The government ended a wave of public sector strikes last summer when it accepted, in full, the recommendations of independent public sector pay review bodies to increase the pay of teachers, nurses and others.

But ministers might be facing another headache over pay and the possibility of a fresh threat of strikes from some unions.

BBC Verify examines why this pressure over public sector pay and industrial action has re-emerged.

In July 2024, the new Labour government accepted the recommendations of these bodies to increase public sector pay by between 4.75% and 6% for the 2024-25 financial year.

There is a new round of recommendations from these bodies every year and they traditionally deliver in the summer.

In September 2024, the government decided to speed up the process by asking for their recommendations by the spring for how much public sector pay should rise in each sector in the 2025-26 financial year.

These have not been made public yet, but reports suggest the recommendations are for more than the health and education departments have budgeted for this financial year.

In their own submissions to the pay review bodies, the health and education departments said they could only afford to increase their pay bills in England by 2.8%.

The BBC has been told that the teachers’ pay review body has recommended a 4% rise and the NHS body has recommended 3%.

In the case of teachers, this would be above the latest 3.2% consumer price inflation forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility for 2025-26.

Because education and health are devolved, the health and education departments set budgets for spending in England only. The teachers’ pay review body makes recommendations for England only but the NHS pay review body covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Public sector pay is set through a separate process in Scotland.

The recommendation of an above-inflation pay rise for teachers is likely to be because of ongoing concerns about staff recruitment and retention in schools.

These have been raised in previous pay recommendations.

Calculations by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) show that, despite the 5.5% average cash pay rise teachers received in 2024-25, the average pay of most teachers in that year – when adjusted for inflation – was still lower than than it was back in 2010.

In the case of the most experienced teachers, pay was 9% lower than it was 15 years ago in real terms.

Official government data also shows widening gaps between the recruitment figures for teachers in specific subjects and their recruitment targets.

Just 17% of the target for secondary school physics teacher recruitment was achieved in 2023-24, down from 42% in 2019-20.

Overall teacher recruitment was 62% of the target, down from 87% in 2019-20

We do not know what all the individual pay recommendations from the review bodies will be, but Verify has done some calculations that give a rough sense of the potential impact.

Overall UK public sector pay in 2023-24 was £272bn, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The previous Conservative government had budgeted for a 2% cash increase in public sector pay in 2024-25.

And last July, Labour said the cost of meeting the full 2024-25 pay recommendations would be an additional £9.4bn.

That implies that total public sector pay in 2024-25 will have been roughly £287bn, which is around a fifth of total government spending.

So, if the total bill across the public sector for 2025-26 went up by another 3% – rather than 2.8% – that would imply the government needing to find about an extra £550m.

But if it went up by 4% it would imply the need to find around an extra £3.5bn.

The government said in the 2024 Autumn Budget that it would seek to fund any pay rises above what departments have budgeted for not by raising taxes or more borrowing but by “productivity improvements”.

In other words, departments would have to accommodate the additional pay rise by making cuts elsewhere in their budgets.

The government has reiterated this, with the prime minister’s spokesperson telling reporters in December 2024 that: “For pay awards to go beyond inflation they will have to be met by productivity improvements.”

The National Education Union (NEU), England’s largest teaching union, has already said it would resist any further effective cuts to the overall education budget.

And it is demanding any pay rise for teachers be fully funded with new money.

The NEU said in April 2025 that it would vote on taking strike action if the government stuck with its 2.8% pay offer for the 2025-26 academic year.

And when the government indicated in December 2024 that it could only afford a 2.8% pay rise in the health sector in England, the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing both said the figure was too low.

The government funded last year’s above inflation pay increase for public sector workers by increasing employers’ National Insurance contributions and Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in November that she did not want to increase taxes again this Parliament.

As for borrowing, she has left herself only £9.9bn of “headroom”, or leeway, against hitting her chosen fiscal rules in 2029-30 and taking on additional debt to pay for higher public sector pay would risk being on course to breach her rules.

But analysts also warn that it will be far from easy to pay for higher pay through increased public sector productivity.

“If the pay recommendations come in higher than what departments have planned for, that will create a budgeting challenge,” says Ben Zaranko of the IFS.

“If no additional funding is forthcoming, it will force ruthless prioritisation and tough choices elsewhere. Public service leaders are already being asked to find major efficiency savings, and there is a limit to what is realistic.”

Additional reporting by Anthony Reuben

The UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has begun hearings for an opinion on Israel’s legal duty to allow aid to Palestinians and to co-operate with the UN’s Palestinian aid agency, Unrwa – both of which Israel has barred in Gaza.

Israel stopped allowing aid into Gaza on 2 March, which it said was to pressure Hamas into releasing hostages. The UN and aid agencies say food and supplies are running out in Gaza, which Israel denies.

Last year Israel severed ties with Unrwa, accusing it of colluding with Hamas.

The hearings at The Hague are expected to last for five days, though a ruling could take many months.

Ammar Hijazi, the Palestinian ambassador to International Organisations in The Hague, opened the hearings with a disturbing and graphic testimony.

He accused Israel of a “genocidal campaign” against the Palestinians, adding that Israel’s “crimes” put Palestinians at risk of irreparable harm.

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, at times his voice breaking, hands shaking, told the judges it has “never been more painful to be Palestinian”.

He said Israel was seeking “deliberately to deprive the population in Gaza” to ensure it has “no way to survive” and that people were “trapped between death and displacement”.

He described Unrwa as a “shining example of multilateralism at the UN” and called for a place where Palestinian families could be “reunited in life rather than death”.

In a statement coinciding with the start of the hearings, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said it had decided “not to take part in this circus”.

“It is another attempt to politicise and abuse the legal process in order to persecute Israel,” he said.

Israel won’t be among the 39 countries speaking at the ICJ this week, but has provided a 37-page written submission to the court, in which it outlines the ways in which it claims Unrwa has been infiltrated by Hamas and argues that Israel is entitled to end cooperation with the organisation for the sake of its own security.

The only countries likely to defend Israel in court are the US and Hungary.

At issue are two bills passed by Israel’s parliament in October that declared Unrwa harboured terrorists, and ordered the government to end all co-operation and contact with the organisation, including the supply of visas to Unrwa international employees.

Unrwa has challenged Israel’s allegation that it knowingly has Hamas members in its ranks, or that it co-operated with the armed group.

The focus of these hearings is to aid the judges in answering the question posed by the UN General Assembly, specifically whether Israel acted unlawfully in overriding the immunities and privileges of a UN body. But with statements live-streamed around the world from the Peace Palace, home to the ICJ in the Hague – the process is being used to highlight the wider concerns and context.

In December, a vast majority of countries at the UN General Assembly voted to get the ICJ involved for a definitive interpretation of the law and Israel’s obligations.

Since then, the humanitarian situation in Gaza has got worse.

Two weeks after cutting off aid, a ceasefire which had offered some respite for Gazans since January collapsed when Israel resumed its military offensive. Israel and Hamas blamed each other for the end of the truce.

The current Israeli blockade is the longest closure Gaza has ever faced.

The UN says Israel – as an occupying power – is obliged under international law to ensure supplies for the 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza.

Israel says it is complying with international law and there is no aid shortage.

That’s something disputed by a number of humanitarian relief organisations operating on the ground in Gaza.

At the end of March, all 25 bakeries supported by the World Food Programme (WFP) there were forced to close after wheat flour and cooking fuel ran out.

According to the UN, malnutrition is spreading.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) says there are also severe shortages of medicine, medical supplies and equipment for hospitals overwhelmed by casualties from the Israeli bombardment, and that fuel shortages are hampering water production and distribution.

The WFP warned food prices had skyrocketed by up to 1,400% compared to during the ceasefire, and the shortages of essential commodities raised serious nutrition concerns for vulnerable populations, including children under five, pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the elderly.

Earlier this month, the head of Unrwa said a “man-made famine” was “tightening its grip” across Gaza.

Human rights groups argue that Israel is using the aid blockade as a form of collective punishment and as political leverage in hostage release negotiations.

Hamas is holding 59 hostages, taken when it attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people. Israel responded with a massive military campaign, which has killed at least 52,243 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

France, Germany and the UK described the blockade as “intolerable” and condemned as unacceptable remarks by the Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Katz, linking the supply of aid to political pressure on Hamas.

The Israeli foreign ministry said more than 25,000 lorries carrying almost 450,000 tonnes of aid had entered Gaza during the ceasefire, adding: “Israel is monitoring the situation on the ground, and there is no shortage of aid in Gaza.”

It also said Israel was not obliged to allow in aid because Hamas had “hijacked” supplies “to rebuild its terror machine”.

Hamas has previously denied stealing aid and the UN has said it has kept “a very good chain of custody on all the aid it’s delivered”.

The WFP says more than 116,000 tonnes of food supplies – enough to feed one million people for up to four months – is positioned at aid corridors and is ready to be delivered as soon as Israel reopens Gaza’s border crossings.

Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Mansour, warned the judges that “people are starving” while “food rots at the border”.

The hearings represent the biggest test of Israel’s compliance with international law since the ICJ’s landmark rulings in January, March and June of 2024 that ordered it to take immediate steps to allow aid to enter Gaza unrestricted and unhindered.

The UN has argued blocking Unrwa amounts to a violation of the Palestinians inalienable right to self-determination.

The ICJ judges’ advisory opinion is expected within months.

A man whose ex-partner forged paternity test results to make him believe he was the father of her child said what she did had ruined his life.

Ryan Hampson was at the child’s birth after rekindling his relationship with Beth Fernley after she forged DNA test results to make it appear there was a 99.9% probability he was the father.

Fernley, 26, of Warrington, Cheshire, admitted fraud by false representation at Liverpool Crown Court and was sentenced to 13 months in jail, suspended for 18 months.

Mr Hampson – whose name was on the child’s birth certificate – said his proudest moment was becoming a father, but when he found out it was a lie he was “left grieving over a child that was still alive”.

He called for a change in the law to allow for mandatory paternity testing before a birth is registered.

But the Home Office said there were no plans to do so.

Mr Hampson told BBC North West Tonight that he asked for the DNA test in 2019 after Fernley told him she was pregnant.

The court heard how Fernley had asked Mr Hampson for £300 towards the test, and then sent him screenshots which she claimed were from company EasyDNA.

Mr Hampson then rekindled his relationship with Fernley.

She later forged another letter when the child was a toddler.

That letter suggested the DNA company had made a mistake and he was not the father, the court heard.

When Mr Hampson contacted the firm, the forgery and deception started to unravel.

He said: “They told me that there was no record of me.

“They never sent the letters to me and they actually told me to seek legal advice because they actually thought I was a victim of fraud.”

He described feeling “shocked”, “numb” and “devastated” at the news.

“I honestly couldn’t believe it,” he said.

His mother, Claire Hampson, said it was “heart-breaking” to watch her son’s “whole world fall apart” while trying to process “the fact there’s been so much deceit not just to Ryan, but to us as well”.

Mr Hampson contacted police in July 2022 and Fernley was arrested.

On sentencing, the Recorder of Liverpool, Judge Andrew Menary, described it as “a particularly dreadful offence”.

He said when police became involved she continued to deny she had lied, in a “perpetuation of sinister dishonesty”.

Mr Hampson and his family want more recognition and punishment for paternity fraud.

“The actions that were committed were utterly dire.

“We are a victim of fraud and I felt like this should have been taken a lot more seriously.”

He wanted to keep a relationship with the child who he said he “adored” but the biological father is now back.

“The hardest thing I ever done was to let [them] go,” he said.

“I felt like it was the only right thing for me to step away and I have done that to protect [them].”

Mr Hampson said he is having counselling and with the help of his family, was working to rebuild everything that was taken away from him.

A Home Office spokesman said it took such cases seriously.

The spokesman said: “Fraud, and specifically paternity fraud, is a truly terrible crime, and those who provide false information on a birth certificate already face a criminal conviction.

“Work is under way on a new, expanded Fraud Strategy and we continue to work closely with private industry, law enforcement and tech companies to go after those committing fraud.”

However, he added: “There are no plans to change the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 to include mandatory paternity testing prior to a birth registration taking place.”

A sweeping power outage left millions of people in Spain, Portugal and parts of France without electricity on Monday, leading to chaotic scenes and widespread disruption.

A problem with the power connection between France and Spain was a contributing factor to the outage, the head of a trade body that represents Europe’s power industry said.

Kristian Ruby, of Eurelectric, told the BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight a “specific incident with an interconnector between France and Spain” occurred on Monday.

Mr Ruby said this “meant the Spanish grid was disconnected from the broader European grid”.

He added that the interconnector incident was unlikely to have caused the outage on its own and that there were “likely to have been other elements in this equation”.

A day of widespread disruption saw trains cancelled and evacuated in some regions, and traffic lights stop working as delays mounted at airports.

As of Monday evening, 11 trains remained stranded, Spanish Transport Minister Oscar Puente said.

With shops, homes and restaurants plunged into darkness – and some people stuck in lifts – Spain’s electricity network said by mid-afternoon that restoring power could take several hours.

By Monday night, 50% of power had been restored across Spain, according to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. While Portuguese energy provider REN said electricity had been restored to 750,000 customers.

But a state of emergency remained in place, with regions able to request the special status.

Sánchez said the cause of the outage was still being investigated and warned against speculation, while Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro said there was “no indication” of a cyber attack.

The first reports of an outage began around midday (10:00 GMT) on Monday and its impact quickly escalated.

As the scale of the disruption became clear, residents of Madrid were warned to stay put, keep off the roads and not to call emergency services unless “truly urgent”.

A Spanish operator said power restoration would take up to 10 hours, while Portugal’s power firm REN said getting back to full power could take up to a week.

Queues formed at cash machines as card payments were affected by the outage, and there were reports that some petrol stations are closed.

When the blackout hit the Madrid metro station network, commuters were left confused and panicking. One resident, Sarah Jovovich, described the sense of confusion underground when the lights went off in a metro station.

People were “hysterical” and “panicking”, she told the BBC. “It was quite chaotic really.”

Mobile phones had stopped working and nobody had any information, she said.

When she left the metro station and emerged into the streets, she found the roads gridlocked with heavy traffic. “No-one understood anything. Businesses were closed and buses were full,” she said.

The outage also left a number of people stuck in lifts.

Emergency workers were called to 286 buildings to free people trapped inside elevators in the Madrid region, the head of the regional government, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, told the television station Antena 3.

Spanish media reported that some hospitals had implemented emergency plans, including halting routine work, news agencies reported.

By early evening and after several hours of blackouts, residents in some parts of the country reported the lights were back on.

Power was being restored “in several areas of the north, south and west of the [Iberian] peninsula”, the Spanish grid operator said.

The authorities in Spain and Portugal were on Monday night still trying to work out what caused the power cuts.

“There are no indications of any cyberattack” at this point, the President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, said.

As panic spread earlier in the day, residents of Madrid were warned to stay off the roads.

In a video on social media, the mayor of the Spanish capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, told residents to “keep their movements to an absolute minimum and, if at all possible, to remain where they are. We want to keep all roads clear.”

People should only call emergency services if it is “truly urgent”, he said.

“If emergency calls go unanswered, go to the police and the fire stations in person, where they will try to deal with all the emergencies.”

The country’s nuclear power plants automatically stopped when the blackout hit, and the Spanish oil company Moeve said it halted operations at its oil refineries.

People were left stranded on trains in difficult to access areas, with Transport Minister Puente saying there were issues with coupling locomotives.

Speaking to the BBC, Gabriela Chavez said she had been travelling between Seville and Madrid via train when the power went out and the AC and toilets stopped working.

“They have let everyone off the train but we have no idea how long we will have to wait for,” she told the BBC on Monday. “People at the top of the hill have flagged down cars who have dropped off water and crisps for us, which is kind [and] people from the village have come to drop off supplies for us.”

Flights were also impacted, with delays and cancellations at some airports. EasyJet said it was experiencing some disruption to operations at Lisbon and Madrid. It said the situation was “fluid” and told customers to check local advice.

As of Monday evening, aviation data company Cirium said 96 flights departing from Portugal – and 45 from Spain – had been cancelled.

Businesses have been severely affected. Some Ikea branches in Spain switched to backup generators and stopped customers from entering its stores.

The Madrid Open Tennis organisers have decided to cancel Monday’s event.

Elsewhere, Andorra and parts of France were also hit, but the Balearic and Canary Islands were not affected.

The first sign of trouble Peter Hughes noticed was when his train to Madrid started to slow down.

Then the TV monitor and lights went off. Emergency lights switched on, but did not last, and the locomotive ground to a halt.

Four hours later, Mr Hughes was still stuck on the train 200 kilometres (124 miles) outside of Spain’s capital. He had food and water, but the toilets were not working.

“It will be getting dark soon and we could be stuck here for hours,” he told the BBC.

The massive power cut that stranded Mr Hughes triggered chaos across Spain and Portugal, and also impacted Andorra and parts of France, from about midday local time (10:00 GMT).

Traffic lights shut off. Metros closed. Businesses shuttered and people joined queues to get cash as card payments did not work.

Jonathan Emery was on a different train halfway between Seville and Madrid when the cuts hit.

For an hour, he sat on the train, the doors closed, until people could pry them open to let in ventilation. Half an hour later, passengers left, only to find themselves stranded.

That was when people from local villages started coming and dropping off supplies – water, bread, fruit.

“Nobody is charging for anything, and word must be getting around in the local town because people just keep coming,” he said.

Commuters in Madrid were left confused in the dark when the blackout hit the city’s metro station network. One resident, Sarah Jovovich, was getting off the train when the lights went out.

People were “hysterical” and “panicking”, she told the BBC. “It was quite chaotic really.”

Mobile phones had stopped working and nobody had any information. Once out of the metro station, she found the roads gridlocked with heavy traffic.

“No-one understood anything. Businesses were closed and buses were full,” she said.

Hannah Lowney was halfway through scanning her grocery shopping at Aldi when the power went out in the Spanish capital.

People were coming out of their offices and walking home because they could not tell when the buses were coming, Ms Lowney said in a voice message sent to BBC Radio 5 Live.

“It’s a bit disconcerting that it’s the whole country, I’ve never experienced this before,” she said.

Mark England was eating lunch in the restaurant of the hotel where he is staying on holiday in Benidorm when “everything went off and the fire alarm started going off and the fire doors started closing”.

In an international school in Lisbon, the electricity flickered on and off for a while, then gave up, teacher Emily Thorowgood said.

She kept teaching in the dark, the children in good spirits, but lots of parents were taking their children out of school, she said.

Will David, a Brit living in Lisbon, was having a haircut and beard trim in the basement of a barber when the power went down. The barber found him a spot by the window upstairs to finish the cut with scissors.

“The walk home felt very strange, both with the lack of traffic lights meaning a complete free-for-all for vehicles and pedestrians on the roads – as well as so many people milling around outside their places of work with nothing to do,” he said.

Initially, mobile phone networks also went down for some, leaving many scrambling for information.

Curtis Gladden, who is in La Vall D’Uixo, about 30 miles from Valencia, said it was “scary” as he struggled to get updates about what was happening.

Eloise Edgington, who could not do any work as a copywriter in Barcelona, said she was only receiving occasional messages, could not load web pages on her phone and was trying to conserve her battery.

An hour and a half after the power went out, one resident of Fortuna, in south-east Spain, said her husband was driving around, trying to find a petrol station that could supply fuel to run a generator and keep their fridge powered.

“We are worried about food, water, cash and petrol in case this goes on for a couple of days,” said Lesley, a Brit who has been living in Spain for 11 years.

Locals “have more to worry about” than the Madrid Open tennis tournament being suspended, she said, adding there is “very little news about what’s happened”.

Mr England said walking down the street in Benidorm, a “majority of shops are in darkness and shuttered or have people on the entrances saying you can’t come in. There’s no cash machines, no traffic lights so it’s strange.”

After Mr Gladden’s phone signal returned after about two hours, he and others ventured out to cafes, but found “nothing is working – we came to get some food and a drink but they can’t cook without electricity”.

Within two hours, Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica said it was beginning to recover power in the north and south of the country.

But two-and-a-half hours after the cuts, Madrid’s mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida still urged all residents to “keep their movements to an absolute minimum and, if at all possible, to remain where they are”, in a video recorded from the city’s integrated emergency security centre.

At 15:00 local time, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pulled together an “extraordinary” meeting of Spain’s national security council.

Red Electrica CEO Eduardo Prieto said at a news conference shortly afterwards that it could take “between six and ten hours” to restore power.

Just before 16:00, electricity flicked back on in Malaga. By 17:00, the grid operator said power was being restored “in several areas of the north, south and west of the [Iberian] peninsula”.

Portugal’s power firm REN gave a more dire prediction, saying that it could “take up to a week” before the network was back to normal.

A state of emergency was later declared across Spain, with regions able to request special measures.

But by Monday evening, Sanchez said 50% of power had been restored across Spain, while REN said electricity had been restored to 750,000 customers. Many, however, remain without power.

Knock on effects continue: Back-up generators at airports kicked on, allowing most flights to leave on time, but some have been unable to operate.

Tom McGilloway, on holiday in Lisbon, was due to return to London on Monday night, but as of early evening did not know what would happen.

He said for the time being people were getting drinks and food – but vendors told him they would only be able to keep working until the batteries ran out on their payment terminals.

“If I need to book a hotel if the plane is cancelled, I don’t know how I can do it if payments are down,” he added.

“My partner’s parents are trying to get petrol so they can pick us up to take us back to Alentejo but many petrol stations are closed or not taking payment. We might be stuck with no plan for where to stay tonight.”

Spanish violinist Isaac Bifet went to a rehearsal in the morning at the symphony orchestra in Madrid. But the building was all dark and most of the other orchestra players hadn’t turned up because they were stranded with no transport.

People without cash were particularly stuck, he told the BBC, because online payments systems were down.

The day without power was “strange” and “a little medieval”, Mr Bifet said. But “the atmosphere was actually pretty nice.”

And with the electricity still out in his apartment, he spent the evening drinking beers with friends by candlelight.

Additional reporting and research by Andree Massiah, Kris Bramwell, James Kelly, Bernadette McCague and Josh Parry

Young people have told the BBC they are finding it harder than ever to get a job, with some graduates frustrated at being turned down for roles at supermarkets.

The government says getting more young people into work is a priority but UK job vacancies are at their lowest level in nearly four years.

The British Retail Consortium (BRC), which represents supermarkets, told the BBC young people would be hit hardest as firms cut back on hiring because of rising employer costs and forthcoming changes to workers’ rights.

Faisa Ali Tarabi, 24, from Bolton said she had gone through Aldi’s recruitment process only to be told there was no suitable vacancy.

She has a degree in accounting and finance from the University of Salford and a masters in management from Manchester Metropolitan University

Looking for work since she finished her masters in January 2024, she estimates she has applied for around 2,000 roles.

“I’ve been without work for 15 months now, and to be honest, I’m not just looking for work with my degrees now. I’m trying to get whatever I can for the time being.”

Faisa says she applied for a job at an Aldi warehouse in March 2024 but she showed the BBC an email from the store’s recruitment team saying: “You’ve done really well so far, however we do not currently have a vacancy that fully meets your requirements.”

It said “all is not lost though” and said recruiters would be back in touch if a potential vacancy came up in the next 12 months. She says she has not heard anything since. The BBC has asked Aldi for a comment.

In February we reported that more 16-24 year-olds were not in work, education or training at the end of 2024 than at any point in the past 11 years.

That is 13.4%, or almost one out of every seven people in that age range, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Faisa was one of hundreds of people who commented on this report on BBC News TikTok saying their unemployment was not for want of trying.

“I check every day, there are no jobs,” one user said.

Another said: “Finished my uni degree and can’t find one job within the field I studied for.”

A third user posted: “Young people aren’t fussy we literally can’t even get hired cleaning toilets.”

The number of jobs on offer in the UK fell to 781,000 in the first three months of the year, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Some experts believe the rising cost of employing people is making businesses hold back on hiring new staff.

In April the rate of employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) went up and so did minimum wages across different age groups.

Business groups have also called for urgent changes to the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill over concerns it could hit hiring.

Under the new law being scrutinised in the House of Lords on Tuesday, company bosses will be required to offer a zero-hours worker a guaranteed-hours contract based on the hours they clock up during a 12-week period.

The biggest concern among retail HR directors is that this risks making it much harder to offer people part-time jobs, according to a BRC survey.

It surveyed HR directors at 30 businesses, together employing 585,000 retail workers.

Just over half said the law change would result in a reduction in staff numbers in their business, while 61% said the new law would reduce flexibility in job offerings.

BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said: “Almost 250,000 jobs have been lost in retail over the last five years and many major retailers have already announced further job cuts on the back of increased costs of employment which kicked in in April.”

She said part-time roles were down by 200,000 since 2017.

“These roles, which provide vital entry points into work for students, carers and returners, are set to be hardest hit,” she said.

“In its current form the Employment Rights Bill could backfire, putting the brakes on hiring, or worse still, putting retail job numbers further into reverse.”

In November we spoke to Amy Wilkes, 23, from Coventry who was struggling to find a job after getting a degree in criminology, policing and investigation.

She says she applied for supermarket roles but did not get a response.

“It was feeling impossible,” she says. “What really hurt me was the not hearing back because you don’t get any feedback to tell you where you’re going wrong.”

After seven months Amy secured a job as a support worker, which she will start in July.

“It was a surreal moment when I found out. I was in absolute shock, quite emotional but very thrilled,” she says.

Her biggest piece of advice to others looking for work is “don’t give up”.

“I know it’s really hard but there is a job out there for you,” she says.

“Think about what you can offer – that helped my confidence to think about myself and knowing my value and what I could bring to a company.”

A government spokesperson said its new “youth guarantee” was “providing every 18-21-year-old in England with access to an apprenticeship, quality training and education opportunities or help to find a job”.

It said its decisions, including to raise employer NICs, were necessary to “stabilise the public finances” to fund services like the NHS.

They added that business could claim employer NICs relief for some eligible staff including those aged under 21 and for apprentices under the age of 25.

1. Search beyond a 40-mile radius – Remote, hybrid and flexible working open up opportunities further away.

2. Use key words in your searches – Online algorithms will pick up on daily searches and send you more of the same.

3. Don’t wait for a job to be advertised – Contact a manager at a business that you like the look of as you never know what opportunities might be coming up.

4. Sell your skills – Use social media sites like LinkedIn which showcase your skills and experience. Other platforms like X and Instagram can prove useful when touting yourself out to potential employers as well.

5. Get learning – While you’re on the hunt for a job see if there are ways to fill gaps in your CV with free courses, volunteering or shadowing.

6. Celebrate the small wins – Set personal targets, like a certain number of jobs to apply for in a week or a number of cold emails to send, and acknowledge the little wins along the way to keep your spirits up.

You can read tips from careers experts in full here.

A first-of-its-kind satellite due to launch on Tuesday will be able to see through clouds and leafy canopies to assess how they are protecting the planet from climate change.

The Biomass satellite, from the European Space Agency, will “weigh” the Earth’s forests, revealing how much planet-warming carbon is being stored within trees and therefore kept out of the atmosphere.

Until now the amount of carbon stored by the 1.5 trillion trees in the planet’s rainforests has been impossible to calculate.

Led by British company Airbus, the project hopes to help scientists more accurately model climate change and track rates of deforestation.

The satellite is due to be launched at 10:15 BST from ESA’s Kourou station in French Guiana.

It has been affectionately named “space brolly” for its giant 12m diameter antenna which expands outwards.

The antenna will use radar with a very long wavelength – allowing it to see deeper inside forests and reveal branches and trunks obscured by the canopy.

“Most radars that we have in space today take wonderful images of icebergs, but when they look at forests they see the tops of the forest, the little twigs, the little leaves, they don’t penetrate down into the forests,” explained Dr Ralph Cordey, head of geosciences at Airbus.

“But what we found was that by using a much longer radar wavelength, we could see down into the depths of trees and forests,” he said.

The 1.2-tonne satellite will use an approach not dissimilar to that used in a CT scan, and analyse slices through the trees on repeat passes to build up a picture of how much woody material is present.

It is this material that can be used as a proxy for the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide stored.

Currently scientists have been measuring individual trees and trying to extrapolate, but this presents a “huge challenge” said Prof Mat Disney, professor of remote sensing, at University College London.

“Our current understanding is really patchy, because it’s really, really difficult to measure,” he said. “Essentially, what we’re talking about is trying to weigh the amount of carbon that’s stored in one and a half trillion trees across the tropics.

“Satellites are really the only way you can do that consistently.”

On the ground measurements will continue to take place after the satellite is launched to verify the data it is sending back.

Despite years of testing, the launch will not be straightforward.

“Certain things on the satellite are big, that includes its big 12-metre, deployable antenna. It’s a bit like deploying an umbrella in space, only a very big one, so we will be looking for that to happen smoothly,” said Dr Cordey.

Airbus brought in engineers from the American company L3Harris Technologies to their site in Stevenage to oversee the construction of the antenna-reflector.

L3Harris are specialists in these large, unfurlable systems – expertise which is not currently possessed in Europe.

If the launch is successful, the team is hoping to produce the first maps within six months, and will then continue to gather data for the next five years.

These annual maps will not only show how much carbon is stored but how much is being lost through deforestation.

“The kind of observations that we’ve had for 50 years from [other] satellites like Landsat are affected very heavily by clouds. And in tropical regions, we have clouds a lot of the time, so you may not see a chunk of tropical forest,” said Prof Disney.

Another advantage of the longer wavelength of the Biomass satellite is that it can penetrate clouds giving a consistent, comparable view of a forest from one year to the next.

It is this outcome which has motivated the scientists who have worked on the project for more than 20 years.

“It’s exciting, because it’s going to tell us about how something that we perhaps take for granted,” said Dr Cordey. “Our forests, our trees, how they are contributing to the processes which govern our planet, and in particular, the processes behind climate change which are so important to us today and for the future.”