Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Labour’s deputy leader opens up about being a carer, byelections, and achieving a ‘cultural shift’ in the workplace
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, has said her own experience as a care worker helped to convince her more flexible working could be a “win-win” for staff and employers.
Speaking to the Guardian after announcing new policies last week on employment rights and flexible conditions, Rayner said she had helped negotiate family-friendly working when she was a trade union representative.
Boris Johnson’s “freedom day” will be a day of fear for elderly and vulnerable people and those with compromised or suppressed immune systems, for whom the efficacy of vaccines is much reduced, charities have warned.
Citing the statement by the new health secretary, Sajid Javid, that Covid infections could surge to a record 100,000 a day in a few weeks after all social distancing and mask-wearing regulations are removed in England, Blood Cancer UK has said that 19 July “will be the day that it feels like freedoms are being taken away from” many people.
Warnings of brain drain from developing world as Covid adds to numbers of nurses leaving profession
Health ministers around the world are being urged to sign off on plans to create 6m more nursing jobs by 2030, amid warnings that Covid-19 has exacerbated a global shortage and could spark a “brain drain” from the developing world.
Delegates meeting virtually this week at the World Health Assembly, the key decision-making body of the World Health Organization, are expected to adopt a resolution calling on countries to transform the nursing profession through more investment, support and training.
It’s already hard for care workers to cope with Covid outbreaks that kill residents they have known for years. Guilt that they may possibly have caused it only makes things worse.
That is the anxiety faced by many, according to a carer who has spoken to the Guardian from the midst of a care home outbreak which has so far claimed 12 lives.
Here are some of the main points from the Downing Street lobby briefing.
In Wales parents and children may know by the end of the week whether schools in Wales will be reopening after half-term, the Welsh government minister Eluned Morgan has indicated. She told a briefing:
We’re expecting an announcement on that on Friday but of course that will be determined by those negotiations [with teaching unions] that will be held this week.
The focus will absolutely be on those children who are youngest, who find it most difficult to learn online and need that socialisation perhaps more than some of the older children.
Wages should rise to make jobs more attractive to UK staff say government advisers
The end of freedom of movement will increase pressure on the social care sector in the midst of a pandemic unless ministers make jobs more attractive to UK workers by increasing salaries, government advisers have warned.
The Migration Advisory Committee (Mac) has warned of the “stark consequences” of low wages in social care with most frontline role ineligible for the post-Brexit skilled worker immigration route or on the official list for job shortages in the UK.
Minimum salary thresholds to also remain in place, presenting additional barrier
Care home staff have been excluded from a post-Brexit fast-track visa system for health workers, in a move that critics say could prove “an unmitigated disaster” and may increase the risk of spreading coronavirus.
Confirming there would be no special treatment for carers coming from the EU or the rest of the world, the government said it hoped Britons would fill a shortfall of around 120,000 workers, equating to 10% of all posts. Currently 17% of care jobs are filled by foreign citizens.
The Department of Health and Social Care has recorded a further 155 deaths in the UK in its latest daily update on coronavirus. That takes the official UK death total to 44,391.
As we try to point out every day, this official headline total used by the government is not the actual total. That is because these figures only include people who tested positive for coronavirus and died. Taking into account the deaths of people who did not have a test, but where coronavirus was cited on the death certificate, the real total is more than 55,000.
The Welsh health minister has expressed concern that workers at a food factory where there has been an outbreak of Covid-19 might be spreading the virus because they take it turns to use the same bed.
Speaking at the Welsh government’s daily briefing, Vaughan Gething said there had been a suggestion that workers were coming off shift and jumping into a bed just vacated by a housemate who then went off to work.
I’m genuinely concerned about the conditions that people live within, not just in houses of multiple occupation where people may share bathroom and toilet facilities or kitchens, and the opportunity for contact indoors and surfaces is an obvious concern. You’ve heard that from our scientists, and others.
But in particular, if there is reality to the suggestion that people are sharing beds, there’s an obvious risk if people finish one shift, then return from that shift to get into a bed that someone has just got out of. So there are real issues here about accommodation and how it may be an unhelpful factor in driving transmission within that workforce.
Scottish health board figures for tests on care home staff and residents reveal a “scandalous” postcode lottery, with significant divergence in how different parts of the country are coping with new testing policy.
Scotland’s health secretary, Jeane Freeman, pledged on 28 May to offer weekly tests to all 50,000 care home workers. Last Friday, after concerns were raised about the uptake of the policy, she sent a strongly worded letter to health board chief executives last Friday, telling them that directives were “not for local interpretation”, and that board-by-board data on the number of completed tests would now be published weekly.
Some older people who fund their own care home fees are being forced to pay a steep and unexpected coronavirus bill by their care provider, it has been revealed.
Older people and their families are being asked to pay more than £100 a week on top of their usual care home fees, with homes saying the cost of PPE and staff absences could push their finances into the red, threatening their sustainability.
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.
About half of all Covid-19 deaths appear to be happening in care homes in some European countries, according to early figures gathered by UK-based academics who are warning that the same effort must be put into fighting the virus in care homes as in the NHS.
Snapshot data from varying official sources shows that in Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and Belgium between 42% and 57% of deaths from the virus have been happening in homes, according to the report by academics based at the London School of Economics (LSE).
Britain’s care homes are in danger of being overwhelmed by the coronavirus, with staff warning they are at “breaking point” and the country’s biggest charitable provider revealing confirmed or suspected cases in more than half of its facilities.
MHA, which runs more than 220 facilities, said 750 of its staff – more than one in ten – are unable to work, and that confirmed deaths from the disease are rising.
Eighteen signatories call for spending rules to be shaken up to benefit care services and marginalised groups. Plus Jeremy Beecham says local government is in dire need of a funding injection
We welcome the government’s commitment to level up disadvantaged areas of the UK in this week’s budget. We also welcome suggestions that the chancellor is considering including spending on social infrastructure such as health, education or care as a form of infrastructure investment.
Most of the time when we think of infrastructure we think of physical infrastructure like roads, railways and hospital buildings, but a broader definition of it would include social infrastructure like NHS salaries, training, personal assistants for those with disabilities and childcare workers. The government has promised to spend in these areas, but is restricted by its own rules about what it can and can’t borrow money for. It can borrow to invest but not to “just spend”.
Government plans to take ‘full control’ of borders a disaster for economy and jobs, say industry leaders and Labour
Britain is to close its borders to unskilled workers and those who can’t speak English as part of a fundamental overhaul of immigration laws that will end the era of cheap EU labour in factories, warehouses, hotels and restaurants.
Unveiling its Australian-style points system on Wednesday, the government will say it is grasping a unique opportunity to take “full control” of British borders “for the first time in decades” and eliminate the “distortion” caused by EU freedom of movement.