As it happened Ended
Boris Johnson has said it is “absurd and shameful” the Winston Churchill national monument is at risk of attack by protesters this weekend, and warned Black Lives Matter supporters that the responsible thing to do is “stay away from these protests”.
The prime minister went further and claimed the tearing down of statues constitutes “lying about our history”, before claiming that the demonstrations had been “hijacked by extremists intent on violence”. Lib Dem home affairs spokesperson Christina Jardine responded by accusing Mr Johnson of “stoking division and fear in our communities.”
Full border controls with the EU won’t be ready until at least six months after the Brexit transition period ends on 31 December 2020, the government has announced. It comes as the latest GDP figures show the British economy shrank more than 20 per cent in April.
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Tracing system missing too many cases, warn independent scientists
Baroness Dido Harding, in charge of the government’s test, track and trace programme admitted the system is “not at the gold standard” after data showed around one-third of people testing positive for the virus either went untraced or did not supply lists of contacts.
Health secretary Matt Hancock claimed the figures will get “better and better” and added: “Participation is your civic duty.” He said he was “not ruling out” compulsory compliance (i.e. fines).
The independent Sage group of scientists and academics said the number of people contacted in the first week was “alarming” and “well below what is required to manage the spread of the virus”.
Figures showed just 5,407 people who had tested positive for coronavirus cooperated with the scheme by providing details of individuals they had been in close contact with. But the independent Sage group pointed to ONS surveillance data suggesting that there were at least 23,000 new symptomatic cases during that period.
More details here:
Government set to backtrack on full border checks
The government is expected to backtrack on its plan to introduce full border checks with the EU from the end of 2020 over fears of the economic impact of coronavirus.
Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove is expected to make an announcement on Friday over border operations for when Brexit fully comes into effect at the end of the transition period.
The UK had committed to introduce import controls on EU goods in the new year, but ministers are now expected to adopt a more flexible approach to prevent the departure compounding the chaos from Covid-19.
The Financial Times first reported that a “temporary light-touch regime” is now planned for UK ports, regardless of whether a trade deal is struck with the EU this year or not.
Human rights watchdog to investigate ‘hostile environment’ policy
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) will look at the Home Office’s “hostile environment” policy in light of the Windrush scandal.
The watchdog said it is launching legal action to review whether the department complied with equality law when carrying out the immigration measures.
The hostile environment strategy was devised under Theresa May when she was home secretary in the coalition government to deter illegal immigration and continued under her successor, Amber Rudd.
UK economy shrinks by record 20 per cent in single month
The UK economy plunged by 20.4 per cent in April in the biggest fall since records began, the Office for National Statistics has said.
Official figures show Britain’s GDP shrank by more than a fifth in the first full month of the lockdown as shops and factories closed and workers were sent home.
It is the largest drop in a single month since records began in 1997.
Jonathan Athow, deputy national statistician at the ONS, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the fall in GDP “is really unprecedented”.
He added: “Actually, if you take March and April together the fall was 25 per cent. So in two months the economy shrank by a quarter … it’s 10 times the size of the largest fall we have seen before the coronavirus.”
Government ‘lifelines’ will help economy recover, says Rishi Sunak
The coronavirus pandemic has had a severe impact on Britain’s economy – GDP shrank more than 20 per cent in April – but chancellor Rishi Sunak claimed the steps the government has taken, including supporting salaries, grants and tax cuts will help it to recover
“In line with many other economies around the world, coronavirus is having a severe impact on our economy,” he said.
A new group set up for families of people who have died from coronavirus victims wants an urgent inquiry into the crisis to help prevent further deaths.
“What we need to look at straightaway are the issues which are life-and-death decisions,” he told the BBC. “We expect there will be a second spike. We want to know what the government is going to do when that happens.”
The group’s request comes after Scotland’s former chief scientific adviser Professor Dame Anne Glover said an inquiry must be held before a second wave of the virus hits the UK.
|A government spokesperson said: “At some point in the future there will be an opportunity for us to look back, to reflect and to learn some profound lessons. But at the moment, the most important thing to do is to focus on responding to the current situation.”
The government has been accused of “suppressing” a report into the disproportionate threat posed by Covid-19 to BAME communities, which Public Health England has now said it will publish next week.
The BBC and Sky News reported on the existence of the second report last night – which contained recommendations for how to limit the impact of the virus on ethnic minorities.
Prof Raj Bhopal from Edinburgh University, who had been asked to review the 64-page document told the BBC that “parliament had not been told the full truth” and called for the report’s immediate release.
While equalities minister Kemi Badenoch had told the Commons that Public Health England “did not make recommendations because they were not able to do so”, citing a lack of data, the government has now told the BBC that she was not referring to this second report, only the first.
The government has now told the BBC and Sky News that the recommendations will be published next week, saying the report had been conducted “in parallel” with the first but was not part of the same document.
A Labour spokesperson said: “The government’s decision to block this report is scandalous and a tragedy. The recommendations it makes could have saved lives. The minister should now explain what she knew about it and when.”
Some people ‘simply didn’t feel like answering the phone’ to contact tracers, says minister
Health minister Edward Argar has said one third of people who tested positive for coronavirus and were transferred to the NHS Test and Trace app were not successfully contacted because they “simply didn’t feel like answering the phone”.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast on Friday, Argar said: “Some people won’t necessarily have answered their phone, you and I know what it’s like if you have flu for example, and Covid-19 is a much, much nastier disease than that, you sometimes simply don’t feel like answering the phone or responding to much at all.”
“This is the first week of this new scheme and I think it has started off very, very well,” he added.
Argar said the government will “continue to chase up those who didn’t respond.”
Contact-tracing app ‘isn’t the vital part’ of NHS Test and Trace, claims minister
Asked about the development of the track and trace app, health minister Edward Argar told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme “It’s a complex piece of technology, and we continue to develop it and work to refine it.
“But, actually, as Dido Harding, who heads up the test, track and trace programme, has said, in a sense, the app is the cherry on the cake for this programme.”
“It is the human contact. It is the tracing that’s been done … that is the core part of making this programme work.
“So, the app has the potential, in the future, to be another step forward. But, it isn’t the vital part of it. The vital part of it is this human tracing that we have already got running.”
Scaffolding placed around Churchill statue ahead of protests
The Winston Churchill statue in Parliament Square is among the memorials being protected by authorities ahead of fresh protests.
Scaffolding was filmed being put up around the statue on Thursday evening. It came amid fears of clashes on Saturday between right-wing groups who vowed to “defend” selected memorials and Black Lives Matter demonstrators.
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said: “The statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square is being temporarily covered for its protection.
“The overwhelming majority of protests have been peaceful, but after recent damage the decision was taken by the Greater London Authority City Operations Unit to cover it.”
Violent protesters ‘could be jailed within 24 hours’
Any protesters deemed violent could be jailed within 24 hours of being arrested as authorities attempt to deter trouble at marches across the UK, according to reports.
The fast-track court plans come as more Black Lives Matter demonstrations, as well as far-right counter-protests, are expected this weekend.
Justice secretary Robert Buckland has told magistrates to use a similar model to the one used in the response to the 2011 riots, according to The Times.
The plans could lead to people suspected of causing vandalism, criminal damage or assaulting a police officer being jailed within 24 hours of their arrest in an attempt to defuse disorder.
Airlines launch legal action against government
British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair have now launched legal action against the government’s “flawed” 14-day quarantine policy.
The airlines announced they have asked for a judicial review to be heard “as soon as possible”, claiming the measures introduced this week will have a “devastating effect on British tourism and the wider economy”.
They said they have seen no evidence of when proposed air bridges between the UK and other countries will be implemented.
Instead, they want the government to re-adopt the policy it introduced on March 10, which saw passengers from countries deemed at high risk of coronavirus infection being order to self-isolate on arrival in the UK.
Among the claims made by the airlines in their legal challenge to the quarantine are:
– The guidelines are more stringent than those applied to people confirmed to have Covid-19.
– There was no consultation on scientific evidence provided for “such a severe policy”.
– People from overseas commuting weekly to the UK are exempt.
Runnymede Trust director and a member of the independent Sage group of scientists Dr Zubaida Haque has raised questions about the government’s failure to publish recommendations of how to reduce disproportionate ethnic minority deaths from coronavirus.
Asking whether equalities minister Kemi Badenoch misled parliament with her statement that PHE were “not able to” make recommendations within the published report, she added: “This is exactly what the Black Lives Matter protests are about: it is about the lives of BME people being perceived as expendable and it is about not being heard.”
Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that further suppression of the virus must come before any talk of relaxing the two-metre social distancing rule.
Covid-19 infections continue to fall
The number of people with Covid-19 in England “has decreased in recent weeks”, new figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.
The number of average infections per day since the end of April has fallen from 5,600 new infections per day to 4,500, according to the latest figures.
The ONS publishes snapshot data on how many people at any one time are infected with Covid-19 based on swab results from households across the country. The figures look at community infections and do not include care homes or hospitals.
EU experts see some risk of return to lockdown in second wave
The risk of a second wave of coronavirus infections big enough to require European lockdowns to be re-imposed is moderate to high, EU health experts have said.
A pandemic risk assessment by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) also predicted a moderate pick-up in infection rates in the coming weeks, although it said transmission has passed its peak in most European countries.
“The pandemic is not over,” ECDC director Andrea Ammon said in a statement accompanying the assessment.
She said that while there are decreasing trends of Covid-19 infections across Europe, efforts are still needed to limit the spread of the disease.
Death rates twice as high in England’s deprived areas, new figures show
People living in more deprived areas are experiencing coronavirus death rates more than double those living in wealthier parts of the country, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
Covid-19 mortality rates more than halved in all but two regions in England between April and May, the latest ONS figures show.
Yet the statisticians pointed to an ongoing trend which has seen the poorest parts of the country hardest hit by the disease.
There were 128.3 deaths per 100,000 people in the most deprived council areas – 118 per cent higher than the 58.8 deaths per 100,000 in the least deprived parts of the country.
Sarah Caul, head of mortality analysis at the ONS, said: “People living in more deprived areas have continued to experience Covid-19 mortality rates more than double those living in less deprived areas.
“General mortality rates are normally higher in more deprived areas, but Covid-19 appears to be increasing this effect.”
Relatives of Covid-19 victims call for inquiry now
The famility members of nearly 500 people who have died from coronavirus are calling for an immediate snap public inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic so lessons can be learned quickly to prevent further deaths.
The founder of the group said he believed his own father’s death could have been prevented. Matt Fowler told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “He was only 56, so he has gone way, way before his time.”
Our Whitehall editor Kate Devlin has more details.
‘Betrayal’: Farage reacts to expected U-turn on border checks
The Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has responded to the news the government is set to backtrack on its plan to introduce full border checks with the EU from 1 January
“The first betrayal, this is a very bad sign,” he tweeted. Farage also called the boarding up of the Winston Churchill statue as “surrender to the mob”.
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