Tuesday newspaper round-up: Spending review, Amazon, start-ups

The head of the Treasury spending watchdog has warned Sajid Javid that he is on track to break government borrowing rules after embarking on the biggest annual increase in spending for 15 years. Robert Chote, the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), said the chancellor had set a course for the public finances that would probably breach a Conservative manifesto pledge to deliver balanced budgets by the mid-2020s. – Guardian

Amazon received €241m in tax credits last year that it can deduct from future bills for its European business, despite efforts by authorities in Brussels to ensure the company pays more tax. Amazon Europe, which is based in Luxembourg and aggregates the billions of pounds of sales the retailer makes from individual countries across the continent, received the credits after reporting a pre-tax loss of €493m in 2018. Sales rose 11.6% to €28bn. – Guardian

All but the most brazen companies aim to win their customers’ trust. But for businesses supplying life-saving products, failure to deliver means much more than just a lost sale. Patients on prescription medicines rely on a complex web of local professionals, wholesalers and multinationals with convoluted supply chains to get them the drugs they need. More than three million prescriptions a day were dispensed in England alone in 2017, according to NHS Digital. – Telegraph

A campaigner who has compiled evidence of alleged signature forgery by banks has told the National Crime Agency that it would be a “betrayal of the public” if the claims are not investigated. The Treasury select committee asked the law enforcement agency, which leads the battle against organised and economic crime, to meet Julian Watts, who claims that banks are guilty of industrial scale forgery of documents, including those used in home repossessions. – The Times

Business creation in Britain slumped last year, research has found. The number of new start-ups fell by almost 42,000, or 12.9 per cent, compared with 2017, an analysis of official figures revealed. The study from the Enterprise Research Centre, a joint venture from Warwick and Aston university business schools, suggested that the slowdown may reflect uncertainty linked with Brexit. The researchers also said that a continuing lack of clarity could have dented the growth ambitions among some more established companies. – The Times