Closing summary
Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds has been speaking with reporters (including my colleague Jasper Jolly) at the Farnborough International Airshow today, and weighed in on two crucial matters:
Firstly, on Royal Mail, saying that he expects the government to call in the proposed £3.6bn takeover of mail service by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky for review. Reynolds said he will talk to Kretinsky about the bid this week, and would look at how the government could receive binding assurances about services in UK’s the national interest.
Secondly, on the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. Reynolds said the government was going to hold out for a “market” saviour to rescue the shipyard, and that he was confident that it would continue to build ships for he Royal Navy despite its ongoing financial troubles.
Elsewhere, airline stocks have plunged in the wake of Ryanair’s earnings report, which showed that weak demand from cost-conscious consumers had sent profits down 46% in the first quarter.
It sparked a sell-off in airline stocks, with Ryanair down 15%, BA-owner IAG down 3.6%, EasyJet down 6.6%, and Wizz Air down 8.7%.
Our other main stories today:
Thanks for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow morning from 8am. –KM
BT has been fined more than £17m for missing 14,000 emergency calls after technical faults caused the emergency call handling service to be disrupted for nearly 11 hours last summer.
The telecoms regulator launched an investigation shortly after the incident on 25 June 2023. Publishing its findings on Monday, Ofcom said the handling of the network fault was a “catastrophic failure”.
The watchdog’s director of enforcement, Suzanne Cater, said:
Being able to contact the emergency services can mean the difference between life and death, so in the event of any disruption to their networks, providers must be ready to respond quickly and effectively.
In this case, BT fell woefully short of its responsibilities and was ill-prepared to deal with such a large scale outage, putting its customers at unacceptable risk.
Today’s fine sends a broader warning to all firms: if you’re not properly prepared to deal with disruptions to your networks, we’ll hold you to strict account on behalf of consumers.
BT, which manages the emergency services calls system, said it had taken three days to contact each of the callers who had not been connected after what it described as a complex software problem that affected nearly 14,000 call attempts from 12,392 people.
Ofcom said its decision to fine BT £17.5m was based on a number of factors including the seriousness, duration and degree of harm.
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