Tuesday newspaper round-up: Ofwat, Budget, law firms

(Sharecast News) - More than $70tn (£53tn) of inherited wealth will pass down the generations across the world over the next decade, widening inequality and highlighting the need for intervention by the G20 group of leading nations, a group of economists and campaigners have warned. In a report ahead of the G20 meetings in Johannesburg, hosted by the South African government later this month, the expert panel said the gap in global wealth between rich and poor will widen over the next decade without a permanent monitoring group such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. - Guardian Ofwat is unlawfully allowing water companies to charge customers twice to fund more than £100bn of investment to reduce sewage pollution, campaigners will allege in court on Tuesday. Lawyers for River Action say the bill increases being allowed by Ofwat - which amount to an average of £123 a year per household - mean customers will be paying again for improvements to achieve environmental compliance that should have been funded from their previous bills. - Guardian

With just weeks to go until the Budget, hundreds of potential tax and spending policies are now under debate inside No 11 Downing Street, mostly in isolation from each other, and many with contradictory impacts on growth, inflation and living standards. But as the process deepens, the Chancellor and her team need to lift their heads from the famous Treasury scorecard and focus on the big picture. - Telegraph

Almost half of shop workers are abused or attacked every week, according to a new survey showing the scale of Britain's retail crime epidemic. At least 43pc of shop floor staff said they were being routinely targeted by abusive shoppers and one in four claimed they had been physically assaulted over the past year. - Telegraph

Nearly a third of solicitors' firms have breached anti-money laundering rules over the past year, the profession's watchdog has reported, and fines totalled £1.5 million. The figures emerged a fortnight after ministers moved to strip the Solicitors Regulation Authority of responsibility for monitoring lawyers' compliance with the rules and passed the job to the Financial Conduct Authority. - The Times