Thursday newspaper round-up: Inflation, Post Office, public sector

(Sharecast News) - Rishi Sunak is at risk of missing his flagship target to halve inflation this year, one of Britain's leading economic forecasters has warned, as households are left thousands of pounds worse off amid the cost of living crisis. Sounding the alarm over the hit to living standards, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said the soaring price of food and other basic essentials meant inflation was on track to remain persistently high for the rest of this year. - Guardian The Post Office is facing a government investigation after paying bonuses to executives for supplying evidence to the public inquiry into the Horizon computer system scandal. Kevin Hollinrake, the business minister, has demanded an "immediate explanation" from the Post Office after parts of chief executive Nick Read's £450,000 bonus were linked to providing "all required evidence and information on time". - Telegraph

Britain's bloated public sector is nearly twice as large as official figures suggest, economists have said, after the Tories failed to stem its relentless growth over the past 13 years. Analysis by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr) suggests that around 10.6m people are employed by the state - far more than the 5.7m typically cited by the Government. - Telegraph

Shares in Carl Icahn's conglomerate fell sharply after it revealed that federal prosecutors had been in touch to request information a day after a short-seller alleged that it was operating a "Ponzi-like economic structure". The veteran American activist investor has forcefully pushed back against the report from Hindenburg Research, pledging to "vigorously defend" his business and branding the criticism "fundamentally flawed". - The Times

About 1.6 million households and businesses were paid a total of almost £11 million under a scheme that rewarded them for cutting their power usage at peak times last winter. National Grid, the company responsible for keeping the nation's lights on, said the energy savings under the "demand flexibility service" were equivalent to the amount of electricity needed to supply about 10 million homes for an hour. - The Times