Here are the stories making the business headlines across Scotland and the UK this morning.
If you see a shoplifter, arrest them yourself, police minister says
The policing minister has urged members of the public to help tackle the epidemic in shoplifting by making citizen’s arrests when they see thieves stealing goods in supermarkets.
Chris Philp also called on retailers to instruct their security guards to intervene when it is safe to do so and use the power of arrest.
He said that members of the public, particularly shop staff, must see it as their role to help the fight against shoplifting, warning that otherwise it would “just escalate”.
Although he wanted to see faster and better police responses to shoplifting, Philp accepted that they “can’t be everywhere”.
Click here to read more in today's Times.
Food price inflation will keep slowing, says Tesco boss
The pace of rising food prices will continue to slow this year, easing the pressure on households, the UK's biggest supermarket chain has said.
Tesco boss Ken Murphy said things remained "challenging" for customers but that the grocer would "continue to lower prices wherever we can".
The BBC reports the chain reported a big jump in profits for the first half of the year as wholesale costs came down.
It added that customers were buying more own-brand products to save money.
Brookfield bucks trend to back renewables in $1bn deal
The Canadian investor chaired by Mark Carney is buying a family-run British renewable energy company in a deal worth nearly $1 billion.
Brookfield Asset Management said that its second Global Transition Fund was acquiring Banks Renewables, which is controlled by Durham-based businessman, Harry Banks.
It appears to be a vote of confidence in Britain’s renewables sector at a time when several wind developers are abandoning or halting proposed investments amid concerns over soaring costs and punitive taxes.
The deal is understood to have an enterprise value of almost $1 billion including debt and is expected to net more than $500 million for the Banks family, whose Banks Group has interests spanning property, transport and mining. Some of the proceeds are expected to be ploughed into Banks’ new housebuilding division.
Household gas bills expected to rise under heat pump rollout
Household gas bills could rise under plans to boost the roll-out of heat pumps across the UK, a government minister has said.
Lord Callanan, minister for Energy Efficiency and Green Finance, said he wants to move green levies from electricity to gas in order to discourage the use of traditional home boilers.
The green levy shift on household energy bills will make electricity cheaper and gas more expensive.
It's reported in the Telegraph up to 15% of the domestic electricity bill is made up of green levies, adding around £200 in annual costs.
Last year, just 55,000 heat pumps were sold in the UK, significantly lower than the Government’s target of 600,000 installations a year by 2028.