Black women in England suffer more serious birth complications, analysis finds


Tobi Thomas Health and Inequalities Correspondent
Sun, 7 April 2024 

Pre-eclampsia is a serious pregnancy complication that causes high blood pressure

.Photograph: Blend Images/Alamy

Black women are up to six times more likely to experience some of the most serious birth complications during hospital delivery across England than their white counterparts, with the figures being described as “stark” and disheartening”, according to analysis.

Black women made up 26% of women who experienced the birth complication pre-eclampsia superimposed on chronic hypertension during delivery, despite making up just 5% of all deliveries across England, according to a Guardian analysis of NHS figures for 2022-23.

They were six times more likely to experience this pregnancy complication than their white counterparts, who made up 47.2% of these cases despite making up 70% of all deliveries.

Pre-eclampsia is a serious pregnancy complication that causes high blood pressure and protein in the urine, affecting between 1% and 5% of pregnant women across the UK. The condition can lead to serious complications for the mother and baby. Superimposed pre-eclampsia is when preeclampsia complicates another existing condition such as high blood pressure.

Black women were 1.5 times more likely to develop preeclampsia more generally than their white counterparts, and were also overrepresented in birth complications regarding high blood pressure, making up 16% of these cases.

Worldwide, pre-eclampsia affects up to 6% of all pregnancies and causes approximately 500,000 foetal deaths and 70,000 maternal deaths each year.

Experts said that in order to address the disparities in birth complications, the existing health inequalities such as why some ethnicities have higher rates of pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure would need to be addressed.

Black women in the UK are almost four times more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts, while black babies are twice as likely to be stillborn.

Prof Asma Khalil, the vice president for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said structural racism and the unconscious bias of healthcare professionals could be a factor contributing to the disparity.

“The figures are striking and demonstrate inequality, but unfortunately I’m not really surprised,” Khalil said. “We know that women from a black background have a higher risk of pre-eclampsia and hypertension.

“Why this is the case is multifactorial, and I strongly believe that in order to find the solution, you need that also multidisciplinary approach. Healthcare professionals and doctors cannot fix the problem on their own, we need to work with public health doctors, policymakers, and the government need to prioritise and invest on the issue.”

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour MP and chair of black maternal health all party parliamentary group, said: “These stark figures highlight the continuing inequalities facing Black women at every stage of the birthing journey.

“With Black mothers 3.7 times more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth, the government must urgently set a binding target to end this maternal mortality disparity and improve health outcomes for Black women across maternity care.”

Dr Anita Banerjee, an obstetric physician with expertise in high risk pregnancies, said the figures were “disheartening”, and that healthcare professionals building trust with marginalised communities was essential for reducing health inequalities.

Banerjee said: “We say that the NHS is free at the point of contact and that everybody should get the same, by why is it that if you’re from a black background you’re risk of complications seem to be higher, particularly in regards to maternity for pre-eclampsia.”

“What we saw during the pandemic is the importance of our cultural competency and understanding of the women that we serve, and also secondly them trusting us. We can’t stop everybody getting preeclampsia but there are certain people which have a prior propensity.

“It’s hard if you’re serving a population that isn’t used to getting that much information or understanding because they don’t feel that they’ve got our trust, it can be quite hard.”

An NHS spokesperson said: “The NHS is fully committed to ensuring all women receive high-quality care before, during and after their pregnancy – all local maternity and neonatal systems now have action plans in place to help ensure care is equitable for all mothers, babies and families, with staff having access to inclusive clinical training aids to support care for women and babies with Black or dark skin.

“As these figures demonstrate, further progress is needed, which is why the NHS is investing £10m this year to enable targeted action against inequalities, including providing more holistic support for women living in the 10% most deprived areas of England, who we know are more likely to experience adverse outcomes during pregnancy and birth.”

EU nears final vote on landmark asylum reform

Anne-Laure MONDESERT
Sun, 7 April 2024 

Migrant charities fear the reform will lead to systematic border detentions (Sakis MITROLIDIS)

The EU will vote Wednesday on a vast overhaul of its immigration policies that would notably harden entry procedures for asylum-seekers and require all the bloc's countries to share responsibility.

The European Parliament will decide a series of laws forming the bloc's migration and asylum pact, based on a European Commission proposal first made in September 2020.

The overhaul was reached only after overcoming years of tensions and divisions among EU member countries. Once fully adopted, it would come into effect from 2026.


Alongside its passage, the European Union has been striking agreements with several outside countries to try to reduce the number of migrants leaving their territories with the goal of reaching Europe.

The backdrop of the two-pronged approach is a rise in asylum applications in the 27-nation EU, which last year reached 1.14 million, the highest level since 2016.

Irregular migrant entries into the bloc are also increasing, to 380,000 last year according to the EU's border and coast guard agency Frontex.

The migration and asylum pact has been opposed, for very different reasons, by the far right, the far left and some socialist lawmakers.

"After years of impasse, the new migration rules allow us to regain control over our external borders and reduce pressure on the EU. State authorities, not smugglers, have to decide who enters the European Union," said Manfred Weber, head of the biggest political group in the European Parliament, the centre-right European People's Party.

NGOs and migrant charities have come out against the reform, especially its provision creating border facilities to accommodate asylum-seekers and quickly send back those deemed ineligible, which they fear will lead to systematic detentions.

The reform largely retains the basic rule in force under which the first EU country in which an asylum-seeker arrives is responsible for their case.

But it adds a "solidarity mechanism" that requires all EU countries to help front-line states such as Italy and Greece when they come under pressure by either taking in some of the asylum-seekers or providing an equivalent financial contribution.

- 'Inflammatory topic' -

A French centrist lawmaker in the European Parliament, Fabienne Keller, who shepherded one of the texts, called the pact "very balanced" and "a big improvement over the current situation".

"There are better checks on flows of irregular migration through the border procedures and more solidarity," she said.

But she acknowledged it was "a hugely inflammatory topic" and criticised far-right lawmakers for "trying to panic everybody" over the changes.

The parliament's vote will not be the last step for the pact, as the technical application of its procedures still need to be defined, Keller said. They include how to organise the border centres and supply them with sufficient resources, translators and police officers.

Another controversial point is a provision to send asylum-seekers to "safe" third countries.

A left-wing lawmaker, Raphael Glucksmann of France, said "that would allow asylum-seekers likely to obtain asylum in an EU country to be sent to transit countries".

He criticised a compromise under which some EU nations would be able to offset their financial obligations under the solidarity mechanism if they helped pay for tougher border security in another EU country.

"That upholds the idea of a 'safe third country' which would apply to some countries that are 'safe' only by that label," he said. "It's another step towards the outsourcing of our borders."

On the far right, lawmaker Jean-Paul Garraud of France said "the outer borders of the EU are like sieves and nothing has been done to change that".

One of the few changes the far right favoured was a system to take the biometric data of each arriving asylum-seeker and put it into an EU database called Eurodac, he said, though he argued it would do little to stop mass irregular immigration.

"These mechanisms are just smokescreens," he said. "They will be ineffective and won't be able to be applied given the scale of the migration flows."

alm/rmb/ec/db

Artists’ AI dilemma: can artificial intelligence make intelligent art?

Amelia Tait

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, 8 April 2024 

The masks in Huyghe’s Liminal sense and respond to the environment around them.Photograph: Courtesy the artist and Galerie Chantal Crousel, Marian Goodman Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, Esther Schipper, and TARO NASU © Pierre Huyghe, by SIAE 2023

Two people dressed in black are kneeling on the floor, so still that they must surely be in pain. If they are grimacing, there would be no way to know – their features are obscured by oversized, smooth gold masks, as though they have buried their faces in half an Easter egg.

Their stillness makes them seem like sculptures, and only by checking for the subtle rise and fall of their chests can you confirm they are indeed human. Which is fitting, really – because they aren’t actually human, at least not totally. They’re human-machine hybrids, “Idioms”, created by French artist Pierre Huyghe for his largest ever exhibition, Liminal, at the Punta della Dogana in Venice.

Idioms are wandering the exhibition for its run between March and November. Sensors in their masks monitor the rooms they sit in and visitors they encounter, and artificial intelligence will gradually convert this information into a brand new language. Slowly, for example, the Idioms’ masks will come up with the words for “door” or “humans” or “writing” – building a dictionary until they will even be able to communicate with one another. Every day, their knowledge will accumulate; Huyghe wonders what they might be able to say in 20 years’ time.


On a crisp March day, shortly before the exhibition opens to the public, two Idioms kneel in a darkened room opposite a large black box suspended from the ceiling – this is a “self-generating instrument” (also loaded with environmental sensors), producing ambient music and crisscrossing beams of light. In response to the artwork in front of them, the Idioms appear to have only generated a few syllables, repeated intermittently over and over again as the LED screens on their foreheads glow gold. Their words are a hissing whisper. It sounds a lot like, “What’s this?”

It’s a fair question to ask. The dilemma facing any artist who tries to tackle a subject as paradigm-changing and era-defining as artificial intelligence is that the real magic is often happening on some hard drives behind the scenes. While there is a blinking server on show at Liminal, Huyghe himself conceded at a press conference three days before opening that it might be hard for a casual visitor to understand that the language coming from the Idioms’ masks is AI-generated; he worried that visitors would assume that the people wearing the masks are the ones whispering.

For contemporary artists, there is a clear pressure to tackle and engage with the buzzy technology that has rapidly disrupted everything from homework to journalism since ChatGPT’s debut in 2022.

Like Huyghe, creatives from German film-maker Hito Steyerl to British conceptualist Gillian Wearing have used AI to make or enhance their art. Shortly after Liminal’s first run closes, an ostensibly “fully AI-driven” multimedia exhibition of French artist Philippe Parreno’s historical works will open at Haus der Kunst in Munich.

Whether artists are using the technology in an interesting and challenging way or simply hoping to hop on the hype bandwagon is not always easy to discern. From a preliminary press release of the Munich show, it’s unclear exactly which elements of Parreno’s exhibition will be artificially intelligent, and it’s easy to see how AI could cynically be slapped on to an exhibition like an Instagram filter, a shiny veneer that makes old work seem new.

AI is already all around us, autocompleting our emails, suggesting a new show to watch on Netflix, and reading the weather forecast in the voice of Amazon’s Alexa. In recent years, chatbots have revolutionised writing – responding to prompts to write cover letters, code, plays, poems, and essays – while text-to-image models such as DALL.E and Midjourney allow anyone to create “art” by typing in a few words.

But as the technology becomes more prominent in our everyday lives, artists’ use of AI risks feeling trite. Crowds have allegedly been “transfixed for an hour or more” by Turkish artist Refik Anadol’s “live paintings” currently being displayed at the Serpentine Gallery in London. AI was fed imagery of rainforests and coral reefs to generate Anadol’s exhibition, Echoes of the Earth: Living Archive, which features immersive “artificial realities” that visitors can wander through. While crowds may be transfixed, critics have said that Anadol’s previous AI-generated work is over-hyped.

“The whole thing looks like a massive techno lava lamp,” New York Magazine’s Jerry Saltz wrote of Anadol’s Unsupervised, a 24ft screen that used AI to continuously generate images at the Museum of Modern Art between 2022 and 2023. Saltz found the work to be pointless and mediocre – good at entertaining you briefly but ultimately “not disturbing anything inside you”. In short, he felt the work had nothing to say.

Saltz argued that “if AI is to create meaningful art, it will have to provide its own vision and vocabulary”. On a literal level, this is exactly what Huyghe’s Idioms are doing. Watching them is oddly mesmerising – as a viewer, it is interesting to be confronted not with a finite state of “artificial intelligence”, but an ongoing process of “artificial learning”.

Here, Huyghe’s use of AI takes the art out of the artist’s control, which is exciting – not least because of the possibility that things could go wrong. The Idioms could fail to produce a language or produce one that is discordant and offensive to our ears. They could be unduly influenced by rowdy exhibition-goers or rebel in some way, repeating the same words over and over again.

It would undoubtedly be fascinating to return day after day and see how the Idioms have responded to the art around them. As Huyghe intended, these strange masked beings provoke questions about the relationship between the human and the non-human (even if my first thought was, “I bet their knees hurt from all that kneeling”).

Less thought-provoking is the use of AI in his work Camata. Robotic limbs surround a skeleton in one of the world’s driest deserts, performing a mysterious ritual. Though the footage is not live, the film is edited in real time, with artificially intelligent “editors” gathering data from a large brass telephone-pole-like sensor near the opening of the exhibition. This sensor monitors everything from the number of guests in the gallery to the weather outside, and the Camata footage is edited accordingly.

Yet curator Anne Stenne clarifies that this isn’t a simple case of “x” leading to “y” – for example, if only one person was in the exhibition, it wouldn’t be the case that the AI editors would automatically, say, choose footage shot at night. This means that while the endless editing process is fascinating – you could, after all, sit there for the exhibition’s entire run and never see the same sequence twice – it’s hard to understand as a layperson why AI was a necessary element. Would the work be any different if the editing was randomly generated? As a casual viewer, it’s very hard to know.

Indeed, those who attend these exhibitions simply have to trust that something fantastical is occurring behind the scenes. While Huyghe’s sensors are visible throughout the exhibition, the artist is unwilling to share the details of the program that processes this information and exactly how it runs. A representative says, “Pierre doesn’t want to focus on the technical parameters of his works. He wants to concentrate on the visitor’s experience.” Audiences may find this troubling in a world where companies have been found to be using “pseudo-AI” that is actually run by hidden humans behind the scenes.

AI art works best when it does something that the artist alone could not, as is the case with Huyghe’s self-generating language. Anything else risks feeling at best gimmicky and at worst pointless. Regardless, the AI trend will continue to sweep galleries, and soon enough the tool will be commonplace enough that questioning it will be like questioning a pen or a pencil.

In the 1960s, “computer art” swept the globe, with exhibits from London to Stuttgart to Zagreb to Las Vegas. One contemporary writer said “perhaps a computer will never produce a painting all by itself”, and noted with caution that “at least one expert thinks such art represents a genuine new art form”. One day, undoubtedly, discussions of AI’s place in art will sound this archaic.

• Liminal by Pierre Huyghe is at Punda della Dogana, Venice, until 24 November

The Body Shop owed more than £276m to creditors at time of collapse


Sarah Butler
Fri, 5 April 2024 

The UK arm of The Body Shop went into administration in February, putting more than 2,200 jobs at risk.Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The Body Shop’s UK arm owed more than £276m to creditors including landlords, suppliers, tax authorities and its international divisions when the ethical beauty retailer collapse in February, it has emerged as it appealed to landlords to cut rent as part of a rescue deal.

Avon, the cosmetics group owned by The Body Shop’s former parent company Natura, is the biggest trade creditor – owed just over £13m for products it manufactured, according to a report by the administrators FRP who were appointed to the UK arm of the ethical beauty retailer in February.

Total debts at the failed group add up to more than £276m, of which £6.3m is tax owed, £44m is money owed to trade creditors, £63m is from lease liabilities and other borrowing, and £143m relates to “related suppliers” understood to be other parts of the business.


The report does not reveal the extent of further debts owed to the group’s largest secured creditor, Aurelius, the German restructuring specialist that bought the retailer last year.

The private equity company put the UK arm of The Body Shop into administration in February less than three months after taking control, putting more than 2,200 jobs at risk.

In a report published on Friday, administrators said they believed they would be able to raise enough cash to ensure The Body Shop’s UK tax bill was paid and that staff would receive holiday pay, pension payments and other arrears, but they could not outline how much suppliers, landlords and other unsecured creditors might receive.

Related: ‘A scented awakening’: how The Body Shop influenced generations

One major asset up for sale will be the brand rights to the Body Shop name – worth £7.9m, according to FRP – which had been thought to be controlled by Aurelius. However, the administrator has now established that the transfer of the brand was not completed before The Body Shop’s collapse.

The availability of the brand rights could clear the way for an auction of The Body Shop, which was previously seen as unlikely because of Aurelius’s ownership of the brand. Interested parties are thought to include Next.

The report says The Body Shop collapsed after a $76m (£60m) credit facility was repaid to its former owner, the Brazilian group Natura, shortly before the change of ownership and leaving the company with greater demand for investment than its new owners had foreseen.

Administrators are planning to launch an insolvency process called a company voluntary arrangement (CVA), which is intended to cut rents at the group’s remaining stores. No further store closures are expected in the UK at this stage.

If the CVA is successful, Aurelius has agreed not to seek repayment of secured loans it made to the business shortly before its collapse.

Since The Body Shop called in administrators, about 82 of the 197 UK stores have closed, with the loss of more than 425 jobs, while a further 329 jobs have gone at head office.

Operations in the US, Germany and Belgium are being shut down after those businesses were either sold off or deprived of cash by the administration of the UK parent.

The group’s Canadian division closed 30 of its 105 stores, and its Australian and New Zealand operation is struggling to find enough cash to continue. On Thursday, a court in France put the Body Shop’s 66 stores there into administration with the aim of trying to find a buyer for the business.

UK Civil servants vote to strike over two days a week in the office

Lucy Burton
Fri, 5 April 2024

empty office

Civil servants at Britain’s official statistics body have voted to go on strike after being asked to work in the office for two days a week.

A total of 73pc of voting employees backed industrial action at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) because they want to keep the option of working from home full time.

The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, which is spearheading the push for action, has called for urgent talks with ONS officials to resolve the dispute.

It previously argued that many workers only accepted a job at the ONS because of home working, saying that the plan to force workers to spend at least 40pc of their time in the office has “caused considerable disruption, especially for staff with childcare and other caring arrangements”.

Fran Heathcote, general secretary of PCS, said that ONS bosses had “seriously undermined the trust and goodwill of their staff by seeking to drive this policy through in such a heavy-handed way”. She called for the policy to be paused immediately.

It is the latest pushback from staff who want to continue working from home as bosses increasingly demand an end to remote practices.

Ministers have been trying to pressure Whitehall staff back into the office at least 60pc of the time, or three days a week for full-time staff, over fears that working from home has reduced productivity and increased waiting times for services.

Around 1,200 employees balloted for a strike but only half of that number voted, a turnaround which only just hit the legal threshold for a ballot.

An ONS spokesman said that the organisation has had a hybrid working model for several years, in line with the wider civil service.

He added: “Face-to-face interaction supports collaboration and fosters learning and innovation, while some tasks can be done as effectively or even more effectively at home.

“We are applying this flexibly to help balance business and personal needs, and have offered all colleagues extensive support.”

RENT INCREASES ARE INFLATIONARY

UK rent rises forecast to outpace wage growth for three years


Richard Partington Economics correspondent

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, 7 April 2024 

Rishi Sunak’s government last month watered down reforms to increase protections for renters Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Rent rises in Britain are forecast to outpace wage growth, despite having already surged at the fastest pace on record after the Covid pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

The Resolution Foundation expects added pressure on millions of households and said average rents could increase by 13% over the next three years as current high growth in the private rental market work their way through existing tenancies.

Forecasting 4.2% growth in average rents in each year up to 2027, the thinktank said this rate was much faster than the 7.5% growth in average workers’ earnings (2.4% a year on average) predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility over that period.


Rishi Sunak’s government last month watered down reforms to increase protections for renters against no-fault evictions, leading to accusations that the prime minister and the housing secretary, Michael Gove, had caved in to Tory MPs lobbying in favour of landlords’ interests.

Related: Ground rent not legally or commercially necessary, says UK watchdog

In a report titled Through the Roof, the Resolution Foundation said renters across the country had already been through an exceptional surge in new tenancy rent levels – up by almost a fifth over the past two years. It said the surge had affected more households in the past after a big increase in private renting, almost doubling from 11% of all households in the mid-1990s to 20%. This included a sharp increase in the number of families living in private rented accommodation headed by someone aged 30-49, meaning that renting was no longer solely the preserve of those in their 20s.

However, the report said record growth in rental costs was beginning to slow after a “bounceback from the pandemic”, with market rents for new tenancies having cooled from an annual growth rate in cost of 10.4% in June 2023 to 7.5% by March 2024.

But the thinktank warned that it could still take years for this burst of growth to work through the whole private rental sector.

While new renters were already paying higher monthly outgoings, it said existing tenants reaching the end of their tenancies, or those being forced to accept within-tenancy price rises, would face large rent increases in future.

The report found that the main factor driving up rental costs was the snapback from Covid lockdowns, when evictions and repossessions were halted and rents collapsed amid heightened economic uncertainty. More recently, it said fast-rising wages had also pushed up rents for new tenancies.

It said there had been “scare stories” about higher interest rate rises and tougher regulations, causing a mass exodus of landlords from the private rental sector. However, it dismissed this as having only a limited impact, highlighting Bank of England research showing the sector had only shrank by 1% since mid-2019.

The thinktank said rents tended to track wage levels over the longer term but had fallen to the lowest level on record relative to earnings amid the disruption of the pandemic. While they had risen back by early 2022, they still remained about 5% lower, indicating that they would continue to increase by 13% over the next three years to return the UK’s rent-to-earnings ratio to its long-term trend.

Cara Pacitti, a senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, said: “With more families renting privately, and renting for longer too, these rent surges are a bigger problem for Britain, and require bolder solutions from policymakers.

“Short-term solutions include regular uprating of local housing allowance to support poorer families, and the ultimate, longer-term solution is to simply build more homes.”

A government spokesperson said it was supporting households with help for bills amid the cost of living crisis. “Our Renters (Reform) Bill will give people more security in their homes and empower them to challenge poor practices. Through our long term plan for housing we are investing £11.5bn in the affordable homes programme and remain on track to build one million over this parliament.”

Farmers’ union boss hits out at Tories over rushed Brexit

Archie Mitchell
Sun, 7 April 2024 

The boss of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has hit out at Conservative ministers for rushing Brexit and said the government “got wrong” some aspects of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

Tom Bradshaw, who has replaced Minette Batters at the top of the NFU, which represents more than 46,000 farmers and growers across England and Wales, said ministers “should have taken some of our warnings [about Brexit] at face value”.

The arable farmer from Essex, who took over from Ms Batters in February, said members are traditionally “big supporters” of the Tories.

But he said “many are feeling let down” by post-Brexit trade deals and said the government “did not consult and did not listen” to farmers when leaving the EU.

A group of farmers in tractors descended on London to protest in March (AFP via Getty Images)

He said trade deals are undermining UK farms because supermarkets can sell foods produced to lower standards abroad.

And Mr Bradshaw criticised the “short term” focus of the current government, with a general election expected later this year hampering longer-term decision-making.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, he said: “Historically our members would have been big supporters of the Conservative Party, but many are feeling let down, particularly by the international trade deals [which they believe disadvantage British farmers]. They are not going to forget about that quickly.”

He added: “The Brexit deal got delayed but our ministers at Defra were not willing to delay the transition and so put themselves under huge time pressure to deliver a scheme,” he says. “Their department was the most impacted by withdrawal from the EU and it became a totem pole.”

“They didn’t consult and they didn’t listen. They delivered a scheme under a restricted timescale and there are areas of it that I think they got wrong. They should have taken some of our warnings at face value.”

And, in a dig at some of Britain’s post-Brexit trade deals such as with Australia and New Zealand, Mr Bradshaw said: “If we are expected to produce to standards here then we should expect all the food sold in this country to be produced to that standard. And if as a country we don’t care about those standards, then our members should have the competitive advantage to produce to lower standards. You can’t have it both ways.”

Losing the support of British farmers would be a hammer blow for the Conservatives, who have enjoyed the support of rural voters for generations.

A poll for the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) suggested the Tories would lose 53 of their 96 rural seats at the general election, with high-profile Conservatives such as Jeremy Hunt at risk.

And in March Tractor-riding farmers descended on Westminster to protest against trading arrangements they claim will “decimate” British farming and jeopardise UK food security.

In March, protesting farmers called for ‘a radical change of policy and an urgent exit from these appalling trade deals which will decimate British food’ (Gareth Fuller/PA Wire)

Campaign groups Save British Farming and Fairness for Farmers of Kent organised the demonstrations at which farmers called for “a radical change of policy and an urgent exit from these appalling trade deals which will decimate British food”.

Mr Bradshaw did say recently appointed environment secretary Steve Barclay is “doing a good job so far”, but said “I don’t think [ministers] can be clear about their plans when you are only planning for six months’ time”.

And, with Labour on course for a landslide majority, he added: “At the NFU we are proudly apolitical, but in the four years I’ve been in the NFU team, I have built up a strong relationship with shadow farming minister Daniel Zeichner, who has been in post throughout that period.”

UK
What is National Nail Tech Price Increase Day and what does it mean for your manicure?

Ellen Manning
Updated Sun, 7 April 2024

The price of getting your nails done could go up this week as part of a campaign by nail technicians. (Stock image: Getty)

Thousands of nail technicians are set to put their prices up this week as part of a national campaign to ensure they earn less than the minimum wage.

National Nail Tech Price Increase Day is set to take place on Monday (8 April), when technicians and salons across the country have agreed to raise the amount they charge in order to cover growing costs.

The campaign has been organised by The Nail Tech Org, which says its data suggests the average nail technician earns less than £7-an-hour - while the minimum wage is £11.44 an hour.

The cost of having your nails done can vary, depending on where you are in the country and what treatment you are having, but it is believed that prices could increase by up to 50% in order to ensure salons and technicians aren't charging less than they are paying out in various costs.

The idea to put prices up across the country on the same day is in a bid to normalise higher prices and raise awareness, organisers have said.

Here, Yahoo News UK looks at what National Nail Tech Price Increase Day is and what it means:-

What is National Nail Tech Price Increase Day?

National Nail Tech Price Increase Day will take place on Monday (8 April), when thousands of nail technicians across the country have agreed to collectively raise their prices.

It has been organised by The Nail Tech Org, which said research gathered from its members had revealed that many are only earning around £7 an hour after deducting all the costs they need to pay out.

In an Instagram post, it said: "We gathered insights & data from our NTO members over the last few weeks to gain a snapshot into the financial world of nail techs…& we couldn’t believe what we found. After being shocked by some of the stats we found, we realised change needed to happen & in support of our National Nail Tech Price Increase Day we’re ready to do just that!!

"Join us, and hundreds of other nail techs from across the industry, as we come together to support each other in educating ourselves on the costs of running a nail tech business and empower each other to raise them appropriately."

In another post, it added: "We already know that pricing is a huge issue within our industry, but the only way that we are going to tackle this, is to do what we do best… to do it together."

Inviting members to take part in the Price Increase Day on Monday, it said: "Our studies have found a lot of nail techs are working for less than minimum wage. We have created this day, so nail techs feel empowered and supported and come together to raise our prices (if needed) correctly at the same time, we create a new normal.

"A normal that pays us a fair wage for the work that we do and the services that we provide. This isn’t just a campaign; it’s a movement towards empowering nail technicians like yourself to run not just a successful, but also a sustainable business!"


What is a nail technician?

Nail technicians are trained to carry out various treatments for nails, from applying different kinds of polishes and extensions to repairing and removing extensions, nails and polish.

Training and what different nail techs do can vary from place to place, but can require education on: how to apply and remove different polishes; nail artistry; sanitisation and hygiene practices; health and safety; nail anatomy and physiology and nail diseases and disorders.

According to the government careers website, the average annual salary for a nail technician can range from £15,500 for a starter to £22,000 for an experienced nail technician. But many suggest they actually earn less than minimum wage by the time they have paid out all the associated costs involved in doing their job.
Who is supporting National Nail Tech Price Increase Day?

The campaign has received support from nail technicians across the country, with many saying they will join in the price increase day, as well as explaining to their clients why they are taking the step.

One said they charge £40 for the application of gel nails but gets complaints that she is too expensive, while another said she had been absorbing rising costs but could no longer afford to do so.

Another said: "It's typically one of our least profitable treatments".

As well as urging nail technicians to join its campaign, the Nail Tech Org has produced a free pricing course for its members, which includes a current income calculator, pricing calculator and two masterclasses in a bid to help them initiate their own price rises.

Photo with copy space of a manicurist polishing the nails of a client

What other changes have happened around employment this week?

The campaign around nail technicians comes amid other changes in the world of work based on employment.

Three major new laws came into effect on Saturday - all revolving around employees' rights in the workplace.

They changed how employers deal with flexible working, unpaid leave for staff who are carers and redundancy during pregnancy.

For Flexible Working, the change in the law means you have the right to ask if you can work flexibly from the first day of your employment, rather than only when you have worked for your employer for 26 weeks or more.

In addition, under the Carer’s Leave Act, which came into force on Saturday, employees who are carers can take up to a week of unpaid leave every 12 months – equating to five days for most people.

Workplace protection for pregnant women has now been extended as of Saturday too, as part of the Protection from Redundancy (Pregnancy and Family Leave) Act 2023.

UK
Activists call on Barclays to close ‘fracking loophole’ in energy finance policy


Rebecca Speare-Cole, PA sustainability reporter
Sun, 7 April 2024 

Campaigners are calling on Barclays to close what they see as a “loophole” in its energy policy that allows the financing of fracking companies.

The UK’s biggest bank amended its climate change statement in February, pledging to focus capital on supporting energy companies to decarbonise.

The bank said it would no longer finance new oil and gas projects and would restrict its financing of “pureplay” companies – those that focus exclusively on fossil fuel extraction and exploration.

But ShareAction, which campaigns for responsible investment, pointed out that pureplay companies working on short-term extraction projects are exempted from this commitment.

The charity added that fracking activities – a controversial process that involves making large cracks in underground rocks to extract oil and gas – are typically short-term.

To explore the potential impact of continued financing to fracking firms, ShareAction looked at Barclays’ recent history of energy financing.

Its financing of pureplay firms decreased by 42% from an average of 1.9 billion dollars between 2016-2020 to 1.1 billion dollars between 2021-2022 – the latest year for which figures are available.

But ShareAction also found that companies specialising in fracking on average made up the majority share of Barclays’ financing to pureplay firms during this period, at 57%.

The share was 80% for fracking firms in the most recent year of 2022, it added.

Barclays argues that the financing of fracking does not lock in long-term emissions since most projects have a short-term lifecycle (Tim Goode/PA)

Elsewhere, ShareAction said Barclays has committed to restrict fracking financing in the UK and Europe, where the practice is mostly banned or suspended.

Meanwhile, the bank’s fracking client base is largely located in the US.

The charity said many of Barclays’ peers such as HSBC and BNP Paribas have applied restrictions to financing for fracking in North America as well as the UK and Europe.

Barclays argues that the financing of fracking does not lock in long-term emissions since most projects have a short-term lifecycle and that more widely, investment is needed to support existing energy assets while clean energy is scaled.

The bank’s energy policy update came after a period of engagement with a coalition of investors including ShareAction.

The charity and other campaign groups welcomed the move and withdrew a resolution asking shareholders to vote for change at the bank’s annual general meeting in May.

But they also said the changes did not go far enough to a make significant impact on the bank’s fossil fuel financing.

Kelly Shields, campaign manager at ShareAction, said: “Barclays’ energy policy contains loopholes that allow the bank to continue to financially support fracking – a risky activity that contributes to climate change and can destroy habitats and contaminate water supplies.

“Barclays’ stance on fracking leaves it out of step with other large banks that have listened to the concerns of investors and customers and started taking steps to cut off support for this fossil fuel.

“We’re calling on Barclays’ shareholders to ask the bank to close these loopholes and rule out financing for all pureplay oil and gas companies, including fracking clients, wherever they are in the world.”

Katharina Lindmeier, senior responsible investment manager at Nest, said: “We have been clear that we think Barclays can and should go further on their climate commitments, particularly in strengthening its fracking policy.

“We will continue working with Barclays over the coming years to help develop their policy, with fracking a key area of engagement.”

A Barclays spokesperson said: “With a target to provide one trillion dollars of Sustainable and Transition Finance by 2030, Barclays continues to support an energy sector in transition, focusing on the diversified energy companies investing in low-carbon and with greater scrutiny on those engaged in developing new oil and gas projects.

“We are committed to financing current energy needs, while financing the scaling of the clean energy system of tomorrow, to ensure that energy is secure, affordable and reliable.

“Barclays’ absolute financed emissions for the Energy sector reduced by 44% since 2020, exceeding our 2030 target.”

UK retail sector lost £11.3bn to payments fraud last year, figures suggest

NOT SHOP LIFTING

Josie Clarke, PA Consumer Affairs Correspondent
Sun, 7 April 2024 


More than a third of UK businesses (35%) fell victim to fraudulent activity, cyber attacks or data leaks over the last 12 months, up 37% on 2022, according to the report for financial technology platform Adyen by the Centre for Economic Business and Research (Cebr).

Retail businesses lost an average of £1,394,518 each to fraudulent activity over the last 12 months, the report said.

Luxury fashion retailers lost an average of £2.8 million, clothing and accessory businesses £2.6 million and health and beauty brands £1.1 million each.

In an effort to improve online sales, many retailers have opted for more lenient online returns policies.

However, many now battle high rates of chargeback fraud. If a retailer receives a fraud-related chargeback for a transaction, it means that the cardholder claims they did not authorise or participate in the transaction.

Fraud is also impacting shoppers, with 33% of UK consumers becoming a victim of payments fraud over the past year, up from 23% in 2022, a survey found.

Payment fraud is defined as a fraudster stealing someone’s credit or debit card number, or checking account data, and using that payment information to make an unauthorised purchase.

Consumers who fell victim to payments fraud in 2023 lost an average £311.09, an increase of 16% on the year before.

Adyen chief operating officer Roelant Prins said: “Fraud is a pervasive challenge for retailers, and today’s findings demonstrate how it can significantly impact profits.

“Criminals are deploying more sophisticated methods when they attack businesses, including the application of AI, and it’s therefore critical to invest in the right defence mechanisms to protect the company and customers.

“With technology in place, such as machine learning tools, retailers should be able to recognise genuine customers and spot fraudulent activity across their sales channels.”

Censuswide polled 2,002 consumers in the UK from January 15-2