Pulse.Assent

Secretary of State for Wales Alun Cairns is to host a roundtable with International Trade Secretary DR Liam Fox and leading dairy businesses to discuss future trade opportunities once we leave the EU.

Wales exported £14.6bn worth of goods in 2016, up 10.4% from £13.3bn in 2015, with growing non-EU markets including UAE, Canada, Turkey and China all featuring in its top 15 export destinations.

Wales continues to be a hub for global investment, with latest statistics showing the number of jobs in Wales either created or safeguarded as a result of Foreign Direct Investment projects rising to 11,000 in the last year, up from 7,000 in 2015/16.

Secretary of State for Wales, Alun Cairns said:

Wales is an ambitious outward-looking nation. Our country is home to some of the most innovative and exciting companies and products in Wales are sold right around the globe.

As part of the United Kingdom, Wales benefits from the economic security and international influence that comes from pooling our resources.

The UK Government is ready to support Welsh businesses to take advantage of every opportunity available to them to grow and expand into new markets.

International Trade Secretary, Dr Liam Fox also said:

The Department for International Trade is committed to helping Welsh businesses boost exports, find new markets and showcase their international reputation for excellence, from agriculture to aerospace.

As an international economic department we will also continue to build on the impressive increase in jobs backed by in Foreign Direct Investment, and work closely with the Welsh Government to design a future trade policy in the national interest of the whole UK.

Trade White Paper

The Trade White Paper published by the Department for International Trade establishes the principles that will guide future UK trade policy as well as laying out the practical steps that will support those aims.

These include:
* taking steps to enable the UK to maintain the benefits of the World Trade Organisation’s Government Procurement Agreement;
* ensuring the UK can support developing economies by continuing to give them preferential access to UK markets;
* preparing to bring across into UK law existing trade agreements between EU and non-EU countries, providing certainty to businesses and global investors; and
* creating a new, UK trade remedies investigating authority

Feedback from businesses can be sent to stakeholder.engagement@trade.gsi.gov.uk by 6 November.

Further information

• Latest statistics show over the last 12 months the UK secured more foreign direct investment projects than ever before, UK exports have increased 13.1% on the previous 12 months in the year to August 2017 and the current account deficit narrowed to £101.3 billion in the year to 2017 Q2, from £113.8 billion in the year to 2016 Q2.
• In 2016/17 Wales welcomed 85 Foreign Direct Investment projects creating or safeguarding over 11,000 jobs.
• Wales exported £14.6bn worth of goods in 2016.
• While Europe is a key market for Wales, non-EU countries including UAE, Canada, Turkey and China all feature in the top 15 destinations for Welsh exports of goods with the USA remaining Wales’ largest export market for goods.
• The UK Government has developed the Wales Export Guide – a document that sets out the full range of support available to Welsh businesses from the UK Government and contains inspiring stories of companies based in Wales that are successfully exporting.
• You can download a copy of the guide here

This month’s Price Paid Data includes details of more than 97,000 sales of land and property in England and Wales that HM Land Registry received for registration in September 2017.

In the dataset you can find the date of sale for each property, its full address and sale price, its category (residential or commercial) and type (detached, semi-detached, terraced, flat or maisonette and other), whether it is new build or not and whether it is freehold or leasehold.

The number of sales received for registration by property type and month

Of the 97,102 sales received for registration in September 2017:

• 72,519 were freehold, a 3.2% increase on September 2016
• 9,013 were newly built, a 21.6% decrease on September 2016

There is a time difference between the sale of a property and its registration at HM Land Registry.

Of the 97,102 sales received for registration, 27,553 took place in September 2017 of which:

• 568 were of residential properties in England and Wales for £1 million and over
• 320 were of residential properties in London for £1 million and over
• one was of a residential property in Birmingham for £1 million and over
• three were of residential properties in Greater Manchester for £1 million and over
• none were of residential properties in Cardiff for £1 million and over

The most expensive residential sale taking place in September 2017 was of a flat in the City of Westminster, London for £15,200,000. The cheapest residential sale in September 2017 was of a semi-detached property in Birmingham, West Midlands for £17,500.

The most expensive commercial sale taking place in September 2017 was in Wakefield, West Yorkshire for £39,477,000. The cheapest commercial sales in September 2017 were in the London boroughs of Harrow and Southwark, each for £100.

Access the full dataset

Notes to editors

1. Price Paid Data is published at 11 am on the 20th working day of each month. The next dataset will be published on 28 November 2017.
2. Price Paid Data is property price data for all residential and commercial property sales in England and Wales that are lodged with HM Land Registry for registration in that month, subject to exclusions.
3. The amount of time between the sale of a property and the registration of this information with HM Land Registry varies. It typically ranges between 2 weeks and 2 months. Data for the two most recent months is therefore incomplete and does not give an indication of final monthly volumes. Occasionally the interval between sale and registration is longer than two months. The small number of sales affected cannot be updated for publication until the sales are lodged for registration.
4. Price Paid Data categories are either Category A (Standard entries), which includes single residential properties sold for full market value or Category B (Additional entries), such as sales to a company, buy-to-lets where they can be identified by a mortgage and repossessions.
5. HM Land Registry has been collecting information on Category A sales from January 1995 and on Category B sales from October 2013.
6. Price Paid Data can be downloaded in txt format, csv format and in a machine-readable format as linked data and is released under the Open Government Licence (OGL). Under the OGL, HM Land Registry permits the use of Price Paid Data for commercial or non-commercial purposes. However, the OGL does not cover the use of third party rights, which HM Land Registry is not authorised to license.
7. The Price Paid Data report builder allows users to build bespoke reports using the data. Reports can be based on location, estate type, price paid or property type over a defined period of time.
8. HM Land Registry is a government department created in 1862. It operates as an executive agency and a trading fund and its running costs are covered by the fees paid by the users of its services. Its ambition is to become the world’s leading land registry for speed, simplicity and an open approach to data.
9. HM Land Registry safeguards land and property ownership worth more than £4 trillion, including more than £1 trillion of mortgages. The Land Register contains more than 25 million titles, which show evidence of ownership, covering more than 84% of the land mass.
10. For further information about HM Land Registry visit www.gov.uk/land-registry.
11. Follow us on Twitter @HMLandRegistry, our blog, LinkedIn and Facebook

UK Government Investments (“UKGI”), the Government’s centre of expertise in corporate finance and corporate governance, announces a significant strengthening of its senior management team with the appointment of four new Directors. Tom Cooper and Candida Morley join UKGI as Directors, while Michael Harrison and Henry Lloyd have both been promoted to Director from within UKGI. These appointments expand UKGI’s senior management team from four to eight Directors working with Mark Russell, UKGI’s Chief Executive Officer.

Commenting, Mark Russell said:

As UKGI activity continues to increase, I am delighted that we have been able to strengthen further and enlarge our senior management team through the appointment of four highly experienced Directors.

One of the primary attractions of working at UKGI is that we operate at the heart of government, at the point where the public and private sectors meet. As such, we welcome Tom and Candida to UKGI from the private sector and congratulate Michael and Henry on their appointments as UKGI Directors. They all bring a breadth and depth of expertise to the senior management team which will be hugely beneficial to the ongoing development of UKGI.

Tom Cooper was most recently Global Co-Chairman of M&A at Deutsche Bank where he has spent the last 8 years. He started his career at KMPG and was at UBS Investment Bank for 21 years where his various roles included Head of European M&A.

Candida Morley joins UKGI from HgCapital where she was an Operating Partner. Between 2001 – 2015 she worked at private equity fund LDC (where her roles included Chief Portfolio Offer and Chief Operating Officer), prior to which she worked at Elementis plc, 3i plc and as Director of Development at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Michael Harrison joined UKGI in 2009 from Greenhill Caliburn, the Australian independent corporate finance adviser, prior to which he worked at CSFB and BZW. At UKGI he has worked on a range of projects across Government and currently works closely with organisations including Network Rail and Ordnance Survey.

Henry Lloyd joined UKGI in 2015 having spent over 25 years in European corporate finance and M+A, including roles at JPMorgan, CSFB and BZW. At UKGI his work has included representing the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the board of The Insolvency Service and advising the Ministry of Defence on the establishment of a new Executive Agency for the delivery of the submarine programme.

For further information:

UKGI: Josh Coe – 0207 215 4787

Citigate Dewe Rogerson: Toby Moore, Jos Bieneman, Elizabeth Kittle – 0207 638 9571

About UKGI

UKGI is owned by HM Treasury but independently managed and with a Board mostly comprised of independent Non Executive Directors. It combines the former Shareholder Executive and UK Financial Investments (‘UKFI’). Working with a range of Government departments across Whitehall and operating at the boundary of the public and private sectors, UKGI’s role is to provide Government with a centre of excellence in corporate finance and corporate governance.
While enormous in its scope and diversity, UKGI’s work covers four principal areas:

• It acts as shareholder, representing Government’s interests in the stewardship of over twenty arms-length organisations and assets, ensuring their good governance, scrutinising their performance and looking to optimise their value and operational efficiency on behalf of the taxpayer. It does all of this in line with its Principles of Portfolio Governance, which set the standard for the governance of assets in the public sector;
• It continuously reviews the feasibility of and alternatives for optimising the monetisation of those Government assets held for disposal, going on to prepare and execute all of Government’s significant corporate and financial asset sales;
• It advises Government on all its financial interventions into corporate structures resulting from corporate or sectoral distress and other special situations;
• It advises Government on its major negotiations with corporates, responding to M&A and other potential transactions that have implications for the UK national interest.

The International Development Secretary Priti Patel has today welcomed London’s first African convertible bond at the opening of the London Stock Exchange. In an address to investors from London and Lagos, Ms. Patel said that “trade, investment and finance have helped to transform the prospects for the world’s poorest countries”.

In her keynote speech to the Nigerian Capital Markets and Banking Forum, Ms. Patel highlighted achievements made since the launch of DFID’s Economic Development Strategy in January, which set out the Government’s priorities for establishing new trade, investment and economic relationships, with a focus on ending poverty and supporting job creation in the world’s poorest countries.

These included:

• DFID’s continued commitment to CDC, allowing the UK’s Development Finance Institution to invest much-needed capital into thousands of African and South Asian businesses, to create millions of jobs and generate taxes;
• the partnership between DFID-backed Private Infrastructure Development Group and the Nigerian Sovereign Wealth Authority to create InfraCredit Nigeria – providing guarantees to encourage Nigeria’s pension funds to invest long-term, local currency finance into infrastructure projects;
• a £15 million investment by Financial Sector Deepening Africa, a Nairobi-based non-profit funded by DFID, in a fund allowing African firms to issue bonds in their own currencies for the first time, so they can invest, expand and create jobs, safe from the risk of currency fluctuations;
• and the announcement today that EcoBank, a CDC investee which now serves 13.7 million customers across 36 African countries, is raising $150 million of additional investment by issuing the first African convertible bond on the London Stock Exchange.

International Development Secretary Priti Patel said:

The City of London leads the world in supporting the high-growth economies of the future, with the London Stock Exchange supporting job creation and opportunities in Nigeria.

I am urging the international private sector to lead the new job creating economic revolution by investing in the long-term potential of the Nigerian market.

Ending aid dependency and creating new markets for trade, investment and inclusive growth will lead to a more prosperous world for us all.

Ms. Patel was addressing the Nigerian Capital Markets and Banking Forum, a day-long conference held by the London Stock Exchange in collaboration with the Nigerian Stock Exchange and in partnership with Afrinvest.

The CMA is concerned about the clarity, accuracy and presentation of information on sites, which could mislead people, stop them finding the best deal and potentially break consumer law.

Its investigation will examine several practices, including:

• Search results: how hotels are ranked after a customer has entered their search requirements, for example to what extent search results are influenced by other factors that may be less relevant to the customer’s requirements, such as the amount of commission a hotel pays the site.
• Pressure selling: whether claims about how many people are looking at the same room, how many rooms may be left, or how long a price is available, create a false impression of room availability or rush customers into making a booking decision.
• Discount claims: whether the discount claims made on sites offer a fair comparison for customers – for example, the claim could be based on a higher price that was only available for a brief period, or not relevant to the customer’s search criteria, for example comparing a higher weekend room rate with the weekday rate for which the customer has searched.
• Hidden charges: the extent to which sites include all costs in the price they first show customers or whether people are later faced with unexpected fees, such as taxes or booking fees.

The CMA has today written to companies across the whole sector requiring information to understand more about their practices. The CMA also wants to understand the impact that these practices have on sites’ customers so is calling on people that use them, and hotels that advertise with them, to share experiences which could be relevant to the investigation.

If the CMA finds that sites’ practices or claims are false or misleading and are breaking consumer law, the CMA could take enforcement action.

Andrea Coscelli, Chief Executive of the CMA, said:

Around 70% of people who shopped around for hotels last year used these sites and they should all be confident they have chosen the best accommodation for their needs and are getting a good deal. In today’s increasingly busy world, sites like this offer real potential to help holiday-makers save time and money searching for their ideal get-away.

To do this, sites need to give their customers information that is clear, accurate and presented in a way that enables people to choose the best deal for them. But we are concerned that this is not happening and that the information on sites may in fact be making it difficult for people to make the right choice.

That’s why we have started our investigation into this sector – to get to the bottom of these issues, see whether sites are breaking consumer law and make sure they help, not hinder, people searching for their next hotel room.

Today’s announcement follows the CMA’s year-long market study of online comparison tools, which emphasised the importance of complying with consumer law by setting out clear ground rules. They must be:

• Clear on key issues such as how they make their money
• Accurate in the information they provide
• Responsible about how they use people’s personal data
• Easy to use

All information relating to this hotel booking investigation can be found on the case page. This also sets out how people can get in touch with information on the concerns identified above.

Notes to editors

1. The CMA is the UK’s primary competition and consumer authority. It is an independent non-ministerial government department with responsibility for carrying out investigations into mergers, markets and the regulated industries and enforcing competition and consumer law. For CMA updates, follow us on Twitter @CMAgovuk, Flickr and LinkedIn.
2. The key pieces of consumer protection legislation relevant to the CMA’s investigation are the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 (CPRs) and Part 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA). The CPRs contain a general prohibition against unfair commercial practices and specific prohibitions against misleading actions, misleading omissions and aggressive commercial practices. Part 2 of the CRA aims to protect consumers against unfair contract terms and notices, and requires contract terms to be fair and transparent.
3. As an enforcer under Part 8 of the Enterprise Act 2002 (EA02), the CMA can enforce the above legislation through the courts. Ultimately, only a court can decide whether a particular term or practice infringes the law.
4. The CMA has not at this stage made a finding on whether online travel agents’ terms or practices have breached consumer protection law.
5. Hotel booking sites include sites that offer accommodation in hotels, B&Bs and hostels.
6. Media enquiries should be directed to the CMA Press Office (press@cma.gsi.gov.uk, 020 3738 6191).
7. You can view the CMA’s video about the investigation on Youtube.