Markus Andrews

London mayor Sadiq Khan has urged the government to make face coverings mandatory on public transport as the UK continues to average more than 40,000 confirmed coronavirus cases a day for over a week.The government has so far been resistant to bringing in so-called Plan B measures, which would see the reintroduction of mandatory facemasks indoors along with guidance to work from home and the use of Covid passports.Mr Khan called for Londoners to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and the flu to protect the NHS this winter.He said in a statement the the “deadly virus has not gone away and this winter we’re facing both flu and Covid”.“The worst thing we can do is to lower our guard, be complacent and underestimate the risk these viruses pose to all of us,” he added.“The situation with Covid-19 in the capital is so finely balanced that it needs all of us to act together to protect ourselves, our loved ones, the things we enjoy and our NHS this winter.“That’s why I’m urging all eligible Londoners to have the booster vaccine and flu jab as soon as you are offered it, continue to wear a mask where you can and am calling on the government to put simple and effective steps, such as mandatory face coverings on public transport, in place to halt the spread of the virus now.”The mayor’s comments came after a leading scientist suggested measures in Plan B may not be needed if data continues to show a decline in cases.Professor Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London and a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), told a press briefing there is no apparent growth in case numbers but there is a continued rise in hospitalisations.The government on Thursday announced all remaining countries on England’s red list for international travel will be removed, with Transport Secretary Grant Shapps saying Whitehall will also recognise coronavirus vaccines for arrivals from than 30 new countries and territories.Wales advised it will adopt the same changes.PA More

Boris Johnson’s government will struggle to reach its net zero target unless local councils get involved in making homes more energy efficient, MPs have warned.Ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK ministers have set out proposals to encourage green home improvements as part of a wider plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.But MPs on the housing committee said the government’s strategy lacks proper funding for local authorities to help make Britain’s homes more energy efficient.Labour MP Clive Betts, the chair of the housing select committee, said councils must be given support to help deliver change. “The government must learn the lessons of past failed nationally delivered ‘green’ schemes,” he said.Mr Betts added: “To meet the scale of the challenge and enable local councils to make long-term decisions on behalf of their communities, the government should also come forward with a long-term funding plan for local authority climate action.”The government’s plan to hand out £5,000 grants to help residents replace their gas boilers with green heat pumps over the next three years has been branded “inadequate” by environmentalists.Only 90,000 of the UK’s 22 million gas-heated households will benefit from the £450m commitment, according to Friends of the Earth. Greenpeace also warned it “stopped short of what is required”.The report published by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on Friday also claimed the government’s strategy lacked ambition.The MPs said there was a risk a large number of existing gas boilers will simply be replaced with new gas boilers unless families were given a greater incentive to make changes.“Moving to lower or zero emissions from new homes is important,” said Mr Betts. “But to reach net zero, it’s crucial that insulation is improved in existing homes and that householders are offered viable choices and incentives to replace their gas boilers and decarbonise their heating.”The MPs report also urged the government to set funding plans to decarbonise heating beyond 2025, and bring in a new target of moving to zero carbon homes by 2030.The Local Government Association (LGA), the body representing local authorities across England, said council bosses would have to be “at the core” of the country’s efforts to hit the net zero target.“It is absolutely crucial that councils are at the forefront of the national response to climate change,” said councillor Darren Rodwell, the LGA’s environment spokesperson. “We need the government to work in partnership with local authorities to … help to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner.” More

An NHS payment scheme pushed by David Cameron while he worked for Greensill Capital provided no “material benefits” to the health service, a government watchdog has found.The former Conservative prime minister was at the centre of a scandal over his lobbying of Tory ministers on behalf of the finance firm which collapsed earlier this year.In 2019 Mr Cameron lobbied then health secretary Matt Hancock about the benefits of payment scheme allowing NHS staff to get some of their earnings in advance, later rolled out to several trusts.But an investigation National Audit Office (NAO) has found that the salary scheme – and a separate payment scheme for community pharmacies – did not receive the expected uptake and did nothing to help the NHS financially.The Labour chair of the public accounts select committee said the failure of the schemes to deliver “promised savings” raised more questions about the government’s ability to “prevent conflicts of interest”.The NAO investigation looked into the Pharmacy Earlier Payment Scheme brought in by the Department of Health and Social Care in 2013 following advice provided by Lex Greensill. His firm Greensill Capital later acted as the scheme’s financial guarantor.The health department estimated that the scheme – aimed at getting banks to help reimburse pharmacists for prescriptions more swiftly – could save the NHS £100m. But investigators for the spending watchdog found “no evidence that these predicted savings were realised”.The NAO also looked into a salary advance scheme called Earnd – pushed by Greensill Capital by 2019 and 2021 as a way of allowing employees of NHS trusts to receive a proportion of their earnings before payday.The investigation found that seven NHS trusts adopted the scheme, but was not widely taken up and did not help the health service financially. The collapse of Greensill Capital in March 2021 forced some NHS trusts to switch to another advance scheme – incurring extra costs for doing so.Earlier this year it emerged that Mr Cameron had organised a “private drink” with Mr Greensill and Mr Hancock in October 2019 to talk about the salary advance scheme.The ex-health secretary later admitted his former Tory colleague had lobbied him, but details of the meeting were not published anywhere on records of official engagements.Labour MP Meg Hillier, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, said the NAO’s findings “raise yet more questions over the government’s ability to prevent conflicts of interest and the independence of advice it receives”.The influential backbencher added: “The consequences once again fall squarely on the taxpayer – with increasing risks to value for money and promised savings vanishing into thin air.”Mr Cameron came under intense scrutiny over his efforts to get Greensill Capital access to the government’s Covid support schemes in the early weeks of the pandemic as the firm faced insolvency.Documents showed a barrage of messages sent by Mr Cameron to ministers, including chancellor Rishi Sunak, and officials at the Treasury and Bank of England in March and April of 2020 as he fought to get Greensill access to a loans scheme.Mr Cameron later told MPs on the Treasury committee that he ought to have made formal approaches by letter – but insisted that his use of private phone numbers of former Tory colleagues was “acceptable”. More

Cabinet minister Liz Truss has vowed to protect LGBT+ people from “abhorrent” conversion therapy, as the government finally sets out its long-awaited plan to ban the practice.The Conservatives promised in 2018 to bring forward legislation to end conversion therapies which seek to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity.In March, three of the government’s LGBT+ advisers quit their posts and issued damning criticism over the failure of Boris Johnson’s government to fulfil the long-standing pledge.Ms Truss, the minister for women and equalities, is now launching a six-week consultation process on the legislative plan to make “coercive” conversion therapies illegal in England and Wales.The government wants create a new offence for so-called talking conversion therapies, as well as making sure violent conversion therapy acts are sentenced appropriately under existing laws.“There should be no place for the abhorrent practice of coercive conversion therapy in our society,” said Ms Truss as she launched the consultation.“Today we are publishing detailed proposals that will stop appalling conversion therapies and make sure LGBT people can live their lives free from the threat of harm or abuse.”The minister added: “I want everyone to be able to love who they want and be themselves. Today’s announcement sets out how we will ban an archaic practice that has no place in modern life.”The government said individuals would remain “free to seek out professional help and guidance” – saying legislative efforts would be focused on practices which people have not willingly agreed to undertake.But campaigners have warned that there should be no defence that a victim appears to have consented to conversion therapy if the government hopes to introduce a truly comprehensive ban.A recent report by the Forum group of human rights lawyers and experts warned: “Individuals who seek out conversion practices in the hope of being ‘cured’ are not made aware of the severe psychological harm to which they are exposed, and so cannot give informed consent.”Officials in Northern Ireland have already start preliminary work on drafting a bill after politicians at Stormont passed a motion calling for a ban on conversion therapy in April.In Scotland, the SNP administration has vowed to end conversion therapy – but said it would wait to see if Mr Johnson’s government follows through on its pledge to “eradicate” the practice and how extensive any proposed ban might be.The government has made clear its legislative plan is aimed at changing the law in only England and Wales.The Government Equalities Office (GEO) also said ministers were particularly keen safeguard under 18s – saying legislation would place a strong emphasis on preventing children undergoing any conversion therapies.Ministers are also preparing to bring in Conversion Therapy Protection Orders to protect potential victims from undergoing the practice. This could include removing passports of those at risk of being taken overseas for conversion therapy.The government is launching its six-week consultation at 9am on Friday. The GEO is seeking input from charities, and is urging those with experience of conversion therapy to come forward to give their views. More

The crew of a British fishing boat detained by French police are “in good spirits” and will remain onboard the vessel until its release, its owner has said. Scottish firm Macduff Shellfish said its main concern was the welfare of the crew on the Cornelis-Gert Jan, which was boarded by French authorities on Wednesday.France said the scallop vessel was detained for not having the correct licence to fish its waters, but the trawler’s owners said it was operating legally.It was still being held in the port at Le Havre, a city in Normandy, on Thursday.It comes amid a bitter and escalating row between France and the UK over post-Brexit fishing rights. The UK government has summoned the French ambassador in an attempt to make progress in the dispute. As the Macduff Shellfish boat remained moored in Le Havre’s port, Andrew Brown, the Scottish firm’s director of sustainability and public affairs, said: “Our priority concern is for the welfare of the crew of the Cornelis.“The crew are in good spirits and will remain on board the vessel until its release.”Mr Brown said on Thursday the skipper of the boat had left the ship to be interviewed by authorities and “we have ensured that he has legal representation throughout these discussions”.He added the scallop vessel was ordered into a French port on Wednesday “while legally fishing for scallop in French waters”. “It appears our vessel has been caught up in the ongoing dispute between the UK and France on the implementation of the Brexit Fishing Agreement,” he said.“We are looking to the UK government to defend the rights of the UK fishing fleet and ensure that the fishing rights provided under the Brexit Fishing agreement are fully respected by the EU.“We will vigorously defend ourselves against any claims.”The French maritime ministry said two British vessels were sanctioned by authorities on Wednesday: one for obstructing checks and the second for not having a licence to fish in French waters. The latter was diverted into Le Havre’s port, the statement added. George Eustice, the UK environment secretary, told MPs on Thursday he understood the Cornelis was on a list provided by the Marine Management Organisation to the European Union, who granted a licence.“We are seeing some reports that, for some reason, they were subsequently withdrawn from the list; it’s unclear why that might have been at the moment,” he added. It comes amid anger in France after the UK and Jersey turned down applications from dozens of French boats to fish in their waters in what Paris said was a breach of Britain’s post-Brexit trade deal with the EU.French ministers have warned they will block British boats from some ports and tighten checks on vessels travelling between France and the UK if the issue is not resolved by Tuesday.Annick Giradin, France’s minister for the seas, tweeted on Thursday: “It’s been nine months since French fishermen have not been able to work.” She also accused the UK of breaching its agreement.A UK government spokesperson said proposed French actions were “unjustified” and they regretted “confrontational language” used by France in the row. The Foreign Office on Thursday summoned French ambassador Catherine Colonna for talks after Brexit minister David Frost held a crisis meeting of senior cabinet colleagues.Lord Frost said he was “concerned by French plans on fisheries and beyond” and expected to have more to say on Friday. More

A Labour MP has described how she and her family were forced to flee her home in the middle of the night following what she feared was “an immediate firearms threat”.Naz Shah was speaking after Sundas Alam, 30, admitted a number of charges at York Crown Court on Thursday relating to sending death threats to the Bradford West MP.She said she had had many death threats before, but this was the first time she had dialled 999 because “I really genuinely felt it was an immediate firearms threat”.Alam, of of Princeville Street, Bradford, admitted three counts of sending malicious communications and one of perverting the course of justice part-way through her trial. She was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on November 29.Ms Shah said that what made Alam’s threats worse was that she used cloned email addresses which led to an innocent family being dragged out of their beds by armed police and questioned for 20 hours by officers responding to her alert in April.“I can’t imagine what they went through,” the MP told PA Media. But she said: “It won’t stop me doing what I do.”She added: “I’m just grateful to West Yorkshire Police, really. It’s really close to home. We’ve lost two colleagues in the last five years.”She added: “I’ve never had to call 999 before, this was the first time.“It was the length of time between one email and the other. I was thinking ‘this is somebody stewing, this is somebody stewing for so many hours’ and actually saying ‘how do you want this rifle to your head or through the window’.”She said she thought: “Are you telling me you’re outside my house?”“At the time it was really, really real,” Ms Shah said.The MP said she stayed in her home while she waited for the police, but made sure her children were taken to a safe place.She said: “I’ve got a thick skin and I just carry on with it but my kids and my family do worry. That causes more concern.”Ms Shah said: “I’m just glad it’s over now and I can get back to doing my job.“It’s never nice and you should never have to get used to it, and you should never get used to people threatening your family. It shouldn’t be a pre-requisite for doing the job.”She said: “It won’t stop me doing what I do.”In August 2019, Stewart Hanson, 57, of The Woodlands, Tranmere, was jailed for 12 weeks after sending offensive emails to Ms Shah.Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said his thoughts were with Ms Shah and her family “for all that they have had to endure”.“Nobody should have to put up with threats like this,” he said. “Sadly it’s the reality for too many in public life.” More

There is strong public support for taking “platform” apps such as Deliveroo and Uber into public ownership if they fail to improve pay and conditions for their workers, new polling has found.A study of opinion commissioned by researchers at Oxford University found a ratio of nearly two-to-one (41 per cent to 22 per cent) believe so-called gig economy workers are not paid a fair wage.The researchers from the university’s Fairwork project had pollsters ask voters about measures they would support to improve conditions in the sector.They found nearly two-thirds of Britons (64 per cent) support changing employment law to stop platform employers from inaccurately describing workers as “self-employed” to get around requirements like holiday pay and sick leave.And a significant majority (57 per cent) think the companies should be obliged to negotiate with trade unions – which very few of them currently recognise. Sixty per cent also say the companies should have to accept worker representatives sitting on their boards of directors. But there was also strong support for going further: asked whether the companies behind the apps should be nationalised and taken into public ownership if they repeatedly failed to offer workers fair pay and conditions, 49 per cent agreed and 25 per cent disagreed.A large majority of 60 per cent of Labour voters support the idea, but it is also popular among Conservative voters, who back it by 47 per cent in favour to 27 per cent opposed.Apps such as Deliveroo, Uber and Amazon Flex pay workers per job completed rather than a set wage, and claim people who work for them are self-employed rather than employees.As a result, workers can be paid below the minimum wage, especially during quiet periods, and do not get the same rights as other workers. Defenders of the approach say it offers more flexibility, but critics say it makes it hard for workers to rely on a regular income and makes their jobs extremely precarious.Mark Graham, a professor the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, and director of the Fairwork research project, said the polling results showed “an appetite for decisive action to improve fairness in the gig economy”. “The development of technology has allowed for services like transport and delivery to be organised in new ways, but these developments risk being monopolised for the benefits of platforms and their investors, rather than being passed onto workers,” he said.“Given the scale of the social challenges we face as we emerge from the pandemic, there is an urgent need for the platform economy to transition towards working for social benefit, not private profit.   “Gig economy platforms need to start making serious improvements now if they want to keep their customers on side and prevent this demand for change from escalating further.”  Labour has already pledged to change employment law to stop firms using bogus “self-employment” status to strip workers of the right to holiday and sick pay. The party also says it will bring in “fair pay agreements that would require certain sectors to negotiate with trade unions for minimum pay and conditions”.Alex Marshall, president of the IWGB union, which organises workers on platform apps, said: “This report reiterates that the tide is turning in the gig economy. Not only are we seeing more and more exploitative employers lose in court and be ordered to give workers the rights they have been illegally denied, but now we are seeing public opinion hugely change too. “These key workers have proved their value with the huge shift they put in to get us all through the pandemic and the public are getting behind them in demanding better treatment. “A more ethical employment model would not only be beneficial for the workers, but would improve public perception and benefit the business too. Workers’ voices are being heard and this comes as a result of unions like the IWGB getting organised, campaigning and winning in the gig economy and making sure that worker rights remain front and centre.”The polling in the study was conducted by Survation on 21 and 22 October 2021 from a representative sample of 2,020 adults aged 18 and over living in the UK. More

Children and young people face becoming a lost generation due to rising education inequality, high taxes and climbing house prices, leading economists have warned.Analysis shows that, despite spending touted in Rishi Sunak’s Budget on education and childcare, those in further education over the next three years will face funding that is still 10 per cent lower than it was in 2010.Tax hikes introduced by the chancellor will also disproportionately hit younger people as they target work over wealth. Cohorts entering the jobs market will also face stagnant pay packets, with wages which are 40 per cent lower than predicted before the financial crash of 2008. They face the highest tax burden as a percentage of GDP since 1950 by 2026, equivalent to £3,000 per household even as inflation may reach 5 per cent next year.Kate Green, the shadow education secretary, told The Independent: “The chancellor has got the wrong priorities and young people are paying the price for it.“This is a Budget that will leave millions of families on lower incomes worse off, fails to match the scale of the education recovery challenge with the funding the government’s own catch-up commissioner Sir Kevan Collins said was needed, and still leaves sixth forms and colleges with less funding than they had more than a decade ago,” she added.Weak pay growth comes as younger people also face higher property prices. According to the Office for National Statistics the average UK house price was £25,000 higher in August than a year earlier, at a time of low interest rates and after the government cut stamp duty – a move widely criticised for further inflating the market.Economists said Mr Sunak had chosen to back measures that would have less of an impact on elder generations rather than those that would hit all ages equally.“In the autumn 2021 Budget, it’s notable that extra public spending is concentrated on health and social care for older people,” said Lord Willetts, president of the Resolution Foundation’s Intergenerational Centre.“We do have an obligation to older generations, but we need to do more for younger people as well,” he added.Funding for sixth form colleges will still be 10 per cent lower in real terms than in 2009-10 by 2024, when accounting for inflation, even as evidence suggests starkly deepening educational gaps between children and young people from wealthier and poorer backgrounds.Overall, the total allocation for schools’ Covid recovery in the budget amounted to £4.9bn. This was less than a third of the total requested by former government education tsar Sir Kevan, who resigned his post in June over dissatisfaction with the catch-up funding offered by the Treasury.In response to the Budget, the education expert wrote in The Times, that it was a “surrender” in the effort to recover lost learning. “The short-term saving offered by a limited recovery programme will be dwarfed by the long-term cost of successive cohorts leaving education with lower skills, an effect that will be most apparent in our poorest communities,” Sir Kevan added. The Budget “represents a false economy and a step towards a less equal society”.Older students were particularly poorly catered for in the budget, according to the IFS.“Spending per student in further education and sixth form colleges will remain well below 2010 levels. This is not a set of priorities which looks consistent with a long-term growth strategy,” director Paul Johnson said.Younger people were also hit harder than elders with higher taxation, despite the new health and social care levy, which aims to raise £12bn per year to address the pressures of an ageing population.“Both NICS [the health and social care levy] and changes to the personal allowance and higher rate threshold will affect younger people who are working rather than pensioners who are out of work,” said Xiaowei Xu, a senior research economist at the IFS. “The chancellor could have chosen to raise something like council tax that would have linked to homeowners and therefore linked to pensioners as well,” she added.While there was a clear need to increase funding for the NHS and social care, the chancellor needed to reconsider how much support he was offering younger people, economists said.The announcement of the increases to national insurance contributions, which will become a health and social care levy, came several weeks ahead of the Budget. The major tax increase was criticised at the time as being a tax on the working age population, rather than those most likely to be using social care services for age-related needs.The Budget was also criticised for falling short on childcare provisions. It also offered an increase in benefits only to those universal credit recipients who can work, as opposed to those who may need to care for their children full time. Children in those households will be, in relative terms, worse off even after changes to the national living wage and the universal credit taper.Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves described the Budget as “hammering working people, while giving banks a tax cut”.“The Tories have no plan to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, no plan to shift the unfair taxes they’ve hit working people with and no plan for growth,” she said.Low interest rates have also fuelled higher asset prices in recent years, making it harder for younger workers to get on the housing ladder. “We have a continued period of significantly negative real interest rates, probably therefore continued high levels of asset prices and very poor levels of earnings growth, all of which tends to favour those who are older and wealthier relative to those who are younger and less wealthy,” Mr Johnson said.A Treasury spokesperson, said: “This Budget means billions of pounds to deliver the priorities of the British people by investing in stronger public services, including our education system, levelling up opportunity, driving business growth and helping working families with the cost of living.“It makes work pay by cutting the universal credit taper rate from 63p to 55p, and raising the national living wage by 6.6 per cent to £9.50 an hour in April 2022, which the Low Pay Commission estimate will benefit 2 million workers. And we ensured our action to fund health and social care announced in September applied fairly across generations by extending the health and social care levy to apply to those working over state pension age.” More