Brexit news – live: PM accused of ‘dereliction of duty’ on NI as trade from Ireland to GB slumps 50%

Boris Johnson has promised that coronavirus vaccines from UK factories will be delivered to Europe, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said, political editor Andrew Woodcock reports.

As the Commission came under attack for the slow provision of jabs in the EU, Ms von der Leyen last night told German TV that AstraZeneca had agreed to step up deliveries of vaccine in February and March by 9m doses to 40m.

And she today said that Pfizer will provide the EU with 75m additional doses of the BioNTech vaccine in the second quarter of 2021, bringing the total to as many as 600m over the course of the year.

Downing Street said it was too soon to say when “surplus” vaccine doses could be donated to other counties, such as European Union member states.

The prime minister’s official spokesman refused to say whether surplus doses would only be available once all UK adults had been offered a jab – which might not be until September – or whether vaccines could be donated once only the priority groups had been immunised by the spring.

“It’s too early to discuss surplus doses,” the spokesman said.

“Our priority remains to ensure that we get the vaccine out to the most vulnerable in society – groups one-four and the rest of phase one – by the spring and that’s why we have set out what we will do.”

Keir Starmer has been on Channel 4’s ‘Steph’s Packed Lunch’ programme, making the case for the government to end the agony of people still trapped in cladded buildings – so long after the Grenfell tragedy – before a Commons vote later.

“I honestly can’t believe, three and a half years after Grenfell, we’re even having this conversation,” the Labour leader said.

His attempts at some light-hearted knockabout almost backfired when he said, of his struggles to home-school his kids in maths and English: “I’m scratching my head to try to help the children.”

Steph McGovern, the presenter, asked: “Obviously. there’s a lot of figures involved in your job. Do you think, as prime minister, you’d be alright if you weren’t that good at maths?”

Sir Keir quickly made clear that he did not mean he couldn’t do maths himself – it was just the teaching of it that presented a challenge, apparently.

Boris Johnson has said he is “optimistic” people will be able to enjoy a summer holiday this year, provided the disease can be kept under control.

“I don’t want to give too much concrete by way of dates for our summer holidays. I am optimistic – I understand the reasons for being optimistic – but some things have got to go right,” he said during a visit to Batley, West Yorkshire.

“The vaccine programme has got to continue to be successful. We have got to make sure we don’t get thrown off course by new variants, we have got to make sure that we continue to keep the disease under control and the level of infections come down.”

The prime minister said the rollout of the vaccination programme has been “phenomenal” but declined to be drawn on whether the government would meet its targets.

“I think it would be unwise to speculate at the moment. I think the NHS, the pharmacies, the volunteers, helped by the Army, they have done an outstanding job,” he said.

“The rollout has been phenomenal so far but it is still, relatively speaking, early days.”

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, will lead a press conference from No 10 at 5pm this evening, alongside Stephen Powis of NHS England and Susan Hopkins of Public Health England, Downing Street has announced.

The UK has imposed sanctions on four Zimbabwean security officials over human rights violations, notably the killing of protesters, the foreign secretary has announced.

The sanctions include a ban on travel to the UK and the freezing of assets, and are the first to be targeted at individuals under the recently launched Zimbabwe autonomous sanctions regime, which the British government said aims to encourage the Mnangagwa government to “respect democratic principles and institutions”.

The government said the officials targeted, including Owen Ncube, Zimbabwe’s security minister, are responsible for the deaths of 17 people in protests against a fuel hike in 2019 and the deaths of six protesters in violence in the wake of President Mnangagwa’s rise to power.

Boris Johnson suggested education was more of a concern for the government than the economy when considering the impacts of the pandemic.

On a visit to Batley in West Yorkshire, the prime minister said he thought the economy could “bounce back” before turning to education: “The thing that really concerns me at the moment is education and the deficit in our children’s education that we have run up as a result of these lockdowns.

“That for me is one of the major, major priorities for us – making sure that we ameliorate and repair the loss of time in the classroom, the loss of educational opportunities.”

Ministers have promised schools will be the first to leave lockdown and the prime minister said the return of pupils would be “the first sign of normality beginning to return”.

Labour has accused the government of worsening regional inequality through its handling of public finances during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Speaking after the release of regional GDP figures from the Office for National Statistics, Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, said: “These figures confirm what we already know: the pandemic, and the government’s handling of it, is worsening regional inequality.

“We need a responsible approach to secure our economy and bring jobs to every village, town and city.

“Instead, the chancellor is hitting families with a triple hammer blow of cuts to Universal Credit, a massive hike in council tax and a pay freeze for millions of key workers. It’s economically illiterate.”

Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister, said the EU’s bid to override part of the Northern Ireland protocol on Friday in an attempt to control the distribution of vaccines “was a mistake that everybody recognises should not have happened”.

“I mean in simple terms, you do not touch the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland without full consultation with the people who are most impacted by it,” the Fine Gael minister told Ireland’s RTE earlier.  

“The Irish government, the British government and, perhaps most importantly, political leaders in Northern Ireland.

“That’s what happened on Friday, which should not have happened. And I think lessons have been learned as a result of that, and it certainly won’t happen again.”

Arlene Foster has accused Boris Johnson of a dereliction of duty after accusing him of not doing enough to address Irish Sea trade disruption.

Northern Ireland’s first minister demanded action from the prime minister amid the continued fallout from the EU’s botched move to invoke a mechanism to suspend elements of the new trading arrangements.The European Commission was forced into an embarrassing U-turn on Friday when it backtracked on an attempt to restrict the free flow of goods across the Irish border.try to unilaterally suspend part of Brexit’s Northern Ireland Protocol to prevent the region being used as backdoor to move vaccines from the bloc into the UK.

The European Commission was forced into an embarrassing U-turn on Friday when it backtracked on an attempt to restrict the free flow of goods across the Irish border by trying to suspend part of Brexit’s Northern Ireland Protocol to prevent the region being used as backdoor to move vaccines from the bloc into the UK.

Ms Foster said the EU had “lowered the bar” for triggering suspension, which is done by invoking Article 16 of the protocol.

The DUP leader said she did not accept that the Commission’s initial move on Friday was a mistake.

“It was absolutely an act of hostility and actually they have not ruled out using it again,” she told BBC Radio Ulster.

Ms Foster said it was “patronising and offensive” to described the problems encountered by Northern Ireland businesses and consumers as “teething problems” and she called on Mr Johnson to act and move immediately to deploy Article 16.

“I have to say directly to the prime minister and to the UK government that it is a dereliction of duty for a prime minister of the United Kingdom to stand by and allow United Kingdom citizens to suffer and that is what he is allowing to do at present, so therefore action is absolutely needed,” she said.

While Article 16 suspends aspects of the protocol to facilitate negotiations on resolving the issues of concern, the first minister said she wants the protocol binned altogether. “There’s nothing positive to come from protocol,” she added.