The feature will be rolled out...

The number of young people not in education, employment or training has edged closer to one million, underlining mounting pressure on Britain’s fragile labour market and intensifying calls for targeted intervention from ministers. Official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that an estimated 957,000 people aged 16 to 24 were classified as Neet between October and December 2025. That represents 12.8 per cent of the age group, a slight rise on the...

Ocado Group is preparing to cut 1,000 jobs over the next year as it accelerates a cost-cutting drive aimed at stabilising finances and restoring investor confidence. The reductions, equivalent to around 5 per cent of its global workforce , will fall heavily on the UK, with roughly two-thirds of the affected roles based domestically. Most of the cuts are expected at the company’s headquarters in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, and will largely impact technology and support functions....

When the Government’s entrepreneurship adviser, Alex Depledge, declared that Britain does not “need any more restaurants”, I’ll confess my first reaction was disbelief. My second was to reach for the data. And my third, after reading it, was a conclusion both simple and troubling: she has misidentified where entrepreneurship in this country actually lives and in doing so, is making it harder for it to survive. Let me start with the basics. Hospitality employs 2.6...

OpenAI is to expand its London research centre to become its largest hub outside the United States, setting the stage for an intensified battle with Google DeepMind for top artificial intelligence talent in the UK capital. The developer of ChatGPT said it would significantly increase the size of its London operation, which currently employs around 30 researchers, although it stopped short of disclosing specific headcount targets or investment figures. The move represents a strategic deepening...