The foreign secretary has said every adult in the UK will be offered a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine by September. In an interview on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Raab said he hoped that by the early spring, some restrictions could be lifted gradually so the country could ‘get back to normal’. He added that people arriving in the UK could be asked to stay in quarantine hotels under plans being considered by ministers
Continue reading...Category Archives: Dominic Raab
Fears UK aid cuts could undermine research on deadliest diseases
Exclusive: experts sign letter warning against slashing spending on public-private programmes
Experts fear a push to cut the UK’s aid budget will slash spending on global health research, handicapping international public-private programmes that have helped combat the world’s deadliest diseases over the last decade.
In a letter addressed to the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, last week, prominent parliamentarians sought reassurance that the planned cuts would not lead to “dramatic reductions” in investment for devastating diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, Aids and a clutch of neglected tropical diseases.
Continue reading...Dominic Raab warns UK at risk of third wave of coronavirus – video
The UK is at risk of a third wave of Covid-19 in the new year if the right balance is not struck on restrictions, Dominic Raab has told BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show.
The foreign secretary also refused to rule out the prospect of a third nationwide lockdown next year. The Commons will vote on Tuesday on whether to approve the three-tier system replacing the national lockdown
Continue reading...Overseas aid budget for education cut by a quarter this year, data shows
Reduction came before this week’s move to slash UK spending on poorer nations to 0.5% of national income, with girls worst affected
The overseas aid budget for education was slashed by more than a quarter by the government this year, even before this week’s further axing of a third of aid spending, according to analysis seen by the Guardian.
As anger met the government’s announcement this week, it was revealed that it has already reneged on the Tory manifesto pledge by cutting primary and secondary education funding as part of £2.9bn of cuts made by Dominic Raab in July. On Wednesday in parliament, while announcing he would seek to legally cut the aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of gross national income, Raab reiterated a promise to prioritise girls’ education, which was immediately dismissed as “empty rhetoric” by the shadow international secretary.
Continue reading...Dominic Raab says legislation is needed to cut UK aid spending
Foreign secretary says it is not known when 0.7% target, set in law, will be restored
The foreign secretary has decided legislation is required to cut the aid budget since the current fiscal uncertainty means the government may feel obliged to miss the commitment to spend 0.7% on gross national income on overseas aid for longer than a year.
Legislation would be laid, Dominic Raab told MPs in an oral statement, but he did not give a date for doing so. The Foreign Office has indicated it is unlikely to be introduced until the second half of next year.
Continue reading...UK, France and Germany discuss working with Joe Biden on Iran nuclear deal
Foreign ministers hope US will lift sanctions in effort to revive 2015 agreement with Tehran
European foreign ministers from Germany, France and the UK have met to discuss a joint approach with the incoming Joe Biden administration on reviving the Iranian nuclear deal.
The three nations, whose ministers met in Berlin, are hoping Tehran can reach an agreement under which the US would lift its crippling sanctions in return for Iran ending its non-compliance with the 2015 agreement constraining its nuclear activities.
Continue reading...Johnson risks rift with Biden by pressing ahead with Brexit bill
Prime minister says changes to legislation will protect Northern Ireland peace deal
Boris Johnson has risked opening a rift with the US president-elect, Joe Biden, by insisting the internal markets bill that reneges on part of the EU withdrawal agreement would go ahead as planned.
The prime minister said the legislation would go through parliament and added that the planned changes, which would hand unilateral power to ministers to change or disapply export rules for goods traveling from Britain to Northern Ireland, would protect the Good Friday peace deal.
Continue reading...Saudi Arabia fails to join UN human rights council but Russia and China elected
Result follows warnings from human rights groups that UN body’s credibility at stake
Russia and China have been elected to the UN human rights council for the next three years, but Saudi Arabia failed in its attempt to win a place on the 47-seat body.
The result is a severe blow to the country’s efforts to improve its image in the wake of the admitted killing of the Saudi citizen and Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi.
Continue reading...UK coronavirus live: Boris Johnson faces Keir Starmer at PMQs after new restrictions unveiled
English rules don’t go ‘anywhere near far enough’, says leading government Covid adviser
- Shortages threaten Johnson’s pledge of 500,000 UK Covid tests a day
- 10pm nightlife ban ‘not a silver bullet’, Raab admits
- Six ways to get through the next six months
- Raab’s morning interviews - Summary
- Global coronavirus updates – live
Starmer says Johnson said the opposite yesterday. Everyone can read it in Hansard. He says a week ago the PM acknowledged that there was a problem. Is the PM saying capacity is the problem, as Dido Harding says? Or he is saying that too many healthy people are requesting tests, as Matt Hancock says?
Johnson says the attacks on Harding from Labour are unseeming. He says the government is going to get testing up to 500,000 per day. He says he wants to hear “more of the spirit of togetherness” that was on display yesterday.
So why did Johnson says yesterday it had “very little” to do with the spread of the disease, Starmer asks.
Johnson says it is an “epidemiological fact” that transmission takes place human to human. And capacity today is at a record high, he says.
Continue reading...Dominic Raab bodyguard suspended after gun reportedly left on plane
Police protection officer had been returning from US trip with foreign secretary
A police protection officer who was travelling with Dominic Raab has been suspended from duty after reportedly leaving his gun on a plane.
The officer had travelled with the foreign secretary on a visit to the US when he allegedly left his gun on a plane at Heathrow airport on Friday.
Continue reading...Biden and Pelosi warn UK over risking Good Friday agreement
Leading Democrats tell UK foreign secretary that Northern Ireland peace deal cannot be casualty of Brexit
Joe Biden on Wednesday joined the clamour of Democrats warning Boris Johnson not to let the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement become a casualty of his Brexit talks.
The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, is in Washington trying to repair relations with pro-Irish Democrats amid concerns that the UK’s attempt to leave the EU on its own terms will undermine the Good Friday peace agreement.
Continue reading...UK, France and Germany agree to reject US demand for Iran snapback sanctions
European ‘E3’ ministers reach consensus during Kent meeting hosted by UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab
Foreign ministers from the UK, France and Germany have agreed to hold out against US demands to snapback all UN sanctions on Iran, despite intensified pressure from the US specifically on the UK government to fall into line.
The US was left isolated at the UN security council last month when it said it wished to reimpose snapback sanctions, with the European nations – known collectively as the E3 – arguing that the US was no longer a participant in the deal and so unable to act unilaterally. The US, which left the deal in 2018, described the E3 position as crackers and pandering to terrorists. A further showdown on the issue at the UN is expected this month.
Continue reading...UK’s chief Brexit negotiator has ‘brass neck’, says former May aide
Gavin Barwell angered by David Frost’s suggestion that May government ‘blinked’ in negotiations
Theresa May’s former chief of staff has accused the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, of having a “brass neck” after he said the UK government had “blinked first” in negotiations.
Gavin Barwell, a key member of the former prime minister’s negotiating team, said Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement was “95% the work of his predecessors” and a deal had only been secured by conceding to the EU’s demand for some customs checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain, which May’s team had not agreed to.
Continue reading...UK will lead world on tackling famine and Covid with new department, says Raab
Merging DfID and FCO will cement Britain ‘as a force for good’, Raab claims, but critics fear aid will be deprioritised
Dominic Raab pledged Britain will take the global lead in tackling coronavirus and the growing risk of famine in developing countries by combining diplomatic strength with “world-leading” aid expertise, as the newly merged Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) prepared to launch on Wednesday.
In his first appointment as head of the FCDO, the foreign secretary appointed Nick Dyer, acting permanent secretary of the former Department for International Development (DfID), as the UK’s first special envoy for famine prevention and humanitarian affairs.
Continue reading...Dominic Raab: new department will make aid spending more effective
Merger of Foreign Office and Department for International Development will mean better value for money, minister says
Dominic Raab has pledged that the controversial merger of the Foreign Office and Department for International Development (DfID) will give taxpayers better value for money on government aid spending.
The foreign secretary has ordered a review into the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), the body for overseeing government aid, in a move he said would lead to “more effective and accountable aid spending” when the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is formally launched next week.
Continue reading...‘Resign!’: Alexander Lukashenko heckled by factory workers in Minsk
Embattled Belarus president looked shaken as people yelled ‘liar’ in fresh blow to regime
Alexander Lukashenko’s grip on power in Belarus has taken a further hit, as workers heckled him during a visit to a factory on the outskirts of Minsk.
The visit to the the state-owned MZKT military vehicles factory on Monday was meant to show the Belarusian president was still in control and retained the support of workers at the vast factories that are the backbone of the country’s neo-Soviet economy, a day after the biggest rally in the country’s recent history against his rule.
Continue reading...Faith leaders join forces to warn of Uighur ‘genocide’
Statement signed by Rowan Williams, bishops, imams and rabbis says Chinese Muslim minority faces ‘human tragedy’
Rowan Williams, the former archbishop of Canterbury, is among more than 70 faith leaders publicly declaring that the Uighurs are facing “one of the most egregious human tragedies since the Holocaust”, and that those responsible for the persecution of the Chinese Muslim minority must be held accountable.
The incarceration of at least a million Uighurs and other Muslims in prison camps, where they are reported to face starvation, torture, murder, sexual violence, slave labour and forced organ extraction, is a potential genocide, say the clerics.
Continue reading...The Guardian view on the disappearing aid: a shake up with lethal consequences | Editorial
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, levels of hunger and poverty are going to rise. Given this, the abolition of DfID is a serious mistake
This week’s warning from Unicef is stark. Without immediate action, children under five will die in their tens of thousands in the coming year as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The UN agency estimates that an additional 6.7 million children will become dangerously under-nourished unless at least $2.4bn can be mobilised. The risk is that 10,000 more children a month will die.
Hunger is not confined to poor countries: the call for 1.5 million more children in England to get free school meals is evidence of that. Ministers ought to act at home. But acute hunger is a much more acute problem in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. What’s more, Unicef is far from alone in pointing out the vulnerability of the world’s poorest people to coronavirus. The World Bank is pencilling in the first increase in poverty in two decades. The International Monetary Fund says deep recessions in advanced countries are having a marked impact of remittances – worth $360bn in 2018 – into low income and fragile states.
Continue reading...UK could impose more ‘handbrake restrictions’ on arrivals beyond Spain
Quarantine measures for people travelling from Spain may be applied to other countries
Holidaymakers have been warned the government could impose “handbrake restrictions” on more countries beyond Spain in order to stop the spread of coronavirus – with travellers unlikely to be given much warning if further quarantine measures need to be enforced.
The restrictions on travellers returning from Spain after the measures were announced overnight threw summer holiday plans into disarray for British tourists, and will raise fears among those travelling to other European countries that they could face a similar turnaround at a moment’s notice.
Continue reading...Spain quarantine: government acted ‘as swiftly as we could’, says Raab – video
Dominic Raab has defended the government's sudden decision to impose restrictions on holidaymakers returning from Spain after a surge in coronavirus cases in the country. Travellers will have to self-isolate for two weeks upon their return. The foreign secretary said the government would not 'make apologies' for the move as inaction could have risked a second wave in the UK
- UK imposes 14-day quarantine on travellers from Spain
- Raab defends 14-day quarantine for travellers returning from Spain