Markus Andrews

The chief secretary to the Treasury has said he was not present in the traditional pre-Budget photograph on Downing Street because he is agoraphobic.Simon Clarke said the condition – which can include a fear of being in situations where it might be difficult to escape – “prevents me being comfortable in some open spaces”.As a result, he did not stand alongside the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and other Treasury ministers in the photos taken outside No 11.Mr Clarke instead tweeted an indoor photo of him alongside Mr Sunak on Wednesday.He said: “Really looking forward to explaining the Budget and SR [spending review] alongside the Chancellor. “I won’t be outside for the photos in Downing Street as I live with agoraphobia – which prevents me being comfortable in some open spaces – but will be busy in Parliament and out in the country over the coming days.“Today is all about a major moment for the UK and we have an important story to tell about investment in our public services and infrastructure, economic recovery, levelling up and Net Zero – those are the issues I’m proud to be discussing today.”The NHS website describes agoraphobia as a “fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult or that help wouldn’t be available if things go wrong”.The health service guidance says people often wrongly assume that agoraphobia is simply a fear of open spaces, but that it is actually a “more complex condition”, with fears associated with the condition including travelling on public transport, visiting a shopping centre or leaving home.Mr Clarke was promoted to chief secretary in Boris Johnson’s September reshuffle.He had previously been a local government minister but resigned in 2020, citing personal reasons understood to relate to his family life.Before his local government post, the Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland had previously been exchequer secretary to the Treasury.Additional reporting by PA More

Masks have been made mandatory again for staff in parliament except MPs – sparking accusations that politicians are behaving as if they are “above the rules”.The Commons authorities have updated Covid guidance to say all staff, visitors and media must cover their faces to combat the upsurge in cases.But it remains up to each MP whether they choose to wear a mask or not. Conservative MPs have come in for heaviest criticism, having largely ditched face coverings in recent months.The FDA union for civil servants said elected representatives were acting as if they were “above” the rules that everyone else on the parliamentary estate has to follow.The union’s national officer Jawad Raza told The Independent: “This isn’t about politics, it’s about the health and well-being of others in the workplace. It’s high time MPs stop this reckless behaviour.”Mr Raza added: “This has never been more important than on Budget day, when hundreds of MPs and parliamentary staff will pack into the chamber with no room for social distancing.”New guidance in advance of Rishi Sunak’s Budget speech on Wednesday said that “all face-to-face meetings with colleagues should be avoided, unless there is a business need”.The memo said the change was “due to recent increases in Covid-19 across the country” and added that the “highly fluid” would be reviewed on 4 November.Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg was condemned for saying last week that Tory MPs do not need to wear masks in parliament because with they have “a more convivial, fraternal spirit” than other parties.But around half of backbench Tory MPs were seen wearing masks in the chamber for PMQs and the Budget announcement, having been encouraged to change their stance by party chiefs.Boris Johnson and several members of his front bench were seen wearing masks on Wednesday – but Mr Rees-Mogg was again seen without a face covering.MPs have pointed to the fact that they are not employed by the Commons authorities, unlike staff and contractors, so cannot be forced to wear masks.The Prospect union, which represents workers in parliament, said the situation with face coverings was “ludicrous” and accused MPs of appearing to “pretend that the pandemic is over”.Garry Graham, deputy general secretary, said: “It’s welcome that House authorities are finally catching on to what unions have been saying, that it’s too early to relax.He added: “But we’re still left in the ludicrous situation where MPs do as they please on masks while everyone else does the right thing.” More

There has been much speculation over what the latest Budget will bring, with several aspects being leaked early.It comes as Chancellor Rishi Sunak has been urged to put the climate emergency at the heart of his Budget and end the suspicions that he is resisting the switch to net zero, with the Cop26 summit just days away.The chancellor is set to unveil measures to raise wages, rescue the NHS, boost skills and improve transport links to parliament on Wednesday. It layout the three-year spending settlement setting the battleground for the next general election.He is also expected to continue the decade-long freeze on fuel duty – after prices at the pumps leapt to a record 143p a litre – despite criticism that the move clashes with climate policy.In addition, the chancellor will hail “a new age of optimism” in his Budget amid predictions he will have more money than expected to spend due to a fast bounce-back from Covid.The chancellor is set to strike an upbeat tone as he talks up building a “stronger economy of the future”, with the promise of rising wages, cash for the NHS and investment into regional transport projects.But what does all this mean for our own bank balances, our cost of living and what are the potential impacts on our day to day lives following the announcement?To help answer your budget queries we have George Parker, an Assistant Tax Manager at tax, accounting and business advisory firm Blick Rothenberg, on hand to help explain aspects of the measures being announced.George will be answering your questions live in the comments section of this page from 1-2pm on Thursday, 28 October.Please bear in mind that George is a tax expert and so will not be answering any questions that encompass political queries.Register to submit your question in the comments box below. If you’re not already a member, click “sign up” in the comments section to leave your question.Don’t worry if you can’t see your question – they will be hidden until George joins the conversation to answer them.Then join us live on this page from 1-2pm, as he tackles as many questions as he can within an hour. More

Rishi Sunak is planning to soften the blow of his cuts to Universal Credit by tweaking the benefits system, according to reports.The chancellor is expected to change the so-called “taper rate” for claimants in work – a move which would let them keep more of their wages.But the £20 a week cut is still expected to go ahead – and charities warn that tweaking the taper will not help the poorest.Under plans reported by The Sun newspaper Mr Sunak would change the taper rate from 63p to 60p – a change which would still fall short of some Tory MPs’ demands to cut it to 55p.But while 5.5m families are to be hit by the £1,040 a year, £20 a week cut, just 1.7m families will benefit from tweaking the taper by 3p.And it would help families who do benefit by an average just £5.60 a week, according to calculations by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation – well short of reversing the headline cut.And even those in work may not benefit from the change – as around 400,000 working families claiming Universal Credit do not earn enough to be impacted by the taper.The taper rate is the amount of Universal Credit payments people lose as they earn more above a certain amount, known as the work allowance. A lower taper lets people keep more of the money they earn before their benefits are withdrawn.Speaking on Wednesday morning ahead of the budget, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham told the BBC: “On the rabbit out of the hat, I’m hearing that they are about to U-turn on Universal Credit. And actually, that is a credit to the Labour Party that’s that’s campaigned on that particular issue. And I hope that is the rabbit that’s in his hat today. “We’re hearing that there’s going to be a change particularly for those on Universal Credit in work. If he’s going to do that, it’s the right thing to do. This pandemic is not over, people are still feeling its impact. But credit to those who’ve campaigned particularly those in the Labour front bench who’ve been consistent on this point.”The chancellor is expected to have significantly more headroom to meet his self-imposed spending targets, because of a more rapid economic recovery from Covid than had been expected.But he is thought to have resisted demands to entirely scrap his planned £20 a week cut to the government’s flagship benefits system. Research by conservative think-tank the Legatum Institute found that ending the £20 uplift to Universal Credit would plunge 840,000 people into poverty, including almost 300,000 children. More

Teaching school children about the climate crisis must be “intertwined” in every subject of the curriculum, Labour’s Nadia Whittome has demanded.In an article for The Independent, the MP claimed the existing education system is “failing to prepare young people” for the workforce they will inherit and the effects of climate inaction.Her intervention comes just five days before the critical Cop26 summit begins, with world leaders gathering in Glasgow in an attempt to thrash out an agreement to keep global warming below 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.Last week, unions urged the education secretary, Nadhim Zahawi, for a “comprehensive review of the entire curriculum” and suggested a new professional qualification for teachers on climate could be created.Arguing the government’s climate targets depend on a transformative education system, Ms Whittome wrote that if ministers are serious about reaching the legally binding target of net zero by 2050 they “need the workforce to do it”.“For all the government’s talk about the importance of skills-based education, it is missing a trick by failing to train the next generation who will be essential to the transition to a low-carbon economy,” the Labour MP said.Ahead of a debate on the issue of climate change and the school curriculum in Westminster Hall — led by Ms Whittome — she stressed the education system needed to stop treating the “disaster” of the climate crisis as a “hypothetical future and instead ensure we are ready for what is an inevitable reality”.“We need to ensure climate education is no longer exclusive to those who take optional subjects or briefly glazed over, but instead centred in all subjects,” she said.“The climate crisis will affect everyone, whether they are a builder or a banker, a carer or a pharmacist. This means that climate education must be intertwined into every subject in a way that is accessible to all.”At the last general election in 2019, Labour pledged to make climate change a core part of the curriculum — ensuring “all young people are educated about the ecological and social impact of climate change”. However, the party has not yet set out whether the commitment still stands under Sir Keir Starmer.Addressing the imminent UN Cop26 summit, Ms Whittome added: “Whatever happens at this conference, it will be young people who will be left to pick up the pieces.“While politicians talk about 2050 as some far-off point in the distant future, long after their careers are over, today’s school children will be in the middle of their working lives.“Many will live to see the end of this century – and the full effects of climate inaction. But our education system is failing to prepare young people for this future.“Whilst we’re told to list the benefits of climate change in Geography lessons, we’re not once taught about the historical events and political systems that catalysed the climate crisis, the social and economic repercussions that this catastrophe will induce, or what constitutes the possible solutions.” More

NHS Test and Trace has cost taxpayers “eye-watering” sums of money and “has not achieved its main objective” of letting people return to a normal live , a damning report by MPs has concluded.The programme was rapidly set up in May last year and spearheaded by Baroness Dido Harding, with the objective of testing the nation and tracing contacts of positive cases.But a report from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the scheme was “muddled” and a number of the aims of the programme have been “overstated or not achieved”.It added that it “has not achieved its main objective to help break chains of Covid-19 transmission and enable people to return towards a more normal way of life”.The failures come despite the programme being given the equivalent of 20 per cent of the NHS’s entire annual budget – £37bn over two years.The committee also criticised handling of the cash, highlighting that the programme has still not managed to reduce the number of expensive contractors – who are paid an average of £1,100 per day – and has not developed a “flexible” approach to using laboratories, which “risks wasting public money”.Test and Trace’s “continued over-reliance on consultants is likely to cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds”, the report states.It has been focused on getting programmes up and running and “paid less attention to ensuring these programmes delivered the benefits they promised”, it adds.And uptake of services provided by the programme is “variable” as some vulnerable people are much less likely to take a test than others.MPs on the cross-party committee said that as the programme is moved into the new UK Health Security Agency it needs a “proper long-term strategy”.Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the PAC, said: “The national test and trace programme was allocated eye-watering sums of taxpayers’ money in the midst of a global health and economic crisis.“It set out bold ambitions but has failed to achieve them despite the vast sums thrown at it.“Only 14 per cent of 691 million lateral flow tests sent out had results reported, and who knows how many took the necessary action based on the results they got, or how many were never used.“The continued reliance on the over-priced consultants who ‘delivered’ this state of affairs will by itself cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds.“For this huge amount of money we need to see a legacy system ready to deliver when needed but it’s just not clear what there will be to show in the long-term. This legacy has to be a focus for government if we are to see any value for the money spent.”MPs have set out a series of recommendations and suggested improvements to the programme.Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said in a statement: “NHS Test and Trace (NHSTT) has played an essential role in combating this pandemic.“As the Public Accounts Committee acknowledges, there have been improvements in testing capacity, turnaround times and speed and reach of contact tracing – and improved collaboration with local authorities.“The fact is NHSTT is saving lives every single day and helping us fight Covid-19 by breaking chains of transmission and spotting outbreaks wherever they exist.“More than 323 million tests have now been carried out across the UK. NHSTT has now contacted more than 19.9 million people, helping to slow the spread of the virus.“Testing, contact tracing and the wall of defence built by our vaccination programme are all fundamental to our ongoing efforts to keep people safe as we return to a more normal way of life.”A government spokesperson said: “We have rightly drawn on the extensive expertise of a number of public and private sector partners who have been invaluable in helping us tackle the virus.“We have built a testing network from scratch that can process millions of tests a day – more than any European country – providing a free LFD or PCR test to anybody who needs one.“The new UK Health Security Agency will consolidate the knowledge that now exists across our health system to help us tackle future pandemics and threats.”Additional reporting by PA More

Ministers will not make a decision on Covid-19 restrictions for two weeks until the impact of half-term on infections can be seen, The Independent understands.The measures under consideration include restricting household mixing indoors this winter, as data modelling suggests that working from home and mandatory mask wearing might not be enough to avoid an increase in hospital admissions.The UK reported 263 deaths on Tuesday, a higher number than any day since 3 March at the tail end of the second wave, when 315 were reported. It comes amid an increasing clamour from experts and politicians to impose measures, including social distancing, as soon as possible. Labour has leant its backing to imposing plan-B measures and called on the government to enact it without “dither and delay”. “We think we should follow the science – if the scientists are saying work from home and masks, we should do that,” Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves said on Sunday.Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), also speaking on Sunday, said that the government must not be “complacent” about the rising rate of hospitalisations and deaths. Meanwhile, mayor of London Sadiq Khan has called on people to “urgently reconsider” mask wearing. However, measures, such as mandatory mask wearing and working from home – which fall under the government’s plan B, are unlikely to be enough on their own, according to sources familiar with modelling the impact of Covid restrictions. This means the government may be forced to go further, if the rollout of booster jabs is not fast enough to combat the waning of previous vaccine doses, particularly among the over-50s. Delays to imposing some restrictions also mean that more moderate measures will be less effective at containing the virus, according to the previously mentioned Whitehall sources.Speaking at a vaccination centre last Friday, prime minister Boris Johnson said that the government keeps “all measures under constant review”, but he added that “the numbers that we’re seeing at the moment are fully in line with what we expected in the autumn and winter plan”. The prime minister said: “I’ve got to tell you at the moment that we see absolutely nothing to indicate that that is on the cards at all.”The fresh details about which measures are under consideration follow warnings from Professor Lucy Chappell, chief scientific adviser to the Department of Health and Social Care, at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday. The adviser said that further measures beyond plan B had been “proposed” but these had not been “extensively worked up”. She confirmed these had been referred to as a plan C.Prof Chappell also told MPs that there is “no single metric” that would lead to plan B being enacted, as MPs expressed their frustration at the lack of information on the decision-making process in the days ahead.The Independent understands these measures which go beyond plan B include limits on mixing in pubs, cafes and restaurants, and in homes. This is because the impact of asking those who can to work from home has been dramatically reduced as the workforce has stuck with home working several days a week even after restrictions were lifted.This change in behaviour means the limitations of plan B, such as working from home, have become more acute than when it was originally devised. And while some workers have cut down on their days in the office, they are content to travel to socialise in crowded indoor settings.There will be “a bit of a crunch moment” in the two weeks after half-term concludes to see whether the infection rate climbs sharply and feeds through into considerable numbers over-50s without boosters being hospitalised. Over-50s are more likely to have medical complications and waning protection from vaccines because of when they were jabbed.It is this reluctance to go to the office but eagerness to go to the pub that means that the power of a work from home request is “weaker compared to older modelling, and it wasn’t that strong before”, one Whitehall source said.Other data, including footfall figures gathered by Google show that while the population is concerned about infection rates, people are not moderating behaviour in the same way as during previous periods of higher infections.Previously, as infections have risen and ahead of the government imposition of restrictions, people had already moderated their behaviour and started to be more cautious. Now, the vaccine roll out and a “dulling effect” means that people are less concerned about mixing with others. “This is forcing a binary if there is a sharp increase in hospitalisations, and if there is a slow roll out of booster vaccines in the coming weeks,” a source familiar with government Covid planning said. “It’s Freedom Day or it’s Plan C, with significant restrictions on mixing in indoor settings,” they said. “There would need to be a vaccine passport system ready now, with far greater uptake, for it to have a decent impact. It’s too late for that.”Adaptations to allow for home-working mean that the economic fallout from this restriction would be far lower than previously assumed, too. The Politico website reported that a Treasury impact assessment of five months of plan B measures could cost as much as £18bn. Economists told The Independent that it was hard to judge what restrictions would mean for future growth, but that companies have adapted to greater home working.“Each time the impediment on economic activity from lockdown appears to reduce,” said Kallum Pickering, senior economist at Berenberg bank. “I don’t think we can really speculate what kind of policies might be needed because these situations can move very fast as we’ve learned, but I am quite confident that if we did have renewed restrictions, the [economic] impact would be temporary.“There’s no reason to think the economy wouldn’t bounce back,” he added.There was little reason to think that plan B on its own would be “devastating or transformational”, said James Smith, research director at the Resolution Foundation, a think tank. However, greater measures would likely force the government to reinstate previous tranches of economic support, such as furlough.“Being clear about at what points [in terms of hospitalisations] the government would start implementing plan B or even C, would be really helpful.”A government spokesperson said: “We knew the coming months would be challenging – this is exactly why we set out our Covid plan for autumn and winter.“We are monitoring all the data closely, and the prime minister has been clear that it does not yet show that plan B is necessary. But it is ready should we need to act to avoid a rise in hospitalisations which would put unsustainable pressure on the NHS.“Our focus remains on our booster campaign, vaccinating 12-15 year olds, and encouraging those who haven’t yet come forward to have their jab.” More

Britain’s defence secretary has denied that the Afghanistan war ended in defeat, two months after the retreat of Nato forces and the Taliban’s retaking of Kabul.Speaking at a parliamentary committee on Tuesday Ben Wallace said the US, British and other Nato forces had lacked “resolve” – while pointing the finger at the US.Mr Wallace said it was “reasonable” to expect the Afghan army, which melted away in the face of a rapid Taliban advance as soon as Nato troops withdrew, to have held out longer.And he told an MP angry at the consequences of the withdrawal: “If you want to aim your anger at the US: I didn’t sign the Doha agreement. The Doha agreement was done by the United States.”Asked whether Nato forces had been defeated in the country, which immediately reverted to Taliban control after 20 years of occupation, Mr Wallace said: “No, I don’t, I don’t think we were defeated.”I think if we had chosen to stay as the force we had, or indeed, if we wanted to continue, we were… our resolve was found wanting is what I would say, rather than defeated.”I don’t think we were militarily defeated if we had stayed at force levels that were required. We always had a military advantage until we started reducing [troop numbers].”The Taliban was largely vanquished during the initial invasion of 2001 but gradually retook large swathes of territory in the country in the intervening two decades. But the final withdrawal of the last US and Nato combat forces saw those gains accelerate rapidly, with practically the whole country falling to the Taliban in a matter of days.Mr Wallace told the committee: “Many people across the international community felt that there was an Afghan army, there was a significant sized, well resourced Afghan army with actually lots of equipment, that I think people had thought might have stayed longer in role. “Whatever you we think about the internal conditions about the Doha agreement, which I felt was a rotten deal, even with that and the conditions, I don’t think it was unreasonable for many people to have thought that all those Afghans, hundreds of thousands of people under arms, who have been trained and equipped.”He painted a picture in which the UK had little input to US strategic decisions about withdrawal, despite being the second largest combat force deployed in the country,”I would meet the United States Secretary State of defence , and he would say we’re planning to do this by then. And then a few weeks later, those timetables might change. And then we’d just have to take the cue,” he said.On the question of whether the retreat from the country was a defeat, Mr Wallace said: “The US Doha deal, and then NATO chose to draw down, to leave. “They could have said, we’re not doing a deal, and we’re staying there. And yes, we would have continued to lose men and women of our armed forces. “But it was never the case that militarily the forces available to NATO weren’t overwhelming. But we took a decision, or the Doha deal in cause of the deal to do it.”Conservative MP Mark Francois, who sits on the committee, suggested that it was “sophistry” to claim the Nato withdrawal was not a defeat. Accepting that the US and UK had not been defeated in the field, he asked: “What’s the difference?”Mr Wallace said: “I think the difference is NATO were there to enable a political resolution and political campaign and I think that is what failed. “We were enabling: the military were there to put in place the security environment in order to try and deliver that. When that was withdrawn that’s when you find out whether your political campaign has worked. “And I think what we discovered is it didn’t work. And so it was the the Western resolve and the Western political narrative or political foundations they had laid, failed. And I think there’s lots of searching questions there for all of us. “Whether that was did we overlook corruption? Did we have optimism bias in the capacity of the Afghan forces to want to stand against the Taliban, bearing in mind their significant casualty rates.”The Doha agreement was signed by US president Donald Trump in February 2020 and committed to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan by May 2020. The agreement, negotiated with the Taliban’s leadership, was honoured by Joe Biden, though its deadline was extended. In exchange, the Taliban agreed to prevent Al Qaeda from operating from areas under its control. More