Travellers cheques and foreign currency will also be available electronically

Travellers cheques and foreign currency will also be available electronically.The set-top box will also link televisions to the Internet, eventually giving access to billions of pages of text information. At first this will be limited to a "best of the Internet" service.. GEC yesterday positioned itself to combine its Marconi defence electronics business with that of Thomson-CSF of France whichever of the two government-approved bidders succeeds in taking over the company. Lord Prior, chairman of GEC, said that it had signed memoranda of understanding with both the Alcatel Alsthom-Dassault consortium and the British Aerospace- backed Lagardere group, the two candidates selected to bid for Thomson. The move follows last month's decision by the French government to veto a direct takeover bid for Thomson-CSF by GEC on grounds of "national security". It was the second time in four months the French had rejected a foreign bid.GEC already has joint ventures with the groups bidding for Thomson-CSF. It owns a 50 per cent stake in GEC Alsthom, the Anglo-French power engineering and transport company, and has a space joint venture with Lagardere.Separately, it was confirmed that BAe will fund up to pounds 300m of Lagardere's bid. BAe also has a joint venture with Lagardere's Matra division in missiles.Marconi and Thomson-CSF are Europe's two biggest defence electronics companies and together would form a combination capable of competing on a more equal footing with US giants such as Lockheed-Martin.

Lord Prior said the agreements signed yesterday with the two consortia left it well positioned to take part in any reorganisation of Europe's electronics defence industry.GEC would be prepared to put a large part of Marconi's operations into a combined company although it would keep the naval warship business, which owns VSEL in Barrow and the Yarrow yard on the Clyde separate.The French government was due to select the winning bidder by early July but the timetable may have been affected by the decision to call an election.. BG, the renamed British Gas, will lobby the Government in an attempt to delay the next stage of domestic competition, which the Conservatives had aimed to start in Scotland and the north of England in October. The issue is understood to have already been put to the new energy minister, John Battle, before the general election and is expected to be followed up in briefings with BG over the next few weeks. BG owns the pipeline network, TransCo, and has claimed it cannot introduce complex computer systems, which track customers as they switch supplier, in the planned timescale. The call for a delay to competition comes after BG failed to persuade Clare Spottiswoode, the gas industry regulator, to drop her plan to bring forward domestic competition with a fourth trial area this year.The original aim had been to start the full national roll-out of competition in 1998, though the precise timing had never been clear. Ms Spottiswoode also wants national competition to start in full by next April.Ian Lang, former President of the Board of Trade, announced the October trial area, involving some 2 million homes from Scotland down to Teeside in the North-east, as one of his last decisions at the DTI. However, he opened the issue to consultation within the gas industry.BG has introduced new computer systems for each trial area, leaving at least 10 more to be replaced before full competition is completed. An industry source said: "The agenda has been changed half-way through by the regulator.

Meeting the October deadline is not as simple as that."The earlier trial areas, which cover about 2 million homes in the south of England, have already resulted in Centrica, the demerged BG supply operation, losing more than 200,000 customers.Rival independent gas companies are largely in favour of a quicker national roll-out, arguing that BG has already proved its computer systems can cope with the change.Roger Turner, former managing director of United Gas and one of the leading advocates of competition, said if the Government agreed to the delay it would send conflicting signals about its consumer-led approach to regulation."A delay wouldn't fit in well with Labour's commitment to ensure an open European energy market by the end of the UK's EU presidency and its aim to put the consumer first."Mr Battle also faces calls from regional electricity companies (RECs) to delay start of power competition, due to begin from next April. One REC, which did not want to be named, wants an early meeting.. The strong pound is chipping chip away at growth in manufacturing, official figures suggested yesterday. Manufacturing output fell unexpectedly in March, declining in all sectors except engineering. Separate figures for car sales last month, showing the consumer spending spree continuing unabated, highlighted the contrast between the strength of home demand and weakness on the export front.The division in the economy has split economists between those who call for further interest rate rises to slow consumer spending, and those who reckon this would harm the recovery in industry.Marian Bell at Royal Bank of Scotland said: "Obviously manufacturing is not growing very strongly but that should not prevent the Bank of England from putting interest rates up again."In the other camp, Jonathan Loynes at HSBC Markets said: "Industry needs more rises like it needs a hole in the head."The financial markets brushed off all such worries. Share prices climbed again, the FTSE 100 index ending up more than 18 points at 4,537.5, another record. It has gained nearly 100 points in the three trading days since Labour's victory last week.The pound held steady at just over DM2.81. Gilt prices fell slightly but the yield premium over German bunds also narrowed a little further.

Tuesday's fall in this spread had been the biggest in a single day for nearly three years.Manufacturing output fell by 0.1 per cent in March. It rose 0.6 per cent in the first quarter of the year, to a level 1.6 per cent higher than a year earlier."Manufacturing is not yet up against the wall. This is growth of about the trend rate," said Michael Dicks, UK economist at Lehman Brothers.In the latest month, output was down in most of the main sectors, with drops of 0.8 per cent in chemicals and metals. Engineering bucked the trend with a 0.3 per cent increase.David Hillier at BZW said it made sense for engineering exports to have suffered less because the industry's products were typically more sophisticated and therefore less sensitive to price competition.Taking the first quarter compared to a year earlier as a better indication of the trends, engineering production is up 4 per cent, metals 2.7 per cent, textiles and clothing 1.8 per cent; but the other sectors showed smaller gains.Total industrial production was also down 0.1 per cent during March. Apart from the drop in manufacturing, its main component, gas, electricity and water supply, was down 0.6 per cent due to the unseasonably warm and dry weather. Industrial output climbed 1.4 per cent in the year to the first quarter.Separately, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said new car sales had risen 12.3 per cent in the year to April Retail custom had improved..