Andy Burnham ‘angry’ over water company bill increases; Sports Direct owner buys Harvey Nichols – as it happened

Live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as regulator says five companies can raise bills to pay for infrastructure for new housing and datacentres Andy Burnham has committed to keeping water bills down. So he is fast-approaching the point when he will have to do something about it, now that he is prime minister. On Thursday he accused water companies of treating their customers “as a bottomless source of funding” for the industry’s failings, after proposals that will push households bills even higher were approved. Millions of households in England and Wales will face higher bills after water companies were given the green light to spend £3.4bn more than planned, including to support new homes and datacentres. The big UK economic news of the day was the 0.4% GDP growth in the second quarter. The Guardian’s economics editor, Heather Stewart, writes: double quotation markEconomic growth slowed in the second quarter of the year, as the disruption unleashed by the Iran war began to take its toll, official figures show. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said GDP expanded by 0.4% in the three months to June, down from 0.6% in the first quarter,