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.
Continue reading...Latest updates: ONS figures represent around 1.13% of population; Operation Moonshot trial launches in Liverpool on Friday
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.
Continue reading...Latest updates: PM gives televised address after Sunak extends furlough until end of March
Q: What is your response to concerns about the data presented by government? (See 4.11pm.)
Johnson says the government is happy to share the data it has.
Q: Won’t we have to live with restrictions for some time?
Stevens says the NHS is prepared for coronavirus.
Continue reading...The chancellor has announced that the government will extend the UK's furlough scheme until March as the second wave of Covid-19 infections and new lockdown threaten to push up unemployment. In a major climbdown, Rishi Sunak said the Treasury would continue to pay 80% of workers’ wages
Continue reading...The catastrophe facing the UK is a direct result of our government’s obsession with libertarian issues. Now we must avoid repeating the same mistakes
Six weeks ago, the government was given a stark warning that the nation faced a “very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences”. Only by imposing an immediate two-week “circuit breaker” lockdown could it hope to reduce the spread of coronavirus, the Sage group of scientific advisers told ministers.
“As over 90% of the population remain susceptible, not acting now to reduce cases will result in a very large epidemic with catastrophic consequences in terms of direct Covid-related deaths and the ability of the health service to meet needs,” the group warned.
Continue reading...As mark 1 gives way to mark 2, scheme has prevented return to dole queues of 1980s– for now
Temporary, timely and targeted. That was how Rishi Sunak described the government’s strategy for coping with the impact of Covid-19 when he gave his budget speech on 11 March.
Less than two weeks later the UK was in lockdown and the chancellor sought to deliver on his pledge with the Treasury’s job retention scheme, or the furlough as it has become known.
Continue reading...Review finds testing flaws meant support went to many workers who lost no income but not to others who had
Rishi Sunak’s flagship scheme to help the self-employed through the pandemic has handed £1.3bn to workers who saw no loss of income while giving nothing to 500,000 people left without work, new analysis has revealed.
In a sign of major flaws in the £12.7bn self-employment income support scheme (SEISS), more than 400,000 workers were able to claim support despite losing no income in the crisis.
Continue reading...Sir Patrick Vallance said there was ‘room for improvement’ with test and trace in the UK as only about two-thirds of the close contacts reached are done so within 48 hours of the case entering the system, according to performance figures released on Thursday.
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak presented a new package of government support grants during a televised briefing and also discussed vaccines and local restrictions
Continue reading...Covid measures are designed to help businesses forced to close their doors over the winter
Hospitality businesses in the north of England have said they will struggle to survive on the new support package unveiled by the chancellor if they are forced into weeks of local lockdowns.
Carol Ross, the landlady of the Roscoe Head pub in Liverpool, said the new jobs support package- which includes the government paying 67% of employee salaries if businesses are forced to shut down and a further £3,000 a month in cash grants towards other costs – was not enough.
Continue reading...Rishi Sunak has said the government will cover two-thirds of workers’ wages at businesses forced to close during new coronavirus lockdowns. The chancellor said the government would subsidise pay by providing grants to companies forced to shut – most likely pubs, bars and restaurants.
Under the expansion, firms whose premises are legally required to shut for a period over winter as part of local or national restrictions can receive grants to pay up to 67% of employees’ salaries
The right fails to recognise that the Swedes’ real virtue in this pandemic is their social cohesion
Sweden is to the 21st-century right what the Soviet Union was to the 20th-century left. Conservatives have transformed it into a Tory Disneyland where every dream comes true. On the shores of the Baltic lies a country that has no need to curtail civil liberties and wreck the economy to curb Covid-19. “I have a dream, a fantasy,” sang Abba. “To help me through reality.” For much of the right, that fantasy is called Sweden.
Let the leader of the Conservative backbenchers stand for the Tory press and innumerable ideologues inside and outside Westminster. Sir Graham Brady ruined a perfectly good argument that parliament must have the power to scrutinise Johnson’s emergency decrees by announcing that there was no emergency. We could look to a country that merely had a ban on gatherings of more than 50, restrictions on visiting care homes, a shift to table-only service in bars and see that “Sweden today is in a better place than the United Kingdom”. Or as the Sun explained on Thursday as Boris Johnson met Anders Tegnell, the Swedish public health “mastermind”, a do-little strategy has spared Sweden a second wave of Covid-19 infections.
Continue reading...Five measures absent from the chancellor’s winter economy plan
Rishi Sunak’s winter economy plan prioritises additional support for “viable” jobs. However, critics have warned that other measures are still needed to help people who have already lost their jobs or will lose them despite the new government scheme.
Here are five measures that could help keep workers in jobs, but were missing from the chancellor’s winter economy plan:
Continue reading...There is evidence that scheme under which Berlin tops up wages of those put on short-time working is effective
It all looked so different for Rishi Sunak three weeks ago. After a bleak early spring in which the economy was sacrificed for health reasons, there were signs that the worst might be over.
Related: Germany’s furlough scheme saves firms from freefall
Continue reading...Ad campaign promoting hygiene and social distancing will run across TV, radio, print and more
A new government campaign is being launched to remind people to wash their hands, cover their faces and keep their distance, in a bid to keep infections down as the winter months approach.
With the slogan “Hands. Face. Space”, advertising will run across TV, radio, print, social and digital display advertising, as well as on community media channels, the Department of Health and Social Care has said.
Continue reading...Prime minister said to be ‘furious’ after being asked in the House of Commons to withdraw comments about the Labour leader
An increasingly desperate Boris Johnson has ordered his staff to step up personal attacks on the Labour leader Keir Starmer and his record as a lawyer, as confidence in the prime minister’s leadership collapses among Tory party members.
The Observer has been told that Johnson was so furious after last Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions – where he was asked to withdraw comments he made about the Labour leader and the IRA by the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle – that he turned on his staff for leaving him under-prepared, and asked them to come up with more attack lines on the Labour leader’s career as a lawyer.
Continue reading...UK should adopt German-style wage support for short-time working, unions say
Rishi Sunak has been urged by union leaders to launch a wage subsidy scheme to prevent a “tsunami” of unemployment when furlough comes to an end this autumn.
Demanding the chancellor follows the examples of other leading European countries to avert a looming jobs crisis, the Trades Union Congress said a continental-style system of “short-time working” wage support could be used in Britain to save millions of jobs from redundancy.
Continue reading...GDP falls 20.4% – the worst of any G7 nation in the three months to June
Britain has entered the deepest recession since records began as official figures on Wednesday showed the economy shrank by more than any other major nation during the coronavirus outbreak in the three months to June.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic prosperity, fell in the second quarter by 20.4% compared with the previous three months – the biggest quarterly decline since comparable records began in 1955.
Continue reading...Numbers of foreign visitors are already down – and the fresh surge of Covid cases could spell the end for the holiday season
In a normal August, the much-loved miniature tourist train in the French port city of Sète would be full of tourists from Britain and elsewhere, enjoying the ride.
Optimistically, the manager, Romiy Priore, took steps to make his attraction safe for Covid times. “With the virus, we decided to order disposable earphones for the start of the season on 23 June – 100 of them,” he says, huddling behind a Perspex screen in a cool cabin on the quayside. “It’s August, and I still have 70 left. That tells you how many foreign tourists we currently have.”
Continue reading...Exclusive: LSE report says even sectors unscathed from coronavirus crisis will be severely affected
A Brexit hit is looming for sectors that have emerged relatively unscathed from the Covid-19 pandemic, analysis by the London School of Economics suggests.
The LSE report says Brexit will deliver a double shock to the economy – with business conditions worsening for those sectors that have survived the impact of coronavirus and lockdown measures – whether Boris Johnson secures a deal with the EU or not.
Continue reading...International trade secretary tells PM and chancellor plans risk smuggling and damage to UK reputation
An extraordinary cabinet row has erupted over Brexit with Liz Truss warning that Boris Johnson’s border plans risk smuggling, damage to the UK’s international reputation and could face a legal challenge from the World Trade Organization.
The international trade secretary wrote to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and Michael Gove on Wednesday warning of four “key areas of concern” over their plans for the border next January.
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