(Sharecast News) – People who were trapped in poverty before the pandemic have suffered the most financial damage during the crisis, according to a report warning the government that more support is needed to help hard-pressed families. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) said those who had been struggling to make ends meet before March last year were more likely to work in precarious jobs or sectors of the economy that had been hardest hit by lockdowns. – Guardian
Morrisons has become the first UK supermarket to break the £10 an hour pay barrier just as the spotlight is being shone on poor pay levels in an industry where workers are in the frontline of the pandemic. The Bradford-based supermarket said it would guarantee pay of at least £10 an hour with the new deal, which starts in April, ushering in a significant pay increase for nearly 96,000 colleagues. Its minimum hourly pay now stands at £9.20 an hour. – Guardian
The end of the stamp duty holiday will leave hundreds of thousands of buyers poorer and bring the housing market boom to a crashing halt, experts have warned. Campaigners are calling on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to extend the tax break from its current end date of March 31 to prevent chaos from engulfing the market and derailing Britain’s post-Covid recovery. – Telegraph
The cost of shipping goods from Europe to the UK has risen sharply this year, raising the prospect of higher prices for French cheese, German sausages and other imports together worth tens of billions of pounds. The average cost of transporting a lorryload of goods to Britain from Germany was 26 per cent higher in the first week of 2021 compared with the average for the third quarter of last year, according to Transporeon, which tracks freight flows. – The Times
Investors in the failed Woodford income fund have missed out on a multimillion-dollar payout from the $1.5 billion takeover of Kymab, the largest acquisition of a private UK biotechnology company. Sanofi, the French drugs group, agreed this week to purchase Kymab for an upfront payment of about $1.1 billion. The purchase price could rise by up to $350 million, depending on future milestones. – The Times
