Markus Andrews

Ministers have sought to reassure the public over winter gas supplies and hikes in bills, as they insisted the energy price cap will “remain in place”.It comes after Boris Johnson stressed the government would do “whatever we can” to keep gas supplies flowing and preventing the collapse of firms, but declined to give an assurance it would not last for months.The prime minister also declined to say whether official action could include the temporary suspension of the energy price cap.But speaking after a roundtable of industry leaders — and before an update to the Commons on the situation — business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said he “reiterated the need for all of us to prioritise consumers”.“My task is to ensure that any energy supplier failures cause the least amount of disruption for consumers,” he added.“In any scenario, we will ensure UK consumers have continuity of supply — through a supplier of last resort or special administrator if needed. The energy price cap protects millions of consumers. It will remain in place.”His remarks, however, came as research from the Resolution Foundation think-tank suggested that four in ten households on universal credit face a 13 per cent hike in energy bills in the same month the benefit is to be cut by £20-per-week – a move widely condemned by anti-poverty campaigners. The organisation said that 4.4 million claimants could see their bills increase significantly, with families on universal credit also four times as likely as the wider population to use pre-payment meters for energy.Earlier, No 10 failed to completely rule out the prospect of the price cap being scrapped, but did insist there were currently no planned changes to the measure.Quizzed on whether the government was considering get rid of the price cap, the prime minister’s spokesperson said it “remains in place” to “protect consumers from sudden increases in global prices and it will save them money this winter”.“Well, again, as I say, the energy price cap remains in place, and I’m not aware of any change to that at all,” they added, when pressed again.“It’s in place to protect people’s energy bills,” the spokesperson said. “That’s what it does, that’s what it has done, and as I say, it’ll continue to do so.”The No 10 spokesperson also stressed that the UK food chain was “incredibly resilient” amid warnings of shortages due to lack of CO2, which has threatened meat production and the distribution of frozen food.“We’ve got a highly resilient food supply chain in the UK, we’ve seen that throughout the pandemic, and we will obviously continue to work with industries that are facing issues to ensure that remains the case”.Quizzed on whether the country faced a “winter of discontent”, the official added the government was “confident that the security of supply is not a cause for immediate concern in terms of energy”.Ed Miliband, the shadow business secretary, however, said: “A basic duty of government is to ensure secure, affordable energy supplies for businesses and consumers. It is a fundamental failure of long-term government planning over the last decade that we are so exposed and vulnerable as a country and it is families and businesses that are paying the price.“The government must take all necessary steps to ensure stability for customers and do everything in its powers to mitigate the effects of this crisis on businesses and consumers.” More

Boris Johnson has accused global warming campaigners of damaging their own cause by disrupting daily life with stunts like repeatedly blocking motorways.Mr Johnson said that protesters from Insulate Britain who targeted M25 junctions in Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire had detracted from the climate emergency message at a time when it is increasingly being taken on board by the British people.And he said the government was right to take on new powers to move protesters when they threaten critical infrastructure like roads and railways or take direct action which risks doing “serious economic damage”.Mr Johnson was speaking as 41 people were arrested in the latest Insulate Britain protests on London’s orbital motorway and other major transport links on Monday morning.Climate activists blocked the anti-clockwise exit slip road at junction 18, Chorleywood, Herts, while a separate protest took place near junction four of the A1(M), near Hatfield.A third incident saw Kent Police prevent protesters from gaining access to the M25 carriageway at junction 1a, the Dartford River Crossing.Insulate Britain are calling on the government urgently to bring forward a legally binding plan to fund insulation retrofitting across the UK by 2030, as a means of cutting carbon emissions.Founder Roger Hallam, a former Extinction Rebellion activist, has said he intends to humiliate Mr Johnson at the COP26 global warming summit which he is hosting in Glasgow in November, by showing that he is ready to jail hundreds of climate campaigners at the same time as urging world leaders to cut emissions.Speaking as he travelled to the US for a crucial preparatory meeting ahead of COP26, Mr Johnson turned his fire on those responsible for three motorway blockades in the space of five days.“I don’t think these people do any favours to their cause,” said the prime minister.“I think what they do is detract from a very important moral mission that is widely shared by the people of this country.”He said home secretary Priti Patel was right to demand that police take decision action against what she has termed “guerrilla tactics” by “selfish” protesters.“We are taking powers to be able to move protestors when they are threatening critical national infrastructure when they are threatening to do serious economic damage,” said the prime minister. “I think that is absolutely right.”Numerous arrests were made on Friday as demonstrators from the Insulate Britain group targeted M25 junctions in Kent, Surrey and Essex.Ms Patel summoned Met Commissioner Cressida Dick and other police chiefs after officers failed to drag away protesters immediately when up to 80 blocked the motorway.Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has branded the group’s actions as “dangerous and counterproductive”.But Green MP Caroline Lucas said her party believes non-violent direct action is “legitimate when other forms of trying to raise issues with the government have failed”. More

Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte offered to mediate in the ongoing dispute between the UK and EU over post-Brexit arrangements for the Irish border, Boris Johnson has said.Any move to insert a national leader into the process would represent a step away from the Brussels rule that negotiations on the Brexit deal take place only directly between London and the European Commission.But there was no indication that Mr Johnson had asked Mr Rutte to take any formal role in resolving the impasse when the two men met on Friday evening at 10 Downing Street.The prime minister was speaking days ahead of a face-to-face White House meeting with Joe Biden, who has warned him not to allow his row with the EU over the border protocol to endanger peace in Northern Ireland.But he refused to rule out invoking Article 16 of the protocol, which allows the UK to suspend the operation of post-Brexit arrangements at the border but exposes it to the risk of retaliatory action from Brussels, including trade tariffs.The implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol has been the most contentious element of the EU withdrawal deal negotiatied by Mr Johnson, with Brussels initiating legal action over unilateral extensions by the UK to so-called “grace periods” before regulations come into force in full.Earlier this month, Britain indefinitely delayed the implementation of full checks on products of animal origin and a ban on movements of chilled meats between the British mainland and Northern Ireland, which had been due to come into effect on 1 October.Although the move was taken without the EU’s agreement, the European Commission indicated it would not take legal steps. However, the Commission said it would not renegotiate the terms of the deal agreed by Mr Johnson in 2019, as demanded by Brexit minister Lord Frost in a command paper in July. And there has been little sign since of progress in talks to resolve the issue.Speaking as he flew to the US for talks with President Biden, Mr Johnson today said the stalemate cannot be allowed to “go on forever”.“I talked to Mark Rutte the other night who wanted to come and see if he could mediate on the issue and I said ‘You know we really want to make progress,” he told reporters. “We seek a solution, but it has to be one that allows the free movement of goods between all parts of our country’.”And he added: “The current situation can’t go on forever.”But he gave no indication that the UK is prepared for compromise to resolve the issue which has massively increased bureaucratic checks on goods travelling between Northern Ireland and the British mainland and has prompted the DUP to threaten withdrawal of its ministers from the Stormont power-sharing executive.The problems stem from Mr Johnson’s decision to draw a customs border down the Irish Sea, as a means of extracting Theresa May’s “backstop” from the deal governing the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.The protocol negotiated and agreed by Mr Johnson and his Brexit minister David Frost in 2019 effectively keeps Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market and shifts customs  checks from the border with the Republic to the ports and airports of entry from the British mainland.London does not accuse the EU of breaching the protocol, but claims it is being implemented in an over-zealous way. Mr Johnson denied he was picking a fight with Brussels to please his Brexit-backing supporters.“I hope everybody knows this isn’t something that the UK government is trying to stoke up for our own political purposes,” he said. “On the contrary, we want to fix this, we want common sense.“We want no barriers in the UK for trading in our country and it’s crazy at the moment that we’ve got the protocol being enforced or being used in the way that it is.“I don’t believe it’s sensible, 20 per cent of all checks in the whole of the perimeter of the EU are now done in Northern Ireland. So we do need to sort it out, we need to sort it out fast.” More

Boris Johnson has admitted he has no more than a six in 10 chance of getting the breakthrough agreement needed at the Glasgow Cop26 climate emergency summit to avoid catastrophic rises in global temperatures.The prime minister gave the gloomy assessment as he arrived in New York for a last-ditch effort to get the process back on track with just six weeks to go to the UK-hosted gathering, when he hopes to agree action to keep warming within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.He warned bluntly that some major economies “need to do much more” if Glasgow is to succeed in moving forward the ambitious programme of emission reduction agreed in Paris in 2015.At a meeting co-hosted by United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres on the fringe of the UN general assembly, Mr Johnson will be joined either virtually or in-person by political leaders from China and Brazil – viewed as two of the biggest obstacles to effective action – as well as some of the nations most vulnerable to the effects of global warming.He will repeat his “coal, cars, cash” mantra as he urges fellow leaders to phase out carbon-emitting coal power generation, make the switch to electric vehicles and make good on a 2009 pledge to provide $100bn a year to help developing countries cut emissions and adapt to a warmer planet.But asked to assess his chances of success, he told reporters travelling on his official Voyager plane to the US: “Getting it all this week is going to be a stretch. But I think getting it all done by Cop? Six out of 10.“It’s going to be tough, but people need to understand that this is crucial for the world.”Just 42 days ahead of the November summit, many major countries are yet to fulfil commitments to improve on nationally determined contributions (NDCs) towards global emission reductions agreed in Paris.China’s promise to bring its emissions to a peak before 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060 is regarded by many analysts as insufficient at a time when the world’s biggest carbon emitter is planning to build 43 new coal-fired power plants and 18 new blast furnaces.And Brazil’s president Jair Bolsanaro stands accused of accelerating warming by allowing vast areas of the Amazon rainforest to be burnt and logged.Asked if he will tell Mr Bolsanaro when they meet that the clearance of rainforests must stop, Mr Johnson said: “Yes. We want to stop and reverse the global loss of biodiversity, including in the rainforest.“I think it is in the long-term interests of Brazil and the people of Brazil to recognise the spectacular natural endowment that they have and to conserve it and I am sure that president Bolsanaro agrees with that.”By the time they arrive in Glasgow, all countries need to have committed to larger NDC pledges and demonstrated that they are ready to make “very considerable progress” on cutting emissions by 2030, said Mr Johnson.“Some countries are really stepping up to the plate, others – including some G20 countries – need to do much more. We’ll be making that argument and setting that out strongly in the next few days.”Asked how he would persuade Beijing to improve its offer, Mr Johnson said: “The Chinese, actually, have stepped up. They’ve gone a long way already and I congratulate President Xi on his vision.“China is going forward to net zero by the middle of the century – 2060. That’s extraordinary. I think China is massively important on this, but it shows real signs of making progress.”Mr Johnson brushed off climate-denying comments made a decade ago by his new international trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who in 2012 tweeted “We aren’t getting hotter, global warming isn’t actually happening”, and branded climate campaigners “fanatics”.Insisting Ms Trevelyan was an “outstanding” addition to his cabinet, he said: “If you were to excavate some of my articles from 20 years ago, you might find remarks I made obiter dicta about climate change that weren’t entirely supportive of the current struggle.“But the facts change and people change their minds and change their views, and that’s very important too.”An OECD report last week confirmed that only $79.6bn (£58bn) in climate finance for the developing world was mobilised by richer countries in 2019 – 2 percentage points up from the previous year but still well short of the $100bn target which was due to be reached in 2020.Mr Johnson will tell fellow leaders on Monday that they have a “duty” to do more, and announce that £550m of climate finance previously committed by the UK is to go toward weaning developing countries off coal and helping them switch to cleaner energy sources.“In coming together to agree the $100bn pledge, the world’s richest countries made an historic commitment to the world’s poorest – we now owe it to them to deliver on that,” he will say.“Richer nations have reaped the benefits of untrammelled pollution for generations, often at the expense of developing countries. As those countries now try to grow their economies in a clean, green and sustainable way we have a duty to support them in doing so – with our technology, with our expertise and with the money we have promised.”At the end of the General Assembly this week the UK will publish the detail of countries’ climate finance commitments to date, and Mr Johnson has asked Germany and Canada to draw up a $100bn delivery plan ahead of Cop26, to spell out how the climate finance promise will be met through to 2025. More

Liz Truss will demand the immediate release of UK nationals detained in Iran – including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe – during a meeting with the country’s foreign minister on Monday. The new foreign secretary is to hold talks with Hossein Amir-Abdollahian at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where she will raise the case of the charity worker among others.Monday’s gathering will be the first time the two officials have met and comes after Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, said he would be speaking with Ms Truss on Sunday to urge her to make the issue a “top priority”.Ms Truss will also raise the country’s nuclear programme, with a warning that with every day that passes without a resumption of talks, there was “less space for diplomacy”.Ms Truss said: “I will be asking Iran to ensure the immediate and permanent release of all arbitrarily detained British nationals in Iran, and to begin working with us to mend our fractured relations.“The UK, US and our international partners are fully committed to a nuclear deal, but every day that Iran continues to delay talks whilst escalating its own nuclear programme means there is less space for diplomacy.” More

An “unconscionable” 100 million stockpiled Covid vaccines will expire in rich countries by Christmas while poorer nations are starved of supplies, a new analysis says.The research also suggests a further 1 million more deaths from the pandemic by next summer, amid a lack of ventilators and oxygen, the data group Airfinity found.The study has been endorsed by Gordon Brown, who has sent it to Joe Biden ahead of the US president leading a UN jabs summit on Wednesday – to spur him to avoid “a vaccine waste disaster” as “use by” dates pass.Meanwhile, the former prime minister has been appointed an ambassador by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to drive forward better global action on public health.Mr Brown said: “It is unthinkable and unconscionable that 100 million vaccines will have to be thrown away from the stockpiles of the rich countries, whilst the populations of the world’s poorest countries will pay for our vaccine waste in lives lost.“It is will be a profound and collective political tragedy if this summit misses the opportunity to act with doses transferred immediately to poorer countries.”The warning comes after the UK joined other Western nations in stepping up jabs for its own population, with an autumn booster campaign for over-50s.Boris Johnson has promised to share 100 million doses with developing countries from the UK’s vast vaccine mountain – but only 9 million have been sent so far.Airfinity said its research predicted no shortage of overall jabs – with 7 billion vaccines available across the world by the end of this month, rising to 12 billion by December.Mr Brown called for a target to vaccinate 40 per cent of citizens in the poorest countries by December, which would require 2.3 billion doses to be transferred.He also called for the swapping of delivery contracts so that Covax, the agency for bulk purchasing of vaccines, and the African agency AVAT receive them much earlier.“Wednesday’s summit must decide whether countries will swap delivery contracts, how regulatory barriers to vaccine exports can be overcome and who will underwrite the costs if stockpiled vaccines are to be used before they expire,” Mr Brown said.And he added: “Global political leaders must match the extraordinary commitment and cooperation of scientists and manufacturers who have created the opportunity to vaccinate the entire world.”Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director-general, pointed to Mr Brown’s “tireless” work to share Covid vaccines equitably, in appointing him ambassador for global health financing.“In this role, he will elevate and support WHO’s work to raise awareness internationally on the great need for sustained global health financing, particularly from G20 and G7 countries,” Dr Tedros said. More

MPs and business leaders are proposing a raft of changes to ease the pain from Boris Johnson’s “broken” Brexit trade deal, in the wake of evidence of public unhappiness with it.Food export checks must be streamlined, the cost and complexity of obtaining visas eased and a new body set up to protect food standards, their report tells ministers.The cross-party UK Trade and Business Commission – which gathered evidence from expert witnesses – was set up after the government abolished the Commons committee scrutinising the Brexit fallout.It says it found “no appetite for widespread deregulation or divergence from EU rules” – long hailed as the key benefit of EU withdrawal by the prime minister and David Frost, his Brexit minister.Instead, the alarm was raised over the “barriers” faced by businesses losing out to international competitors, the “burden” on small firms and freelance workers” and the risk of “irrevocable damage” to UK farming.Meanwhile, its polling found that 53 per cent of people think the Christmas Eve deal has created more problems than it has solved – with just 15 per cent thinking it has overall benefits.“The evidence we’ve heard from dozens of experts and businesses confirms that this deal is broken and will continue to create problems in our supply chain and cost jobs and money in the UK,” Hilary Benn, the Labour MP who jointly leads the commission.The study’s recommendations include:* Relaunching and simplifying the Brexit support fund – after it paid out less than one-third of the £20m allocated to it;* Digitising checks for food exporters – to end a system inferior to “less cumbersome processes” in EU countries;* Reducing the cost and complexity of visas – with the cost for skilled workers and academics coming to the UK roughly five times higher than competitors; and* Establishing a new authority to protect food standards in new trade deals – after criticism of government confusion over whether they will be safeguarded.Mr Benn added: “We’re calling on the government now to work with business and our European neighbours to implement these reasonable improvements to their deal and measures to support UK firms.”The report comes as pressure grows on ministers to plug gaps in the skeleton deal, with Labour backing a new agreement to end the crisis facing touring musicians.However, the mooted EU-UK “Partnership Council” has met only once – and the two sides are instead locked in a bitter battle over the Northern Ireland protocol.The commission is co-led by the head of the Virgin Group, Peter Norris, and its members include figures from Trafalgar Entertainment, the chemical company BASF, and the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium.Support is provided by the Best for Britain internationalist group, whose chief executive, Naomi Smith, appealed for a new approach from the new-look cabinet.“The poll shows the British public can see the government’s Brexit deal for what it is – an insufficient and self-sabotaging agreement that is causing significant problems for British businesses, the economy and jobs,” she said. More

France has cancelled a summit with defence secretary Ben Wallace in protest at the submarine deal between Australia, Britain and the US, according to reports.Florence Parly, the French minister of the armed forces, personally took the decision to drop the bilateral meeting that was due to be held in London this week, sources told Reuters.The postponement of the Franco-British Council – which would have been addressed by Ms Parly during her visit – was also confirmed to the Guardian by Peter Ricketts, the organisation’s co-chair.It follows the decision by Australia to scrap a multi-billion pound submarine deal with France in favour of a new Aukus security partnership with America and Britain.France reacted to the announcement by recalling its ambassadors to Canberra and Washington, while foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian described the move as “a stab in the back” and accused Australia of “lies and duplicity”.However the French ambassador to the UK was not recalled and British officials appear to have hoped the London meeting would still go ahead.The Ministry of Defence declined to comment on the reports that the meeting had been called off.US president Joe Biden will speak to Emmanuel Macron about the issue during a call “in the next few days”, a French government spokesperson said on Sunday.France will also be seeking “clarification” from Australia over the cancellation of the submarine deal, including discussions over compensation, spokesperson Gabriel Attal told news channel BFM TV.Australian prime minister Scott Morrison defended his decision to ditch the submarine deal with France and claimed that concerns had been flagged months ago.“I don’t regret the decision to put Australia’s national interest first,” Mr Morrison said at a briefing on Sunday.“This is an issue that had been raised by me directly some months ago and we continued to talk those issues through, including by defence ministers and others.”China has also criticised the Aukus partnership, accusing Australia, the UK and the US of being stuck in a “cold war mentality” and showing “ideological prejudice”.Additional reporting by agencies More