A savings example for the banks

Well, that's what people say, but they ought to take a look at National Savings & Investments before jumping to such conclusions. It today published its figures for the fourth quarter to the end of last December, and they show that it has 27 million customers and, as of last November, it accounted for 8% of the country's saving.

However, that is not the story. The thing of which it can be justly proud is that in the flight to safety following the banking collapses of last autumn, it took in between three and four times as much money as it had budgeted for - £11 billion rather than between £3 billion and £4 billion - without systems falling over, money getting lost, customers not getting confirmations or any of the failings of which the public sector is so often accused. It took the extra business in its stride. National Savings is a remarkable success story but because it is in the public sector, it does not do to acknowledge it.

Its entire strategy seems driven by a desire not to make waves - not to be too aggressive in attracting money lest this disrupt the savings market and upset the banks, which constantly lobby to keep to a minimum the amount of money it should be targeted to raise, and not to upset the Treasury by spending too much on raising the cash in case it becomes uncompetitive against the cost of selling gilts.

It was planning to deliver £13 billion of net money over the five years to 2012. But being a safe haven amid the turmoil means it is likely to deliver £11 billion this financial year alone.

One might expect an enthusiasm to build on this success, given the need to encourage saving in the longer term, and the Government's pressing need for money. But next year's target, to be announced in the Budget though not yet agreed with the Treasury, is likely to be back down to about £4 billion - so as not to cause disruption or provoke accusations of unfair competition in the savings market.

One can see the point - although it does rather clash with Government policy towards the National Lottery. It seems it is all right to take a quarter of the money from the public as it pursues the ridiculous odds of a Lottery win, but it is not OK for NS&I to compete vigorously against the Lottery with Premium Bonds.

The climate is odd for Drax

Board members, who for obvious reasons do not want to be named, say that one of the major casualties of the recession so far has been companies' willingness to incur additional expense to burnish their green credentials.

With some notable exceptions, climate change has never become a primary concern of those running British business, particularly when they were direct suppliers to the public and therefore could not use it to gain a marketing or PR advantage. Now the recession has given them another excuse. Climate-change policies may have been nice to have but they are by no means a necessity, so they figure not at all in boardroom thoughts.

This growing indifference has been mirrored in the price of carbon traded on the European Climate Exchange, which has plunged in recent weeks to levels where it provides almost no incentive to companies to change their behaviour for the better. To some extent, this is a result of the difficulty the European Union still has with its allocation of permits to polluters, not wanting to hit them so hard they go out of business or move to a more accommodating country, while still making them pay something as a cost for pollution.

But the bigger problem has been falling industry activity, which by definition means less energy is consumed, and makes it easy for companies to operate within their ceilings - and that means they have no need to buy additional carbon emission permits in the market.

All this leaves Drax, which operates Europe's biggest coal-fired power station and which reported yesterday, in a rather odd position. This is one boardroom were climate-change policy is top of the agenda. Its generation accounts for about 7% of Britain's energy and, although in the public mind coal is the great Satan, the equipment it has to remove carbon and sulphur means it compares favourably with other forms of fossil generation in terms of emissions, and has the edge on cost.

There is therefore a logic that says we should build more coal-fired plants to alleviate the country's looming energy gap. But given how the Government has struggled to utter the word nuclear as a climate-friendly source of new power generation, one can only imagine its difficulties with the word coal.