Wall Street banking giant Goldman Sachs revealed today that staff earned a total of 15.4 billion US dollars (£9.6 billion) in pay and bonuses last year - equivalent to around £270,000 per employee.

Unemployment has soared by 49,000 to 2.5 million, with a record number of young people out of work, new figures showed today.

David Cameron pledged to succeed where Tony Blair failed yesterday as he launched a new phase of the Coalition Government's sweeping plans to reform public services.

The Government cannot afford to delay essential reform of Britain's public services, David Cameron warned today.

The spectre of rewards for failure returned to haunt the City yesterday as it emerged that Gartmore chief executive Jeffrey Meyer will depart from the company with a £5m pay-off after its rescue by rival Henderson for £335m – £465m less than the company was worth when it floated on the London Stock Exchange.

The controversy over bankers' bonuses intensified yesterday as it emerged that the Lloyds chief executive, Eric Daniels, is likely receive a £2m bonus – close to his £2.3m maximum – before he leaves the taxpayer-backed bank on 1 March.

David Cameron and Ed Miliband clashed over bankers' bonuses in the House of Commons today, as the Labour leader accused the Prime Minister of applying "one rule for the banks and another for everybody else".

Bosses getting huge pay rises while workers have their wages squeezed is a recipe for "desperately low morale" in companies, TUC general secretary Brendan Barber warned today.

Unions are gearing up for a demonstration in the spring against the Government's massive cuts in public spending, predicting it will be a "huge" national event.

The leader of North Korea held out a rare olive branch in his New Year message yesterday calling for a "lasting peace" on the Korean peninsula. However, Kim Jong-il tempered the goodwill by warning that his country's military would also continue to prepare itself for fighting through "prompt, merciless and annihilatory action".

The former banker investigating ways to get more women executives appointed to Britain's boardrooms will today give his strongest indication yet that quotas have been ruled out.

Ed Miliband is warning Britons to be braced for the pain of deep spending cuts – and accuses Coalition ministers of being callous in how they wield the axe.

Consumers could soon be paying a higher tax rate than the UK's biggest banks, following changes to corporation tax and VAT in 2011, according to the Trades Union Congress.

Business leaders today urged the Government to delay planned changes to the retirement age, warning that firms faced "huge uncertainty" and greater risk of tribunal claims if they went ahead.