Brexit blow to workers as real pay starts to fall again - as it happened

Here’s a round up of the day’s events.

• Regular pay growth (excluding bonuses), was 1.9% in February, lower than the 2.3% rate of inflation in the same month. It was the first time since August 2014 that inflation has outpaced wage growth and signalling that a Brexit-related squeeze in UK living standards is underway (the fall in the value of the pound since the vote is pushing up inflation).

• Over the broader three-month period to the end of February, regular pay growth slipped to 2.2% from 2.4% in the three months to January. Pay growth including bonuses was unchanged at 2.3%.

• Unemployment remained at a 42-year low of 4.7%, and the employment rate also stayed at the highest level since records began in 1971, at 74.6%.

• Tesco reported that profits have once again broken through £1bn, after annual sales grew at its UK chain for the first time in seven years. Shares are down more than 5% however, making it the FTSE 100’s biggest faller.

• Sports Direct named Alex Balacki, a store manager in Barnstaple, as its first employee representative to attend board meetings, as the retailer attempts to clean-up its reputation.
• Over in Brussels, the IMF’s Christine Lagarde warned Donald Trump’s protectionist stance could result in a “self-inflicted wound” for the global economy.

• European markets were subdued. The FTSE 100 is currently down 10 points at 7,356. The pound is up 0.06% against the dollar at $1.2495.
  

On that note, it’s time to close for the day. Thanks for all your comments, and we’ll be back tomorrow.

Back in the UK, the inaugural international FinTech conference has been taking place in London.

The sector - which includes things like contactless payments, banking apps and online crowd funding - employs more than 60,000 people in the UK and is worth nearly £7 billion to the UK economy according to the Treasury.

The government is hopeful that Britain will remain a frontrunner in FinTech after it has left the EU.

However, the chancellor Philip Hammond warned delegates that it won’t come easy:

We can’t remain the number one place for FinTech and the other technologies of the fourth industrial revolution by simply relying on our ingenuity, talent and openness, we have to go out and get the business.

We will have to strive and graft and fight to seize the opportunities - and make the most of them.

That means growing and strengthening the areas – like Fintech – in which we enjoy a competitive advantage… while we need to continue to attract the brightest and the best from around the world to these shores. We must also do better at nurturing and developing the home-grown talent to drive our economy forward in the future.

Our vision of an outward-looking, Global Britain will deliver the high-skilled, high-wage economy of the future that will power the higher living standards we all want to see for future generations.

Christine Lagarde has used a speech in Brussels to criticise Donald Trump’s protectionist stance.

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund said that putting up trade barriers would amount to a “self-inflicted wound” for the global economy.

More recently, we worked together to ensure that the great recession did not become another Great Depression. Cooperation through a multilateral framework has benefited every country. Fostering more resilient growth therefore requires more international cooperation – not less.

Restricting trade would be a self-inflicted wound that disrupts supply chains, hurts global output, and inflates the prices of production materials and consumer goods. And low-income households are hurt the most as they consume the largest part of their incomes.

Read the full story here:

The Resolution Foundation has analysed the ONS figures and says real pay is falling in sectors representing 40% of the workforce.

Stephen Clarke, economic analyst at the thinktank, says:

Britain’s brief pay recovery has come to an end. Forty per cent of the workforce are experiencing shrinking pay packets according to the latest figures, in sectors ranging from accommodation to finance and the public sector. Many more will join them in the coming months as inflation continues to rise, with pay across the economy as a whole set to have fallen in the first three months of 2017.

While the National Living Wage is protecting the lowest earners from this squeeze, boosting wages across the rest of the economy is the big living standards challenge of this parliament.