Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Vaughan Gething heard decrying Labour colleague after leaving his audio live on video call
Wales’s health minister, Vaughan Gething, has learned the hard way about one of the risks of videoconferencing after he accidentally broadcast a sweary rant about one of his colleagues during a virtual session of Welsh assembly.
Having apparently left his microphone live after addressing the assembly, the minister could be heard loudly decrying his fellow Labour assembly member Jenny Rathbone.
It’s clear that the coronavirus pandemic is not the first thing on the prime minister’s mind
On one level, the argument about what Sir Simon McDonald said to the foreign affairs select committee this week can be dismissed as a storm in a Whitehall teacup. Hours after the head of the foreign office had called Britain’s refusal to join the European Union’s procurement efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic a “political decision”, McDonald retracted his words. Whitehall-watchers are fascinated. The wider world has bigger things to worry about.
But on another level, this week’s row is political dynamite – and for two main reasons.
Hundreds of asylum seekers in Glasgow have been given less than an hour’s notice to pack up their flats before being moved into city centre hotels, where they claim social distancing is “impossible”.
They have also had all financial support withdrawn, apparently because the hotels provide three meals a day, basic toiletries and a laundry service, in a move condemned by campaigners.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, is facing fresh pressure over the protection offered to NHS staff after the European commission said the UK had been given “ample opportunity” to join an EU scheme bulk-buying masks, gowns, gloves and goggles.
After a day of confusion in Westminster over the UK’s lack of involvement in the EU’s joint procurement of equipment, a spokesman for the commission appeared to bolster the claim that ministers had taken a “political decision” to opt out.
The British government is coming under fire for failing to join the EU’s procurement scheme for medical equipment, including masks, gloves, goggles, gowns, testing kits and ventilators, at a time when NHS health workers across the country are crying out for more supplies. In the latest twist, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, was forced to deny claims, later retracted, by the government’s senior diplomat that it had been a “political decision” to opt out of the scheme.
Dozens of patients with Covid-19 have been turned away from the NHS Nightingale hospital in London because it has too few nurses to treat them, the Guardian can reveal.
Epidemics of infectious diseases behave in different ways but the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more than 50 million people is regarded as a key example of a pandemic that occurred in multiple waves, with the latter more severe than the first. It has been replicated – albeit more mildly – in subsequent flu pandemics.
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has announced that he is making £20m available to an Oxford team to accelerate trials for a coronavirus vaccine that will be trialled on people from Thursday.
Sir Philip Rutnam takes action under whistleblowing laws, claiming constructive dismissal
Priti Patel is facing legal action under whistleblowing laws after her former permanent secretary Sir Philip Rutnam lodged an employment tribunal claim on Monday saying he was forced from his job for exposing her bullying behaviour.
Rutnam claims he was constructively dismissed from his role as Home Office permanent secretary after informing the Cabinet Office that Patel had belittled officials in meetings and made unreasonable demands on staff.
With ministers warning that shortages of protective medical gear could continue, test rates remaining stubbornly low and the hospital death toll rising on Sunday to 16,060, some Conservative MPs have expressed private concern that Downing Street does not have a strong grip on the crisis.
Hospital leaders have directly attacked the government for the first time during the coronavirus crisis over the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) after a desperately needed consignment of surgical gowns that had been announced by ministers failed to arrive.
In an unprecedented intervention, which hospital leaders privately say is the result of “intense frustration and exasperation”, the organisations representing NHS trusts in England urged ministers to “just focus on what we can be certain of” after weeks of “bitter experience” with failed deliveries.
Steve Rotheram is the latest mayor to urge people to wear masks in public after Sadiq Khan called on the government to make them compulsory on transport in London during the coronavirus outbreak.
The metro mayor of Liverpool city region said wearing any type of face covering meant Britons were likely to “go further in protecting [themselves] and other people”.
Government close to target figure, but researchers still fear citizens may be missed out
The Home Office has received 3.4m applications from people seeking to stay in the UK after Brexit under the EU settled status scheme.
It puts the government close to its overall goal for the scheme, with estimates of the number of EU, EEA and Swiss citizens eligible to remain in the country lying between 3.4 million and 3.8 million.
The shadow defence secretary called on the government to do “everything it can” to protect the British armed forces from coronavirus – and make public the number of times service personnel have been tested for the disease.
John Healey wrote to the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, amid concerns about a lack of transparency with the British military and after serious outbreaks of the respiratory disease on US and French warships.
NEW: OBR publishes an economic scenario (not forecast) for what might happen to the UK economy as a result of #Covid19. It assumes a 3 month lockdown.
Unemployment: ⬆️by 2 million.
GDP (2020) ⬇️ 13% in 2020.
If so, would be the worst economic contraction for a century.
Here is an excerpt from the report published by the Office for Budget Responsibility today looking at what impact the coronavirus lockdown could have on the economy. It says GDP could fall by 35% in the second quarter of the year.
Here is an extract.
In addition to its impact on public health, the coronavirus outbreak will substantially raise public sector net borrowing and debt, primarily reflecting economic disruption. The government’s policy response will also have substantial direct budgetary costs, but the measures should help limit the long-term damage to the economy and public finances – the costs of inaction would certainly have been higher ...
We do not attempt to predict how long the economic lockdown will last – that is a matter for the government, informed by medical advice. But, to illustrate some of the potential fiscal effects, we assume a three-month lockdown due to public health restrictions followed by another three-month period when they are partially lifted. For now, we assume no lasting economic hit.
Britain missed three opportunities to be part of an EU scheme to bulk-buy masks, gowns and gloves and has been absent from key talks about future purchases, the Guardian can reveal, as pressure grows on ministers to protect NHS medics and care workers on the coronavirus frontline.
European doctors and nurses are preparing to receive the first of €1.5bn (£1.3bn) worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) within days or a maximum of two weeks through a joint procurement scheme involving 25 countries and eight companies, according to internal EU documents.
It has been three weeks since Boris Johnson told the country, we were going into lockdown.
The measures, the prime minister said, would be reviewed in three weeks time and are due to be discussed this Thursday.
We are doing a lot of work in government to be guided by the science and the medical advice that you get and I think that, until you have got that evidence, we will be getting ahead of ourselves.
There will come a time in the future where we can talk about relaxation or transition but we are not there now.
At the daily briefing, Dominic Raab said the government was trying to give front line staff reassurance over personal protective equipment (PPE).
It comes amid renewed concern over a shortage of some supplies in parts of the country.
We understand the importance of getting PPE to the front line whether it’s in care homes or the NHS.
I think the strongest practical reassurance they will want and that we can give them is that over the Bank Holiday weekend over 16 million items were delivered and we are straining every sinew to roll them out even further and even faster.
It was the middle of March and, like almost everyone else in the country, Annemarie Plas, from south London, was sitting at home under the new conditions of the coronavirus lockdown. It was then that she had an idea about organising a community clap for NHS workers after seeing something similar in her home country of the Netherlands. Now, every Thursday at 8pm, millions of people head out into the streets to clap and cheer for the people risking their lives on the frontline. She tells Anushka Asthana how one idea became a national outpouring.
The crisis is bringing people together in other ways too. Naveed Khan is using a customised vehicle to deliver food and supplies to vulnerable people across his home city of Bradford. Lucy Welling,an NHS nurse, had her bike stolen as Britain went into lockdown. But followers on social media rallied round and helped find the bike amid several offers of a new one. The episode inspired a new movement, #TourDeThanks, to offer up bikes to key workers. In Nunhead, south London, Claire Sheppard set up Nunhead Knocks to help out those living in isolation. In Sheffield, 23-year-old Sarah-Jane Clark is one of a number of colleagues who moved in to a care home to look after residents safely.
The inclusion of “targeted herd immunity” as a possible UK government response to the Covid-19 pandemic – in a list of possible interventions considered for analysis by a contractor – appears to contradict strong denials by the health secretary 10 days earlier that it was any part of government policy.
Matt Hancock gave that response on 14 March after two senior government officials had said publicly that achieving “herd immunity” was a key aim, prompting widespread alarm among medical experts that the British government was planning to allow the majority of the population to become infected.
The government faces a chorus of cross-party calls on Sunday for the urgent recall of parliament in “virtual” form as MPs and peers demand the right to hold ministers to account over the escalating coronavirus crisis.
The demands from leaders of all main opposition parties, as well as senior Tories, came after the death toll from Covid-19 in the UK approached 10,000. Deaths from the virus rose by 917 on Saturday compared with Friday to a total of 9,875.
The home secretary has said she is sorry if people feel there has been a failure to supply sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) to NHS staff, as it was revealed that 19 UK health workers had died after contracting coronavirus.
Speaking at the daily Downing Street coronavirus briefing, Priti Patel was asked twice if she would apologise about the lack of PPE being provided to frontline workers. “I’m sorry if people feel that there have been failings,” she said. “I will be very, very clear about that.”