Markus Andrews

The military could be deployed as lorry drivers to help tackle Britain’s growing fuel crisis, the transport secretary has said.Grant Shapps said the government would consider bringing in soldiers to drive trucks or train others if the drastic shortage of heavy good vehicle (HGV) drivers continued to hit the supply of petrol.BP was forced to ration petrol deliveries and close down some of its filling stations on Thursday, while Esso said a small number of its Tesco forecourts have also been impacted by shortages.Asked on LBC whether military could soon step in, Mr Shapps said soldiers could be deployed across “a wide range of different things – from of course helping to test, to helping to drive”.The minister also told BBC Breakfast: “With regards to things like whether there’s a role for the military, obviously if there is, if that can actually help, we will bring them in.”Mr Shapps added: “There will be technicalities as to whether they can immediately switch over to commercial trucks and so on, there could be other roles for them such as in driver testing and training. I am ruling nothing out.”Ministers have reportedly discussed whether soldiers should be put on standby to drive tankers to petrol stations if shortages continue.A contingency plan known as Operation Escalin would only be ordered if the situation got significantly worse, according to The Times.The transport secretary attempted to dissuade drivers from panic buying petrol – telling motorists to “carry on as normal” and promising to “move heaven and earth” to keep good moving.Mr Shapps denied that Brexit was the culprit in the UK’s dire shortage of lorry drivers, arguing that the split from the EU had allowed the government to bring in more driving tests.“I’ve seen people point to Brexit as if it is the culprit here. In fact, they are wrong,” he told Sky News. “Brexit actually has provided part of the solution of giving more slots available for HGV tests.”Mr Shapps also told the broadcaster the wages for hauliers had been held down by “importing cheap European, often eastern European labour, undercutting the domestic market and creating more long-term problems”.He added: “What I don’t want to do, and I’ve been hinting at this, is undercut with, as has happened before, cheaper European drivers and then find our drivers drop out because they are being undercut. That doesn’t solve the problem, it just creates a new problem.”Despite the increase in driving tests, Rod McKenzie of the Road Haulage Association (RHA) trade body said that the government had allowed the driver shortage to get “gradually worse” in recent months.“We have got a shortage of 100,000 (drivers),” he told BBC’s Newsnight – pointing to the 20,000 European drivers lost because to Brexit, on top of historic shortfalls in the workforce.Some of the UK’s largest businesses and industry bodies have joined the RHA in asking the government to relax visa requirements to allow more overseas drivers to work in the UK.BP is understood to have asked the government for similar support on a temporary basis. More

When a priest arrives at a hospital in Chorzow to perform the last rites, nurse Mariusz Strug can see the fear in dying patients’ eyes. “After the sacrament, they knew what was happening,” he said.But there have been no psychologists available to offer any consolation to the patients. Strug and another nurse would try to offer some kind words, but they were strained to the limit caring for 60 patients in their COVID-19 ward.“People come to us and they want us nurses to perform a miracle,” said Strug.Exhausted from working in such an understaffed system, he is among a group of health care workers who have come to Warsaw from across Poland for an around-the-clock protest outside the prime minister’s office that has gone on for nearly two weeks. After a year and a half of the pandemic, and with Poland on the cusp of a fourth surge of COVID-19 infections, nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers and other health care workers have come to urge Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and other authorities to make deep reforms to the health care system, arguing that it is in danger of collapse.“The pandemic showed us how bad the health care system is,” said Gilbert Kolbe, a nurse and spokesman for the protest movement. “This is the last chance to do something before it will be too late. We won’t be able to avert a crisis coming in five, ten years.”While health care workers across the 27-nation European Union have been tested by the pandemic, Poland faced that test with fewer doctors and nurses than most. According to OECD statistics, Poland has the lowest number of working doctors in proportion to its population — just 2.4 to 1,000 inhabitants compared with 4.5 in Germany Poland also has only 5 nurses to 1,000 inhabitants, below the EU average of 8 and far below richer countries like Germany, which has 14.Poland’s health care sector has been strapped for resources for decades, a situation not rectified by a series of governments on the left, the center or now the right. The problems have been exacerbated by the thousands of doctors, nurses and others who left Poland for higher paid work in Western Europe after the country joined the EU in 2004. Of the medical professionals who have stayed in Poland, many have also left the public sector for better-paying jobs in the private sector, leaving fewer to care for the poorest people, said Kolbe, a 25-year-old who left a public hospital to work for a private medical company but hopes to return to the public system one day. Kolbe said 5,500 people complete their nursing studies on average each year in Poland, but only about 2,500 go to work in the public system. Some of those protesting say they are simply exhausted. With wages low, some work more than one medical job to support themselves.Alicja Krakowiecka, a 56-year-old nurse from the southern city of Czestochowa, said her hospital is so short-staffed that during the height of the pandemic she would sometimes begin her day at 6 a.m. only to be asked to stay on because the night nurse was sick. She was then left alone with 30 patients for a 24-hour shift. Instead of getting two days off she would be asked to return the next evening. “Do you refuse?” she asked, explaining that she agreed to the exhausting shifts out of a sense of obligation.The protest began Sept. 11, when tens of thousands from across Poland marched through Warsaw. Some stayed on in tents and held daily press conferences and lectures. Last weekend the protesters were deeply shaken when a 94-year-old man who come been stopping by and giving them candies killed himself a few feet away. A shot rang out during a news conference and the medics ran to the man, but couldn’t help him. Since then they have protested silently, forgoing news conferences.Amid the pressure of the protests, and with talks between health care unions and the government going on for weeks, Morawiecki announced Tuesday that an additional 1 billion zlotys ($254 million) would be allocated this year to salaries and education in the health care sector. In addition, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said Wednesday that he had agreed to pay paramedics more.Still, the group organizing the protests said the rest of the health care community was not satisfied, meaning more talks between the government and the protesters are planned.Kamila Maslowska, a medical student, stopped by the protest tents with some friends Tuesday to show her solidarity.“I know two additional languages fluently, apart from Polish so I think I could find a job abroad,” she said “(But) I would not like to leave. I would like something to change for the better.”___Follow all AP stories on the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic. More

The government is reportedly backing plans for another large-scale nuclear power plant in the UK to help the country achieve its net zero targets.It is in discussions with American nuclear reactor manufacturer Westinghouse amongst other groups, to develop the new plant in Anglesey, Wales, reports The Times.If the plans were to go ahead, the new plant would be able to generate enough electricity to power more than six million homes from the mid-2030s.It would come in addition to a nuclear plant under construction at Hinkley Point, Somerset, and a proposal for a new reactor at Sizewell, Suffolk, which is in advanced planning stages.Ministers are reportedly concerned existing nuclear projects do not support the country’s ambition of reducing its carbon rates, with Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng having reservations that by the early-2030s there will not be enough nuclear power to phase out gas power.He is understood to back plans to build a new plant in Anglesey, and is lobbying the Treasury to seek private investment.The government is also in “exploratory” talks with other consortiums about the development of new nuclear sites presenting a number of potential proposals for using the Anglesey site, according to the director of Nuclear Projects and Development at the government’s Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy department.Giving evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee, Declan Burke said his department had been in discussions with US engineering firm Bechtel, which proposes building a Westinghouse AP1000 reactor.Conversations have also been had with Shearwater Energy to create small nuclear reactors and a wind farm.There was a £20bn plan to develop a new plant at the site in January, however Horizon Nuclear Power withdrew its plans citing the funding options.Its plans had reached “the point beyond which ministers were not willing to go, despite us all very much wanting that project to work”, Mr Burke explained.Hitachi also pulled out of a £20bn project last September after it failed to reach a funding agreement with the government.It said it made the decision given 20 months had passed since the project had paused “and the investment environment has become increasingly severe due to the impact of Covid-19”. More

Boris Johnson has been forced to accept that his cherished project of a bridge or tunnel linking mainland Britain with Northern Ireland is not going to happen.Speaking as he returned from a trip to the USA, the prime minister downgraded the plan to an “ambition”, which he acknowledged would not come to fruition until “substantially after” other infrastructure projects such as HS2.His comments effectively sounded the death knell for a £20bn scheme that he previously insisted was realistic, despite being widely derided by engineers over the technical challenges and price.Johnson first suggested connecting Stranraer in Scotland to Larne in Northern Ireland by a 28-mile bridge bridge three years ago to a chorus of scepticism from experts. Concerns were raised from the start about the practicality of spanning a stormy stretch of water more than 1,000 feet deep in some places, parts of which had been used as an offshore ammunition dump during the Second World War.Experts said it would require dozens of support towers at heights never achieved anywhere in the world.More recently, Johnson floated the alternative of a tunnel between Stranraer and Larne, while an even more ambitious proposal envisaged an underground hub beneath the Isle of Man with “spokes” connecting to sites in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.Mr Johnson has insisted the idea is serious, commissioning a feasibility study from a transport connectivity review led by Network Rail chair Sir Peter Hendy.But the under-sea option was blasted as “the world’s most stupid tunnel” by former No 10 aide Dominic Cummings, and the Treasury let it be known earlier this month that chancellor Rishi Sunak had ruled it out from his October spending review on cost grounds.Now Mr Johnson has effectively accepted that the bridge too is no longer an option for the foreseeable future.Asked which of his grandiose infrastructure plans were ever likely to see the light of day, the PM indicated that he expects the eastern leg of the HS2 rail link from Birmingham to Leeds and beyond to go ahead, but was gloomier about the prospects for the Irish Sea link.“You’ll have to wait til the spending review and the integrated rail plan, which is also coming out,” he told reporters.“It will be wonderful for all parts of the north, northeast, northwest, Leeds, Derby, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester. We have wonderful plans.“What I would say, perhaps, about the tunnel/bridge is perhaps, although it remains an ambition, it’s not the most immediate. It will be delivered substantially after the rest of the programme … just described.”With even the first phase of HS2, linking Birmingham to London, not due for completion until between 2028-31, Mr Johnson’s comments indicate that he does not expect an Irish Sea bridge to go ahead during his time in office.It is not yet known how much public money has been spent on considering the PM’s proposals for a fixed link crossing the Irish Sea.An earlier plan for a garden bridge across the River Thames in London, vigorously promoted by Mr Johnson while the city’s mayor, was ditched in 2017 at a cost of £43m to the taxpayer. More

The three candidates hoping to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor, and the four leaders of the other parties currently in parliament, clashed Thursday over a variety of topics in the last televised debate before Sunday’s election.Unlike previous debates that repeatedly focused on climate change, poverty and other domestic topics, the candidates discussed foreign policy issues for the first time, too.Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats who is currently Germany’s finance minister, said closer cooperation within Europe is needed but that at the same time the EU needs to continue to work closely together with the United States and NATO.“We are the big country in the middle of the European Union with the biggest population and the biggest economic strength,” Scholz said. “And therefore we need to make sure that Europe speaks with a more united voice.”His closest rival, Armin Laschet of the center-right Union bloc, also spoke out for a stronger and more united Europe, adding that the continent should cooperate on common arms projects.“We need more Europe, we need to speak with one voice,” Laschet said. “We need to start projects together, also arms projects to be able to act together.”Green party candidate Annalena Baerbock said Europe needed to find a common approach on how to interact with China.“I want to make sure that we create a united, European approach toward China in which one (EU) country doesn’t get played off against the other,” she said.The candidates and party leaders also faced off over how to solve housing shortages in big German cities, fight hatred on social media, and tackle the radicalization of the protest movement against pandemic restrictions.Merkel’s Union bloc and its candidate for chancellorship, Laschet, have made small gains in the polls in recent weeks. But it remains narrowly behind the center-left Social Democrats, headed by Scholz.The Greens who are putting forward their own candidate for chancellor for the first time, are trailing in third place, but could play kingmakers when it comes to forming a government.The close race and number of parties with significant support means the next government will be determined by post-election coalition negotiations between at least two and more likely three parties.Merkel, chancellor since 2005, is not seeking a fifth four-year term.Slightly over 60 million Germans will elect a new parliament. The party with the most seats will seek to form a coalition government and gets its candidate elected as chancellor by lawmakers.—-Follow AP’s coverage of Germany’s election at https://apnews.com/hub/germany-election More

A partial climbdown on the looming cut to universal credit is being considered by ministers, to head off fierce criticism that huge numbers of people will be plunged into poverty.The £20-a-week reduction would stay – but working people who receive the benefit would be allowed to keep more of their earnings, under the proposal.The so-called “taper rate” – the amount a claimant loses for every extra pound they earn – would be reduced from 63p to 60p, if the Treasury agrees the move.It would cost around £1bn a year, but that is far less than the £6bn cost of reversing the £20-a-week cut, which the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has refused to do.Furthermore, the move would only benefit the approximately 40 per cent of universal credit claimants who are in work – and of those, only people able to take on extra hours.The cut – to reverse what ministers insist was always a temporary increase, because of the pandemic – is predicted to plunge half a million more people into poverty, including 200,000 children.An internal Whitehall analysis warned of a “catastrophic” impact from removing the support, including rising homelessness, poverty and foodbank use.Boris Johnson is faced with the prospect of the cut kicking in on 6 October, the day before he makes his leader’s speech to the Conservative Party conference.The prime minister was discomforted in the Commons last week, when he was unable to explain how universal credit claimants should recoup the £20-a-week.Senior Tories including former leader Iain Duncan Smith, Damian Green, and ex-Scottish leader Ruth Davidson are just a few of the heavyweight outspoken critics.Mr Duncan Smith, who quit as work and pensions secretary in 2016 in protest at benefits cuts, has consistently criticised the taper rate for being too harsh.Jonathan Reynolds, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, said: “Rising food costs, tax hikes, the energy crisis and cuts to universal credit are a perfect storm facing working families. It’s not too late for the government to change course and cancel their cut.”The Resolution Foundation think-tank warned that easing the taper rate – while a positive move – was not a substitute for retaining the uplift.“The gains are far smaller than the £20-a-week cut and would flow to better off families on universal credit while three million families would gain nothing at all,” said Karl Handscomb, its senior economist.“Virtually all households would still be significantly worse off overall.”It is understood that the plan is being pushed by the Department for Work and Pensions and is being considered by the Treasury,Ironically, Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, got into trouble when she appeared not to understand how the taper works, in a major gaffe earlier this month. More

Boris Johnson’s government is holding talks with energy regulator Ofgem about whether a cap on gas and electricity prices for consumers may have to go up, a junior minister has said.The energy price cap imposes limits on costs for 11 million people on default tariffs – but struggling energy firms want it scrapped so they can pass on higher gas prices to customers.“We’ve had lots of conversations … with companies themselves, with Ofgem, in reviewing that price cap we clearly want to protect customers,” business minister Paul Scully told Sky News on Thursday.Although the government has resisted calls to ditch the price cap, Mr Scully conceded there were “pressures” on the current price limit set by the regulator due to soaring wholesale gas costs.Asked what the worst-case scenario was for a rise in the price cap, the minister said: “This is all part of the conversations that Ofgem will set that cap at, because supply prices are based on a number of factors.”The government is preparing for the “worst-case” scenario of gas costs remaining high beyond just a “short spike”, Mr Scully added. “We need to make sure we are planning for the worst-case scenario, because we want to make sure we can protect consumers.”The price cap is due to rise to 12 per cent at the start of October to £1,277 pounds for a household using an average amount of energy, and would in normal circumstances be reviewed again in April 2022.The wholesale price of gas has soared in recent weeks, putting increasing pressure on Britain’s energy suppliers, who want the cap to be lifted.Avro Energy and Green stopped trading on Wednesday – affecting more than 800,000 customers – and Ofgem has warned that other firms will follow in the weeks ahead.Despite calls to ditch the price cap to help firms at risk during the crisis, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said it would be “staying” and the government would not be bailing out energy firms.“I have absolutely rebuffed that. I’ve said the price cap is here to stay,” the minister told MPs on the energy and business select committee on Thursday.Despite previous assurances from the business secretary, Mr Scully said the government could not guarantee that consumers could keep the terms of their previous tariff if their supplier goes bust.Earlier this week Mr Kwarteng said he thought those being transferred to new providers would “be expected to pay the same amount”.But on Thursday Mr Scully told Times Radio: “No, that’s not going to be possible in terms of a guarantee. What we’ll have though is security.”He said customers “don’t need to do anything because their transfer will be made directly through the Ofgem scheme, making sure that they have a company looking after them, supplying their energy”. Meanwhile, Mr Scully denied that the country is heading back into a 1970s-style “winter of discontent” when the economy was brought to its knees by power cuts and price rises.Asked by Times Radio if a winter of discontent with empty shelves, power cuts and rising living costs was looming, the small business minister said: “No. Look this isn’t a 1970s thing at all. I don’t recognise that.”“We need to build resilience back into the economy in some of these areas,” he added. “There is not need for people to go out and panic buy.”Tesco bosses reportedly told government officials last week that the shortage of truck drivers would lead to panic-buying in the run up to Christmas if action was not taken to hire more hauliers from overseas.But Mr Scully said offering visas to overseas drivers would not solve the problem, claiming shortages were being felt across Europe, and the government was looking to other options instead.“There are hundreds of thousands of people in the country that have HGV licences, either full or partial, that are not working at the moment,” he said. More

The government was warned 18 months ago that some of the UK’s struggling energy companies faced possible collapse, a newly-released letter has revealed.Regulator Ofgem wrote to business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng last March to warn him of the “systemic risk” faced by energy suppliers, urging the government to consider action to help stabilise the market.Shared by Labour on Thursday, the Ofgem letter warned that many firms had only “thin cash reserves” – telling the minister that any shocks could mean “significant numbers of suppliers who have otherwise good business models may fail”.It follows the collapse of two more energy suppliers, as the deepening gas supply crisis has now impacted 1.5 million customers.Labour’s shadow business and energy secretary Ed Miliband quoted from the regulator’s warning letter in parliament – challenging Mr Kwarteng to explain “what planning was done for this eventuality following the letter”.Mr Miliband added: “Surely the government should have been in a position to know exactly what need to be done … Haven’t they left the country dangerously exposed, with [the government] scrabbling around for solutions?”Although the March 2020 Ofgem letter was written in the aftermath of the first coronavirus lockdown – warning of the financial difficulties companies faced as customers saw their incomes hit – it also warned of “systemic risk to the energy supply sector as a whole”.It stated that any shocks to the market “could mean that significant numbers of suppliers who have otherwise good business models may fail”, adding: “We are concerned that this may be significantly bigger in scale than recent failures and could involve larger, as well as small, suppliers.”The letter also warned that the usual Ofgem mechanism, known as “the supplier of last resort” – which sees the regulator switch customers to a new supplier – may not be possible.The regulator stated that the failure of medium and large suppliers in the UK may need to be handled with a “special administration regime”, in which the government would have to step in to prop up failing firms.Responding to Mr Miliband’s questions in the Commons, Mr Kwarteng said he remembered the 2020 Ofgem letter and denied the government had been “complacent” over the energy crisis.The business secretary said: “The whole point about the supplier of last resort process which was interrogated last year is that it is an organised process, well established, which can allow existing strong companies to absorb customers in failure.”Although the government has thus far refused to bail out any struggling firms, Mr Kwarteng said the “special administration regime” the government had prepared for energy crises was still in place if needed.At least 1.5 million customers have seen their suppliers go to the wall following the collapse of nine firms this year. Ofgem has warned that more firms would go bust following the sharp rise in gas prices.Avro Energy and Green became the latest casualties of a huge spike in the wholesale cost of natural gas when they announced they had ceased trading on Wednesday. Another medium-sized supplier, Igloo, is reportedly on the verge of collapse, with administrators said to be assessing the options for insolvency.Peter McGirr, chief executive of Green, suggested it was unfair that the government had been willing to bailout a US-based company CF Fertilisers to restart CO2 produced but not his firm. “Why do they get a bailout and we don’t?” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.Junior business minister Paul Scully said on Thursday it was “not possible” to guarantee that affected customers would not see their bills rise – contradicting claims by Mr Kwarteng days earlier that customers being transferred to other firms should “be expected to pay the same amount”.Mr Scully also said the government has been holding talks with Ofgem about whether a cap on gas and electricity prices for consumers may have to go up.The minister told Sky News there had been “lots of conversations” about “reviewing” the price cap, which imposes limits on costs for 11 million people on default tariffs. Firms want it scrapped so they can pass on higher gas prices to customers.Meanwhile, Mr Kwarteng said that people living in the north of the country will be hit hardest by soaring energy prices this winter.Responding to MPs questions in the Commons, the minister acknowledged “the single most important determinant” of gas prices would be the cold weather – but said schemes like the Warm Home Discount would help protect the most vulnerable people. More