Plans to give HM Revenue and Customs the power to dip into bank accounts to recover unpaid tax will leave people open to fraud and error, a Commons watchdog has warned, The Guardian reported. The Treasury select committee, led by Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, said the current proposals are "very concerning" because people will be at risk of having money wrongly taken out by HMRC. Around 17,000 a year people could be affected by the new tax collection powers, which are expected to raise around £100m a year.

Centrica issued its second profits warning in six months yesterday, after admitting 180,000 households had quit its domestic arm British Gas, and the mild winter meant its remaining customers turned their heating down, The Independent reported. The Big Six supplier said it would not raise prices for British Gas customers this year. However, despite admitting that wholesale energy costs had fallen, it made no offer to cut prices.

Barclays Plc is set to announce plans to cut thousands of jobs and shrink its investment bank as Chief Executive Antony Jenkins tries to get his turnaround plan for the British bank back on track after a bad 10 months. Jenkins, who took the CEO hot seat in August 2012 after investment banker Bob Diamond was ousted following a scandal over the rigging of benchmark interest rates, will lay out a revised strategy for Barclays on Thursday. His original plan to cut jobs and improve profitability, set out to much fanfare less than 15 months ago, needs some significant revisions.

The Co-operative group’s stake could fall to about a fifth from 30 per cent as it sells share options to avoid injecting more cash, the Express reported. The group has admitted it will have to go to lenders if it wants to put in another £120million needed to keep the stake at 30 per cent. It is believed to be a better option than selling all its rights and would avoid the possibility of the stake falling below 20 per cent which would remove any effective control over the bank.

Barclays Plc will next week announce the creation of a bad bank portfolio of assets it deems non-core that it intends to sell or run down as part of a streamlining of its investment bank, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, Reuters reported.Last year, Barclays Chief Executive Antony Jenkins announced a portfolio of assets termed Exit Quadrant, that it aimed to get rid of; and these assets are likely to go in the non-core portfolio along with commodities assets following last week's decision by the bank to exit that business, the Financial Times said.

The number of people going insolvent in England and Wales edged up by 2.5% in the first quarter of this year, as experts warned there is still "no light at the end of the tunnel" for many families despite the recovering economy, the Belfast Telegraph reported. Some 24,931 individual insolvencies were recorded over the latest three-month period, which is 2.5% higher than the fourth quarter of 2013 but is still 0.3% down on the same period a year ago. A growing number of people going bankrupt helped to push up the figures.

Britain’s major lenders will have to demonstrate they can weather a brutal housing market slump under Bank of England stress tests to be unveiled on Tuesday, the Financial Times reported. The BoE’s Prudential Regulation Authority will disclose details of its scenarios alongside a broader EU-wide exercise aimed at gauging the health of major banks. Under the PRA’s scenario declines of about 35 per cent in residential property prices are expected to be triggered by a sharp rise in interest rates from the current 0.5 per cent level.

Britain has blocked plans by state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland to pay bonuses worth double an employee's fixed salary, adding to the pressure on banks to rein in pay. Banks across Europe have come under fire from the public, shareholders and politicians for extravagantly rewarding staff at a time of austerity that was brought on in part by the reckless lending of some financial groups. British Business Secretary Vince Cable this week wrote to banks and other big companies warning them to cut out excessive rewards or face tighter rules.

Britain has blocked plans by state-controlled Royal Bank of Scotland to pay bonuses worth double an employee's fixed salary, adding to the pressure on banks to rein in pay. Banks across Europe have come under fire from the public, shareholders and politicians for extravagantly rewarding staff at a time of austerity that was brought on in part by the reckless lending of some financial groups. British Business Secretary Vince Cable this week wrote to banks and other big companies warning them to cut out excessive rewards or face tighter rules.

Lenders to the Gherkin, the conical skyscraper that’s one of London’s best-known landmarks, appointed a receiver to take control of the building after years of defaults, Bloomberg News reported. Holders of debt backed by the 30 St. Mary Axe tower in the City of London financial district hired Deloitte LLP after “adverse interest rate and currency movements have caused the total senior liabilities secured by the property to increase materially,” the company said in a statement today. Receivership is similar to U.S. bankruptcy protection.