Business groups claimed Britain's banks were not supporting small enterprises yesterday despite figures showing major lenders edging towards their lending targets.

John Longworth, a veteran retailer, has been named as the new director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, taking over from David Frost, who has run the business organisation since 2003. Mr Longworth has held posts as a senior executive at Asda and Tesco, and is also non-executive director of the Co-operative Group Food Ltd and Nichols plc.

There's no mistaking the voluptuous hourglass form of Arne Jacobsen's 1955 Model 3107 chair, better known as the Series 7. So the Danish designer must have seen it as a fitting tribute when the Swinging Sixties' most infamous set of curves straddled his creation for a nude photo shoot, sending sales through the roof, where they remain to this day.

One of the country's leading business organisations has warned the government that its plan to reduce the Budget deficit will take longer than expected because growth will be slower than the official estimates and may even "fizzle out".

Workers are taking fewer days off sick, with a record 45% having no days off ill at all in 2010, according to research today.

The Government has dropped controversial plans to cut housing benefit for long-term dole claimants, it was confirmed today.

New employment laws coming into force over the next four years will cost industry a "staggering" £22.8 billion, a leading business group warned today.

DNA samples from every man in Bristol should be screened as police continue to hunt for the murderer of Joanna Yeates, one of the city's MPs has urged.

The Government faces an "unpalatable choice" between an immigration policy that will damage the economy or the possibility of failing to fulfil a key promise, a think-tank said today.

A leading business group will today sound alarm bells about "deepening splits" in the Coalition over employment law.

There was a moment at the heart of the interview when it sounded as if Andrew Marr might have borrowed a question from David Frost – his now famous suggestion to a disgraced ex-president that there was something the American people very much wanted to hear him say. The subject here, of course, was Iraq: "To all the people, looking, watching who still feel very angry and upset about this," Marr asked, "is there anything further that you want to say to them?" Mr Blair – it won't greatly surprise you to learn – declined the invitation to play Nixon. It would be inhuman not to feel sorry about those who had died, he agreed, but no, he didn't regret the decision he'd made about war.

More than three months after the coalition Government was formed, and ministerial jobs were divided up between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, David Cameron's administration has still not appointed a trade minister to promote UK business abroad.

A majority of British businesses back the emergency Budget, according to figures released by the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), with 64 per cent supporting the balance between spending cuts and tax rises.