Auction houses and shoppers seeking new clothes for the Christmas holidays lifted British retail sales last month by more than expected, adding to recent signs that a slowdown in the economy might have abated slightly, Reuters reported. Retail sales volumes rose by 0.8% month-on-month in October, the Office for National Statistics said. A Reuters poll of economists had pointed to a 0.5% increase. Retail sales are now 5.8% above the level of February 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Auction houses were an especially strong driver of retail sales growth in October, the ONS said.

British and European Union negotiators highlighted significant gaps on Friday in their positions on trading arrangements for Northern Ireland despite a senior British minister expressing confidence of breaking the impasse, Reuters reported. Britain and the EU agreed to intensify efforts to resolve difficulties over trade from the UK mainland to the British province this week after Brussels cautiously welcomed a change in tone from London following weeks of verbal sparring.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has proposed a ban on debt packager referral fees in a bid to protect consumers, YahooFinance reported. The UK watchdog said on Wednesday that debt packagers – who are regulated providers of debt advice and refer customers on to other providers of debt solutions – should not be allowed to be paid a commission. Under the current setup, they rely on 90% of their income from referral fees paid by these other firms.

Inflation in Britain rose to its highest level in nearly a decade in October after soaring energy prices hit household bills, the New York Times reported. The Consumer Price Index rose to 4.2 percent from a year earlier, the highest since November 2011, and up from 3.1 percent in September, the Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday. The price increases were more than twice the central bank’s target of 2 percent, increasing the likelihood that policymakers will go ahead with the interest rate increases they have signaled are coming.

OneWeb to $ 49.3 million to bankers, lawyers and other advisors acting on behalf of former shareholders as part of a $ 1 billion transaction between the U.K, government and India’s Bharti Global rescued a satellite internet company from bankruptcy last year, CaliforniaNewsTimes.com reported. The disclosure was made on an audited account published on Tuesday. The sale agreement “required the company to bear the cost of selling the former shareholder of One Web Communications,” the account said.

Britain continues to face severe labor market shortages despite the end of the furlough program because 465,000 people have disappeared from the workforce since the start of the pandemic, according to Bank of America, Bloomberg News reported. Ending the benefit on Sept. 30 for those out of work during lockdowns was expected to bring people who had given up on job hunting back into employment. “That has not happened yet,” Bank of America economist Rob Wood said in a note on Tuesday. U.K.

British private-sector employers expect to raise staff pay by an average of 2.5% over the next 12 months, well below the likely rate of inflation, according to a survey that could ease worries at the Bank of England about the risk of a wage-price spiral, Reuters reported. The quarterly figures from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) suggested that companies were taking only cautious steps to battle growing recruitment difficulties.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has set aside a 15 billion-pound ($20 billion) fund that could be used for tax cuts before the next election if the pandemic is brought under control, analysis of U.K. budget figures shows, Bloomberg News reported. Sunak put the money aside in a reserve for unforeseen emergencies in a spending review published with the budget last month. While all chancellors maintain such a cushion in case spending overshoots, Sunak’s is multiples larger than that of his predecessors.

The Bank of England and the Treasury are to launch a formal consultation on a UK central bank digital currency, BBC.com reported. This evaluation of the design and possible benefits of a new kind of digital money is a further step towards its possible creation. The currency, for use by households and businesses, would sit alongside cash and bank deposits, rather than replacing them. No decision has been taken on whether to have such a currency in the UK.