Thursday newspaper round-up: Thomas Cook, UK car industry, supermarkets

Taxpayers would have to foot the bill if another tour operator followed Thomas Cook into insolvency, the National Audit Office has warned, after a tourism industry fund that paid out £481m to repatriate and refund holidaymakers hit by the collapse was left severely depleted. In a report on the shock demise of the 178-year-old tour operator last year, the NAO said the state had already borne £156m in costs, a figure it said was likely to rise in future. - Guardian

Britain’s automotive industry may never recover from the coronavirus crisis, experts have warned, after responsible for more than two-thirds of the UK’s annual vehicle production paused assembly lines. Honda, BMW and Toyota joined a rapidly lengthening list of carmakers halting European operations on Wednesday, Jaguar Land Rover, the UK’s largest auto firm, as the only one still operating UK plants. – Guardian

Boris Johnson said a temporary universal basic income was one of several measures under consideration to help workers left in dire financial situations by the coronavirus crisis. Universal basic income involves regular fixed payments by the state to everyone in a country with no strings attached, irrespective of their income. The idea remains controversial among economists and relatively untested outside of pilot programmes in countries such as Finland. – Telegraph

One of the big supermarkets has called on the government to relax competition law and other legislation to allow stores to work together to ensure food reaches the shelves. David Potts, chief executive of Wm Morrison, said that some of the “legislation around competition works well in peacetime, but not so well in wartime”. He said that supermarkets working together would benefit customers during the pandemic and that “competition law can act as a handbrake”. Businesses are turning to crowdfunding as a way to win support from loyal customers to help them and their staff deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. – The Times

Crowdfunder and Enterprise Nation, a small business network, have launched a service that allows companies to pre-sell products and services which can be redeemed once the crisis has ended or eased. The aim is to keep cash coming in when a business is forced to close temporarily or its trade is drastically reduced and to support staff. Crowdfunder said it would cover all platform and transaction fees of listing campaigns during the pandemic. – The Times