Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Former prime minister told to release full texts he sent to chancellor at start of the pandemic
An influential group of MPs has ordered David Cameron to release texts he sent to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, as part of a parliamentary inquiry into the Greensill lobbying scandal.
The Conservative-dominated Treasury select committee wrote to key figures in the scandal on Monday, asking for evidence that will help piece together the true impact of Cameron’s efforts to ensure the lender had access to emergency Covid loans and NHS staff records.
England’s chief medical officer has warned MPs that revising the government’s roadmap to emerge from lockdown sooner than planned would risk a more serious third wave of Covid infections.
Prof Chris Whitty said he expected a surge of infections once restrictions were lifted but that exiting lockdown faster, when fewer people are vaccinated, would send more people into hospital and lead to more deaths.
BMA, Royal College of Nursing, Royal College of Midwives and Unison say pay recommendation ‘fails the test of honesty’
The government is under mounting pressure to reconsider its proposed 1% pay rise for NHS staff in England, with four trade unions writing a joint letter to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, to express their “dismay” and calling for a fair pay deal.
The British Medical Association (BMA), the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of Nursing and Unison said the pay deal “fails the test of honesty and fails to provide staff who have been on the very frontline of the pandemic the fair pay deal they need”.
Rishi Sunak is delivering his budget – here is rolling coverage of the main points, updated throughout the speech
The chancellor says he would do “whatever it takes” during the pandemic, and that he has done and will continue to do so. He says there has been acute damage to the economy, with more than 700,000 people losing their jobs, the economy shrinking by 10% – the largest fall in 300 years, and borrowing is highest it has been outside of wartime. “It’s going to take this country, and the whole world, a long time to recover from this extraordinary situation,” he says.
Rishi Sunak will also announce help for an additional 600,000 of the newly self-employed on Wednesday
Rishi Sunak will announce on Wednesday that the Treasury is extending its furlough scheme until the end of September in an attempt to safeguard jobs as a fragile economy emerges from the Covid-19 emergency.
In an unexpected move, the chancellor will say that workers will continue to be guaranteed 80% of their salary for a further three months after the government envisages all restrictions on activity will be removed in June.
Small businesses will receive help in Wednesday’s budget to boost tech and management skills
The bosses of small businesses are to be invited back to school to brush up on their management skills, under plans to be announced in the budget designed to help close Britain’s productivity gap with rival nations.
As part of the attempt to speed up the UK’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, will unveil a “help to grow” scheme that will offer the leaders of up to 130,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) the chance of MBA-style management training.
The cross-Channel train service has seen a 95% fall in passengers during the Covid-19 pandemic
Eurostar has said it is facing an existential threat, as business leaders pleaded with the government to step in and save the “vital link” with Europe.
A 95% drop in passenger numbers has brought the cross-Channel train service to its knees, and the company reiterated on Sunday that while government loans had been extended to aviation, international high-speed rail had also been severely affected by the pandemic.
Official figures have missed £800bn of private assets, says thinktank, amid calls for wealth tax to fund Covid recovery
Almost a quarter of all household wealth in the UK is held by the richest 1% of the population, according to alarming new research that reveals a historic underestimation of inequality in the country.
The study found that the top 1% had almost £800bn more wealth than suggested by official statistics, meaning that inequality has been far higher than previously thought. Researchers said the extra billions was a conservative estimate and could well be more.
Chancellor aims to firm up agreements that would allow institutions to trade as if still in EU
Rishi Sunak has offered financial services firms the prospect of closer access to EU markets than outlined in the Brexit trade deal, after Boris Johnson conceded that this aspect of the agreement fell short of UK hopes.
With MPs and experts still poring over the 1,246-page details of the agreement ahead of votes in the Commons and Lords on Wednesday, increasing focus has fallen on the relative lack of provision for the service sector, which makes up about 80% of the UK economy.
MPs campaigning against chancellor’s plans believe they can ‘humiliate’ the government into U-turn
Senior Tories fear that the cut to Britain’s aid budget will become permanent, amid a growing campaign inside and outside parliament to reverse the decision.
Conservatives opposed to the move are already vowing to “humiliate” the government by forcing it to stand by its manifesto commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid – a vow chancellor Rishi Sunak said he would breach in his review of public spending last week. He announced that £4bn would effectively be cut from the aid budget by reducing it to 0.5%, despite pleas from Tories and the archbishop of Canterbury.
Readers respond after the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, cut international aid by a third in his spending review
Rishi Sunak has said he could not tell the country he was giving 0.7% of gross national income to foreign aid (Foreign Office minister resigns as Sunak cuts aid budget, 25 November). What kind of country does he think he lives in? Can he and the rest of the government not see that so many of the problems in the world come from the gross divide between countries like ours and ones where so many face starvation?
Has he not noticed that during the first lockdown, 10 million people volunteered to help people in their community? Did he not notice the thousands who volunteered to trial the vaccine? These are not people who would wish to ignore the rest of the world.
Akshata Murty, Sunak’s wife, holds multimillion-pound portfolio making her richer than the Queen
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is facing questions over the transparency of his financial affairs after a Guardian investigation established that his wife and her family hold a multimillion-pound portfolio of shareholdings and directorships that are not declared in the official register of ministers’ interests.
Akshata Murty, who married Sunak in 2009, is the daughter of one of India’s most successful entrepreneurs. Her father co-founded the technology giant Infosys, and her shares in the company are worth £430m, making her one of the wealthiest women in Britain, with a fortune larger than the Queen’s.
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.
The former prime minister David Cameron’s political legacy will be permanently dominated by Brexit, an event he misjudged and abhorred. But until now he could at least comfort himself with one positive foreign policy achievement to his name. He was prime minister when the UK for the first time met its goal of spending 0.7% of its gross national income on overseas aid, and also enshrined it in law in 2015, so apparently entrenching Britain’s commitment to the world’s poorest.
Andrew Bailey said failure to agree to deal would cause long-term damage to UK economy
The governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has warned that the economic cost of a no-deal Brexit would be bigger in the long term than the damage caused by Covid-19.
Bailey said failure to agree to a deal before the Brexit transition expires at the end of December would cause disruption to cross-border trade and damage the goodwill between London and Brussels needed to build a future economic partnership.
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, declined to apologise for PPE contracts given to companies with links to MPs and ministers during the first wave of coronavirus.
Appearing on BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show, Sunak was questioned on the government's purchase of 50 million face masks from Ayanda Capital that were later deemed unusable for NHS workers.
'It was right to try to do everything we can, and I'm not going to apologise for us reacting in that way,' Sunak said.
Former prime ministers say widely expected move to cut budget is ‘strategic mistake’
Former prime ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair have warned against plans to cut the overseas aid budget, calling the idea a “strategic mistake”.
The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is widely expected to pare back the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on overseas aid to 0.5% in next week’s spending review.
A coronavirus passport app promoted by the Olympian Zara Tindall has been reported to a health regulator over concerns it is mis-selling antibody tests.
The V-Health Passport was touted as a “game changer” to get sports fans back into stadiums and major events. It involves spectators getting a rapid antibody test prior to attending an event, with results uploaded on a health passport on an app.
In the advert, Zara and Mike Tindall were being told they don’t have the virus – you can’t say that. This could do harm, with people getting into sporting events with negative results while they are infectious.
I have no problem with the app, it’s the use of the app. A lot of health professionals have seen it with their head in their hands.
Some schools may be sending children home “too readily” amid the pandemic, the chief inspector of Ofsted has said.
Parents of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) have been told that schools cannot accommodate their children due to Covid-19 risk assessments, according to Amanda Spielman.
And here, many parents haven’t made an active decision to keep their child at home – they’ve been told that schools can’t accommodate them. Because it’s too difficult, because Covid risk assessments won’t allow it. It’s deeply concerning and, understandably, many parents feel cut adrift.
For the children with SEND that have been able to get back into education, it hasn’t been plain sailing either. We’re hearing that many have suffered setbacks in their communication skills – probably down to having reduced social interaction for such a long time.