Closing summary
Wall Street stocks rose modestly at the open, with a mood of caution following reports of funding hurdles for Oracle’s data centre plans.
The Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasda were flat to 0.3% higher.
Over here, the FTSE 100 index has jumped 1.6%, or 15 points, to 9,839, after a bigger-than-expected drop in UK inflation to 3.2% in November, which cemented expectations of an interest rate cut from the Bank of England tomorrow. The FTSE is on track for its best day in eight months. The pound fell by 0.45% to $1.3366, while yields, or interest rates, on UK government bonds dropped.
Jim Ratcliffe’s chemicals company Ineos has been granted £120m of government funding to help save the UK’s last ethylene plant at Grangemouth, in a deal expected to protect more than 500 jobs.
The investment in the Scottish plant was necessary to preserve a vital part of the country’s chemicals infrastructure, the UK government said. The ethylene produced there was essential for medical-grade plastics production, water treatment and in aerospace and car-building, it added.
Keir Starmer said the investment, with an additional £30m from Ineos, was proof his government would “invest in Britain’s future”. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor who travelled to Grangemouth today with the business secretary Peter Kyle, said the case for intervening was “compelling” and key for Britain’s national security.
Our main stories today:
Rachel Reeves would probably rather not rake over the chaotic run-up to last month’s budget, but it will be high on the agenda on 13 January when Richard Hughes, the recently departed chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) appears before the House of Lords economic affairs committee, reports our economics editor Heather Stewart.
Hughes resigned last month, five days after the OBR inadvertently released its budget documents - including details of the chancellor’s tax plans - 40 minutes or so before she stood up to speak in the House of Commons.
He had also courted controversy by publishing a letter setting out the evolution of the OBR’s forecasts, which the Tories seized on to suggest Reeves had misrepresented the health of the public finances.
Prof David Miles from the OBR, who appeared before the same committee on Tuesday, underlined how frustrated the forecaster had been by the flurry of leaks ahead of the budget.
I think that there’s actually an agreement between the Treasury, the OBR, the chancellor, that this wasn’t a very helpful process in many ways - that there was lots of speculation about measures, there were leaks, there was briefing. I don’t think it did anybody any good.
