Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Health secretary expected to announce a formal pay offer to key unions later today
Sinn Féin’s US fundraising arm has caused a row by calling for a referendum on Irish unity in adverts in the New York Times, Washington Post and other US publications.
The half-page ads were paid for by Friends of Sinn Féin and ran on Wednesday urging support for unity referendums in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. “It is time to agree on a date,” it said. “Let the people have their say.”
They’re ads from Irish American organisations whose view on reunification is well known and held for a very long time and they take out ads every year. So, the focus now needs to be on getting back to work [at Stormont].
PM said to have been informed of the complaint against Williamson before giving him a cabinet role
Rishi Sunak is facing further questions over his political judgment after it emerged he was made aware of a complaint by the former chief whip against his political ally Gavin Williamson before appointing him.
The Guardian understands some cabinet ministers and ex-ministers were aware of hostile messages to Wendy Morton. The texts were revealed over the weekend to include angry remonstrations about not being invited to the Queen’s funeral and warnings that “there is a price for everything”.
Oliver Dowden says Department of Health has ‘well-oiled contingencies’ to manage impact of action
The government has said it has contingency plans for dealing with a strike by nurses amid the growing threat of industrial action in the NHS.
The Observer revealed on Sunday that the biggest nursing strike in NHS history could take place before Christmas after “large swathes of the country” voted for nationwide industrial action. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is due to announce the results of its ballot in the next few days.
New prime minister likely to prioritise unity in offering ministerial jobs, although leading Trussites can expect the chop
Rishi Sunak has pledged to build a cabinet of all the talents but, given the swiftness of the leadership competition, relatively little has been briefed about his potential cabinet.
His team say no roles have been promised to any backers and Sunak was in the enviable position as the frontrunner of not needing to promise roles to anyone.
Analysis: Kwasi Kwarteng and Thérèse Coffey could be among the big winners if Truss becomes PM
Liz Truss has three weeks before she is likely to walk through No 10’s black door as prime minister, facing a difficult in-tray. Here we take a look at how senior roles could shape up.
This is from James Johnson, a Tory pollster (who worked for Theresa May in No 10) whose firm JL Partners carried out polling in Wakefield, on who ought to be taking the blame for the byelection defeats.
PM Media has just snapped this.
Boris Johnson has said he will “listen” to voters but will “keep going” after the Tories suffered a double by-election defeat.
Tory party co-chair voices ‘revulsion’ at ferry company’s actions after 800 staff replaced with agency workers
P&O crossings between Liverpool and Dublin resumed on Saturday afternoon, two days after the ferry company suspended services when it sacked 800 staff and brought in replacement agency workers.
Labour had called on the government to step in and halt any crossings, as ministers confirmed that all government contracts with the company were being reviewed.
Brexit opportunities minister says people will find Partygate scandal ‘fundamentally trivial’ in the context of war in Ukraine. This live blog has now closed.
“I think people respect honesty,” says Rishi Sunak. A few weeks ago this would have been seen as an obvious dig at Sunak’s boss, but it did not sound like that today. He was talking about Treasury policy in the early days of the Covid pandemic, and how he felt it was important to admit that government policy would not be able to save all jobs.
Now he’s talking about the family dog. He was oppoosed to getting a puppy for a long time, he says, but when he became chancellor, he was spending so much time at work that he lost the moral authority to say no.
The prime minister has been reported to the police by Labour MPs over allegations there were at least two parties in Downing Street during lockdown restrictions last year.
Neil Coyle, Labour MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, wrote to the Met police commissioner, Cressida Dick, asking her to investigate reports that the prime minister spoke at a leaving do in November and also allowed a staff Christmas party to go ahead in December.
The withdrawal of six English Premier League clubs from the European Super League highlights the need to examine the governance of football, the UK culture secretary has said, pledging “we will not have our national game taken away from us for profit”.
Oliver Dowden paid tribute to the fans whose pressure prompted the withdrawal of the six English clubs initially signed up for the breakaway competition, leaving the project in tatters, but warned that more needed to be done.
A third coronavirus vaccine will start being administered in the UK next month, joining the Pfizer and AstraZeneca jabs already in use, the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, has confirmed. Britain has ordered 17m doses of the Moderna vaccine, which has a 94% efficacy rate in trials, which are expected to start arriving in April. Dowden also insisted the government was confident it would be able to meet its target of getting people over 50 vaccinated by 15 April, and all remaining adults by the end of July
Coronavirus “certificates” that would show whether people have had a vaccine or a negative test are being considered by the government as a way of getting people back to larger events, the culture secretary has said.
Oliver Dowden told Sky News that he hoped people would be able to return “in significant numbers” from 21 June if “all goes to plan”.
Oliver Dowden expected to meet US company, as No 10 says UK will ‘defend free speech and journalism’
The UK government is “obviously concerned” at the repercussions of Facebook’s shutdown of large numbers of news and public information resources in Australia, Downing Street has said, confirming that the culture secretary will meet the US company this week.
Oliver Dowden is “expecting to meet Facebook this week”, Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said, adding that the date had yet to be confirmed.
Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, has urged politicians involved in the UK-EU trade negotiations to “dial down the language”. In comments which seemed to be aimed at Boris Johnson, Coveney told reporters at a press conference in Berlin:
What I would say to politicians, we need to try and dial down the language in terms of the division and differences of views and focus on the detail.
There is a bigger picture here that goes beyond trade in a world that is changing and has a lot of risk.
The Conservative MP Imran Ahmad Khan has criticised Angela Merkel for refusing to let Boris Johnson lobby her over the UK-EU trade talks. (See 10.57am and 12.37pm.) You can tell Ahmad Khan’s a Brexiter, because he’s brought up the war ...
I stand with millions of Britons that are deeply insulted at the shocking news that the German Chancellor has refused the British Prime Minister’s request for a telephone call. This is an insult to every Briton, whether they support our PM or not.
Have our EU “friends” no regard or respect for the UK and our nations’ sacrifices that permit them to live in freedom and prosperity today, safely away from the shadow of totalitarianism?
The EU’s contemptuous treatment of the UK makes it clear there cannot be a deal until it accepts the UK as a sovereign equal and awards us the respect and regard we merit.
Oliver Dowden says younger viewers might take historical drama’s portrayal as fact
The culture secretary plans to write to Netflix and request a “health warning” is played before The Crown so viewers are aware that the historical drama is a work of fiction, he said in an intervention that prompted criticism.
Oliver Dowden said that without the caveat younger viewers who did not live through the events might “mistake fiction for fact” following complaints that the fourth series of the drama had abused its artistic licence and fabricated events.
Culture secretary distanced himself from widely mocked poster amid job losses in arts
A government-backed advert that encouraged people working in the arts to reskill by turning to a career in cybersecurity has been scrapped after the culture secretary described it as “crass”.
On Monday morning Oliver Dowden distanced himself from the Cyber First campaign, which resurfaced on the same day his department was celebrating awarding £257m in funding to struggling venues and organisations.
Dowden tweeted that the ad campaign, which is backed by the government and promotes retraining in tech, did not come from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), while reiterating that he wanted to “save jobs in the arts”.
Here are the main points from Nicola Sturgeon’s press briefing earlier.
I want to give people hope. I think there’s a lot right now that should give all of us hope. It’s been painful, it’s been hard, but we’ve got this virus to really low levels.
But I don’t do my job, I don’t discharge my responsibilities and ultimately I don’t do anybody any favours if I give false hope, or if I get so desperate, as I am to get everybody back to normal, that I forget about the risks that we face, and then I’m standing here in a few weeks and we’re going backwards.
My biggest concern right now is that there are things that all of us can do to keep this under control that we’re all maybe getting a bit lax at doing.
Sometimes one person’s political issue is another person’s very legitimate issue, part and parcel of dealing with Covid. And the fiscal flexibility of the government to deal with the overall consequences of Covid [an issue raised by the reporter] I would put into the latter category.
The all-party parliamentary group on coronavirus, which is chaired by the Lib Dem MP Layla Moran, is holding its own inquiry into the lessons to be learnt from coronavirus, and today it has holding its first oral evidence session. Niall Dickson, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS leaders, told the group that NHS managers were very worried about a second wave. He said:
I would say in relation to the second spike issue or something coming, the levels of concern among our members - the people who are leading NHS trusts, who are leading in primary care and all levels in the systems - is very high.
I mean, of course, there’s real concern about winter and the compounding factors there, but also about an earlier spike.
Oliver Dowden has dismissed the idea that coronavirus testing at airports could avoid the need for travel restrictions such as the two-week quarantine placed on people returning to the UK from Spain. 'It's not the case that you can simply test somebody and be sure they don't have the disease,' the culture secretary told BBC Breakfast. 'At this stage, it's just not the case that we can simply test at the border and give people that assurance.'
U-turn puts Boris Johnson on collision course with Tory rebels on timing of ban
Huawei is to be stripped out of Britain’s 5G phone networks by 2027, a date that puts Boris Johnson on collision course with a group of Conservative rebels who want the Chinese company eliminated quicker and more comprehensively.
Oliver Dowden, the UK culture secretary, also announced that no new Huawei 5G kit can be bought after 31 December this year – but disappointed the rebels by saying that older 2G, 3G and 4G kit can remain until it is no longer needed.