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Alan Pickering CBE has been appointed the independent chair of the Royal Mail Statutory Pension Scheme (RMSPS) by Postal Affairs Minister Edward Davey.

Business and Enterprise Minister Mark Prisk today announced the appointment of Lucy Armstrong as the new chair of Capital for Enterprise Limited (CfEL).

A new comprehensive and interactive calendar of key enterprise events throughout 2012 has been unveiled by Business Minister Mark Prisk.

Companies of all shapes and sizes have today been asked for their views on how to tackle unnecessary bureaucracy in company and commercial law.

Government investment in technology and innovation will enable Britain’s world leading digital businesses to benefit from future advances in technology and help them bring new products to the marketplace, Business Secretary Vince Cable announced today.

The Government today published its annual grant letter to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

The Creative Industries Council has endorsed a report into improving the skills of people working in the sector.

The Council, which is co-chaired by Business Secretary Vince Cable and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, met for the second time yesterday and was told what needs to be done to realise the full growth potential of the UK’s creative industries.

Today Foreign Secretary William Hague, joined by Universities and Science Minister David Willetts, will launch a new gateway for UK higher education institutions to build on their international success.

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There is now broad consensus across the main political parties and many business and investor groups in support of “responsible capitalism”. This precludes lavish payouts for failure or mediocrity, and addresses widening inequalities in remuneration. There is also a common understanding that Britain’s recovery from its profound economic crisis must be led by successful private enterprise and that entrepreneurs and good managers will expect competitive rewards. The debate on executive pay has to reconcile these two objectives. That is what I will try to do today.

The future of post offices up and down the country has been secured by Government action, funding and a new agreement between Royal Mail and the Post Office, Postal Affairs Minister Edward Davey announced today.

Four more businesses have successfully secured government support through the Regional Growth Fund (RGF) to create new jobs and boost growth in their local communities.

Major government/private sector campaign launched to encourage businesses to get off the ground.

Prime minister announces plans to make empty government offices available to small businesses to start up and grow.

The latest steps in reforms to the employment tribunal system were unveiled by Employment Relations Minister Edward Davey today with the announcement of a pilot scheme for two regional mediation networks for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

A new comprehensive and interactive calendar of key enterprise, entrepreneur and SME events throughout 2012 has been unveiled by Business Minister Mark Prisk.

The latest security breach from mobile provider O2 is a sign of cyber threats to come according to a panel of security experts.

Anthony Pearlgood, commercial director of PHS Datashred and chairman of the information destruction section of the BSIA, discusses how irritating office habits can affect the security of your organisation.

When the Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions published its report Revitalizing Health and Safety Strategy Statement in 2000, it revealed the shocking news that the cost to the UK of work-related ill health and accidents stood at £18 billion per annum.

LinkedIn has announced its support of the Government initiative to promote new enterprise in the UK by reducing the burden of regulation with the creation of a “Red Tape Challenge” LinkedIn Group enabling UK businesses to connect and participate in the discussion about regulations that are holding back innovative new businesses.

You’ve heard the expression “time is money”, but did you know that your energy is worth money, too? One of the biggest concerns for owners of small or medium enterprises is the waste of energy that can occur throughout a day’s work, and for good reason.

The green movement isn’t just for hippies and tree huggers anymore. The environmental initiatives that have become more popular in recent years are notably less anti-establishment and more large-scale, which means that now is the perfect time for your SME to get on board. But don’t just do it for the Earth; do it for your bottom line.

One mobile for work, one mobile for home is set to be the norm for UK employees in the years to come with less than half of the 5,000 businesses asked said they expect employees to use their personal devices at work in the future - down from 63 per cent last year.

In the run-up to the Olympics in London this summer, many businesses are looking to harness this Olympic spirit for their employees. But how can businesses translate the winning performance of Olympians to their teams?

Nearly half of UK medium-sized businesses do not believe current energy products meet their needs, yet energy is ranked as the second highest risk they face.

Inflation in the UK has fallen to 4.2%. Get the full data over time - and see how it compares to pay
• Get the data

UK inflation dropped to a six-month low of 4.2% in December, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed today - down from 4.8% for November 2011.

More precisely Consumer Price Index (CPI) measure of inflation stands at 4.2% for December. When looking at this drop it is important to remember that in September this year, when the CPI stood at 5.2%, it had never been higher in recorded history.

The Retail Price Index (RPI) measure of inflation stands at 4.8% down from 5.2% in November.

There are some important differences between these two main ways the ONS use to measure inflation. The government prefers the Consumer Price Index, which also includes services, housing, electricity, food, and transportation, but the Retail Price Index covers more items. The RPI includes housing costs and is used for many pay negotiations and used to be used for pension payments. We've included both here - just click on the links on the spreadsheet. You can get the full list of items in the inflation basket here.

We have also added in pay data - and you can see how inflation is racing ahead of average earnings.

We have gathered all the data for inflation since June 1948. Let us know what you can do with this data.

Download the data

DATA: UK inflation since the 1940s - CPI and RPI
INTERACTIVE: how we visualised the data

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Row erupts after prime minister claims that MPs had no choice but to agree to Stephen Hester's bonus are challenged by Labour

Halifax report comes amid claims that first-time buyers are beginning to return to the property market

Buying a house is now much cheaper than renting, mortgage lender Halifax has claimed, in a remarkable turnaround from three years ago when the soaring property market priced out all but the wealthiest buyers. Halifax calculates that the monthly cost of buying the average three-bed home in the UK is now £600, 16% cheaper than the £716 it would cost to rent the same type of property. That contrasts with the peak of the property market in 2008, when a mortgage on the typical home cost around 29% more than renting.

The figures come amid claims that first-time buyers are beginning to return to the property market. The biggest barrier for young buyers - the huge deposits required by lenders - is beginning to crumble as more and more 95% mortgages have become available in recent weeks. Since the start of 2012 several building societies, including Ipswich, Newcastle and Skipton, have launched first-time buyer loans that require just a 5% deposit.

Low-deposit mortgages virtually disappeared in 2009 during the credit crisis, but the number available has jumped from 70 to 95 in the last three months, according to analysis by financial information provider Defaqto.

Interest rates have also fallen, in part due to the ongoing problems in the eurozone, which has had the unexpected effect of lowering money market rates in the UK. Borrowers can now find 5%-deposit mortgages starting at 4.99%, compared with the typical 6.5% asked from first-time buyers in 2009.

Soaring rents are pushing many back into buying, according to Ben Thompson, managing director of L&G Mortgage Club, which sourced 12% of all mortgages in the UK last year. He said that during January it has witnessed a surge in applications from first-time buyers, particularly in London, Surrey, Sussex, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

"A lot of people were priced out of the market between 2003 and 2007, then, when the credit crunch came along, prices became more affordable, but they could no longer get a mortgage because of the deposits required. There's huge pent-up demand out there from potential first-time buyers."

Home ownership peaked in the UK at 71% of all households and has fallen to 67%, with the advent of buy-to-let and the financial crisis blamed for creating a priced-out "generation rent". Last year Savills forecast that the continuing "mortgage famine" would propel a long-term switch into private renting, which has doubled from 7.5% to 15% of all households since the 1980s and which it said will rise to 20% in the next five years.

HSBC this week, in its annual Moving Home Survey, that the property market is still characterised by a "can't buy, won't sell" generational divide, with many under-34s citing high deposits and fear of unemployment as reasons why they are not buying. The housing stock is also being limited by contentment amongst the over-55s with their current property, the survey found. Critics also add that many first-time buyers fail to qualify for mortgages as they are unable to meet the rigorous credit standards required since the onset of the financial crisis.

But Halifax said that a surge in rents, plus an average 11% fall in house prices since the peak, has swung the equation back in favour of buying. Martin Ellis, housing economist at Halifax, said: "The affordability gains for buyers relative to renters in the last three years have been significant. The average mortgage payment has fallen dramatically over recent years as a result of falling house prices and mortgage rates. At the same time, rents have risen due to strong demand for rented accommodation."

But Halifax added that there were only 510,000 home purchases with a mortgage in 2011, the lowest annual total since 1974 and 6% lower than in 2010. "Despite the improvement in the relative affordability of buying a home, the number of purchasers has continued to fall due to the ongoing challenges in raising a deposit and the considerable uncertainty over the prospects for the UK economy, which have severely constrained housing demand," said Ellis.

Celebrated architect Richard Rogers and his partners discuss £140m penthouses, John Prescott's ministerial 'flair' and Prince Charles's strange ideas about architecture

Richard Rogers, at 78, is not about to slow down. "I am enjoying myself, so why would I retire?" says the architect of the Pompidou Centre and the Lloyd's of London building. "I'd like to think I'll be learning a new language or something when I die."

But even a master builder can't go on for ever, which is why Richard Rogers Partnership discreetly changed its name, some five years ago, to Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners. "We wanted," explains Rogers, "to avoid the situation where the name of the practice is someone who died 100 years ago. Architecture is a living thing. If I want to leave something to the future, it has to be able to change – but retain something of the ethos that we built up over 50 years."

Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour are here today too, flanking Rogers protectively like affectionate, respectful and, just occasionally, faintly exasperated sons. (If Rogers is known for running his practice like a family, he is also famous among those who know him for a close and warm family life – one into which tragedy came late last year with the unexpected death of one of his sons, Bo.)

Leeds-raised Stirk, 54, is trim and wiry, with a narrow tie, dark suit and spiky hair; he is softly spoken and emphatic. Harbour, 49, is a rangily tall redhead, brought up in the West Country, with an easy grin and friendly manner. Between them is Rogers, whose get-up – turquoise shirt, orange sweater and splendid, canary-coloured socks – reminds me of Madrid airport's brightly coloured Terminal 4, for which Harbour was lead architect, winning the practice the 2006 Stirling prize.

At the moment Harbour is involved in planning Barangaroo, a former container port in Sydney – the biggest piece of city-making the practice has ever undertaken. Stirk, meanwhile, is working on the new exhibition and conservation centre for the British Museum; he also designed the Knightsbridge residential complex One Hyde Park, infamous for its £140m penthouse, thought to be the most expensive apartment ever put on sale. According to Harbour, their emergence as key figures in the firm is not a revolution. "Between Graham and myself, we have put in 55 years at the practice, so we are not new at it. It's an evolution."

Could a practised eye, I wonder, tell a Stirk from a Harbour building? "I hope not," says Harbour. (Though in fact, one might contend that Stirk buildings – such as the Leadenhall Building in the City of London, and Neo Bankside, a new apartment block next to Tate Modern – tend to be somewhat orthogonal; Harbour's buildings, such as Madrid airport, more expressive and sculptural.) This self-effacing attitude to individual style comes in part from that ethos Rogers mentions. The practice is run on idealistic principles; it has a manifesto that asserts the architects' responsibility towards "contributing to the welfare of mankind, the society in which we practise and the team with whom we work". (It is a moot point, of course, whether the creation of a building containing a £140m penthouse contributes to the welfare of society, a point to which we shall return.) Each Monday morning the staff gather for a discussion of current projects, in which everyone from the highest to the lowest can express views – along the lines of an art-school "group crit" session. There is a profit-share system, and the salaries of the directors cannot rise above a certain proportion of the lowest paid in the firm.

Rogers starts waxing lyrical about the profit-share scheme in answer to a question I put to Harbour about why he has never left the practice, which he joined as an architecture graduate in 1985 "to help out on the Lloyd's building for a couple of months". (Stirk joined in 1983, also cutting his teeth on Lloyd's, which was in December accorded Grade I listed status.) After listening patiently for a little bit, Harbour says: "Actually Richard, that's not the primary reason I am still here. The primary reason I am still here is … every Monday morning it is exciting to come into work because you never quite know what's going to happen, and the debate about architecture and the enthusiasm of the people here is infectious. Richard has been fantastic at encouraging us. I have always felt I can go anywhere within the practice, and I am more excited about tomorrow than yesterday. It's the intellectual environment that I have enjoyed. When I was at college I learned about learning. Here I learned about architecture." He suddenly gets modest. "Of course I know very little about architecture, and the older I get the less I know." He makes it sound a little cultish, as the passion burns in his voice.

Rogers tells me that "architecture is about public space held by buildings"; and civic space, both metaphorical and physical, and the architecture that holds it together, is the subject of a lecture the three are giving at the Royal Institute of British Architects on Tuesday. They gesture toward the public square outside the office, on the banks of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge in London, to illustrate what they mean. (Beside it is the famous restaurant, the River Cafe, run by Rogers' wife, Ruth.) It is privately owned land; but the architects take the view that it adds to the sum of human happiness if they don't lock it off from passersby. And that, in microcosm, is Stirk's argument about One Hyde Park. The important thing, he says, is what they didn't do: "We could have slapped up 12 storeys hard against Knightsbridge, and held the line of the street," he says. Instead, they built a series of pavilion-like structures at right angles to Knightsbridge, allowing passersby to glimpse Hyde Park between the buildings as they wander past.

According to Stirk: "We replaced one big slab building that was impermeable. The notion was to say: this is not a citadel. There are retail areas and garden areas at the base of the building. At least people can sit down on extended pavements; there is an area now where people can congregate and breathe." In short, whatever absurdities prevail upstairs, at street level it is still a better public environment than before.

The idea of the city has preoccupied much of Rogers' life as an architect and, in later years, a politician. He was chairman of the Urban Taskforce from 1998-2005, championing high-density cities; brownfield not greenfield for building. The taskforce was appointed by then deputy prime minister John Prescott, about whom Rogers has nothing but good to say. "Contrary to what everyone believed, I thought Prescott was a good minister, because he concentrated, and stuck around, and had a certain flair. It was a very important part of my life." The question of "how one builds at the density required of a city centre, and still achieves the right feel at the street scale", as Harbour puts it, is of urgent concern, they argue. "It's about humane scale in intensified development," adds Stirk. "It's about concentrating, rather than spreading," says Harbour. "You need good design to solve the problems of dense spaces."

Which is why Rogers has been speaking in the Lords about the government's draft National Planning Policy Framework. He agrees that the planning laws are due for rationalisation. But he fears the proposed reforms will loosen planning regulations too much: we could end up "like the south of France or the southern coast of Spain, with the whole south-east peppered with buildings". He agrees with the National Trust's campaign against the reforms, but from the other end of the argument – their potential effect on cities and towns, rather than just on the countryside. Cities that sprawl lose energy, he says. It's not so long ago, he warns, that post-industrial city centres, such as Manchester's, were bleak places, more or less uninhabited. Drawing residents back to the heart of cities has made them more attractive, safer, livelier. Intelligent density is the answer, with old and new buildings cohabiting gracefully, argue the architects. "Cities are about juxtaposition," says Rogers. "In Florence, classical buildings sit against medieval buildings. It's that contrast we like." Harbour adds: "In Bordeaux we built law courts right next door to what is effectively a listed historic building, and that makes it exciting. Can you imagine that in London?" There is some hope that the government will change its position – the MPs of the communities and local government committee have urged ministers, in a report published before Christmas, to drop the notion of the default "yes" to development. But the battle is not yet won, and Rogers will continue to campaign from the Lords.

The question of juxtaposition, of course, is one that has bedevilled modernist British architects in the past, particularly in relation to Prince Charles's views on architecture. In 1987, the prince spoke out against Rogers' plans for Paternoster Square near St Paul's Cathedral in a speech at Mansion House. ("You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe. When it knocked down our buildings, it didn't replace them with anything more offensive than rubble.") In 2009, he attacked them again: this time, by warning the Qatari royal family off Stirk's plans for the former Chelsea Barracks in London. The practice was sacked by the Qataris at an hour's notice, and years of work went to waste.

Rogers says: "For a long time we thought we were going to be all right, because Prince Charles had other things to think about, like Princess Diana dying. But he has some strange ideas on medicine, some strange ideas on farming and some very strange ideas on architecture. He believes architecture is something that doesn't change. And the problem is he doesn't discuss things, he makes statements." Harbour adds: "He does believe architecture can make the world a better place, so in the abstract, we have a lot in common. But if you are not prepared to debate your position..."

Rogers continues: "He loves Christopher Wren! But Wren was hated during his life because he was too modern." Harbour expands: "The irony is that his 'monstrous carbuncle' speech was made in Wren's extension to Hampton Court, which was a modern monstrosity compared to the original building." Harbour once visited the prince's pet architecture project, Poundbury, on the outskirts of Dorset, "when I was on holiday nearby". He didn't much like it.

His career, says Rogers, has never been easy. "It's been a bloody lot of work to get here. After the Pompidou Centre, my partner was threatening to become a taxi driver. We went through some pretty difficult times. I thought I was going to have to give up architecture at least three times, not because I wanted to leave architecture, but because it seemed to want to leave me." Despite the Prince of Wales's best efforts, though, Rogers has kept at it. And, says Harbour: "He has many years to go." He adds: "I am still younger than Richard was when I joined the practice." I ask why it matters; is it that he will feel truly grown up when he reaches that age? "A deadly concept, growing up," pitches in Rogers. Harbour adds: "What is work? It's part of your life. The idea of stopping work, if you are fortunate enough to love it, is something I don't understand – and I know Richard doesn't."

Rogers, Stirk and Harbour's lecture on Cities and the Language of Architecture is at the RIBA, London W1, on 31 January

More than 500 jobs were on the line at Serco yesterday after the outsourcer which makes its money by cutting its customers' costs took a look at its own wage bill.

The banknotes printer De La Rue yesterday said its trading is in line with its expectations but it will go ahead with planned cost-cutting.

James Murdoch, the under-fire chairman of BSkyB and number three at his father's News Corporation, is quitting the board of British drugs giant GlaxoSmithKline.

An American deal maker, who made his name in the 1990s by investing in struggling businesses such as Eurotunnel and Euro disney, has emerged as a potential saviour of the Coryton refinery.