Thursday newspaper round-up: ONS, Saba Capital, Telegraph

(Sharecast News) - The government's statistics agency is spending £8m to hire an army of low-paid temporary workers amid efforts to fix its "virtually unusable" data on unemployment and wages in Britain. Under pressure over the quality of its data, the Office for National Statistics last month agreed the multimillion-pound deal with the employment agency Randstad to recruit interviewers to help increase the reliability of its labour force survey (LFS). - Guardian Campaigners will be blocked from "excessive" legal challenges to planning decisions for major infrastructure projects including airports, railways and nuclear power stations as part of the government's drive for economic growth. High court judges will be given the power to rule that judicial reviews on nationally significant projects that they regard as "totally without merit" - and which can currently be brought to the courts three times - will be unable to go to appeal. - Guardian

Sweden is urging Britain to club together with Northern European neighbours to purchase a fleet of mini-nuclear power plants. Ebba Busch, the Swedish deputy prime minister, said her country wanted to band together with allies to jointly order at least "10 to 15" small modular reactors (SMRs) in a bid to cut costs and share expertise. - Telegraph

Lisa Nandy, Culture Secretary, must set a deadline for a sale of The Telegraph by an Abu Dhabi fund after it made a "very concerning" call for budget cuts, Sir Ed Davey has demanded. Sir Ed, the Liberal Democrat leader, was responding to news that RedBird IMI, which was blocked from completing its attempted takeover last year, had urged Telegraph executives to make one in 10 staff redundant and abandon planned editorial investments. - Telegraph

Saba Capital's plan to take control of seven UK investment trusts has suffered a blow as the first group of shareholders to vote on its plans "almost unanimously'' rejected them. Herald Investment Trust said the proportion of shareholders who voted against resolutions put forward by Saba, a US hedge fund, represented a "damning indictment" of Saba's proposals to remove the trust's board and appoint its own choice of directors. - The Times