Accident Specialist Hunts £100m Sale Partner

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

One of Britain's biggest providers of medical reports on negligence victims is preparing for a sale that could crystallise a £100m windfall for its shareholders.

Sky News understands Doctors Chambers, which was established 20 years ago, has appointed Cavendish Corporate Finance, an advisory firm, to sell a stake to outside investors.

Doctors Chambers specialises in the provision of expert medical advice to the legal and medical professions, principally in cases of alleged clinical negligence.

The business has performed robustly, having been buoyed by the growth of so-called 'ambulance-chasing' claims management companies.

Sources said the company was aiming to sell a stake of undisclosed size, with the proceeds likely to be partly used to fund further international expansion.

The key beneficiary of a sale is expected to be Dr Bippon Vinayak, Doctors Chambers' chairman.

In addition to its core business, which comprises a network of 5,000 medical experts, Doctors Chambers has a number of sister companies including Bodycare Services, which offers rehabilitation services; DC Life, which supplies medical screening to life assurance and occupational health clients; SmartOnline, a software company; and Document Plus, which targets solicitor and insurance clients with secure document services.

Sales during the year to March 31, 2013, the last for which accounts have been filed at Companies House, rose by 17% to £12.9m, .

In the accounts, the company said it supported Ministry of Justice proposals to establish independent medical panels for the assessment of whiplash injuries.

It added: "The company recognises that as the market has become saturated and competitors seek to increase market share there may be further pressure on margin by either higher level of marketing fees or lower prices being agreed with the insurance industry.

"Doctors Chambers are seeking to further improve the operational efficiencies and service provision to reduce any effect on margin."

Cavendish declined to comment, while Doctors Chambers could not be reached for comment.

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Heathrow T2 'Teething Problems' Warning

Passengers using Heathrow's new £2.5bn Terminal 2 (T2) for the first time today are being warned to expect early teething problems.

Bosses at the west London airport are not expecting a repeat of the calamitous opening of Terminal 5 (T5) back in 2008, which led to travel chaos.

This is because T2 opens in phases, with only 10% of its eventual capacity being reached today.

The first flight to arrive was a service from Chicago operated by the American carrier United Airlines.

The flight touched down at 5.49am, and was the first of 34 flights to and from the terminal today, involving 6,000 passengers.

Six thousand passengers will use the terminal on its first day

By the end of this year more than 20 airlines will have moved in, with 330 flights a day to 50 destinations.

T2 boasts 60 check-in gates and 66 self-check-in kiosks, 29 security lanes, 33 shops, 17 restaurants, more than 7,000 seats, 634 toilets and 42 water fountains.

John Holland-Kaye, Heathrow development director and chief executive designate, said the airport had "sought advice from other airports around the world and learnt lessons from opening T5".

He added: "Heathrow is confident but not complacent about the opening. We recognise that there will inevitably be some teething problems in the first few days.

"We will be focused on identifying and resolving issues as quickly as possible to deliver a smooth journey for passengers."

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Hollande In Plea To Obama Over $10bn Bank Fine

The French president has warned of damage to trans-Atlantic trade talks if the US goes ahead with a reported $10bn (£6bn) fine against BNP Paribas.

Francois Hollande has written to Barack Obama describing such a penalty against the French bank, for allegedly breaking sanctions, as "disproportionate".

His intervention followed a chorus of criticism of the fine from a number of key French ministers.

The New York Times newspaper reported that the governor of the Bank of France, Christian Noyer, had even visited top US officials in New York last week to warn of grave effects on the financial system if it were imposed.

Mr Hollande is set to raise the issue with his US counterpart at a G7 dinner on Thursday, a day before the pair attend ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

It is unclear whether the diplomatic pressure will delay the announcement of any fine, which was expected this week.

The case alleges BNP Paribas broke US sanctions against Iran, Sudan and Cuba as a matter of routine.

A similar case against RBS last year resulted in the British banking group paying £100m.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has previously insisted the size of the penalty being discussed was not justified or proportionate.

Finance Minister Michel Sapin told Les Echos financial newspaper that France was "ready to react firmly to protect its fundamental interests", if the US failed to be fair.

He said: "We are not defending a bank that has admitted to something reprehensible ... We must protect the stability of France's financial system to make sure that it can properly finance the economy."

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ISA Deposits Suffer Unprecedented Fall

Britons 'Draining Savings' To Stay Afloat

Updated: 7:21pm UK, Tuesday 03 June 2014

There's a received wisdom about what is happening in the UK economy. It goes roughly as follows: consumers are short on cash, their real incomes are falling and they are struggling to afford to keep their heads above water. So they are having to borrow to keep themselves afloat.

This borrowing is helping push house prices higher, which in turn is leaving the UK economy vulnerable to collapse.

It's a compelling notion, in large part because much of it is true. Apart, that is, from the central element.

Contrary to widespread assumptions, Britons are not borrowing large amounts in order to keep themselves afloat. In fact, borrowing levels remain strikingly low, according to figures from the Bank of England.

Instead, consumers are tapping into their savings at a record rate in order to finance themselves.

We have known as much since figures uncovered by Sky News late last year showed an unprecedented transfer of cash out of long-term deposits and into households' current accounts.

Our news that deposits in Britons' ISA accounts are falling at an unprecedented rate is the latest evidence of this trend.

On the one hand, it might be construed as a benign pattern: although some consumers might well be overpaying on their new house, at least they aren't borrowing enormous amounts to do so (though of course, at the margin some undoubtedly are doing precisely that).

The worry, though, is that Britons are already overextended as things are.

While the rate at which they are taking on debt is not increasing particularly quickly, it is questionable that they have paid back as much as is necessary following a long pre-crisis debt binge.

The hope is that this savings-fuelled recovery eventually transforms into a business-led recovery – but that would depend on housing market activity diminishing in the coming months.

That still shows little convincing sign of happening, which is why the Bank of England remains privately concerned about the direction the consumer sector is taking.

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Balls Calls For Sky News Debate With Osborne

By Ian King, Sky News Business Presenter

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has thrown down the gauntlet to Chancellor George Osborne to meet him head-on in a debate on Sky News.

The challenge came as the combative Mr Balls repeated his call for the Government to pave the way for more homes to be built in Britain.

He pointed out that, although house prices in some parts of the country had only recovered to peak levels seen in 2007, they had risen by 20% in London and parts of the South East during the last year.

Mr Balls said: "It does feel especially in London and the South East, there's a strong housing market that there's price inflation.

"It's fundamentally about supply and demand - if demand is going up but the supply is not keeping pace prices are rising and that can lead to instability of the past.

"If the Government doesn't do its bit to back the supply of housing, the danger is we will see interest rates going up earlier in this cycle more than the country needs and the rest of the country wants."

Mr Osborne visits the construction site for Kent's Ebbsfleet Garden City

The Shadow Chancellor, who accepted that the Chancellor's Help To Buy Scheme had been necessary to help first-time buyers onto the housing ladder, said he was nonetheless still concerned about the upper limit of the scheme - £600,000 - and that it was open to people other than first-time buyers.

He added: "I've asked the Governor of the Bank of England to keep a close eye on this, to make sure the parameters are right, but at the end of the day, it's actually about supply and demand.

"If supply is the problem, which it is, act on it. We need more affordable homes, I'm afraid a few thousand homes (more built) in Ebbsfleet isn't enough."

Mr Balls said the Government should not just leave it to the Bank of England to try and deflate the housing bubble.

Thousands of homes will be built in Ebbsfleet

He went on: "The Government has been really scaling back on supporting new homes…leaving it to Bank of England sort of says to them they'll have to use the main instrument they've got, which is interest rates.

"I think it would be dangerous for the recovery which is still in its early stages at a time when across the country and there's still spare capacity in the economy.

"To start putting interest rates and mortgage rates up now would be risky and it would squeeze the budgets in which people are still struggling - so I think the Chancellor should pull his weight."

Mr Balls also dismissed suggestions that rising consumer confidence weakened his key critique of the Government, that most households are still seeing a fall in living standards, arguing people were seeing the economy getting better but that they were not seeing an improvement in their own finances.

The shadow chancellor added: "Wages are still going up by less than prices. When the Government says the cost of living crisis is over, most people say 'not in the part of the world where we're living'.

"I think at the moment the Government seems to be patting itself on the back even though we haven't caught up to where we were in 2007. I think it's too early to say they've succeeded."

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Mobile Phone Call Costs Set To Fall Further

The telecoms regulator is proposing further cuts to charges imposed by mobile phone operators for connecting calls to rival networks.

Ofcom said mobile termination rates - as they are known - would drop to just half a penny per minute by April 2017 under its plans.

The proposal, which should result in cheaper bills for customers, follows earlier cuts which saw rates falling from about 25p a minute in 1995 to 0.8 pence currently.

A decade ago, termination rates, which apply to calls from landlines as well as mobiles, were about 14p a minute.

This wholesale charge is part of the cost of delivering calls that providers consider when they set retail prices for consumers.

Ofcom competition policy director Brian Potterill said: "The average cost of a call bundle has fallen from £40 to around £13 in real terms over the last ten years.

"We want to ensure mobile users continue to benefit from competition, which will deliver affordable services in the years ahead."

Ofcom, which said its plans would be finalised by March 2015 following a consultation period, confirmed the rates fall would affect all operators including the big four of EE, Vodafone, O2 and  Three.

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Tesco Sales Slump 'Worst in 40 Years'

Tesco's under-pressure chief executive Philip Clarke has admitted the chain's latest fall in sales is the worst he has seen in his 40 years with the group.

The 3.8% fall in like-for-like sales in the UK during the firm's first quarter marked the third successive quarterly decline for Mr Clarke and was announced  24 hours after separate industry statistics charted a continuing decline in market share for the country's biggest supermarket chain.

Tesco's boss said: "There hasn't been a quarter of like-for-like sales like this before that I can remember, but I've never seen a period of such intense transformation for the industry."

However, he moved to paint a positive picture of trading as efforts to stop customers flocking to discounters are stepped up.

Philip Clarke was stacking shelves when he began his 40-year Tesco career

Mr Clarke, who is two years into a multi-billion pound turnaround plan, blamed price cuts and a weak food market for the core UK performance but said its improved offering was making a "real difference for customers".

He added: "We are pleased by the early response to our accelerated efforts to deliver the most compelling offer for customers.

"We expect this acceleration to continue to impact our headline performance throughout the coming quarters and for trading conditions to remain challenging for the UK grocery market as a whole," he added.

Tesco, like its main rivals Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons, is facing a squeeze from discounters Aldi and Lidl.

It has responded by investing £200m in price cuts on "the products that matter most" - and Mr Clarke said sales volumes rose 28% in those areas during the quarter.

Tesco also hailed lower delivery and service charges for online delivery and enhanced rewards through its Clubcard Fuel Save initiative as measures that would boost loyalty.

The retailer said it had refreshed a further 100 stores in the period and expected a further 200 to be improved by the end of its first half - admitting the disruption will have a negative impact on sales.

While Tesco's continuing sales woes have held down its share price since Mr Clarke took over in 2011, he has repeatedly brushed off speculation about his future, despite little sign his turnaround plan is bearing fruit.

Tesco stock rose 1.3% in early trading on the FTSE 100 on Wednesday, with analysts saying the first quarter performance was slightly better than had been expected by many forecasters.

But it later turned negative following Mr Clarke's comments on future trading expectations.

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Fracking Protest At Prime Minister's Home

'Starting Pistol Fired' On UK Fracking

Updated: 1:38pm UK, Friday 23 May 2014

By Ian King, Business Presenter

Today's twin announcements from the Government mark what ministers hope will be the firing of the starting pistol on the shale revolution in the UK.

The report by the British Geological Survey (BGS), stating that there are vast reserves in the Jurassic Weald Basin beneath Kent, Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire, is a definitive piece of research that lays bare the potential for fracking in those areas.

It is likely to have as dramatic an impact in terms of attracting investor interest - both from domestic and foreign investors - as the BGS study, last year, that revealed the Bowland Basin in the north of England contained around 1,300 trillion cubic feet of gas.

The second announcement is just as dramatic.

The plan to offer a sweetener to communities affected by fracking, which will average around £800,000 per site on top of a one-off payment of £100,000 and a one per cent share of profits will, ministers hope, help overcome any anger that will be aroused by stripping land owners of the right to block fracking through use of the trespass laws.

Yet both are likely to prove explosive. The latter measure is likely to raise objections from civil liberties campaigners as well as those opposed to fracking.

And both, meanwhile, potentially reignites the row opened last year by Lord Howell, a former Conservative energy minister in the 1980s, who said that it would be better to frack in the North - where areas have been left 'desolate' by deindustrialisation - than it would be to do so in the South, where there are many more well-heeled landowners with pockets sufficiently deep to try and drag the Government or any oil and gas companies awarded licences, through the courts.

It has even been suggested that ministers deliberately held back from making these announcements until after the European and local elections.

These announcements raise the scope for more mass demonstrations against fracking in the south of England that would make those in Balcombe, West Sussex, last year look like a vicar's tea party in comparison.

The Government, however, is unabashed. These measures are likely to be one of the biggest and most important in the Queen's Speech next month.

The prize, potentially, is enormous. Even if only a tenth of the gas discovered in last year's BGS study was extracted, it would still be enough to make Britain self-sufficient in gas for the next four decades.

The reserves in the South, revealed in the latest BGS study, raise the tantalising prospect of Britain becoming a major exporter of energy - bringing in countless billions to cash-strapped Exchequer.

That is on top of the tens of thousands of jobs that would be created by a shale revolution and the sharp reduction in domestic energy bills it would bring about.

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Solo Scotland 'Faces Cuts Or Tax Rises'

By Niall Paterson, Scotland Correspondent

An independent Scotland would be forced to bring in a range of austerity cuts or tax rises to balance its budget, a leading economic research group has warned.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said new calculations suggest that, in its first year of independence, Scotland would have a budget deficit of at least £8.6bn.

Using forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the IFS said the deficit calculation was based on a deficit of 5.5%, were it to inherit a population share of the UK's national debt.

The London-based independent research group said this level of debt burden would "not be sustainable for any prolonged period".

Alex Salmond has pledged more child care help for mums who want to work

A White Paper from the Scottish government had suggested £400m cuts in defence spending and abolition of certain personal and business tax schemes.

Yet, the IFS concludes, spending commitments made by Alex Salmond, including additional child care to help women back to work, would require either tax rises or spending cuts in other areas.

At the root of its assessment is an appraisal of North sea oil and gas revenues provided by the OBR.

The Institute said any oil revenue benefit would probably be short-lived, creating a more acute long-term problem for an independent Scotland than it would for the economically diversified United Kingdom.

"One thing that the Scottish Government, the UK Government and the UK opposition have in common is the lack of detail they have provided as to how they would finish the necessary fiscal repair job from April 2016," IFS senior research economist David Phillips said.

"Our calculations suggest that an independent Scotland could expect to be running a deficit of around 5% of GDP in 2016/17, which would be larger than that facing the UK as a whole, and would necessitate tax rises or spending cuts."

Yet the Scottish government has said record investment in the oil and gas industry would mean increased output and revenues.

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Queen's Speech: Government's Agenda Set Out

A house building drive, pensions reform and a commitment to reform the EU have all been put on the agenda for the coalition in its last year.

The speech put the economic recovery at its centre, opening with a pledge to continue bringing down the deficit and cutting taxes "to increase people's financial security".

David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband listen to the speech

With the threat that the Bank of England will increase the base rate before the General Election, there is also a pledge to keep mortgage and interest rates low and to continue to promote the Help to Buy scheme.

David Cameron had suggested he could amend the scheme after Bank of England Governor Mark Carney warned in an interview with Sky News that rising house prices were the biggest threat to economic recovery in the UK.

The Black Rod knocks on the door of the House of Commons before the speech

In an attempt to tackle the housing shortage, the Government announced plans to give developers powers to push through applications without council approval and allowing the Government to sell off unused land for development.

A new garden city will also be built in the Thames estuary at Ebbsfleet in Kent to tackle the housing shortage.

The Prime Minister and his Deputy Nick Clegg claimed the measures laid out in the Queen's Speech were "unashamedly pro-work, pro-business and pro-aspiration".

The Queen leaves the House of Lords after delivering her speech

Just 11 new bills were introduced by the Queen at the State Opening of Parliament, which will bolster Labour's claims the coalition is now a "zombie government" which has run out of steam. Last year there were 19 new bills.

Mr Cameron hit back at claims there was "not enough" in the speech.

The new carriage carrying Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh

He told the House of Commons: "We're creating new laws on producing shale gas... new laws to help build high speed rail... new laws to reform planning to build more homes... we're outlawing modern slavery; confiscating assets from criminals; protecting people who volunteer; cutting red tape and curbing the abuse of zero-hour contracts.

"This is a packed programme of a busy and radical government."

The moment a page boy collapsed during the speech

Labour leader Ed Miliband said: "We would have a Queen's Speech with legislation which would make work pay, reform our banks, freeze energy bills and build homes again in Britain. A Queen's Speech which signals a new direction for Britain, not one which offers more of the same."

Pension reforms set out in George Osborne's Budget, which would mean pensioners will no longer be forced to buy annuities with their savings, were also included along with a Recall Bill which could see voters given the power to sack MPs guilty of serious misconduct.

Other measures include:

:: 5p charge for plastic bags

:: Powers to allow fracking firms to dig under private property without asking

:: Parents to face jail for emotional cruelty to children in new Cinderella Law

:: Pledge to fight to keep Scotland in the union

:: Limit to excessive redundancy payouts for public sector workers

:: Tougher sentences for people traffickers

:: Free school meals for infants

:: Fines for employers who do not pay the minimum wage

:: £2,000 childcare vouchers for working parents

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