Markus Andrews

Former prime minister Sir John Major has branded the government’s failure to evacuate all Afghans who worked for Britain “shameful”, and said withdrawing troops from the country was “strategically very stupid”.The former Tory leader made the remarks on Saturday at the FTWeekend Festival, where he said the decision to leave Afghanistan was “wrong morally but … also wrong practically”.It comes after Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, returned to the UK from an emergency diplomatic tour to Qatar and Pakistan where he attempted to secure the safe passage of those left behind in Kabul.Sir John launched an attack on the current Cabinet, telling those at the London event that it was “shameful we weren’t able to take out those who had worked for us in one capacity or another, or who had worked carrying out the changes to Afghanistan that the Taliban won’t approve of”.In addition, he said, the move to pull out allied troops “abruptly and in my view unnecessarily” will be a “stain on the reputation of the West” for at least a lifetime.Mr Raab told an emergency session of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that he did not know exactly how many British people and Afghans eligible for the Arap (Afghan relocations and assistance policy) scheme had been left in Afghanistan after Britain’s airlift mission ended. It is feared thousands of Afghans who helped British forces in the south-central nation, their relatives and other vulnerable civilians are stranded as a result of the US deciding to pull out its troops.Sir John also rebuked US president Joe Biden for insisting his troops had to leave the nation so swiftly by the 31 August deadline he sent after two decades in Afghanistan.“The fact that it was left in that fashion will leave a stain on the reputation of the West that will last for a very long time and certainly through the whole of the lifetime of those people in Afghanistan whom we have returned to Taliban rule,” the former PM said.More than 8,000 former Afghan staff and their family members were among the 15,000-plus people evacuated by the UK since 13 August. However, up to 1,100 Afghans deemed eligible were estimated to have been left behind, though that figure will fall short of the true number the UK would wish to help.Foreign secretary Mr Raab held talks in Pakistan in order to discuss British nationals and Afghan citizens crossing the land border in order to find safety. He also visited Qatar for talks about reopening Kabul airport in order to resume evacuations.In a tweet on Friday night, Mr Raab wrote: “I have held meetings with key partners in Qatar and Pakistan to support the people of Afghanistan, prevent it from becoming a safe haven for terrorists and respond to the humanitarian situation and safeguard regional stability.”With the House of Commons returning from its summer recess on Monday, he and Boris Johnson are expected to come under renewed pressure to explain their response to the crisis and how they will help more people leave the country.Mr Raab has been criticised for holidaying in Crete at the same time the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan last month. The PM was also called out for being on vacation in Somerset, in the southwest of England – where he returned when the crisis died down – though a No 10 spokesperson later said it was not a vacation and Mr Johnson was in fact “continuing to work”. When cross-party MPs attempted to quiz the foreign secretary about his trip during the recent Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, Mr Raab repeatedly refused to provide details about when he flew to Greece. Additional reporting by PA More

No 10 has been plotting how to cut Nicola Sturgeon out of Cop26 to prevent the first minister stealing the limelight, The Independent can reveal.Advisers at No 10 and the Cabinet Office have been trying to work out how to prevent this autumn’s landmark Glasgow summit from becoming an “advert” for Scottish independence.The strategising was provoked by fears that Ms Sturgeon might attempt to hijack the summit for her own political ends, according to meeting notes and WhatsApp messages seen by The Independent.According to the notes, it was suggested that public statements tied to the summit should focus on Glasgow as a city in the UK, and that mentions of Scotland should refer to its place within the United Kingdom wherever possible. It was also suggested in messages that the prime minister, Boris Johnson, should avoid sharing a platform with Ms Sturgeon in the run-up to and during the event, and that he should “neutralise” her by including other devolved leaders where possible.“This can be labelled as a role for her [as one of the UK’s leaders] but avoids her taking centre stage”, one message read. “We can’t let this be used as an advert for an independence campaign,” another said. Without a counter-strategy, said the meeting notes, there was a risk that the Scottish leader could “hijack” the summit by using it as a “soapbox for her independence obsession”. The notes also record efforts to ensure that the union flag is displayed as much as possible.Sources familiar with the meetings and correspondence also said a deliberate decision had been made that the prime minister would not meet with the first minister on a recent trip to Scotland, as part of the wider effort to frame Cop26 and green investment as a “UK win”.The new revelations over attempts to minimise Ms Sturgeon’s impact at the summit cast doubt on Mr Johnson’s recent attempts to cool his hostile tone. On a recent visit to Scotland, while the prime minister avoided a meeting with Ms Sturgeon, he told the BBC that “there’s going to be a role for Nicola, for Mark Drakeford [Welsh first minister], for everybody in the Cop26”.A British government spokesperson told The Independent that the summit was a “massive undertaking by the whole of the UK”, and that “the prime minister looks forward to working with colleagues to deliver a successful conference.”“The prime minister is leading the call for greater global climate ambition and action to tackle climate change ahead of Cop26, and he is committed to building on our world-leading record in slashing emissions and taking action to ensure we achieve net zero by 2050,” they said.Sources close to the Scottish government said they were infuriated that energy was being spent on using the summit to promote efforts to keep the union together, rather than for its primary purpose of addressing the climate emergency. A Scottish government source said that the plan said “far more about the prime minister and those around him than it does about the first minister”.“Cop26 in Glasgow is a vital occasion in the global fight against climate change – the world is at ‘code red’. That is what we should all be focusing on, instead of pathetic and puerile attempts at point-scoring, which simply demonstrate the depth of Downing Street’s paranoia.”The evidence of wargaming has underlined criticism from other groups, including financial leaders, who have suggested that the summit is likely to fall short of its main aim of tackling climate change. Senior figures at several of the world’s largest asset-management companies told The Independent that they had effectively given up on “anything meaningful” being achieved in Glasgow this year. Instead, they were looking ahead to Cop27 in Egypt in 2022, where they believe that rather than just some relatively limited agreements on coal divestment – which are expected to be reached in Glasgow – they are likely to secure action on limiting the level of finance available for all fossil-fuel-linked ventures. Leading figures in the City said that meetings had been haphazardly planned, lacked clear demands, and had left them unsure what was expected of them. And while coal use was an obvious target, after it became a focus at the G7 summit and the G20, they said they had hoped measures would go further, with clear goals set for divestment from gas-linked investments too.“Coal was, and is, low-hanging fruit. This summit should have found a clear pathway towards faster divestment from oil and gas. It’s also completely failed to win over emerging markets, who are the ones most reliant on using fossil-fuel energy to try develop their economies at pace,” said one asset manager, whose company has several hundred billion pounds under its management. More

Britain’s Brexit minister warned Saturday of a long-term chill in relations between the U.K. and the European Union if agreed-upon trading arrangements governing Northern Ireland are not resolved.David Frost said in a speech at the British-Irish Association in Oxford that the Northern Ireland Protocol needed “substantial and significant change.”The post-Brexit trading arrangement between the British government and the 27-nation EU has seen customs and border checks imposed on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K. As well as seeking to respect the rules governing the EU’s single market for goods, the regulations seek to keep an open border between Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland, a key pillar of Northern Ireland’s peace process. However, they have angered Northern Ireland’s unionist community, who say the checks amount to a border in the Irish Sea and weaken Northern Ireland’s ties with the rest of the U.K.“The stakes are high, the arguments can be bitter,” Frost said. “And I worry this process is capable of generating a sort of cold mistrust between us and the EU which could spread across the relationship.”Frost has for months sought changes to the protocol, which he helped to craft, but the EU has repeatedly rejected opening up discussions again after years of protracted negotiations. “It’s holding back the potential for a new era of cooperation between like-minded states in a world which needs us to work together effectively,” Frost said. Though Frost stressed the need for changes, he sought to downplay concerns in the EU that Britain would unilaterally seek to sweep away all existing arrangements. “That is not our position,” he said. “It is obvious there will always need to be a dedicated U.K.-EU treaty relationship covering Northern Ireland. It is a question of finding the right balance.”Britain formally left the EU in January 2020, but remained within its economic orbit until the start of this year, when a new much looser free trade agreement took hold. At that time, Northern Ireland was given separate status that effectively keeps it in the EU’s single market for goods, a decision that prevents a hard border with Ireland, which would go counter to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 that ended decades of sectarian violence.Ultimately, Britain’s Conservative government is seeking to remove most checks, replacing them with a “light touch” system in which only goods at risk of entering the EU would be inspected. ___For more of AP’s Brexit coverage, go to https://apnews.com/hub/brexit More

Conservatives have been accused of delaying action on air pollution after it emerged that the government agreed to local authority requests to put the introduction of Clean Air Zones on hold last summer because of the Covid outbreak.A plan first published in 2017 directed 61 councils across England to develop plans “in the shortest possible time” for delivering cuts in levels of toxic nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is emitted in car exhausts.But only three Clean Air Zones have since been put in place – in London, Birmingham and Bath & North East Somerset – while Portsmouth is due to launch its own zone this winter.Liberal Democrats, who control both the Bath and Portsmouth authorities, accused the government of using the pandemic as an excuse for delaying action.In answers to questions from Lib Dem spokesperson Sarah Olney, transport minister Rachel Maclean said that “government agreed last summer to requests to delay work on the introduction of Clean Air Zones in a number of areas, recognising the significant uncertainties and economic hardship arising from Covid-19”.Ms Maclean said the Department for Transport was continuing to keep plans for Clean Air Zones under “regular review” to ensure their introduction as soon as possible, but gave no timeframe for future zones.Ms Olney told The Independent: “Failure to clean up our toxic air has contributed to 40,000 early deaths each year all while the Conservatives simply do not care about cleaning up our air. Their record is shameful.“Despite identifying over 60 authorities years ago that needed to cut dangerous emissions, just four have introduced Clean Air Zones.“The Tories even approved delays to schemes – clearly they’re failing to take the issue seriously.“Liberal Democrats would clean up our toxic air nationally just like our councils are doing locally, with a clean air fund for councils to clean up their toxic fumes.”A government spokesperson said: “Air pollution at a national level has reduced significantly since 2010 – emissions of fine particulate matter have fallen by 11%, while emissions of nitrogen oxides are at their lowest level since records began.“While emissions continue to improve year-on-year, we remain committed to cleaning up our air and are providing £880 million in funding and expert support to local authorities so they can develop innovative plans – including Clean Air Zones – to achieve compliance with NO2 legal limits in the shortest possible time.” More

Boris Johnson was today facing a backbench revolt over plans for a £10bn National Insurance hike to pay for social care which Tory critics have branded “socialist”.Conservative critics are to meet early next week to co-ordinate opposition to the plan, due to be finalised in the next few days by the prime minister, chancellor Rishi Sunak and health secretary Sajid Javid.One backbencher told The Independent that Tory WhatsApp groups were buzzing with anger from “many dozens” of MPs, enough to put the PM’s 85-seat working majority at risk when the reforms come to the House of Commons.Marcus Fysh said that MPs will pile pressure on the prime minister and chancellor to change course on proposals to increase National Insurance contributions by 1 per cent or more, which would breach the Tories’ manifesto promise not to raise the rates of NICs, income tax or VAT during the course of this parliament.The choice of NICs to fund social care has sparked furious accusations that the prime minister is effectively asking younger and lower-paid workers – many of whom cannot afford to buy their homes – to pay for his promise that wealthy older people should not have to sell their homes to pay for care.National Insurance is a particularly regressive tax because it is paid by workers earning as little as £9,500 a year, compared to income tax which does not kick in until £12,570, and because lower-income workers pay the 12 per cent rate on all their eligible salary while the better-off pay just 2 per cent on earnings over around £50,000. Pensioners, who would stand to benefit most from the social care plan, do not pay NICs, which are also not levied on unearned income.Mr Fysh said he had been urging Tory chancellors since he entered parliament in 2015 to introduce an insurance-based policy to fill the massive holes in funding for social care.“I am very disappointed to see that they appear effectively to have gone for a tax-and-spend policy, with the tax falling only on those of working age,” he said.“It’s a clear breach of our manifesto commitment and I won’t be voting for it.”Mr Fysh said that Mr Johnson’s preferred policy of putting a £50,000 cap on an individual’s contribution towards care costs would place an open-ended burden on taxpayers, rising swiftly as the elderly population grows.“There are lots of people who are deeply uncomfortable about this – many dozens,” he said. “I haven’t seen any comment in support of it on the WhatsApp groups. It’s all been deep concern about breaking a manifesto pledge. “I can’t speak for how others might vote, but it isn’t something I could support.” He suggested that a “modest” government subsidy could provide sufficient incentive for working-age people to pay for insurance to cover future care costs, while the needs of the current generation of elderly people could be funded by withdrawing the state pension from those with an income of £70,000 or more.Former cabinet minister John Redwood said: “The government should say our tax rates are high enough. We would raise more tax if some rates were cut.“Better social care is a priority we can afford without singling it out to require a tax rise. It seems we can afford lots of government spending people rate less highly.”The expected announcement of a reform package for social care comes more than two years after Mr Johnson said in his first speech as prime minister in July 2019 that he was ready to implement “a clear plan we have prepared”.In the 2019 election manifesto, he promised to “build cross-party consensus” on a plan which would garner “the widest possible support”, based on the principle that no-one would have to sell their home to pay for care. However, no cross-party consultations have taken place ahead of next week’s announcement, with opposition parties saying they have not been made aware of the details of the scheme. More

Record NHS waiting lists for routine diagnostic tests are creating a “two-tier health service” and a bonanza for private healthcare firms as increasing numbers of patients choose to pay rather than wait, Labour has warned.The most recent official statistics show a record 1,367,706 people waiting for tests include MRI and CT scans in June – 2.5 per cent up on the previous month, which itself set a record.The figures emerged as the final details were being thrashed out for a funding package to help the NHS in England deal with the aftermath from the Covid pandemic, which has seen waiting lists soar to 5 million people overall, with predictions that the number could peak as high as 15m over the coming years.Despite chancellor Rishi Sunak’s promise that the NHS would get “whatever it needs”, reports suggest the settlement could be close to £5bn – roughly half what health service bosses in NHS Providers and the NHS Confederation believe is needed.Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth told The Independent that record waiting lists were forcing some patients into debt in order to pay for private treatment to escape “unacceptable” uncertainty in the NHS.He pointed to a recent report from business intelligence firm Laing Buisson, which stated: “While the NHS has faced challenges in restarting elective treatment, self-pay is looking attractive even if currently wait times are longer than usual.”For seven out of 15 diagnostic tests, waiting lists are now at record levels, said Mr Ashworth.These included 275,436 waiting for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, compared to 202,893 at the end of 2019, and 447,993 awaiting a non-obstetric ultrasound, up from 342,143 over the same period.Some 163,265 were waiting for CT scans (up from 135,429) and 142,408 for echocardiography tests (up from 84,234).Mr Ashworth said: “The numbers of patients waiting longer for tests and scans reveals the scale of the crisis the NHS is now in.“Waiting lists for treatment and surgery are at record levels and thousands now queue for diagnosis. It means more unacceptable pain, agony and uncertainty for patients.“Meanwhile private healthcare firms predict a boom in profits on the back of this suffering as increasing numbers who can afford it turn to the private sector to jump the queue while others fall into debt to pay for an operation because they can no longer bear the wait on the NHS.“Thanks to years of Tory underfunding, staff shortages and cuts, a two-tier health service is opening up eroding the founding principles of the NHS as a universal service for all. A rescue plan for the NHS is now more urgent than ever.”A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to making sure the NHS has everything it needs to continue providing quality care to the public as we tackle the waiting lists that have built up during the pandemic.“This year alone, we have already provided a further £29 billion to support health and care services, including an extra £1 billion to tackle the backlog.“We are backing the NHS to deliver the appointments, operations and treatment people need, and have invested a further £325 million to replace diagnostics equipment and set up Community Diagnostic Hubs to deliver 3.5 million more tests by 2022-23, reducing pressure on other services and ensuring more people can be seen more quickly.” More

A senior government scientific adviser has backed the decision to review experts’ rejection of vaccines for teenagers, warning that England has little “wriggle room” to avoid new coronavirus lockdowns.Prof John Edmunds, a member of the Sage scientific advisory group for emergencies, said England was likely to see a big increase in Covid-19 infection rates as unvaccinated children go back to schools.The independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation rejected universal jabs for 12-15 year-olds on Friday on the grounds that benefits for their health were only “marginal”, giving the green light for the inoculation only of 200,000 children with underlying health conditions.And a member of the committee today warned that the vaccine “could do more harm than good” to healthy youngsters.But ministers ordered a review by the chief medical officers of the four nations of the UK – including Prof Chris Whitty – to determine whether social and educational impacts on children might tip the balance in favour of mass vaccination.They are expected to report by the end of the coming week, with ministers thought all but certain to give the green light for all 12-15 year-olds to get the Pfizer vaccine.Prof Edmunds today said it was right for the CMOs to look at the issue from a wider perspective than the JCVI, which is qualified only to consider health factors.“Obviously we need to take into consideration the wider effect that Covid might have on children in their educational and developmental achievements,” the epidemiologist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.“It’s difficult to say exactly how many children haven’t been infected, but it’s probably about half of them. So that’s about 6 million children.“If we allow infection just to run through the population that’s a lot of children who will be infected, and that will be a lot of disruption to schools in the coming months. I think you have to take that into account.”Prof Edmunds said a big increase in cases in England was “likely”, not only due to classrooms opening for the autumn term, but also because of employees returning to the office.He said he hoped the UK would avoid further lockdowns, but warned that pressure on the NHS was currently “significant” and measures to stem the spread of Covid-19 could not be ruled out.“If you look at what the pressure is on the NHS at the moment, it’s much less than it has been previously, but it’s significant,” said Prof Edmunds. “There are significant numbers of cases in hospital at the moment – about the same level as there were in mid-October last year, which was shortly before we went into a lockdown – so we don’t have a lot of wiggle room.”Former government chief scientific adviser Sir Mark Walport said that it was right for Boris Johnson and other policy-makers to ask medical advisers to consider wider aspects of the decision on jabs for teens.“My child’s or my grandchild’s health is also affected by their social environment, by their ability to go to school, by what happens in the family,” he told Today. “There are broader factors as well.”Ministers could in theory press ahead with mass vaccination of teens, even if the CMOs advise against, he said.“The role of the government scientific adviser, and of course Chris Whitty as the CMO, is to provide the advice to government, who in principle can take it or leave it,” said Prof Walport.But JCVI member Adam Finn defended the decision not to approve universal jabs for teenagers.“We know that these vaccines work, they do prevent the disease,” he told Sky News. “But we also know that healthy children aged 12 to 15 very seldom get seriously ill with Covid.“And in that situation, the fact that there are side-effects, albeit very rare, which we don’t really understand at this point, means that there is a risk that we could be doing more harm than good with this vaccine.“And in that situation – even though it’s not very likely – we really are cautious to advise that all children should receive the vaccine. It’s really mostly to do with the fact that the risks of Covid are so small in healthy children.”The general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, Geoff Barton, said that headteachers and principals would “absolutely” back instructions to assist in vaccination of pupils if the review determines that it would reduce disruption to education.“If the guidance is that this will reduce the disruption for all those young people, we’ll absolutely back that,” said Mr Barton.“Disruption to young people doesn’t just mean they’re missing some time with their history teacher. In the most extreme cases – as the Centre for Social Justice showed us last autumn – (we have) 90,000 children missing from schools, some of those being drawn into gang culture, some of them potentially never coming back into education.“So the government is right on this that we have to look at the broader picture.“And frankly in England specifically where we’ve got so few measures now, this is going to be one of the most reassuring ways of telling those 12-15 year-olds ‘Have the kind of jab that your parents are likely to have had, because that is going to minimise the disruption for you’.” More

Outdated communications skills at the heart of government were exposed by the Covidpandemic to the extent that the famous slides displayed at Downing Street press conferences were often completed only minutes before being broadcast on live TV, Boris Johnson’s former media chief has revealed.Lee Cain said that failings in the government’s communications strategy at the outset of the crisis resulted in the public receiving mixed messages at a critical time.And he said that a hub of comms staff set up in the Cabinet Office to oversee official information campaigns as infections soared and the country was plunged into lockdown was a “failure” because of inexperienced staff, unclear lines of responsibility, inconsistent policy and endemic leaks.In a report for the Institute for Government, the former Downing Street director of communications – brought into No 10 by Boris Johnson after working with him on the Vote Leave campaign – called for the centralisation of official comms operation, a cull of hundreds of Whitehall press officers and a shift away from print newspapers towards TV, video clips and social media.Cain also called for the revival of proposals for regular televised press conferences from the new TV studio in 9 Downing Street, ditched by Mr Johnson shortly after the comms chief and his ally Dominic Cummings quit last November. He said that the prime minister himself should host the briefings, rather than journalist Allegra Stratton, whose recruitment to be the TV face of the government was behind Mr Cain’s departure last year. More