Markus Andrews

Boris Johnson is facing fresh questions about alleged Covid rule-breaking amid claims he failed to self-isolate last January after coming into close contact with a Downing Street aide who later tested positive for the infection.The prime minister stood near No 10’s videographer on 31 December 2020 while recording his official new year message as the UK was about to be hit with its second wave of the virus, sources told the Daily Mirror.The videographer tested positive for Covid after the message was recorded. They informed No 10 officials and other staff members in the room were asked to self-isolate for 10 days, but the PM was not.A Downing Street spokesperson insisted that Mr Johnson did not break any regulations because social distancing measures were followed throughout the recording.But photos of the recording posted on the image-sharing website Flickr may raise questions about whether or not Mr Johnson did in fact maintain a two-metre distance between himself and the videographer, as set out in official guidance.A source told the Mirror that the videographer, who was not wearing a face mask, stood “face-to-face” with the PM for around 15 minutes The source also suggested Mr Johnson and the aide stood less than 2m apart during the recording.Official guidance at the time outlined that anybody who came within two metres, for more than 15 minutes, of somebody who later tested positive for Covid were required to self-isolate.Less than a week after the recording took place England was plunged into its third national lockdown as Covid cases soared and hospitals across the country began to fill up with the sickest patients.A Downing Street spokesperson said: “The prime minister was socially distanced from the individual who subsequently tested positive and the duration of the filming was shorter than 15 minutes.“This has been reaffirmed by those present. He was not advised to isolate as the rules did not require him to do so.” More

Keir Starmer will present himself as a “serious” leader for a Britain facing deep problems, in a speech attacking the Boris Johnson as “a branch of the entertainment industry”.Buoyed by a collapse in Tory support in the polls, the Labour leader will use a New Year address to promise voters a better country “based on security, prosperity and respect”.Sir Keir will accuse the prime minister – rocked by accusations of sleaze and of lockdown-busting No 10 parties – of being “unworthy of your trust” and of leading a government whose “incompetence is becoming plain”.And he will paint a picture of a Britain about to enter a cost-of-living crisis, even when the immediate challenge of defeating the Omicron variant of Covid fades.“As we begin this new year, Britain has entered a new phase,” he will say, speaking in Birmingham, where the Commonwealth Games will be staged later this year.“The cost of living is increasing. Energy bills are going up; wages are stagnant. Tax rises are coming in April.“Too many people do not feel safe in their streets. And good luck to anyone trying to get a quick GP appointment.”In his Labour conference speech in September, Sir Keir first hardened his criticism of Mr Johnson’s leadership style – branding him “a trickster” and “a showman”.In Birmingham, he will step up the attack and urge voters to embrace his sober style instead, saying: “I don’t think politics is a branch of the entertainment industry. I think it’s the serious business of getting things done.”The speech comes after Labour opened up a six-point lead over the Conservatives, with its leader – for the first time for more than a decade – seen as the more capable prime minister.Sir Keir finally has the shadow cabinet he wants in place, believing the promotions of Yvette Cooper (home affairs), Wes Streeting (health) and Bridget Phillipson (education) give him a government-in-waiting.His attacks have started to hit home, but Labour is still failing to win over enough disenchanted Tory voters – who remain undecided – and he is under pressure to set out policy detail.Sir Keir will nod to the traditional Labour voters the party needs to win back by praising the Queen, in her platinum jubilee year, and by calling himself “a patriot”.“This country has presented me with great opportunities. It’s a great place to live,” he will say.“But I don’t think you cease to be a patriot because you notice your country has flaws.“On the contrary, the reason we in this party want to correct those flaws is precisely because we are patriotic. I came into politics to make things happen not just to talk about them.”Sir Keir will add: “The Britain I want is a country in which those who contribute get something back.“Because 2022 is also the first year in which we need to tackle some big challenges: repairing after the pandemic; combating the climate crisis; making Brexit work.” More

Hundreds of homeless people are being told by councils to sleep on the streets first if they want housing help under opaque government rules, The Independent has learned.Charities say the guidance used to assess people asking for accommodation is resulting in some being turned away at the housing office and told to “bed down” on the streets so they can be picked up by outreach teams.The situation – branded “appalling” and “utterly unacceptable” by campaigners and MPs – also means that people who are afraid to sleep on the streets are sometimes not picked up by rough sleeping teams at all, with women who fear being sexually assaulted particularly affected.Housing charity Shelter says the problem is systemic, and that its helplines frequently hear from people who are left without accommodation because they cannot be “verified” as rough sleepers by their local authority – including during the Covid lockdown, when they were supposed to be offered a place to stay under the “Everyone In” scheme. Even those who do bed down on the street are sometimes missed by the overstretched and under-resourced council teams who are supposed to find them and take them in. The approach varies by local area, with government guidance on the matter opaque. Labour said the government should step in to make clear that people should not be left until they are desperate to be offered help. “No one should have to render themselves destitute before they’re able to access support,” Sarah Owen, the shadow minister for homelessness, told The Independent. “People should be able to get help before they reach crisis point so we can protect some of the most vulnerable of rough sleepers, particularly women. More

More than half of black children in the UK are growing up in poverty, after a huge increase since the Conservatives came to power, a new analysis says.They are also more than twice as likely to be living below the breadline as white children, according to the study of the numbers in “relative low income”.In 2010, 42 per cent of black youngsters were growing up below the benchmark – but this had risen to 53 per cent in 2019-20, the most recent year for which data is available.Because the black population has risen sharply, the numbers in poverty have more than doubled from 200,000 at the start of the last decade to more than 410,000.Labour seized on the figures to call on Boris Johnson to stop dragging his heels on action to “tackle structural racial inequality at source”, through a new Race Equality Act.The party’s own report last year, by Doreen Lawrence, called for a national strategy to tackle health inequalities and mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting – but no measures have followed, it said.“The Conservatives should be ashamed that more than half of Black children are growing up in poverty this Christmas – more than double the number when they took office,” said Anneliese Dodds, Labour’s equalities spokeswoman.“There is little wonder that child poverty has skyrocketed over the last decade when Conservative ministers have done so little to tackle the structural inequalities driving it.”The party used government data on households living below 60 per cent of median income and population statistics to produce its analysis.The proportion of Pakistani children below the breadline has also risen since the Conservatives gained power – from 50 per cent to 55 per cent, it said.Some 61 per cent of Bangladeshi children living in poor households – the same figure as in 2010 – while the proportion has fallen for Indian youngsters (from 34 per cent to 27 per cent) and for Chinese children (from 47 per cent to 12 per cent).For white children, the share has risen from 24 per cent to 26 per cent – and is the highest overall cohort, at 2.9 million children.A government spokesperson pointed instead to separate figures showing that, in 2019-20, there were 300,000 fewer children in absolute low income than in 2010.People can rise above the threshold if their incomes rise, while remaining in relative poverty – the more commonly used measure – if other people also become better off.The spokesperson told The Guardian: “The latest official figures show there were 300,000 fewer children of all backgrounds in poverty after housing costs than in 2010 and we continue to provide extensive support to reduce this number further.” More

Boris Johnson says no new Covid restrictions are necessary at present, insisting his existing plan B measures are the “right” approach.The government intends to “continue with path that we’re on”, the prime minister said – arguing the current curbs are sufficient, despite the rapid spread of the Omicron variant.Mr Johnson ducked an invitation to say the end of the pandemic is in sight, saying: “It will be absolute folly to say that this thing is all over bar the shouting.”But he said: “We have got plan B in place – people should never forget that.”And he added: “The way forward for the country as a whole is to continue with the path that we’re on.“We’ll keep everything on the review course we keep all measures under review, but the mixture of things that we’re doing at the moment is, I think, the right one.”The comments, on a visit to a vaccination centre, come ahead of a review of plan B – widespread mask-wearing, Covid passes to enter crowded venues and work-from-home guidance – on Wednesday.They suggest those measures will remain in place, but that England will continue to hold fire on the sorts of further curbs in place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.At least half a dozen of NHS trusts have declared critical incidents, as the health service battles what one called an “unprecedented” staffing crisis.But the prime minister said: “No matter how incredibly transmissible Omicron is – and there’s no question it really spreads very, very fast – it is different from previous variants.“And it does seem pretty conclusively to be less severe than Delta or Alpha, it is putting fewer people into ICU [intensive care units] and, sadly, the people who are getting into ICU are the people who aren’t boosted, so get boosted.”However, speaking at the hub at Stoke Mandeville Stadium in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, Mr Johnson admitted “considerable” pressure on the NHS will continue for the “next couple of weeks and maybe more”.“There’s no question Omicron continues to surge through the country”, he said, but insisted help with staffing problems is being provided.The government would “help the NHS with their staffing requirements, and we’re looking at what we can do to move people into those areas that are particularly badly affected”.The prime minister appeared to reject copying the US by cutting the isolation period for people who test positive for coronavirus to five days, warning: “We don’t want to be releasing people back into the workplace when they’re still infectious.“And the risk is you would increase the numbers of people going back into the workplace who are infectious by a factor of three.“So you might perversely have a negative effect on the workforce if you see what I mean, so that’s the argument we’re looking at.” More

Boris Johnson does not “seem to care” about the peace deal in Northern Ireland and is putting it at risk with his Brexit stance, one of its architects says.Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief negotiator, hit out at the prime minister and David Frost – his former Brexit minister, who quit last month – for “sacrificing all the work” to achieve the Good Friday Agreement.The former top No 10 aide warned Northern Ireland’s devolved government could collapse because of the turmoil, saying: “You have to face up to the fact that Brexit requires someone to get hurt.”And he told The Guardian: “What worries me is the casual political vandalism. They really don’t seem to care.“I mean, the damage they are doing to the very fragile political settlements in Northern Ireland, by posturing on things like the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which do not matter to voters in Northern Ireland.“They may matter to Boris Johnson and some supporters [in the government] and the ideological base.“But is it really worth sacrificing all the work that previous generation of politicians put into the Northern Ireland peace process on ideological altar of the ECJ?”The criticism comes after Lord Frost made stripping EU judges of the power to oversee the Northern Ireland Protocol a red line in continuing negotiations, although he was then forced to soften that stance.He and Mr Johnson have also repeatedly threatened to trigger Article 16 of the Protocol, because of Unionist anger over the trade barrier created in the Irish Sea, but have not done so.Mr Powell also raised the alarm over a future poll on reuniting Ireland which, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, will take place if there is clear support for it.“Imagine if you have a border poll on a united Ireland and 48 per cent for remaining in the United Kingdom, a bit like the Brexit referendum,” he said.“People don’t want to address that problem. I understand. But it’s the fear of that that’s causing the trouble.”Mr Powell said he did not expect a return to The Troubles of the pre-Good Friday Agreement era, but warned Brexit created a permanent division in Northern Ireland.On Sunday, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, said the government had to make progress in reworking the Protocol by the end of this month.“January is going to be an absolutely crucial month,” said Jeffrey Donaldson, insisting Article 16 should be triggered if the deadline is missed.“If we don’t get rapid and decisive progress, and one side or the other is kicking the can down the road, this will have major implications for the stability of the political institutions in Northern Ireland.” More

Concern is growing about the “leakage” of Omicron infections from younger to older people, even as overall case numbers flatten in the hotspot of London.The education secretary said ministers are watching closely rising case rates in over-50s – the more vulnerable age group – ahead of a decision this week on whether to introduce tougher restrictions.Nadhim Zahawi said infections in the capital, the “epicentre” for the fast-spreading variant, are “beginning to plateau if not drop”.But he added: “The bit that is more concerning is we’re seeing leakage into the over-50s in terms of infection – and they’re the ones who, if you recall in the earlier waves, ended up in hospital with severe infection and hospitalisation and sadly death rates went up.”The “good news” was that 90 per cent of over-50s have received a booster jab, including 10 million people since the programme was ramped up last month, Mr Zahawi told BBC Radio 4.He repeated that there is “nothing in the data at the moment” to require harsher curbs to be imposed when Wednesday’s review of existing ‘plan B’ measures takes place.But, Mr Zahawi added: “We have to keep a close eye, because we’re seeing some leakage of infections into the over-50s.”The warning comes after 12 successive days of more than 100,000 new Covid infections across the UK as a whole, even with patchy reporting over the festive period. Because seriously-ill patients are usually admitted to hospital a week or more after becoming infected, pressure on the NHS is expected to reach its peak at the end of this week.On Sunday, the health minister Edward Argar admitted that hospital admissions will “potentially” rise for at least two more weeks.Mr Zahawi also played down growing fears of an NHS staffing crisis, with one in 10 workers off sick on New Year’s Eve – nearly half of them because of Covid.“The NHS is very good at being able to move staff around within the system. They have an infrastructure to do that,” he told BBC Breakfast.“They’ve done it over many years in winter when we’ve been, you know, have big flu viruses around.”Th education secretary also defended reintroducing mask-wearing by secondary school pupils in their classrooms, instead of just in communal areas.Omicron is “far more infectious”, he pointed out, and a study of 123 schools had identified the benefits of face coverings while students are being taught.“This is an aerosol-transmitted virus and, if you’re wearing a mask, if you’re asymptomatic, then you’re less likely to infect other people,” Mr Zahawi said.On schools, he said: “The most important thing is to keep them open. We monitor staff absenteeism, I just said to you we’re running at about 8 per cent last year.“If that rises further, then we look at things like merging classes, teaching in bigger numbers.” More

Some of the UK’s largest conservation charities have written to Boris Johnson urging him to make New Year’s resolutions to tackle the crises facing nature and the climate.The National Trust, the RSPB, the Woodland Trust and the Wildlife Trusts are calling for urgent action including protecting peatlands, paying farmers to restore nature, and taking steps to preserve the oceans.Warning of a “huge gulf between rhetoric and reality” in the government’s approach to tackling climate change, they said the momentum gained in November’s Cop26 talks in Glasgow must not be lost.The charities’ leaders are asking the government to make seven promises: Restore peatlands more quickly and ban burning of upland peatUrgently bring forward the long-promised ban on the use of peat for horticultural purposesEmbed climate and nature objectives in agricultural support schemesEnsure that the UK’s protected sites network is big enough and managed so that it protects habitats, species, environments and the carbon stored in themIncrease protection for the marine environment to harness its carbon-storing potentialRaise targets for tree cover in line with the recommendations of the Climate Change CommitteeMake it obligatory for climate risks and hazards to be taken into account in all public decision-makingThe eco charities also want farmers to be paid for taking action to tackle the nature and climate crises.It’s claimed that these pledges would ensure the government can reach net zero carbon emissions and halt the catastrophic decline in nature.Craig Bennett, chief executive of the Wildlife Trusts, said: “2022 needs to be the year when the government steps up with renewed commitments and investment.“There’s still a huge gulf between rhetoric and reality to tackle climate change.“We urgently need to cut carbon emissions deeper and faster, and ensure nature recovers across 30 per cent of land and sea by the end of the decade.“The UK needs to ban new coal mines, set an end date for oil and gas exploration and production, put greater investment in nature restoration, and ensure agricultural and fishing industries are supported so that they can help solve – rather than worsen – the nature and climate crises.”Last month the government announced a consultation on a ban on the sale of peat for use in domestic horticulture in England and Wales from 2024, and for professional use by 2028.And a year ago ministers unveiled a partial ban on the burning of grouse moor peatlands in England. They have also promised eco-incentives for farmers in a new “agricultural roadmap” along with a major tree-planting push. But the letter urges them to go further and more quickly, saying: “November 2021 was a key moment in the global effort to keep 1.5 degrees alive, and an opportunity to set the bar higher in terms of recognising the vital importance of nature for addressing and adapting to climate change.”Beccy Speight, chief executive of the RSPB, said two-thirds of the UK’s high-carbon, wildlife-rich places were unprotected and slowly being destroyed, adding: “The UK government needs to turn its rhetoric on the global stage into reality for our countryside.”A government spokesperson said: “We are absolutely committed to tackling climate change, with the UK having cut emissions faster than any G7 country over the past three decades.“We are taking action to limit rising temperatures with new pledges to cut carbon and methane emissions, end deforestation, phase out coal, and provide more finance to countries most vulnerable to climate change.“Our Sustainable Farming Incentive will reward farmers and land managers for using more environmentally friendly farming practices. We are also consulting on plans to phase out the use of peat in the horticulture sector, and are promoting sustainable management practices on all peat habitats.” More