Transport secretary says ‘no evidence of malign activity’ behind UK airport disruption – business live | Business
Published: 2025-07-31 13:02:25 | Views: 13
UK minister says 'no evidence of malign activity' behind airport disruption
Transport secretaryHeidi Alexander has said there is “no evidence of malign activity” behind the computer issue that caused disruption at UK airports on Wednesday.
Alexander spoke this morning to Martin Rolfe, chief executive of Nats, the company tasked with running UK airspace, about the issue.
She posted on X, the social network:
I have spoken with @NATS CEO Martin Rolfe who provided further detail on yesterday’s technical fault. This was an isolated event and there is no evidence of malign activity.
I have spoken with @NATS CEO Martin Rolfe who provided further detail on yesterday’s technical fault. This was an isolated event and there is no evidence of malign activity.
Key events
Canada's Brookfield to buy out British insurer Just Group for £2.4bn
On the FTSE 250 mid-cap index, there is one standout share price mover: insurer Just Group has soared by 68% in Thursday’s trading.
That is because the trillion-dollar Canadian investment group Brookfield has agreed a £2.4bn deal to buy it – yet another example of a North American take-out of a big British-listed company.
Brookfield said it would combine Just Group with its own insurance company, Blumont, to “create a leader in the UK annuity and life insurance space”. The Just brand will remain in place.
Just Directors, who were advised by bankers at Evercore and J.P. Morgan Cazenove, unanimously recommended shareholders accept the offer.
John Hastings-Bass, chair of Just, said:
The Just board is pleased to recommend the acquisition by BWS, which delivers certain value for shareholders at an attractive cash premium. The acquisition reflects the strength of Just’s business and the significant financial and strategic progress the Just management team, led by David Richardson, has delivered in recent years.
The Just board also welcomes BWS’s strategic plans for Just, which it believes will benefit existing and future customers, Just employees and the UK economy through investment in important productive assets.
Microsoft 'reducing competition' for cloud services in UK
Microsoft’s software licences are reducing competition in the UK cloud services market, according to an investigation commissioned by competition authorities.
The investigation by a panel for the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said that the UK should designate Microsoft and Amazon’s cloud services as having strategic market status, which would allow the regulator to impose conditions on their operation in Britain.
A huge range of businesses and the government rely heavily on cloud service providers such as Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud to host their website and data storage remotely, rather than having to set up their own data centres.
However, the CMA launched an investigation into the sector in 2023, and the panel found that the UK cloud services market is “not working well”, in part because:
“Microsoft has significant market power in relation to several software products because customers are unable or unwilling to switch away from them and Microsoft has moderate to high market shares in respect of each of them.
Microsoft is able to harm Amazon and Google’s business through limits placed on customers who use its services, the panel said. The inquiry found:
Microsoft’s licensing practices have the effect of reducing competition in cloud services markets by adversely impacting the competitiveness of AWS and Google in the supply of cloud services, particularly in competing for customers that purchase cloud services which use the relevant Microsoft software as an input.
Reuters reported that a Microsoft spokesperson said the report “misses the mark again, ignoring that the cloud market has never been so dynamic and competitive, with record investment, and rapid, AI-driven changes. Its recommendations fail to cover Google, one of the fastest-growing cloud market participants.”
Amazon also said “clear evidence of robust competition” had been disregarded.
But Google said the conclusive finding that restrictive licensing harmed cloud customers and competition was a “watershed moment”. “Swift action from the DMU is essential to ensure British businesses pay a fair price and to unleash choice, innovation and economic growth in the UK,” said Chris Lindsay, Google Cloud’s vice president for customer engineering EMEA.
The UK may be ploughing ahead with offshore wind, but across the Atlantic things have rarely been less auspicious for the industry.
Donald Trump appears to genuinely hate wind farms. And that has already had big negative results for wind projects in the USA.
But never fear, Samuel L Jackson is here. We do not usually repost companies’ advertising campaigns on the business live blog, but this is a notable turn for Sweden’s Vattenfall.
(Language warning: this version is tastefully bleeped out; unbleeped here!)
Scotland grants permission for world's largest offshore wind farm
RWE's Gwynt y Mor, an offshore wind farm located eight miles offshore in Liverpool Bay, off the coast of North Wales. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
The Scottish government has granted permission for the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, 38km off the nation’s east coast.
The Berwick Bank wind farm will aim to provide 4.1 gigawatts of power – enough for more than 7.5m homes – in the outer Firth of Forth off the East Lothian coast.
The decision was welcomed by SSE, the company hoping to develop the wind farm. However, SSE is yet to make the final investment decision, pending the granting of a favourable energy price by the government.
Offshore wind will be crucial in the UK government getting anywhere near energy minister Ed Miliband’s target for a net zero electricity grid by 2030 – although it is thought unlikely by some experts that the target can be met.
The government sets the energy prices that wind farm developers can earn through contracts for difference (CfDs). CfDs top up wind farm earnings when energy prices are too low, and reclaim money when they are too high, in a crucial calculation to determine the viability and profitability of energy projects.
Stephen Wheeler, managing director, SSE Renewables said he wants “the most ambitious CfD scheme yet through the upcoming AR7 auction round”. He said:
The Scottish government’s decision to grant a consent order for Berwick Bank offshore wind farm is hugely welcome. At over 4GW of potential capacity, Berwick Bank can play a pivotal role in meeting the mission of clean power 2030 for the UK and achieving Scotland’s decarbonisation and climate action goals.
Berwick Bank has the potential to rapidly scale-up Scotland’s operational renewable energy capacity and can accelerate the delivery of homegrown, affordable and secure clean energy to UK consumers from Scottish offshore wind, helping meet the UK’s clean power ambition by 2030.
Another aspect of Rolls-Royce’s strong financial results today was the improvement in its power systems business.
Power systems – diesel generators and things like big boat motors – has been relatively unloved of Rolls-Royce’s three main divisions: its commercial jet engines business has boomed since recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, while its defence business has benefited from the huge increase in weapons spending. Meanwhile, power systems was struggling for some time.
From the report this morning by Kalyeena Makortoff and yours truly:
Rolls-Royce’s power systems business had a significant increase in interest from datacentres, which the chief executive, Tufan Erginbilgiç, confirmed was linked to the boom in artificial intelligence.
Orders for datacentres rose by 85% compared with last year. The company expects a 20% increase in datacentre orders every year to 2030, having forecast annual growth of 15-17% as recently as February.
And on top of the three engines all running on full blast, Rolls-Royce also has the prospect of small modular reactors – if it can make them work.
You can read the full report here:
Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary, has added that flights are now resumed across the UK after the computer incident.
She posted on X:
I know that any disruption is frustrating for passengers. Flights are now resumed and I am grateful to airlines who are working hard to get people to where they need to be. I will continue to receive regular updates. Passengers should check with airlines before travelling.
UK minister says 'no evidence of malign activity' behind airport disruption
Transport secretaryHeidi Alexander has said there is “no evidence of malign activity” behind the computer issue that caused disruption at UK airports on Wednesday.
Alexander spoke this morning to Martin Rolfe, chief executive of Nats, the company tasked with running UK airspace, about the issue.
She posted on X, the social network:
I have spoken with @NATS CEO Martin Rolfe who provided further detail on yesterday’s technical fault. This was an isolated event and there is no evidence of malign activity.
I have spoken with @NATS CEO Martin Rolfe who provided further detail on yesterday’s technical fault. This was an isolated event and there is no evidence of malign activity.
Yorkshire Water has been fined £865,000 for pumping a million litres of chlorinated water a day into a stream, killing fish during a month of pollution.
The pollution was caused by an incorrect alarm, whose level was set too high to register that chlorinated water was flowing into the water.
The incident happend at Ingbirchworth water treatment works, which provides 90,000 people in Barnsley and South Yorkshire with drinking water, and is fed by Ingbirchworth and Royd Moor reservoirs.
Jacqui Tootill, water industry regulation manager for the Environment Agency in Yorkshire, said:
This pollution was not caused by an unforeseen event or extreme weather. The systems were simply not robust enough and this wouldn’t have happened if proper checks had taken place.
We expect full compliance from water companies and are committed to taking robust enforcement action where we see serious breaches.
We’re pleased Yorkshire Water has now been dealt with by the courts following our investigation.
Back on the UK air traffic disruption, the Guardian’s transport reporter, Gwyn Topham, has some more detail on the meeting between minister Heidi Alexander and Martin Rolfe, the head of the Nats air traffic control company.
It is understood that Alexander will not press Rolfe to consider his position.
Most of the disruption from the brief stoppage came at Heathrow. A total of 84 departures and 71 arrivals were cancelled by 10pm on Wednesday evening, and some inbound flights were diverted to European cities.
You can read the full report here:
A worker with Denver Water prepares to pass a new copper water service line from a residential water meter to the water main. Photograph: Brittany Peterson/AP
The latest market to be disrupted by Donald Trump is that for copper, a metal crucial to pretty much anything that runs on electricity.
Trump had threatened a 50% tariff on copper imports, only to limit it to copper pipes and wiring in an announcement last night. That meant a lot of traders who bought up copper metal in the US are now sitting on stockpiles that that are worth a lot less.
The price of Comex copper electronic commodity futures is down 22% today to its lowest since April.
The price of US copper futures dropped like a stone after Donald Trump appeared to backtrack on a threat to impose 50% tariffs. Photograph: LSEG
Steve Clayton, head of equity funds at Hargreaves Lansdown, an investment platform, explains it well:
Copper markets were upended overnight when tariff arrangements were announced that exempted key grades of copper products from import tariffs in the US. Previously, markets had anticipated tariffs of up to 50% would be imposed, prompting a rush to move physical copper into the US ahead of the tariff’s introduction. That in turn had pushed the price of US copper futures sharply higher in recent months compared to similar contracts trading in London. The sudden realisation that there was no need for the market to be so dislocated sent US copper prices tumbling back down toward the London benchmark, leaving US buyers nursing heavy losses.
