Mortgage lending in the UK has fallen to its lowest level in 18 months and consumer borrowing has slowed down, suggesting consumers are turning away from large purchases after the Brexit vote, the Financial Times reported. The comprehensive official figures from the Bank of England for July were worse than economists expected and also showed that non-financial companies borrowed less in July than the average of the previous six months. The figures will intensify arguments over the short-term economic effects of the vote for Brexit.

Proposals to toughen penalties for tax evasion have been published, as the authorities prepare to receive a big tranche of new data on offshore accounts, the Financial Times reported. The government is proposing new legislation requiring taxpayers with outstanding offshore tax liabilities to come forward by September 2018, after which they will be subject to a new set of sanctions for “failing to correct”. The move is part of a broader toughening of sanctions for all those involved in offshore tax evasion.

Mortgage approvals in the UK slumped to a 1½-year low in the month after the Brexit vote, according to a high street banking report. Loans for house purchases slipped 5 per cent to an 18-month low of 37,662 in July, down from 39,763 in June, according to the British Bankers’ Association (BBA), the Irish Times reported. The setback comes amid a good week for the property sector, with housebuilder Persimmon shrugging off uncertainty surrounding the EU referendum result to post a 19 per cent rise in pre-tax profits.

The former head of Royal Bank of Scotland said in 2009 it could take up to five years to recover from the biggest bank bailout in British history, the Irish Times reported. At the time, this seemed a formidable period for British taxpayers to wait before receiving some of their money back. But nearly eight years on, and under a new chief executive, RBS is still some way off from returning to private ownership. The bank reported a £2 billion loss for the first half of this year, putting it on track for its ninth successive annual loss.

Brexit will hit the Scottish economy and cut the semi-autonomous government’s tax revenue by as much as 13 per cent by 2030, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s administration said, the Irish Times reported on a Bloomberg News story. Depending on the post-Brexit trading arrangement adopted by the UK government with the remaining 27 European Union nations, Scottish gross domestic product could be as much as £11.2 billion a year lower in 2030 than it would have been if Britain remained in the bloc, the Scottish government said in a report citing analysis by a range of research groups.

UK exporters and overseas shoppers visiting Britain are shaping up to be the biggest winners from the plunge in sterling since the vote to leave the EU, the Irish Times reported. According to the Confederation of British Industry, manufacturers’ export order books hit a two-year high this month in a “tentative sign that sterling’s depreciation is starting to filter through to overseas demand”. Chemical manufacturers accounted for just over half of the improvement in export orders, according to the CBI survey.

Years of stagnant wage growth have left more than 1m of Britain’s low-income households struggling with debt problems, according to a report from the TUC, the Financial Times reported. The trade union group argues that even though record-low interest rates have kept the cost of servicing debt at historic lows, many households are acutely financially vulnerable. Based on its analysis of official and survey data, the TUC report estimates that, of 1.6m households in what it terms “extreme problem debt”, 1.2m have an income of below £30,000.

At an English country mansion last month, lawyers for Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) sat down with representatives of angry shareholders to broker an end to what may end up being the costliest case in British legal history, Reuters reported. The meeting at The Grove, an 18-century estate near London that served as the secret World War Two HQ for Britain's biggest railway company, was convened to persuade investors to drop claims they were misled into stumping up 12 billion pounds ($16 billion) just a few months before the bank's bailout in 2008.

British inflation rose to a higher-than-expected 0.6 per cent last month as the increasing cost of motor fuels and second-hand cars drove up transport prices, the Irish Times reported. Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation in July was up from 0.5 per cent in June, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. Economists were expecting the figure to be unchanged.

Big investment banks with their European headquarters in London will start the process of moving jobs from the UK within weeks of the government triggering Brexit, sources said. That is a faster timeline than their public messages of patience would imply, said sources briefed on the plans being drawn up by four of the biggest firms, the Irish Times reported. Dismayed by the lack of a clear plan to protect the UK’s status as a global financial hub, executives are planning for the worst – that they will lose the right to sell services freely around the European Union from the City.