Markus Andrews

Venues and other businesses should still demand Covid passports if they believe they are “necessary”, a minister says – despite the government ditching plans to force them to do so.In a major U-turn, the health secretary Sajid Javid dumped the compulsory crackdown – planned for night clubs and other crowded events, from next month – arguing people should not have to “show your papers” for everyday activities.But, just 24 hours later, the work and pensions secretary Thérèse Coffey acknowledged firms are still free to introduce their own certification schemes – and backed them doing so.“It is sensible of organisations, employers to do the checks they think are necessary in order to protect public health,” she told Sky News.The schemes introduced by music festivals and some leading football clubs are allowing entry if someone is double vaccinated or can show a recent negative Covid test.In contrast, the government had threatened to make proof of vaccination compulsory, in a bid to tackle the number of young people refusing to get themselves jabbed.But Ms Coffey hinted companies were allowed to follow either approach, saying: “Right around the country, people will be going into their places of work, or other areas, and they are already been asked that sort of activity – ‘have you got you two your jabs and similar’ – in order to continue to try and protect.”That was “recognising, we still have a high number of infections in this country on a daily basis and we still want to keep trying to reduce that”, the minister said.Ms Coffey also confirmed that compulsory vaccine passports will remain a reserve option and will be part of a “toolbox” of Covid-fighting measures to be outlined in a document on Tuesday.Boris Johnson is expected to warn that mandatory facemasks could be reintroduced, and work from home guidance reinstated, if a third wave of Covid infections surges this winter.He is also expected to make clear that compulsory vaccination for large events has not been ruled out forever, despite fierce opposition from Tory backbenchers.However, the central strategy will be to implement a vaccine booster campaign and extend first jabs to 12 to 15-year-olds, to curb infections in schools.The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation will publish its advice to coincide with the announcement, amid criticism of it for dragging its heels.However, while medical officers are set to back jabs for younger teenagers, the JCVI may only support boosters for the most elderly and vulnerable people, frustrating ministers.Senior medics and scientists are arguing the UK’s stockpile of spare jabs would be better sent to developing countries, to conquer Covid across the globe. More

The UK government has ended its Covid vaccine deal with Valneva, according to the French company.It had put in an order for 100 million doses, after requesting 40 million more in February.But Valneva said the deal has now been terminated. The government served notice over allegations of a breach of the agreement, which the French pharmaceutical company “strenuously” denies. The Valneva jab is still in the clinical trial phase. The French firm said it could be approved for use, subject to trial results and a decision from the UK medicines regulator, towards the end of this year. Valneva said on Monday it had “received a termination notice from the UK government (“HMG”) in relation to the Supply Agreement for its Covid-19 vaccine candidate, VLA2001”. A company statement said: “The contract provides HMG with the right to terminate. HMG has alleged that the Company is in breach of its obligations under the Supply Agreement, but the Company strenuously denies this.”It added: “Valneva has worked tirelessly, and to its best efforts, on the collaboration with HMG including investing significant resources and effort to respond to HMG’s requests for variant-derived vaccines.”Valenva said it would “increase its efforts with potential other customers” to ensure its vaccine candidate can be used to tackle the Covid pandemic.The jab is being produced at a site in the Scottish town of Livingston.Following Valneva’s statement on Monday, Scotland’s health secretary, Humza Yousaf, said: “Two things I would like to give a reassurance on: first and foremost, even if this contract is terminated we have enough supply even for a booster programme moving forward.“I want to give absolute confidence to anybody listening that we have the supplies necessary to continue to vaccinate, and particularly with a booster programme, hopefully, on the horizon shortly.”He told BBC Good Morning Scotland: “The second thing, of course, is this is a blow for the facility in Livingston. We are very keen and will be reaching out to the company to try to get security and secure a future for that facility in Livingston; we hope that would be with Valneva.”Additional reporting by Press Association More

Sir Keir Starmer has accused Boris Johnson of hitting low-paid families with a “double whammy” of a universal credit cut and a hike in tax, as the party warns that some key workers will be more than £1,000 worse off.Launching a fresh attack on the government’s recently announced manifesto-busting plans to hike national insurance, Labour claimed the government was “putting the very wealthiest ahead of working people”.It comes amid Tory unease over Mr Johnson’s decision to increase national insurance contributions by 1.25 percentage points while standing by plans to reduce universal credit payments to pre-pandemic levels.According to a Labour analysis, the party said these policies – combined with plans to freeze the income tax personal allowance – represented an “attack on the key worker heroes” Britain relied on throughout the Covid crisis.The party’s analysis suggested a social care worker could lose £1,108 next year while a Band 5 nurse was set to lose £1,159.Sir Keir and deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, will highlight the impact of the cuts on Monday during a meeting in London with hospitality and retail workers also affected by the changes.“The Conservatives’ plans to impose unfair taxes are an attack on working people and an attack on the key worker heroes who have got our country through the pandemic,” the Labour leader said.“The government announcement on social care will not fix the crisis in social care, will not clear the backlog in our NHS and will not protect homeowners from having to sell their homes to pay for care. As usual with this prime minister, it is working people who are going to have to pay for the cost of his failure.“Two and half million working families will face a double whammy of a national insurance tax rise and a cut to universal credit. This is the same old Tories – putting the very wealthiest ahead of working people who have to pick up the bill.”Their warning comes as a separate Treasury analysis, reported in the Sunday Telegraph, suggested the 1.25 percentage point hike in national insurance may have “an impact on family formation, stability or breakdown as individuals, who are currently just about managing financially, will see their disposable income reduce”.It added the “behaviour effects” of the manifesto-busting increase in tax – in the form of a new health and social care levy – are “likely to be large”.Speaking on Monday, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, however, will set out that 425,000 jobs a year are to be supported over the next four years through a combination of public- and private-sector infrastructure investment.Setting out how £650bn will be implemented in infrastructure projects over the next decade, Mr Sunak will say: “We put a plan in place to protect jobs and businesses in their hour of need and I am immensely proud that it is working.“Today’s announcement of 425,000 jobs supported per year over the next four years shows that we are sticking to that plan as we level up opportunities across the country. “But this isn’t just about numbers – our Plan for Jobs is also about giving people the hope and opportunity to meet their potential as we emerge from the pandemic and the economy recovers.”A government spokesperson said: “We’ve taken decisive and historic action, with our Health and Social Care Levy due to raise £12bn a year for the NHS and social care. It is a progressive tax with those earning more paying more.“We have always been clear that the uplift to Universal Credit was temporary. It was designed to help claimants through the economic shock and financial disruption of the toughest stages of the pandemic, and it has done so.“Universal Credit will continue to provide vital support for those both in and out of work and it’s right that the Government should focus on our Plan for Jobs, supporting people back into work and supporting those already employed to progress and earn more.” More

Boris Johnson will hammer home the message that he is “dead set” against another lockdown as he insists the country must “learn to live with” coronavirus, according to a report.The prime minister is gearing up to lay out his winter blueprint for “managing” Covid during the winter months, in what will be his first coronavirus press conference since nearly all legal restrictions were scrapped in July.He is expected to commit to repealing some of the coronavirus powers handed to him by MPs in March 2020, including those allowing him to close down the economy and impose restrictions on gatherings.Labour has urged the government “to get a grip before winter”, describing health secretary Sajid Javid’s dramatic announcement on Sunday that the government had dropped its plans for domestic vaccine passports “the culmination of a summer of chaos from ministers”.Describing the argument Mr Johnson is set to make this week, a senior government source told The Telegraph: “This is the new normal. We need to learn to live with Covid.“The vaccines are a wall of defence. The autumn and the winter do offer some uncertainty, but the prime minister is dead set against another lockdown.”Reports indicate that the traffic light system governing international travel are set to be scrapped, in addition to requirements for fully vaccinated British arrivals to pay for PCR tests.However, the government could reportedly still reintroduce restrictions regarding face masks and could reissue work from home advice if infections surge.No 10 has said it is difficult to predict what pressures will be placed on the NHS, with Covid circulating alongside flu, but warned: “The winter months will bring renewed challenges.”Mr Johnson’s announcement is set to coincide with the Joint Committee on Immunisation and Vaccination’s final decision on booster jabs, while The Observer reported that ministers are set to unveil plans to begin vaccinating 12- to 15-year-olds imminently.Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccines minister, told MPs this week that booster jabs are “probably the most important piece of the jigsaw yet to fall into place before we can transition this virus from pandemic to endemic status”.However, experts are warning that coronavirus-related hospital admissions are already increasing at an “alarming rate” – putting increased pressure on the NHS as it struggles to cope with demand for emergency care and millions waiting for treatment.Responding to a report that the government had drawn up plans for a possible “firebreak” lockdown to coincide with the school holidays in October, Mr Johnson’s official spokesman said this week that such measures “would only be reintroduced as a last resort to prevent unsustainable pressure on our NHS”.Citing a government adviser, the i newspaper reported in August that Mr Johnson “privately accepts” up to 50,000 annual Covid deaths as an acceptable level before imposing restrictions – to which Downing Street responded “there is no set number of acceptable deaths from Covid”.Eighteen months after the UK’s first coronavirus-related death, 134,200 people have now lost their lives within 28 days of testing positive. According to the Office for National Statistics, there have been 158,000 deaths registered so far with Covid-19 on the death certificate. More

“Oppressive” elements of the new policing bill must be dropped so doctors and social workers are not forced to inform on vulnerable young people, more than 600 experts have warned in a letter to Priti Patel.Ministers want to create a rule obliging public agencies such as schools and GP surgeries to disclose information about service users to reduce serious violence, using the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which is to be debated in the House of Lords this week.As part of plans to overhaul the justice system and cut offending, they also intend to create serious violence reduction orders to make it easier for police to carry out checks on people who have been previously convicted of carrying knives.However, some 665 GPs, nurses, teachers, and social and youth workers have now written to Ms Patel, warning her scheme will only result in more harm.They wrote: “We believe that this bill will hinder our ability as frontline workers to effectively support the people with whom we work by eroding relationships of trust and duties of confidentiality. Most importantly, it will expand the criminalisation, surveillance, and punishment of already-over-policed communities.”The group fears the legislation will make them complicit in surveillance and force them to hand over personal data even if it conflicts with their professional duties. They argue this will prevent young people, particularly those who are not white, from accessing vital services.They also say the serious violence reduction orders will give police an “individualised, suspicionless” stop and search power with minimal safeguards, with people likely to face “intrusive monitoring”.Existing stop and search powers, which the government expanded this year by relaxing rules on searching people without suspicion, are already used disproportionately to frisk people who are not white, with black people nine times more likely to be stopped by police officers than white people. HM Inspectorate of Constabulary found in February that forces were unable to explain the disparity.Jun Pang, a policy officer at Liberty, said peers must reject the policing bill and urged ministers to change course. She said: “The new police powers it creates will lead to harassment and oppressive monitoring of young people, working class people and people of colour, especially black people, in particular, and expand existing measures that will funnel more people into the criminal punishment system.”And Gavin Moorghen, of the British Association of Social Workers, said: “The duty of confidentiality is crucial to our ability to protect people’s dignity and privacy, foster relationships of trust, and deliver high quality care.“The policing bill may soon force us to betray the hard-earned trust and relationships we have built with young people, as well as our professional duties, by requiring us to be complicit in their criminalisation, surveillance and punishment. The only effective approach to serious violence is to focus on the root causes such as poverty, racism, and other forms of structural injustice.”The Independent has contacted the Home Office for comment.Monday’s letter was not the first volley of criticism aimed at the policing bill. In March some 700 leading legal academics told Boris Johnson his planned restrictions on the right to protest were “draconian” and should be scrapped because they represented “an alarming extension of state control over legal assembly”. The new powers had not been requested by police, The Independent reported at the time.MPs waved through the legislation in July.Additional reporting by Press Association More

Democracy “will prevail” to allow another vote on Scottish independence, Nicola Sturgeon will insist, as she urges Boris Johnson’s government to work “in the spirit of cooperation” on the country’s future.The SNP leader, who has previously said a mandate for a second vote was “beyond question”, will use her conference speech tomorrow to stress that “it is not up to the Westminster government” to decide on Scotland’s future.Last week, the SNP leader said the Scottish government would “restart” work on a plan for independence after it was put on hold by the Covid pandemic, saying she intended to deliver one before the end of 2023.However, Boris Johnson remains firmly opposed to a second vote and Alister Jack, the Scotland secretary, suggested last month that a referendum would be considered if opinion polls “consistently” showed 60 per cent of Scots wanted a new vote.“My approach to government and to politics will be, as far as possible, cooperation not confrontation,” Ms Sturgeon will say on Monday to mark the close of the SNP conference.“The experience of the pandemic and the challenges we face as a result reinforces my view that this is the right approach.“So it is that spirit of cooperation that I hope the Scottish and UK governments can reach agreement — as we did in 2014 — to allow the democratic wishes of the people of Scotland to be heard and respected.”She will add: “But, this much is clear. Democracy must — and will — prevail. Until recently no-one seriously challenged the right of the people of Scotland to choose whether or not they wished to become independent.“As an independent country, co-operation between Scotland and our friends across the rest of the UK will continue, but it will be on a better basis: Scotland will be an equal partner”.In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, the Scottish first minister also insisted she was “confident” the country would vote Yes in a second vote — but would only hold a referendum “when the time is right”.She added: “Ultimately, of course, as with many things in the life of government, it will be a matter of judgement and it’s important that I get that judgement right because I’m very, very serious and have been for 18 months, when I say the biggest responsibility, the most serious responsibility on my shoulders, is steering the country through the biggest health crisis in a century.”The SNP conference also backed the Scottish government plans for the timing of another independence referendum at the “earliest” possible moment after the Covid crisis. Party members endorsed that timescale, backing a motion by 535 votes to 10 which sets out plans for another vote “as soon as it is safe to hold a proper, detailed, serious national debate on independence”.Earlier, however, Ms Sturgeon faced criticism from her predecessor and former first minister Alex Salmond, who told Times Radio the lack of a second independence referendum had left the country in a “time loop”.Mr Salmond, who is now leader of the Alba Party, said: “Listeners and viewers will remember that Bill Murray film, Groundhog Day. The poor man was caught up in a time loop and it took him weeks to get out of it. “Unfortunately Nicola has placed Scotland in a referendum time loop and it’s taken six years and we’re making no progress whatsoever. Now the Bill Murray film was a comedy. This is tragedy. This is Groundhog Scotland, Groundhog referendum.”Mr Salmond, whose new party failed to win a single seat at the Holyrood elections in May, also criticised the new SNP/Green Party coalition’s record on education, health, the economy, local government – and the pandemic – as “at its very kindest mediocre”.“When the immediate cloud of the pandemic lifts they shall be judged on that and probably harshly. We must not have independence judged with it,” Mr Salmond told members gathered at the Alba Party’s conference. Mr Salmond, who appeared to contradict his own insistence that Alba members make their case “by talking up Alba not running down the SNP”, also announced plans to publish an alternative prospectus for Scottish independence.He cited the Wee Blue Book, written by Wings Over Scotland campaigner Stuart Campbell, as having “stood out as winning converts to the national cause” when support for independence rose by 15 per cent ahead of the first referendum.The “wee Alba book” will be sent to 100,000 homes ahead of the council elections next year, Mr Salmond said, adding that the party would have to fundraise to afford their publication.It came after Ms Sturgeon announced this week that the civil service would restart work on a prospectus for Scottish independence. More

Boris Johnson’s pledge to “level up” the country will “mean nothing” if the government presses ahead with plans to end the £20-per-week uplift to universal credit, union boss Frances O’Grady is set to warn.In a keynote speech to the Trade Union Congress (TUC) annual conference, the general secretary will highlight the looming cut amid growing discontent at Westminster, including from backbench Conservative MPs.It comes after Sajid Javid, the health secretary, reiterated on Sunday that the government plans to press ahead with removing the uplift, insisting it “will be ended as planned at the end of this month”.Just last week, reports suggested an internal Whitehall analysis showed there could be a “catastrophic” impact of removing the support, including rising homelessness, poverty and foodbank use.“Ministers tells us they are going to level up Britain,” Ms O’Grady will tell the TUC conference in London on Monday.“But levelling up means nothing if they freeze workers’ pay, slash universal credit, and the number of kids in poverty soars.”Insisting that Covid must be a “catalyst for real change”, she will say: “If levelling up means anything, it must mean levelling up living standards. We need an economy that treats everyone with dignity, that rewards hard work, that helps working families and communities thrive”.The TUC general secretary will also call on ministers to better prepare the country for future economic shocks, including the threat posed by the climate crisis, as she warns: “Covid is not going to be a one-off”.In her speech, she will highlight the dangers posed to workers through future pandemics, technological disruption and climate change, saying: “Looking ahead over the next five, ten, twenty years, it’s clear that economic shocks will grow and intensify in the UK and around the world”.She will add: “Covid is not going to be a one-off. Years of austerity took their toll. And meant we fought this pandemic with one hand tied behind our backs.”“The UK must be better prepared for crises in the future and they’re coming. Climate chaos is here already and the longer we put off getting to net zero, the more disruptive it will be.”“In an age of anxiety, working people are crying out for security. We must build an economy that can withstand the shocks – and help working families face the future with confidence.”After a spate of recent disruption to supply chains and stark warnings that food shortages in supermarkets and restaurants are “permanent”, Ms O’Grady will also demand better conditions for workers.The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) group has previous warned the labour shortages behind the gaps on shelves and restaurant ensues could last up to two years, without urgent government intervention.“Ministers may scratch their heads about how to protect supply chains and fill vacancies,” Ms O’Grady will say. “Well, here’s a novel idea – let’s make that industry deliver decent conditions, direct employment and a proper pay rise.” More

Sajid Javid has insisted he wants to “get rid” of Covid PCR tests for double-jabbed travellers, insisting the requirement should not be kept in place “for a second longer than absolutely necessary”.Following protests from the travel industry over the extra cost on families, Mr Javid said officials were examining the current policy mandating a day two laboratory test when returning to the UK from green and amber list countries.The health secretary’s comments came after reports suggested that the government was looking to scrap the PCR test requirement in time for the school half-term holiday next month to boost the tourism sector.According to the Mail on Sunday, the requirement will be replaced with a lateral flow test that can produce results within 30 minutes, amid concerns in government of “excessive pricing” among some firms offering PCR tests.Speaking on Sky News, Mr Javid said: “Of course we still want to remain very cautious and there are some things, when it comes to travel for example, there are some rules that are going to have to remain in place.“But the PCR tests that’s required on your return to the UK from certain countries, look I want to try and get rid of that as soon as I possibly can”.The cabinet minister added: “I’m not going to make a decision right now, but I’ve already asked the officials that the moment we can, let’s get rid of these kind of intrusions.“The cost that generates for families, particularly families just trying to go out and holiday, you know we shouldn’t be keeping anything like that in place for a second longer than is absolutely necessary”.Speaking on Friday, Mr Javid also hit out the “completely unacceptable” practices of some private companies “taking advantage of holidaymakers”, adding: “We are taking action to clamp down on cowboy behaviour”.Labour’s shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said at first sight the report that the government was looking to ditch the PCR requirement “looks like a reasonable approach”.“We’ll have to see what the proposal is when it comes before parliament. We have had some briefing into the newspapers today that certain elements of the Coronavirus Act will be taken off the statute book,” he told Sky News.“At first sight, based on the briefing, the clauses which are going to be taken off the statute book, that looks like a reasonable approach to me.“But obviously we’ll want to study the detail when it comes to parliament because there have been huge concerns about the way in which the Coronavirus Act has been misused by the authorities, and ridiculous fines have been imposed on people.” More