Markus Andrews

Boris Johnson will not be heading to Scotland for his summer holiday this year, after it emerged how close he came to “catastrophe” on last year’s staycation in the Highlands.The prime minister’s visit to a cottage in remote Applecross on the north-west coast was cut short last August after the location was revealed.But the trip went badly wrong for another reason: Mr Johnson got swept out sea while attempting to paddle board, according to a report in The Times.“He nearly drowned,” a government source told the newspaper. “He got swept away and found himself going further and further out.”A separate source said the prime minister had been canoeing, rather than paddle-boarding, when he got in trouble in the water near his holiday cottage.The prime minister’s security team was said to have been sufficiently worried that they considered calling out a rescue helicopter.But Mr Johnson managed to paddle or row towards his protection officers, who had swum out to sea to save him. “It could have been a catastrophe,” the source told the newspaper.Mr Johnson was supposed to take a two-week holiday with his partner Carrie, their son and their dog Dilyn. But the trip was cut short when the Daily Mail revealed photographs of the rental cottage and social media users quickly identified its location.Mr Johnson and his team feared he and the family could be “mobbed by Scottish nationalists,” officials told reporters at the time.Although the prime minister will remain in the UK for a staycation this summer, he is thought to have ruled out returned a return to Scotland after last year’s experiences.The prime minister is said to have told friends he would go back for a holiday “over my dead body”.International trade secretary Liz Truss has reportedly enjoying a summer holiday abroad in Barbados this summer, but fellow cabinet ministers have decided on a staycation instead.Despite the opening up for international holiday destinations, most ministers remain worried about the PR implications of jetting off abroad when so many Britons have struggled to make foreign holiday plans.Climate minister Alok Sharma has come in for heavy criticism after it emerged he flew to 30 countries this year – including six on the government’s Covid red list – without isolating on his return.Sarah Olney, the Lib Dems transport spokesperson, said: “While Alok Sharma flies to red list countries with abandon, hard-working families can hardly see loved ones or plan holidays as the government changes travel rules on the hoof.”The Independent has approached No 10 for comment. More

Afghan journalists who have worked for the British media will be considered for relocation to the UK if they come under “imminent threat,” Boris Johnson’s government has announced.Foreign secretary Dominic Raab has said cases would be considered “on an exceptional basis,” as fears grow over the rapid advances made by the Taliban in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of almost all Western troops.Dawa Khan Menapal, the director of Afghanistan’s media and information centre, was shot dead in his car in Kabul on Friday. The Taliban said the top media official had been “punished for his deeds”.The UK’s most prominent media organisations has issued a plea to No 10 to help Afghan journalists, translators and support staff who have worked with them over the past 20 years.In a joint letter to the prime minister and foreign secretary, 23 media organisations – including The Independent – called on Mr Johnson to follow the example of president Joe Biden, who has given Afghan media staff with US links access to a refugee programme.In a reply letter to British media organisations, Mr Raab said the “vibrant” Afghan media was one of the country’s great success stories in the past two decades, and should be “celebrated and protected”.The foreign secretary added: “Your letter highlighted the threat faced by Afghan staff who have worked for your media organisations in Afghanistan, in particular the risk of reprisals they face from the Taliban from their association with the UK.“Under existing schemes, we are able to consider individual cases for relocation on an exceptional basis, where there is evidence they are under imminent threat due to the nature of their engagement with the UK.”Mr Raab added: “Journalists (and those supporting them) can be eligible for our support, depending on the individual circumstances that apply.”The media organisations had appealed for the creation of a special visa programme for Afghan media workers with UK links who are at risk as the Taliban attempts to retake the country.The workers and their families – amounting to a total of a few dozen people – face an “acute and worsening” threat to their lives from the militant group, which has a track record of persecution and targeted killings of journalists.Taliban insurgents captured an Afghan provincial capital on Friday amid a deteriorating security situation as the final US, UK and other foreign troops withdraw from the country.A police spokesman in southern Nimroz province said the capital Zaranj had fallen to the hardline Islamists because of a lack of reinforcements from the Western-backed government.A Taliban spokesman said on Twitter that the insurgents had “completely liberated” the province and had taken control of the governor’s house, police headquarters and other official buildings. More

Boris Johnson’s government has hiked spending on Union flags to more than £163,000 in two years as part of its drive to boost pride in the national symbol.The latest figures show spending has increased in virtually every Whitehall department since Mr Johnson became prime minister two years ago.The £163,000 spent in 2020 and 2021 amounts to 85 per cent of flag purchases over the past four years. One leading historian said the increase amounted to a “pushback against devolution and threats to the Union”.The Ministry of Defence has spent £118,000 since the start of 2018 while the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) spent £54,420 last year alone.The DCMS published new guidance in March calling for the flag to be flown every day over government buildings, as culture secretary Oliver Dowden said it was a “proud reminder of our history and the ties that bind us”.It comes as Mr Johnson’s ministers have made Union flags a prominent feature of their homes and offices for media interviews during the Covid pandemic.Robert Jenrick got into a row with the BBC over Union flags, after he was gently mocked by Breakfast hosts about the size of his flag. The communities secretary fired back by saying the flag was a “symbol of liberty and freedom that binds the whole country together”.Robert Colls, professor of cultural history at De Montfort University, said: “I think what we are seeing at the moment from the government is a kind of pushback against devolution and threats to the Union.”The latest figures show the Cabinet Office has spent more than £3,000 since the start of 2018, with just under £2,000 of that funding the purchase of eight flags in the most recent financial year.The figures, first revealed by The Guardian following Freedom of Information Act requests, found the Treasury has spent nearly £1,000 on Union flags since 2018, including three this year at a cost of £607.06.The Department for Transport has spent £1,100 since 2018, including £700 last year, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government spent £90.05 on the flags this year, with no record of purchases in other recent years.SNP MP Tommy Sheppard said: “People will find it quite odd in the middle of a public health crisis that expenditure on flags is something that has been increasing.”He added: “The truth is that this is a deliberate plot by the government to use the union flag to promote its political ends and it just doesn’t fool people. I’m reminded of the comment by Boris Johnson’s 18th-century namesake that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”The figures show the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy spent £392 this year and last – zero in the years previously – while the Department for Work and Pensions spent £1,045 in the last three years.The Department for International Trade spent £653.05 this year and last. The Department for Education spent £134 in 2019, the Wales Office has spent £824 since 2018. This included £597.50 in 2020-21 and the same amount again on Welsh flags.Exemptions to the DMCS’ guidance on Union flags apply when other flags – such as national flags of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, county flags or other flags to mark “civic pride” – are flown. More

A live music scene struggling to recover after 16 months of shutdown has been dealt a further blow after a Home Office blunder meant many venues and agents were given zero allocations for certificates to sponsor overseas artists on the grounds that they applied for none last year.Thousands of live entertainment companies have sponsor licences with the Home Office which allow them to issue temporary working papers to musicians and other artists or crew visiting from overseas. Demand for such papers is expected to rise sharply because of Brexit, which has removed the automatic right to free movement of EU citizens.But annual licences are routinely issued on the basis of repeating the previous year’s allowance, and with no touring in 2020 because of Covid-19, many have been automatically set at zero.Steve Richard, managing director of entertainment immigration specialists T&S Immigration Services, told The Independent: “Lots of people in the industry have been on furlough and they have come back to find they’ve been given a zero allocation. They can ask for more, but they are told that there’s an 18-week wait. If you’re running a festival in August you can’t wait that long.“There is a way round it, because if you pay UK Visas and Immigration £200 they will turn it round it five days. Most people I’ve spoken to are doing that. But that means the department profits from the dilemma its own system spawned, and it will add up to a fair bit of money which the sector can’t afford to throw away.”Major events affected by the issue have included dance music festivals putting on DJs from Spain, Germany or Italy and thrash metal shows involving bands from the thriving Scandinavian scene.Mr Richard said that thousands of organisations take up certificates of sponsorship each year, ranging from small venues applying for an allocation of 10 to major agencies needing thousands. Often a band, DJ or orchestra will be booked at short notice, and hosts do not know how many certificates they will need until the last minute, making pre-allocated quotas vital.Mr Richard raised the issue of zero allocations with the Home Office and received the response that it was “an automatic system-driven process that case-working teams have no control over”.“The system just doesn’t work,” he said. “This was a really predictable problem. They can’t just blame it on the computer saying No.“International touring is just starting up again and if you want to put on an American artist coming to the UK, things like this are really unhelpful.“At present there are so many barriers to touring. Quarantine periods – waived for footballers and tennis players, but not for entertainers – which add a great deal of time and expense to a tour; lack of available insurance against last-minute cancellation due to lockdown; increased paperwork; testing; trucking issues. The Home Office should not be adding to these woes.”Asked about the issue of zero allocations, the Home Office did not dispute Mr Richard’s account.A government spokesperson said: “Musicians and performers are a valued and important part of UK culture. The UK attracts world-class artists, entertainers and musicians and that’s not going to change under the new system.“The rules already permit performers from around the world to take part in events, concerts and competitions without the need for formal sponsorship or a work visa and that will continue to be the case.“We will work with the sponsor to expedite their request and ensure there is no risk to the live music industry.” More

The government’s “pitiful” catch-up funding will leave millions of children without extra support, Labour has warned – as new analysis shows pupils in England lost eight weeks of school teaching this year.Keir Starmer’s party said 346 million days of face-to-face learning were lost to England’s pupils during the academic year gone by because of disruption caused by the Covid crisis.The opposition party urged the government to consider putting £15bn into catch-up funding – warning that the current £1.4bn package could leave many of the poorest pupils behind.The government’s recovery tsar Sir Kevan Collins quit his post in June in protest at a funding plan he described as falling “far short of what is needed” to alleviate the impact of the pandemic on children’s learning.The catch-up funding – amounting to £6,000 per year for each primary school – was denounced by school leaders as “pitiful”.New Labour analysis shows that around 560,000 year 11 students will leave secondary school this summer without any of the government’s catch-up support, while over the next four years nearly two million pupils will miss out necessary recovery support.The party warned that lost teaching time had not been felt evenly during the pandemic – and some more required more catch-up support than others. Pupils on free school meals are 30 per cent more likely to have been out of school in the autumn term, according to its analysis.Kate Green MP, Labour’s shadow education secretary, said: “The Conservatives have treated children as an afterthought failing to keep them learning together in school with their friends.“Ministers have now compounded this failure with an utterly inadequate recovery plan which will leave millions of children without any additional support, showing a shocking lack of ambition for their future ambitions and life chances.“Labour has set out a bold plan to invest in our children’s futures, compensating for the Conservatives’ failures over the last year … It’s time for the Conservatives to get behind Labour’s plan and match our ambition for children’s futures.”Labour’s warning comes ahead of almost 800,000 pupils receiving their A-level, GCSE and BTEC results this week – with expectations of record-breaking numbers of top-scoring results based on teacher assessments, as well as tests done in schools.The opposition and teaching unions have accused the government of failing to set out how it will make sure results are fair for pupils who have missed most time in school – with concerns being raised that the most advantaged pupils are set to benefit from the system. More

A civil servant who accompanied Boris Johnson on his trip to Scotland this week has gone into self-isolation after testing positive for Covid-19.But Downing Street says that the prime minister himself has not been told to self-isolate, as he did not come into close contact with the infected person.Mr Johnson and the civil servant spent some time in the same room together in Glasgow and then flew in the same aircraft to Aberdeen, as the PM visited a wind-farm off the coast of northeast Scotland.But it is understood that they did not sit close to one another on the plane or spend significant periods of time in close proximity to one another, and Mr Johnson has not been identified by NHS Test and Trace as a contact of the infected aide.The aide remained in Scotland to fulfil the requirement to self-isolate, along with all those identified as close contacts, while Mr Johnson returned to London.It is understood that the infected person was a member of the advance team who travelled to Scotland ahead of the PM to prepare for his two-day visit, and did not fly up from London with Mr Johnson.A No 10 spokesperson said: “The prime minister regularly visits communities across the UK and all aspects of visits are carried out in line with Covid guidance.“The prime minister has not come into close contact with anyone who has tested positive.”Labour MP Anneliese Dodds, the party’s chair, said: “It’s clear the prime minister hasn’t learned anything from what happened last time he tried to cook up a reason to be above the rules everyone else has to follow.“Senior Conservatives are really taking the public for fools. This is yet another example of one rule for them and another for everyone else.”Mr Johnson was himself infected with Covid in March last year, spending seven nights in hospital. He was also forced to self-isolate at Chequers last month after health secretary Sajid Javid tested positive shortly after a meeting with the prime minister.Initially, the PM and chancellor Rishi Sunak – who also came into close contact with Mr Javid – had tried to avoid isolation by claiming they would take part in a daily testing pilot scheme instead.However, they both U-turned and decided to spend the isolation period at home after huge public pressure. More

Charities today appealed for a rethink of efforts to use police enforcement in France to stem the flow of migrants in small boats across the English Channel, after a Home Office minister said that the drive was pushing people to resort to longer, riskier and more dangerous journeys in their efforts to reach Britain.Chris Philp was speaking on a visit to France to assess whether the £54m paid to Paris by Home Secretary Priti Patel to fund tougher action against people-smuggling gangs was delivering results for the British public.He is understood to have pressed French officials over why the additional cash – part of an agreement under which French police were to double patrols on Channel beaches and step up intelligence sharing with their UK counterparts – had not prevented more than 1,000 migrants completing the perilous cross-Channel crossing to Kent in the last two days alone.But the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants warned that the government’s hardline approach to the small boats was “pushing desperate people to take more extreme risks”, while the charity Refugee Action said that as a result “business has never been better for the criminal smuggling gangs”.Both appealed for the government to create safe routes for refugees to find sanctuary in the UK.Mr Philp and clandestine Channel threat commander Dan O’Mahoney heard that some 8,000 migrant attempts to reach the UK have been thwarted by French authorities so far this year – almost three times the number in the same period of 2020.But French officers have complained that they have been thrust into a “cat and mouse” game with smugglers, who have adopted “increasingly evasive tactics” to find spots along a 100km stretch of coastline to be able to launch boats undisturbed.The total number of migrants making the life-threatening journey across the Channel in small boats this year passed a record 10,000 on Thursday.Charities have warned that people are being driven to make the dangerous voyage across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes because of the increasing difficulty of alternative methods for reaching Britain, such as in lorries and vans.Mr Philp said: “In recent months we have seen a surge in illegal migration across Europe and the number of crossings we have seen over the last few weeks is simply unacceptable.“Ruthless criminals are treating people like human cargo, smuggling them across borders. They have no care for human life and are taking riskier and longer crossings.“I’m in France today to meet with French law enforcement and make sure the new funding we have provided, which has doubled patrols and meant greater intelligence sharing, delivers results for the British public.“Seeing the vastness of coastline now being exploited by organised gangs shows the scale of the problem facing the French. We must step up to the challenge, and working together offers the best chance of putting an end to his criminal trade and protect lives.”JCWI campaigns director Minnie Rahman said: “The Home Office is freely admitting that their policies and practices put people in danger, pushing desperate people to take more extreme risks and increasing reliance on people-smugglers.“Ministers use meaningless rhetoric while the government worsens the chaos within the asylum system and treats asylum-seekers with utter disregard and cruelty.“Actions speak louder than words and if the government truly wanted to put people-smugglers out of business, they would accept that the solution that is right in front of them – work with France to ensure that people can travel to the UK safely and have their claims heard.”Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive of Refugee Action, said: “It’s scandalous that ministers know their failure to open up more routes to safety is forcing refugees into making ever more dangerous journeys.“As a result, business has never been better for the criminal smuggling gangs who prey on people’s desperation and a lack of choice and turn it into hard profit.“Nobody wants to see people risking their lives in rickety boats. It’s time the government created more routes for refugees to find sanctuary here, such as family reunion schemes, humanitarian visas, and a long term commitment to welcome 10,000 people a year via resettlement programmes.”Despite considerable public attention to the issue of unauthorised Channel crossings, the UK receives significantly fewer asylum-seekers than comparable European countries. Last year, despite a sharp rise in small boat arrivals, asylum applications in Britain fell to 29,456, compared with 93,475 applications made in France and 121,955 in Germany. More

Downing Street has defended climate change minister Alok Sharma for visiting 30 countries this years, insisting that face-to-face meetings with foreign leaders are “essential” in his role as COP26 president.Mr Sharma has come under fire after it emerged he has flown to 30 countries this year – including six on the government’s Covid red list – without isolating on his return.More than half of the trips took place while international travel was all but banned for Britons, according to an audit by the Daily Mail.Mr Sharma, who is currently visiting Bolivia and Brazil – both red list countries – is tasked with securing commitments from key countries as he prepares to host the climate change summit in Glasgow this November.But Downing Street defended his travel record and said it was within the rules for him to avoid quarantine on his return to the UK.Prime minister Boris Johnson’s official spokesman said: “As COP president, Alok Sharma is leading climate negotiations with countries including major emitters to cut emissions and secure ambitious action ahead of the COP26 summit.“The majority of this work is done remotely but some travel to key countries for face-to-face talks is essential.“He has secured ambitious action as a result of the discussions he has had. For example, immediately following his visit to Japan and South Korea the governments there committed to ambitious net zero targets, which was a key ask from the UK.”The spokesman added: “Ministers conducting essential travel such as this are exempted from quarantine, as set out in the rules.”Asked if he would quarantine on his return from Brazil, the spokesman said: “He will continue to comply with the rules as set out.”Mr Sharma’s previous red list trips include Qatar, the UAE, Bangladesh and Turkey.Instead of the mandatory hotel quarantine faced by anyone entering the UK from red list countries since February – the cost of which has just risen from £1,750 to £2,285 – Mr Sharma used a ministerial exemption available to “Crown servants” such as diplomats and essential workers.The exemption requires a negative Covid test.Days after returning from an early June trip to Bangladesh, Mr Sharma met the Prince of Wales indoors before visiting a primary school.The Daily Mail also reported Mr Sharma was able to avoid having to isolate at home following his return from amber list countries.Sarah Olney, a Liberal Democrat transport spokesperson told the newspaper: “As usual with this government, it’s one rule for them and another for everybody else.“While Alok Sharma flies to red list countries with abandon, hard-working families can hardly see loved ones or plan holidays as the government changes travel rules on the hoof.”And Labour shadow cabinet minister David Lammy told LBC: “That’s hugely worrying. I mean, the lack of self-isolation is bizarre and dangerous. And I think that it is probably impossible not to fly, of course, but I think he should be leading by example clearly.”Green Party peer Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb added: “I do understand it’s very good to meet people in person, but this is excessive. When you’re in charge of COP26, to take this many flights is hypocritical.” More