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tv   Talking Business  BBC News  July 21, 2024 12:30am-1:01am BST

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hello and welcome to talking business. here's what's on the programme this week. the work towards a decade of national renewal has begun. a new uk government that's put economic growth front and centre of their policies, from reforming the planning system and getting britain building to a new national wealth fund aiming to develop a modern green energy economy. but with the public finances in the worst state since the second world war and an economy struggling to get off the ground, can the reality match the rhetoric? i'll speak trade and tech with the president of the british chambers of commerce, energy transition with the head of green investment at macquarie, and finance with the chairman of london's city within a city, canary wharf. plus, as ai makes ourjobs easier, could it also make them more prone to cyber attack? we'll find out about keeping our tech safe with the boss of one firm making code more cautious.
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welcome to the programme. now, there's a new government here in the uk, with the labour party in charge for the first time in m years. voted in with a healthy majority, they come into office with the promise of delivering change, with the economy at the forefront. but it is an economy under strain, rebounding after a shallow recession last year. growth is still in short supply — something the new finance chief is hoping to change. chancellor rachel reeves, the first woman to ever hold thejob, said there's no time to waste. sustained economic growth is the only route to the improved prosperity that our country needs, and to improve the living standards of working people. where previous governments have been unwilling to take the difficult decisions to deliver growth or have waited too long to act,
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i will not hesitate. ok, so growth — not exactly a unique target. all governments want growth, not least because a growing economy boosts the treasury with higher tax receipts. but how do you turn the ambition into action? well, the plan from the new labour government includes an overhaul of the planning system, unlocking development and fast—tracking major projects. they also want to create a new national wealth fund, designed to attract investment in infrastructure and new green energy projects. but it is ambitious — the uk economy has been sluggish since the global financial crisis of 2008. growth slumped during the pandemic, and only now it looks to be heading consistently in the right direction. historically, the uk economy has been hindered by a productivity problem, with uk worker output below that of workers in the us, france and germany.
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some economists say underinvestment is the problem. the uk has lagged behind its peers, sitting at the bottom of the g7 league table of total investment for 2h of the last 30 years. but the economy is showing some signs of turning a corner, notching up the fastest pace of growth in over two years in the three months to may, which, alongside a significant cooling in inflation — that's back to around the 2% bank of england target — is finally some good news, but fixing stagnant living standards and boosting public services will require significant funding. the government says economic growth is the key to funding that rebuilding. and so key to that growth is trade, and particularly the relationship with the uk's biggest trading partner, the european union. for more, i spoke to the president of the british chambers of commerce. martha lane—fox, good to have you with us. thank you for being on the programme. and let's start there first of all — the government
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laying out its ambition for the economy. they've put a lot of weight in growing the economy to solve some of the country's problems right now. what do you make of that as a strategy? well, i think it's fundamental. it's fundamental for the businesses that we work with at the british chambers, but it's also fundamental for all of us if we're going to be able to get the kinds of services that we want. so it's tough, but i think it's the right focus. and the government has options — it can pull all sorts of different levers to try and make that economic economic growth easier. where should their focus be right now? well, i think they've laid out their intentions, and clearly have a huge amount of energy around planning reform and green energy and to a degree, kind of digitisation. i think that we at the bcc and our 100,000 members around the world also think those planks are right, butjust would continue to urge the government to focus on closer ties to the european union and a really global outlook for britain as well.
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what do your members want to see? what can a government deliver, a new government? when you talk to your members, what is it that they want? mostly they're worrying about their own business. and normally, even in places that have got pretty tough headwinds, ifound that businesses are really pragmatic, just want to be able to get on and do the work of growing, but that does involve, to a degree, just stability, just giving business that certainty that there's not going to be a rotation of different fiscal rules and different personalities. they love not having a ton of regulation to worry about. and, you know, whatever your political views, it's just a truth that brexit has led to more bureaucracy for many businesses, so i think that is a strong concern. and i think the other thing i'd say is real focus on people and skills. and i think that's another area that government can be helpful because businesses are finding it hard. well, the new government, um, not committing to any
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sort of further talks with europe about re—entry... no. ..or rejoining the european union. so what should the uk's relationship with the eu look like? the bcc has consistently tried to take the politics out of this and not make a political point. and, as you say, it's not on anybody�*s horizon at the minute to try and have a second referendum and go that route. and i think what we'd like to see is just much closer ties through better customs regulation, through clearer customs regulation, through less bureaucracy, and talking a little bit about some veterinary services. but it can go much deeper — just having a bit more of a detailed conversation and a reality check about some of the onus that businesses are finding post—brexit. you're a tech entrepreneur. you helped devise some of the government's digital strategies, didn't you ? and i wonder what more can be done to encourage that growth of what is such a valuable sector
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for the uk economy. how does the uk capitalise on its strengths there? we have had massive success in the uk in building up the digital start—up environment. it is unrecognisable from 10 to 20 years ago. money coming into the country, usvcs coming here — sequoia, andreessen horowitz — you know, putting money into our start—up environment. another huge part is how you make sure that our own non—digital—first businesses, if you like, are also using the tools of the modern age to make sure that they are the most competitive, both locally and also globally. i think there's a lot of the government could do, actually, to unlock that as well. helping companies manage cyber risk, helping companies with the digital skills and all of those different bits, from the start—up community to government and procurement, are part of what make a really strong digital britain. and it's notjust one sector. it now obviously cuts across all of the things that we do and all of the pieces of work that need to happen to grow the economy. martha lane—fox, it's good to have you on the programme. pleasure. nice to talk to you. another part of the
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government's plan is a new national wealth fund to help drive the green transition. so what areas are we actually talking about here? i spoke to the head of green investments at macquarie to find out. mark dooley, good to have you with us on the programme. and talk to me, first of all, about where the uk sits right now in terms of its attractiveness for green energy investment. so, the uk is a very established market for green energy investment. er, the world enjoys and—and is very satisfied with the regime that we have in the uk, the stability that we have here and the clarity of policy, forward—looking policy that we've had here for a long time. and that's made the uk a country that's very good at putting clean green electrons into the existing grid. which green industries are most exciting right now? where are you looking to place your investments in the uk? offshore wind remains the biggest, er, game in the uk, but the opportunities in new forms of decarbonisation such as carbon capture, hydrogen, the creation of an industry around, electric vehicles, gigafactories.
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these are all things that are there for us to do. there's a whole lot of nascent opportunity there, much of it with years of development work already behind it, butjust waiting for sufficient clarity on policy intervention to make that happen. now, the new government has talked about a national wealth fund designed to draw in investment. what sort of difference would that make? and it strikes me, you know, there was a question about what investors want to hear from government when it comes to projects of this scale. so, look, i've got a particular vantage point on that because the business i lead used to be the uk government's green investment bank. and there's a precedent for, i think, a very successful
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funding intervention made by a government where there was a well—defined and correctly targeted specific intervention to make really well—identified things happen. and it worked. and that's the opportunity for the national wealth fund, to identify the areas where the market could benefit from a demonstration of the investability of some of these newer technologies. the government's showing the way, maybe taking risk on some newer technologies, newer business models that the private sector is still a little bit wary of. but, once demonstrated, the private sector will follow in. what are the biggest hurdles when it comes to green investment, though? because the new government is talking about things like relaxing planning laws to allow more onshore wind, more offshore wind, to allow these facilities and infrastructure investments to actually get built. what do you want to see changed to make it easier for you to get your stuff off the ground? planning is a
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shades—of—grey thing. er, and we would always like it to be faster, and it is a speed limit. and there are important initiatives that have been announced by the government that could have an impact there, and that's really welcome. but the thing i would really call out is grid. 0ur speed limit, particularly on the really big offshore wind projects is how fast we can confidently predict that we will be able to connect to the grid. and the reason it's difficult is because there's massive new investment required. mark dooley, global head of green investments at macquarie, grateful for your time. thanks for being on the programme with us this week. thank you. thanks, ben. ok, so plans for growth are all well and good, but if you don't get the 0k from the financial sector, things can quickly come unstuck. to get a read on how they're seeing all of this, i caught up with the chair of london's second financial hub — that's ca nary wharf. sir nigel wilson, welcome to the programme. good to have you here. so, a new government, a fresh start, a clean slate. what does the uk economy look like? you know, talk me through the starting point for this new government. well, i think, first of all, we have to have political, intellectual honesty. tell us what you really
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think, not what you think we want to hear. and we all recognise that we... the situational analysis is the same, is that we've underperformed for a very long period of time, and we have to correct for the sins of the past, and the sins of the past, we know, are underinvestment on a huge systemic basis in housing, in education, in transport, in health care and in energy. we need to sort all that out. and my generation have to stop being the selfish generation. stop being nimbys and actually be positive — do things for our children and our grandchildren. and most of all, we have to invest £100 billion per annum every year of additional investment for ten years. and that's £1 trillion. and we have got the money to do that. it's funny you say we've got the money, because the common narrative is that, you know, the coffers are empty, the treasury is running a bit
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threadbare, there's no money for anything and it's all about growth... yeah. ..getting the economy growing and therefore filling up the treasury and getting the tax revenue in. you're telling me there is money? it's just where it's being spent? yes. i mean, i think the first point you made there is correct. the treasury's now run out of money. you know, the economy is 2.7 trillion in size, we've got 2.7 trillion of borrowing by the government, whereas the private sector — predominantly the private sector — has 6 trillion of long term capital, much of which has been misallocated over a very long period of time and underinvested in things we need to do in the uk economy. and we have to get that 6 trillion to work a bit better. and if you think we're only going to have to allocate an extra 100 billion of that per annum and all the money we can crowd in from the international investors as well into the uk, this should be a slam dunk, in that, actually, we can make all this happen. but we don't need to rely on the public finances to do that because, as you rightly
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point out, the coffers are bare right now. much better if the economy grows. if the economy grows at 3% perannum, that's going to be 80 to 90 billion of extra growth. we need, actually, big ideas, loads of investment, real growth, because real growth in per capita income, in real median wages and in productivity has pretty much been zero since 2007/2008. you talk about the need to make tough decisions. if you look at the majority that labour were handed in this election, they've got that mandate, they've got that ability to make decisions that might not be universally popular, but they can get them through. what sort of opportunities does that present? i think it's an amazing opportunity. i mean, the government has what's called call—in powers on planning. they have cpo powers. they've got to use them, because once they use them, it'll change behaviours very quickly. they've got to drive
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change across the uk, so people like me, who've been the nimbyists of the last 20, 30 years actually get out of our comfort zone in stopping things and actually suddenly realise supporting things is a solution for everyone. yeah, you used that phrase nimby — and for the uninitiated, "not in my back yard," isn't it? that's what it stands for. yeah, sorry. but, no, i mean, it's important, because you talk about honest decisions, tough decisions as well. and maybe that's been part of the problem, hasn't it, about, who is making the decision and why are they making them? do you think the decisions that have been made thus far have always been in the interests of the country? no, i think that's been the problem, is that we've made poor decisions and we've not made decisions. we've very rarely made the right decision. and i think that's self—evident to everybody. what are the hurdles? what is holding the uk back? we've talked about honest conversations. yes. we've talked about the need for difficult decisions.
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what are the hurdles that need to be overcome? ambition. i think we start with ambition. you know, if your ambition is mid—table of the championship — you know, that's not do you think this country can see the opportunity? commercially, we're miles behind, and the ability. i think we should call and help from the tech companies who of the uk. microsoft has an enormous business in the uk.
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so, we should use their basis to complement what we have in universities and young people. i see young people driving for success. they don't want to be me, they want to be some entrepreneur going forward, and that's wonderful to see. we've got to capture the energy and make sure we actually deliver the growth we need. what are the hurdles? what is holding the uk back? we've talked about honest conversations. yes. we've talked about the need for difficult decisions. what are the hurdles that need to be overcome? ambition. we need to have that aspiration and ambition for business. and we simply don't have it right now. and actually, from the investment point of view, the £6 trillion that we've got of capital, that needs massive reallocating over time so that people want higher returns from the money they put aside.
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but actually, most of these decisions are 10, 20, 30 or ao—year decisions around people's pensions. so, if you're looking over that time horizon, you should be hugely committed to investing in the future of technology, on the one hand, and actually in these long—term infrastructure assets on the other hand. clearly we haven't talked about brexit. maybe to your point about how we would like to look at the negatives in this country, we're not optimistic as a nation sometimes a .me . me claimant for difficulties. fundamentally, we have reset our relationship. what should i look out? ., ., ~' ~' our relationship. what should i look out? ., ., ~ ~ �*, look out? -- look like. it's cost of— look out? -- look like. it's cost of pass _ look out? -- look like. it's cost of pass of _ look out? -- look like. it's cost of pass of -- - look out? -- look like. it's cost of pass of -- cost - look out? -- look like. it's cost of pass of -- cost us. look out? -- look like. it's i cost of pass of -- cost us half cost of pass of —— cost us half a percentage. we now need to
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reset our relationship. we need to recognise me it should have a much more positive trading relationship and be much more embedded in europe. i would relationship and be much more embedded in europe. iwould be leading into europe, not leading into europe, not leading the way. yes, there is regulation we can change, which creates a home bias. i would like to see us work so hard in partnership. rebalancing the trading relationship. don't call it a custom union, because that creates political baggage, but he out there and actually recognise that we have letter trading relationship. i5 recognise that we have letter trading relationship. is it recognise that we have letter trading relationship.- trading relationship. is it in the european _ trading relationship. is it in the european interested i the european interested facilitate? it strikes me as a country, we might write to you and say we want a great relationship. we are not
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prepared to have freedom of movement. we still want you to send people to invest and we want to be the great place financial services. can we have it all? actually the best of things we want to. actually, you can't be too aware. what can we offer to europe? we have skills in certain _ can we offer to europe? we have skills in certain areas _ can we offer to europe? we have skills in certain areas as well- skills in certain areas as well these are relationships that we want to have for the movement of the right sort of people to the right sort ofjob. we should be encouraging that right now as opposed to discouraging, which is what done for the last few years. —— what we've done. i get a sense that people need good news. the economies are stalling all
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around the world. being close to the uk is certainly part of their success in narrative as well. so, nigel wilson, chair of the canary wharf group, thank you so much for being on the programme. thank you. and thank you. now, the tech revolution that is generative artificial intelligence promises to open up a raft of new possibilities to transform our lives. but it's also set to come with an increased risk of cyberattacks, as criminals use the same advances and harness their own ai models. well, one company that's fighting back is veracode, and for more, i caught up with its big boss. brian roche, good to have you on the programme. and i want to start with that idea of always needing to stay ahead of the cyber criminals. that battle is getting tougher, isn't it? it is, ben. thank you so much for having me. you know, at veracode, we're focused on building the most comprehensive application risk management platform that helps developers and security teams secure their software, which, you know, can't be more important at the moment, because as we've seen with the adoption and broad
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scale usage of artificial intelligence, we see both developers and hackers leveraging artificial intelligence as a means of driving efficiency and going faster. but the challenge, ben, is that as they adopt artificial intelligence, much of what they are adopting is code that's not secure. in fact, we know that 45% of the code that comes out of artificial models is not secure. so, our mission has never been more important. now, your business itself was founded by hackers, and i wonder how your business has now changed with the advent of generative ai. it is. so, you know, ten years ago, developers started to use what we call open source software. and a simple way to think about open source software is software that is available on the internet, that acts as an accelerator, that if a developer includes it in their application, they can build applications easier and faster.
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well, with the advent or the adoption of artificial intelligence, that now takes that speed benefit and quadruples it. so what you're seeing is developers are leveraging both open source and artificial intelligence and including that vulnerable code in their applications. so, ben, ourjob has never been more important, and we've never been busier trying to keep up with the vulnerabilities and enable developers to be secure at design time, so that they design their applications with security in mind. now, there's a difference, isn't there — hardware hacking and software hacking? and we've seen the number of software hacks grow significantly. and that poses a different set of challenges, doesn't it? it does. we used to live in simpler times. and when you talk about data hacking, we used to live in times when everything ran in a data centre — and often times, a company controlled their own data centre, from the machines
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to the cooling and so on and so forth. but what we're seeing now is that almost everyone has some form of cloud adoption. and in fact, what we see across our customers is that many of them have upwards of 70+% of their applications now running in cloud environments, and what that does is that extends the attack surface and ultimately the ability for hackers to exploit both the data to acquire, you know, login credentials and be able to access and steal data. so what we see now is over 65% of all of the attacks that happen are happening in cloud infrastructures, and they're not happening in data centres. so, we live in much more difficult times where we've got software running across multi—cloud environments, and we're all accessing them from our mobile devices orfrom our home networks. are you confident we can ever win this battle? or is itjust a constant game of cat and mouse? i think the way that we keep up and defend against the risk is to put in place automated mechanisms to both watch and safeguard applications as they're running in
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the cloud, so that you and i know that when we're accessing our bank account that, you know, our data and our money is secure, which is obviously a huge target for hackers. i think the future is going to be artificial intelligence, fighting artificial intelligence, and having an autonomous system and then monitoring it so that we can have the ability to react whenever we identify any kind of malicious or nefarious behaviour. aren't ai models learning all the time? brian roche, chief executive of veracode, it's good to have you on the show. thank you. thank you, ben. well, that's it for this week. i hope you enjoyed the show. don't forget, you can keep up with the latest on the global economy on the bbc website or smartphone app. thanks for watching. we'll see you soon. bye— bye. hello there. well, saturday saw some more sunshine towards eastern
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england in particular. it was warm and humid still here, with some of our temperatures rising again into the high 20s in celsius, whereas further west, it was a wetter story. plenty of thick clouds, fresher feeling conditions developing here. wer�*e all coming into that cooler feeling air as we head through sunday. there'll still be some sunshine around for most of us at times, but also some wet weather in the form of showers. and overnight tonight, we've been seeing some rain moving northwards and eastwards, showers following on behind most of the rain by dawn on sunday will be across the northern isles. still, that hang back of cloud towards eastern england and still that warm, muggy—feeling air — temperatures 16—18 celsius to start off the morning. now, many of us will get off to a sunny start to the day, but cloud will thicken as we head through the late morning into the afternoon, mostly from the west, and there'll be a scattering of showers for western stretches of the uk as well, with heavier rain moving into northern ireland later on through the afternoon, eventually to southwest scotland.
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temperatures will be more or less the seasonal average — 16—23 celsius, so quite a drop for eastern areas of england in particular. staying in that cooler air on monday, a whole host of weather fronts bringing some more wet and some windy weather at times to most of the rain, will tend to be out towards the north and west. a few sharp, thundery showers across scotland down through northwest england. a scattering of showers, but also some sunny spells for northern ireland, and it's blustery in the south where the brisk westerly wind a few isolated showers, but also some sunshine. the sunshine will help to boost the temperature — perhaps for southeast england, we could see 2a or 25 degrees in the best of that. and then, on tuesday, high pressure starts to build in, so the sunshine will be making a return across pretty much the whole of the uk. a few showers to start off the day and a few isolated showers developing as we head through the middle part of the day as well. more of a northwesterly wind, so it's quite a cool wind direction, but temperatures will be boosted by the sunshine, so rising a little higher again as we head through the day on tuesday — the high pressure, too, lasting into wednesday. so, if we take a look at our outlook for the capital cities as we head through the rest
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of the week, it's warm and it's mostly dry again on wednesday. temperatures rising a little further, but more showers on thursday and friday. bye— bye.
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live from washington, this is bbc news. israeli fighter jets strike houthi military targets in yemen in response to attacks on israel in recent months.
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donald trump speaks at his first campaign rally since surviving an attempt on his life a week ago. us presidentjoe biden says he is looking forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week, despite growing pressure to step aside. microsoft admits friday's tech outage affected more than eight million windows devices, and there are warnings criminals might try to exploit the chaos. hello, i'm sophie long. former us president donald trump has given his first campaign speech since surviving an attempt on his life a week ago. he spoke for more than 100 minutes, telling the crowd in grand rapids, michigan, he feels as if he is not supposed to be here. and they keep saying, he's a threat to democracy. i'm
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saying, what the hell did i do for democracy?

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