Markus Andrews

England’s chief medical officer (CMO) should resign over his decision to roll out Covid vaccinations to children “without good clinical reason”, a backbench Tory MP has claimed. A row broke out on Monday after the government announced 12 to 15-year-olds will be offered one Pfizer jab from next week, following a decision made by the CMOs of each of the UK’s four nations, including England’s Professor Chris Whitty.Responding to the move in a tweet on Monday night Marcus Fysh, the Conservative MP for Yeovil, claimed Prof Whitty “does not deserve the confidence of the country” as he called for him to step down.Speaking in the House of Commons earlier, Mr Fysh said he had “grave concerns about this policy and the fact that the chief medical officers have made their decision on the basis of the educational impact rather than the health of the children at clinical level.”In a previous ruling the JCVI, which looks at vaccinations from a purely clinical perspective, concluded that the virus presents a very low risk for children and therefore an inoculation programme would offer only minor benefits.The CMOs, who had come under significant political and media pressure to approve the rollout, told a Downing Street press conference on Monday that there were other benefits, including reducing the disruption to the school term.Professor Whitty told the news conference it had been a “difficult decision” but CMOs would not be recommending the jabs “unless we felt that benefit exceeded risk”.Three million eligible teenagers will be offered a first dose as early as next week as part of in-school vaccination services and. A rollout has not been confirmed in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.The fall out continued on Tuesday morning amid concerns about the youngest children involved in the programme and parental consent.Those under the age of 16 are able to get some medical procedures without consent if they are deemed competent to make that decision on their own.This is checked by the so-called Gillick test, which assesses whether a child under the age of 16 has sufficient understanding and intelligence to understand what is being proposed.If a child is not competent to give consent for themselves, consent should be sought from a person with parental responsibility.Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said children will only be able to have a vaccination against their parents’ wishes following a meeting with a clinician.But Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chairman of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said he would not feel comfortable with a 12-year-old getting a jab if their parent had not consented.Asked about a 12-year-old potentially taking up their offer of a jab if their parent had not consented, Prof Harnden told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable about that.”I think we have to be really careful that we go by the law, and the law clearly states that the child and parent should try to come to an agreed conclusion.”But if the child wants to go ahead or doesn’t want to go ahead and the parent feels absolutely the opposite, then the clinician involved in administering the vaccine needs to be absolutely sure that the child is competent to make that decision.”He added: “There will be a grade of competency from the age of 16 downwards, so 14 to 15-year-olds may be deemed competent to make that decision on their own, (but) it’s less likely that a 12 or 13-year-old will be deemed competent.”Mr Zahawi told Sky News: “On the very rare occasion where there is a difference of opinion between the parent and the 12 to 15-year-old, where the parent, for example, doesn’t want to give consent but the 12 to 15-year-old wants to have the vaccine, then the first step is the clinician will bring the parent and the child together to see whether they can reach consent.”If that is not possible, then, if the child is deemed to be competent – and this has been around since the ’80s for all vaccination programmes in schools – if the child is deemed to be competent, Gillick competence as it is referred to, then the child can have the vaccine.”But these are very rare occasions and it is very important to remember that the School Age Immunisation Service is incredibly well equipped to deal with this – clinicians are very well versed in delivering vaccinations to 12 to 15-year-olds in schools.” More

Keir Starmer agreed a backroom deal to lift Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension from Labour but then rowed back on it following a backlash, Len McCluskey has claimed.The former Unite chief warned the Labour leader “risks becoming fixed in the public’s mind as someone who can’t be trusted” – citing both the episode and Sir Keir’s decision to abandon some leadership election pledges. Mr Corbyn was suspended from Labour for his response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report into antisemitism in Labour, but reinstated after clarifying his comments.But the decision caused an immediate backlash, following which Sir Keir said Mr Corbyn would not have the party whip restored. The former leader is now a Labour member and an MP but not a Labour MP.Writing in the Guardian Mr McCluskey said an “agreed form of words” had been negotiated with Sir Keir’s office for Mr Corbyn’s clarification, after which it was agreed he would be reinstated.He said he and other figures on the left had been told by Sir Keir’s team that Mr Corbyn’s compliance would mean “the suspension will be lifted, after due process, and Jeremy will be back to normal”.Mr McCluskey also said Sir Keir had indicated on the telephone to him that he had personally suspended Mr Corbyn, rather than the party’s disciplinary apparatus acting independently. In a detailed recollection by the former Unite general secretary, the sitting Labour leader is quoted as having said: “He put me in an impossible position and I had no choice.” The distinction over who suspended Mr Corbyn is important because the EHRC’s report said the Labour leadership should not get involved in the party’s disciplinary process.In an account of a meeting about Mr Corbyn’s suspension, Mr McCluskey wrote: “[Labour deputy leader Angela] Rayner began by requesting our discussion be confidential. Given what happened subsequently, I no longer feel bound by that.“[Left-wing Labour MP Jon] Trickett and I asked if there was a way to negotiate a settlement to avoid an internal war. Starmer replied that he didn’t want a war and was happy to talk about ways to reach a solution.“He indicated that a clarification statement by Corbyn could be a way of resolving the issue. ‘Are you saying that if we could reach an agreed form of words that both Jeremy and you, Keir, are happy with, then the suspension could be lifted?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ Starmer said. The others also agreed.”The former union chief said the form of the statement was subsequently negotiated with Sir Keir’s aides.Regarding the backlash after Mr Corbyn was reinstated, Mr Starmer said: “I don’t know if Starmer was taken by surprise by the backlash, but it soon became clear he was going to crumble“Starmer reneged on our deal … Corbyn was now told that if he wanted the whip restored, he would have to make an apology – which prompted the question: if an apology was so important to the leadership, why didn’t they include one in the statement they co-wrote?”Labour did not respond to a request for comment on this story.In the aftermath of the ECHR report’s publication former leader Mr Corbyn had said that “one antisemite is one too many” but that the problem in Labour had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons” by political opponents. The comments caused anger, leading to Mr Corbyn’s suspension from the party. But the former leader later posted a clarification, stating that “concerns about antisemitism are neither ‘exaggerated’ nor ‘overstated’” and that he had only wished to say that “the vast majority of Labour party members were and remain committed antiracists deeply opposed to antisemitism.””. He was reinstated shortly after. More

Children 12 years old and above will be able to overrule their parents and get a Covid vaccine, the government has confirmed.Speaking on Tuesday morning vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said a doctor or nurse would try to intervene when there was a “difference of opinion” between the child and parent.But if after a discussion with the clinician the parent was still opposed to the child been immunised then the teenager, if deemed competent, would be allowed to proceed.The approach mirrors the one taken since 1985 for all vaccination programmes in schools, after a decision by the House of Lords, then England and Wales’ highest court.”Children will have a leaflet that they can share with their parents and of course we have a consent form that will go to them either electronically and, in some schools physically, to their parents, and their parents will then read all the information, have to give consent if the child is to be vaccinated,” Mr Zahawi told Sky News.”On the very rare occasion where there is a difference of opinion between the parent and the 12-15 year-old, where the parent for example doesn’t want to give consent but the 12-15 year-old wants to have the vaccine, then the first step is the clinician will bring the parent and the child together to see whether they can reach consent.”The minister added: “If that is not possible, then if the child is deemed to be competent – and this has been around since the ’80s for all vaccination programmes in schools – if the child is deemed to be competent, Gillick competence as it is referred to, then the child can have the vaccine.”But these are very rare occasions and it is very important to remember that the School Age Immunisation Service is incredibly well equipped to deal with this – clinicians are very well versed in delivering vaccinations to 12 to 15-year-olds in schools.”The government this week confirmed that Covid-19 jabs will be offered to all children in the UK aged between 12 and 15 as early as next week, following a decision by the chief medical officers. The decision was taken amid concerns that a winter surge in cases and hospitalisations could hit the country as the weather gets colder. More

The UK government has threatened to suspend the Northern Ireland Brexit deal if the EU does not reopen negotiations over the year-and-a-half-old treaty.Boris Johnson hailed the signing of the Northern Ireland protocol and withdrawal agreement as a “fantastic moment” for the UK in January last year, but now says it is not working and that it must be changed.Speaking in the House of Lords on Monday evening, David Frost, the government’s Brexit minister, said the EU should come to the table to make changes to the accord. “They would be making a significant mistake if they thought that we were not ready to use Article 16 safeguards, if that were to be the only apparent way forward to deal with the situation in front of us,” he told peers”If we are to avoid this situation, there needs to be a real negotiation between us and the EU.”Lord Frost, who negotiated the agreement as a special advisor with wide ranging executive powers but who has since been appointed to the legislature and made a government minister, added: “A real negotiation does not mean the EU coming up with its own plans for solutions, within the framework of the existing Protocal, and presenting them to us as ‘take it or leave it’.”Britain says it wants “substantial and significant change” to the agreement, which is causing disruption to internal trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland as predicted by critics when it was originally proposed by the government.The UK has already extended post-Brexit grace periods on imports and exports to try and soften any effects – last week saying it would do so again.Under Article 16 the protocol, which governs trade relations between the two territories, would effectively be set aside. The article allows one or both sides to suspend the deal if it is found to be causing “serious” problems, but does not give a firm definition of what counts as “serious”.The agreement negotiated by Lord Frost and Boris Johnson keeps Northern Ireland in the EU single market and customs territory, while the UK sits outside of it. As well as causing frictions, the deal has some advantages for Northern Ireland, which can trade more freely with the the EU than Great Britain. It also eliminates a hard border with the Republic of Ireland, which was the original intent of the protocol. Both these aspects would be lost if the deal was suspended, though there is significant uncertainty over the enforcement of a hard border in the absence of an agreement.The EU’s Brexit chief Maros Sefcovic, has flat-out rejected the idea of renegotiating the deal. Officials in Brussels say members states have no appetite whatsoever for negotiating with Britain after having signed a deal so recentlyLord Frost told peers: “I don’t in fact take Commissioner Sefcovic’s words as a dismissal of our position, I take them as acknowledgement of it.”But I also take it as a fairly clear indication that there is more to be done. So I do urge the EU to think again.” More

Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are more likely to be stopped by the police, threatened or subject to police violence and falsely accused of rule-breaking and wrong-doing during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new report.Lockdown conditions and new police powers pose a threat to already over-policed communities and the most marginalised and vulnerable sections of society, says the study, A threat to public safety: policing, racism and the Covid-19 pandemic.Published by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), and authored by academics from the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) based at the University of Manchester, the report is published in the context of increased scrutiny around policing, following Black Lives Matter protests and ‘Kill the Bill’ demonstrations against the Government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill.Researchers spoke to people of colour across England aged between 19 and 62 about their experiences of coronavirus policing and found evidence of police consistently failing to use PPE or observe social distancing regulations, with one pregnant woman describing an encounter where officers refused to wear masks when asked. The report’s lead author, Scarlet Harris, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic ushered in a period of extraordinary police powers which arrived in a broader context of racist over-policing and police violence. This report draws on extensive conversations with people from racially-minoritised groups and communities living across England over the course of the pandemic.“The findings dismantle the myth that the police contribute to public safety. Instead, they demonstrate how policing such a ‘crisis’ has reproduced profound harms for those from racially minoritised groups and communities.”In one case, an interviewee called Darren told IRR researchers how a police stop, initially justified on the basis of wrongful suspicion of drug possession was quickly replaced – and the stop explained – with a nod to Coronavirus regulations.“I asked him [police officer] how come you’re stopping me? And then he said you smell like you was in possession of cannabis, or I have smelled a strong smell of cannabis coming from you,” Darren said.“He (then) said, well, you and your mates are breaking Covid rules, we’re in a Tier 4 lockdown and you was with them in Sainsbury’s, wasn’t you? So I said, I don’t know who they are, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, but I don’t know these people, do you know what I mean? “You’re only stopping me because I’m Black and you’re racially profiling me; and I don’t even want to play the race card, but some people would be acting a lot worse than I am right now.”Another contributor, Kieran, said: “Even though you do get stopped a lot, it’s just now they feel like, oh, we can now, because we can say it’s down to Covid, and that’s what’s really sticking like right there, it’s like, I can drive out to the shop now, you know, I could go to, for example, McDonald’s, and it’s like, why are you out of your house?”This comes as expert warn that the new policing bill, to be debated this week, risks deepening racial and gender disparities in the justice system.A previous report from the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) found that young men from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds were almost twice as likely to be handed fines for breaches of Covid-19 lockdown rules than white men the same age.Findings of an inquiry by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, published last year, suggested Black people in the UK feel that their human rights aren’t protected as much as white people from policing to healthcare.Speaking about the IRR research, co-author Remi Joseph-Salisbury said: “The evidence in this report really urges us to question the state’s reliance on the police to solve social and public health problems. Despite being central to the government’s handling of the pandemic, policing too often threatens rather than protects public safety, particularly for people of colour.”The Independent has approached the National Police Chiefs Council for comment. More

Boris Johnson is mourning the loss of his mother, the artist Charlotte Johnson Wahl, who has died at the age of 79, it is reported.She died “suddenly and peacefully” at a London hospital, the family said according to the Daily Telegraph.She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease at the age of 40 and later became president of the European Commission for Human Rights.The prime minister once described her as the “supreme authority” in his family.Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was among the first politicians to offer his condolences.“I’m very sorry to learn of the prime minister’s loss. My condolences to him and his family,” he tweeted.Tory MP Angela Richardson said: “Sad news for the PM tonight as well as the rest of the Johnson family. Thoughts with them all.”After marrying Stanley Johnson in 1963, Ms Wahl had four children: Boris, journalist Rachel, former cabinet minister Jo and environmentalist Leo, before they divorced in 1979. The prime minister’s son Wilfred was her 13th grandchild. More

The minister for Afghan resettlement has told MPs to stop asking for help on behalf of people stranded in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan – as the government will not be able to respond to their requests.In a letter to MPs, seen by The Independent, Victoria Atkins told her parliamentary colleagues instead to tell desperate people seeking their help to visit the government website.Describing the move as “utterly disgraceful”, the Liberal Democrats warned that Afghans trapped in their homes in fear of the Taliban had “lost one of their last lifelines”.But the Home Office minister said that Britain’s lack of troops or an embassy in Afghanistan represent a “new reality”, meaning the government now “cannot provide to MPs assessments or updates on those individuals who remain in Afghanistan and whose cases they have raised”.“The deteriorating security situation means that such information is not possible to obtain or may change very quickly,” Ms Atkins wrote on Monday, adding: “We appreciate that is difficult news to deliver to constituents who are desperately worried about family members and friends.”Thanking MPs for raising “the harrowing circumstances” of constituents, their relatives or British allies left stranded after the UK’s fraught evacuation operation from Kabul ended in August, Ms Atkins said they should now instead direct those seeking their help to the government website, “to check for the latest information” about its Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP) and resettlement scheme.MPs should do this “rather than seek to pursue cases on their behalf”, Ms Atkins said.“Given the very difficult circumstances in Afghanistan”, the government “cannot pursue cases … in the usual ways”, she said, adding that the Home Office is “logging the cases we have received” and “considering how this data will be used in the future”.In recent weeks, ministers have fielded a flurry of furious complaints in the Commons from MPs who have received no reply to their emails on behalf of vulnerable Afghans and their families. Describing the hundreds of thousands of emails the government has received about Afghans potentially eligible to come to the UK, Foreign Office minister James Cleverly said on Thursday: “It is just not possible to open, analyse and respond to 200,000 emails in the same timescale that we would normally be able to do.”Ms Atkins said that a hotline set up during Operation Pitting had received more than 5.3 million attempted calls, and that the Home Office had gathered details of over 174,000 Afghans seeking support to fly to the UK.However, Boris Johnson had promised last Monday that “every single one of the emails from colleagues around this house” would be answered by the end of the day. Every MP then received the same standard letter.Responding to Ms Atkins’ letter, sent the following week, Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson, Layla Moran, said: “The Conservatives have turned their back on vulnerable people desperate to flee the terror of the Taliban, and are now telling MPs we should give up trying to help them too.“It is utterly disgraceful. People are trapped in their homes fearing when the knock at the door may come, now they have lost one of their last lifelines.“This has been a complete shambles from the start with devastating consequences. First, MPs were put on hold for hours on end, and now we are simply being fobbed off.”Speaking in the Commons earlier on Monday, Ms Atkins confirmed that 20,000 refugees accepted under the government’s Afghan citizens’ resettlement scheme, and allies and interpreters welcomed under the ARAP scheme, will be able to resettle permanently in the UK.Local authorities will receive £20,000 per person to provide support to resettled Afghans to “integrate into British society and become self-sufficient more quickly”, Ms Atkins said.The UK has evacuated more than 15,000 people – including 8,000 eligible for the ARAP scheme – since 13 August, two days before the Taliban swept into Kabul.With thousands of eligible people thought to be left behind, the foreign secretary Dominic Raab has expressed the need to persuade the Taliban to reopen Kabul airport.But progress has been slow, with just 13 Britons on a flight of 200 permitted to leave the airport last week. More

Boris Johnson will display an “absence of basic humanity” if he allows the planned cut to Universal Credit to go ahead, Nicola Sturgeon has claimed.Scotland’s first minister used her closing speech at the SNP conference to question how Mr Johnson’s conscience could allow him to end the £20-a-week uplift brought in at the start of the pandemic – which she described as the “biggest overnight reduction” to a social security payment since the 1930s.Despite facing a sizeable Tory revolt over the plans, which have been opposed by six former work and pensions secretaries including Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the prime minister and chancellor Rishi Sunak appear determined to plough ahead with the cut – which totals £1,040 per year – on 6 October.Not only has the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warned the cut will hit more than one in three working-age families with children in nearly every constituency across the country, but internal government modelling also reportedly predicts that homelessness, poverty and food bank use will soar as a result.While the Department for Work and Pensions denied carrying out any formal assessment of the cut, one Whitehall official described the modelling as “catastrophic”, telling the Financial Times: “It could be the real disaster of the autumn.”With millions people expected to be affected by the removal of the uplift, Ms Sturgeon said that in Scotland alone it risks pushing 60,000 people – including 20,000 children – into the formal definition of poverty.“The loss of more than £1,000 a year will be utterly devastating, it will quite literally take food out of children’s mouths,” she said on the fourth and final day of the SNP conference. “It will drive people into debt and, in some cases, to destitution and despair – and the Tories know all of this.”The SNP leader added: “To even contemplate a cut like this displays a lack of basic understanding of the reality of life for those on the breadline – or maybe it’s actually a lack of care.“But to go ahead and implement this cut would expose an absence of basic humanity and moral compass.”Claiming that “if this deeply cruel cut does happen, the only conclusion it will be possible to reach is that Boris Johnson simply has no shame”, Ms Sturgeon urged the prime minister “for the sake of millions of desperate people across the country” not to “let that be history’s verdict upon you”.The first minister’s plea came hours after Westminster’s work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey made the furiously disputed claim that people could work two extra hours per week to make up for the loss.“I’m conscious that £20 a week is about two hours’ extra work every week – we will be seeing what we can do to help people perhaps secure those extra hours, but ideally also to make sure they’re also in a place to get better paid jobs as well,” Ms Coffey told BBC Breakfast.But Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner argued that Universal Credit’s taper means a £20 cut for a claimant would mean they need to do more than £50 worth of work, saying: “This is a lie and the work and pensions secretary either knows she’s lying or shouldn’t be in the job.”According to the Resolution Foundation, claimants who work additional hours see their Universal Credit payment fall by 63p for every £1 they earn.As a result, claimants of the benefit who earn the National Living Wage can take a home as little as £2.24 from an extra hour’s work – meaning they would need to work nine extra hours a week to make up for the government’s planned cut in just over three weeks’ time.“This is a government that half the time doesn’t know what it is doing and the rest of the time just doesn’t care,” Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Reynolds told the Commons on Monday as he criticised Ms Coffey’s claim.Ms Coffey replied: “I don’t know the basis of the calculation on what he has just suggested.”The prime minister, meanwhile, displayed his intent to press on with the cut as recently as Thursday, telling broadcasters: “My strong preference is for people to see their wages rise through their efforts rather than through taxation of other people put into their pay packets.”The previous day, when Mr Johnson’s controversial plans to hike National Insurance contributions to pay for social care weathered a vote in the Commons, a Tory minister told the Financial Times that Universal Credit posed a greater political problem.“Colleagues are really worried; I think it will definitely eclipse social care as a political problem,” they were quoted as saying. “It’s not just red wall MPs who are fearing a major backlash from the public.”Labour is expected to force a symbolic vote on the issue in the Commons on Wednesday, although no vote is formally needed for the government to make the cut. More